Search Results

Search found 1130 results on 46 pages for 'consumer goods'.

Page 42/46 | < Previous Page | 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46  | Next Page >

• JavaOne 2012 Sunday Strategy Keynote

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  At the Sunday Strategy Keynote, held at the Masonic Auditorium, Hasan Rizvi, EVP, Middleware and Java Development, stated that the theme for this year's JavaOne is: “Make the future Java”-- meaning that Java continues in its role as the most popular, complete, productive, secure, and innovative development platform. But it also means, he qualified, the process by which we make the future Java -- an open, transparent, collaborative, and community-driven evolution. "Many of you have bet your businesses and your careers on Java, and we have bet our business on Java," he said.Rizvi detailed the three factors they consider critical to the success of Java--technology innovation, community participation, and Oracle's leadership/stewardship. He offered a scorecard in these three realms over the past year--with OS X and Linux ARM support on Java SE, open sourcing of JavaFX by the end of the year, the release of Java Embedded Suite 7.0 middleware platform, and multiple releases on the Java EE side. The JCP process continues, with new JSR activity, and JUGs show a 25% increase in participation since last year. Oracle, meanwhile, continues its commitment to both technology and community development/outreach--with four regional JavaOne conferences last year in various part of the world, as well as the release of Java Magazine, with over 120,000 current subscribers. Georges Saab, VP Development, Java SE, next reviewed features of Java SE 7--the first major revision to the platform under Oracle's stewardship, which has included near-monthly update releases offering hundreds of fixes, performance enhancements, and new features. Saab indicated that developers, ISVs, and hosting providers have all been rapid adopters of the platform. He also noted that Oracle's entire Fusion middleware stack is supported on SE 7. The supported platforms for SE 7 has also increased--from Windows, Linux, and Solaris, to OS X, Linux ARM, and the emerging ARM micro-server market. "In the last year, we've added as many new platforms for Java, as were added in the previous decade," said Saab.Saab also explored the upcoming JDK 8 release--including Project Lambda, Project Nashorn (a modern implementation of JavaScript running on the JVM), and others. He noted that Nashorn functionality had already been used internally in NetBeans 7.3, and announced that they were planning to contribute the implementation to OpenJDK. Nandini Ramani, VP Development, Java Client, ME and Card, discussed the latest news pertaining to JavaFX 2.0--releases on Windows, OS X, and Linux, release of the FX Scene Builder tool, the JavaFX WebView component in NetBeans 7.3, and an OpenJFX project in OpenJDK. Nandini announced, as of Sunday, the availability for download of JavaFX on Linux ARM (developer preview), as well as Scene Builder on Linux. She noted that for next year's JDK 8 release, JavaFX will offer 3D, as well as third-party component integration. Avinder Brar, Senior Software Engineer, Navis, and Dierk König, Canoo Fellow, next took the stage and demonstrated all that JavaFX offers, with a feature-rich, animation-rich, real-time cargo management application that employs Canoo's just open-sourced Dolphin technology.Saab also explored Java SE 9 and beyond--Jigsaw modularity, Penrose Project for interoperability with OSGi, improved multi-tenancy for Java in the cloud, and Project Sumatra. Phil Rogers, HSA Foundation President and AMD Corporate Fellow, explored heterogeneous computing platforms that combine the CPU and the parallel processor of the GPU into a single piece of silicon and shared memory—a hardware technology driven by such advanced functionalities as HD video, face recognition, and cloud workloads. Project Sumatra is an OpenJDK project targeted at bringing Java to such heterogeneous platforms--with hardware and software experts working together to modify the JVM for these advanced applications and platforms.Ramani next discussed the latest with Java in the embedded space--"the Internet of things" and M2M--declaring this to be "the next IT revolution," with Java as the ideal technology for the ecosystem. Last week, Oracle released Java ME Embedded 3.2 (for micro-contollers and low-power devices), and Java Embedded Suite 7.0 (a middleware stack based on Java SE 7). Axel Hansmann, VP Strategy and Marketing, Cinterion, explored his company's use of Java in M2M, and their new release of EHS5, the world's smallest 3G-capable M2M module, running Java ME Embedded. Hansmaan explained that Java offers them the ability to create a "simple to use, scalable, coherent, end-to-end layer" for such diverse edge devices.Marc Brule, Chief Financial Office, Royal Canadian Mint, also explored the fascinating use-case of JavaCard in his country's MintChip e-cash technology--deployable on smartphones, USB device, computer, tablet, or cloud. In parting, Ramani encouraged developers to download the latest releases of Java Embedded, and try them out.Cameron Purdy, VP, Fusion Middleware Development and Java EE, summarized the latest developments and announcements in the Enterprise space--greater developer productivity in Java EE6 (with more on the way in EE 7), portability between platforms, vendors, and even cloud-to-cloud portability. The earliest version of the Java EE 7 SDK is now available for download--in GlassFish 4--with WebSocket support, better JSON support, and more. The final release is scheduled for April of 2013. Nicole Otto, Senior Director, Consumer Digital Technology, Nike, explored her company's Java technology driven enterprise ecosystem for all things sports, including the NikeFuel accelerometer wrist band. Looking beyond Java EE 7, Purdy mentioned NoSQL database functionality for EE 8, the concurrency utilities (possibly in EE 7), some of the Avatar projects in EE 7, some in EE 8, multi-tenancy for the cloud, supporting SaaS applications, and more.Rizvi ended by introducing Dr. Robert Ballard, oceanographer and National Geographic Explorer in Residence--part of Oracle's philanthropic relationship with the National Geographic Society to fund K-12 education around ocean science and conservation. Ballard is best known for having discovered the wreckage of the Titanic. He offered a fascinating video and overview of the cutting edge technology used in such deep-sea explorations, noting that in his early days, high-bandwidth exploration meant that you’d go down in a submarine and "stick your face up against the window." Now, it's a remotely operated, technology telepresence--"I think of my Hercules vehicle as my equivalent of a Na'vi. When I go beneath the sea, I actually send my spirit." Using high bandwidth satellite links, such amazing explorations can now occur via smartphone, laptop, or whatever platform. Ballard’s team regularly offers live feeds and programming out to schools and the world, spanning 188 countries--with embedding educators as part of the expeditions. It's technology at its finest, inspiring the next-generation of scientists and explorers!

  Read the article

• 3 Trends for SMBs around Social, Mobile, and Sensor

  - by Socially_Aware_Enterprise

  While I often am talking to big companies or discussing enterprise solutions. There are times when individuals ask me about Small or Medium sized business trends.  Interestingly,  the Enterprise Social, Mobile, and Sensor initiatives I regularly discuss are in fact related to even the Mom and Pop storefront. The eco-system of new service players in the Social-Mobile-Sensor space generally emerge developing partnerships with enterprises as they develop and bring economy to scale to their services for the larger market. And of course Oracle has an entire division dedicated for delivering products and support to help emerging companies compete without the need to open an industrial strength credit line.. So here are some trends that we are helping large enterprises to deploy today, but small and medium businesses should be able to take advantage of by the end of this year and starting into 2015. 1) The typical small business is generally "Localized". But the ability to be "Hyper-Localized" will come as location based services become ubiquitous. Many small businesses have one or several storefronts and theirs are typically within a single regional economic footprint. While the internet provides global reach, it will be the businesses that invest in social, mobile and local that will win in the end.  Of course I am a huge SoMoLo evangelist. The SMBs' content and targeting with platforms for Geo-Fencing, Geo-Conquesting and Path-Matching to HHI are all going to be accessible to them, if not for Mobile Apps, then via Mobile messaging in Social Networks that offer it.. Expect to be able to target FaceBook messaging not by city, but by store or mall… This makes being able to be "Hyper-Local" even more important. And with new proximity services coming online more than ever before, SMBs will operate and service customers with pinpoint accuracy right down to where they stand in an aisle. Geo-Conquesting will be huge for small players to place ads when customers pass through competitors regions. Car Dealers are doing this now.. But also of course iBeacons are now very cheap and getting easier to put in retail stores. The ability for sales to happen anywhere in the store via a mobile phone or tablet is huge, as it will give the small shop the flexibility to not have to "Guard the Register" as more or most transactions will be digital. Thus, M-Commerce and T-Commerce will change the job of cashier dramatically.. 2) Intra-Brand Advocacy, the idea now is that rather than just depend on your trusty social media manager and his team, you are going to push more and more individuals with expertise inside the organization to help manage, reach-out, and utilize social channels to manage the incoming questions and answers customers need. While for years CRM was the tool of the enterprise, today CRMs enable this now "Salesforce et al" capability to trickle throughout the company. This gives greater pressure to organize roles, but also flatten out the organization. Internal collaboration around topics and customer needs is going to be the key for SMBs to finally get serious about customer experiences. Their customers are online and in social networks. This includes not just B2C SMBs but also B2B companies as well. Don't believe me? To find the players just use hashtag #SocialSelling and you will see… 3) The Visual Networks will begin to move from Content Aggregators to Content Collaboration platforms, which means Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, & others will begin to move to add more features brands want, first marketing platforms, rather than unique brand partnerships as they do today, but this will open ways for SMBs to engage with clear brand messaging and metrics. Eventually providing more "Collaboration" between Brand and Consumer.. Don't think for a minute Facebook bought Oculus Rift so you could see your timeline in 3-D. The Social Networks I advise customers to invest in are ones that are audio and visual intrinsically. Players from SoundCloud to Pinterest are deploying ways for brands to harness their interactive visual or audio based social networks to sell ad units aka brand messaging. While the Social Media revolution is going on, the emphasis was on the social, today it more and more about the media in social, that enterprises soon small and medium businesses will be connected to. 

  Read the article

• Customer Engagement: Are Your Customers Engaged With Your Brands?

  - by Michael Snow

  Engaging Customers is Critical for Business Growth This week we'll be spending some time looking at Customer Engagement. We all have stories about how we try to engage our customers better than ever before.  We all know that successfully engaging customers is critical to an organization’s business success. We also know that engaging our customers is more challenging today than ever before. There is so much noise to compete with for getting anyone's attention. Over the last decade and a half we’ve watched as the online channel became a primary one for conducting our business and even managing our lives. And during this whole process or evolution, the customer journey has grown increasingly complex. Customers themselves have assumed increasing power and influence over the purchase process and for setting the tone and pace of the relationships they have with brands and you see the evidence of this in the really high expectations that customers have today. They expect brand experiences that are personalized and relevant -- In other words they want experiences that demonstrate that the brand understands their interests, preferences and past interactions with them. They also expect their experience with a brand and the community surrounding it to be social and interactive – it’s no longer acceptable to have a static, one-way dialogue with your customer base or to fail to connect your customers with fellow customers, or with your employees and partners. And on top of all this, customers expect us to deliver this rich and engaging, personalized and interactive experience, in a consistent way across a variety of channels including web, mobile and social channels or even offline venues such as in-store or via a call center. And as a result, we see that delivery on these expectations and successfully engaging your customers is a great challenge today. Customers expect a personal, engaging and consistent online customer experience. Today’s consumer expects to engage with your brand and the community surrounding it in an interactive and social way. Customers have come to expect a lot for the online customer experience.  ·        They expect it to be personal: o   Accessible:  - Regardless of my device  Via my existing online identities  o   Relevant:  Content that interests me  o   Customized:  To be able to tailor my online experience  ·        They expect it to be engaging: o   Social:  So I can share content with my social networks  o   Intuitive:  To easily find what I need   o   Interactive:  So I can interact with online communities And they expect it to be consistent across the online experience – so you better have your brand and information ducks in a row. These expectations are not only limited to your customers by any means. Your employees (and partners) are also expecting to be empowered with engagement tools across their internal and external communications and interactions with customers, partners and other employees. We had a great conversation with Ted Schadler from Forrester Research entitled: "Mobile is the New Face of Engagement" that is now available On-Demand. Take a look at all the webcasts available to watch from our Social Business Thought Leader Series. Social capabilities have become so pervasive and changed customers’ expectations for their online experiences. The days of one-direction communication with customers are at an end. Today’s customers expect to engage in a dialogue with your brand and the community surrounding it in an interactive and social way. You have at a very short window of opportunity to engage a customer before they go to another site in their pursuit of information, product, or services. In fact, customers who engage with brands via social media tend to spend more that customers who don’t, between 20% and 40% more.  And your customers are also increasingly influenced by their social networks too – 40% of consumers say they factor in Facebook recommendations when making purchasing decisions.  This means a few different things for today’s businesses. Incorporating forms of social interaction such as commenting or reviews as well as tightly integrating your online experience with your customers’ social networking experiences into the online customer experience are crucial for maintaining the eyeballs on your desired pages. --- Notes/Sources: 93% - Cone Finds that Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media - http://www.coneinc.com/content1182 40% of consumers factor in Facebook recommendations when making decisions about purchasing (Increasing Campaign Effectiveness with Social Media, Syncapse, March 2011) 20%-40% - Customers who engage with a company via social media spend this percentage more with that company than other customers (Source: Bain & Company Report – Putting Social Media to Work)

  Read the article

• Books are Dead! Long Live the Books!

  - by smisner

  We live in interesting times with regard to the availability of technical material. We have lots of free written material online in the form of vendor documentation online, forums, blogs, and Twitter. And we have written material that we can buy in the form of books, magazines, and training materials. Online videos and training – some free and some not free – are also an option. All of these formats are useful for one need or another. As an author, I pay particular attention to the demand for books, and for now I see no reason to stop authoring books. I assure you that I don’t get rich from the effort, and fortunately that is not my motivation. As someone who likes to refer to books frequently, I am still a big believer in books and have evidence from book sales that there are others like me. If I can do my part to help others learn about the technologies I work with, I will continue to produce content in a variety of formats, including books. (You can view a list of all of my books on the Publications page of my site and my online training videos at Pluralsight.) As a consumer of technical information, I prefer books because a book typically can get into a topic much more deeply than a blog post, and can provide more context than vendor documentation. It comes with a table of contents and a (hopefully accurate) index that helps me zero in on a topic of interest, and of course I can use the Search feature in digital form. Some people suggest that technology books are outdated as soon as they get published. I guess it depends on where you are with technology. Not everyone is able to upgrade to the latest and greatest version at release. I do assume, however, that the SQL Server 7.0 titles in my library have little value for me now, but I’m certain that the minute I discard the book, I’m going to want it for some reason! Meanwhile, as electronic books overtake physical books in sales, my husband is grateful that I can continue to build my collection digitally rather than physically as the books have a way of taking over significant square footage in our house! Blog posts, on the other hand, are useful for describing the scenarios that come up in real-life implementations that wouldn’t fit neatly into a book. As many years that I have working with the Microsoft BI stack, I still run into new problems that require creative thinking. Likewise, people who work with BI and other technologies that I use share what they learn through their blogs. Internet search engines help us find information in blogs that simply isn’t available anywhere else. Another great thing about blogs, also, is the connection to community and the dialog that can ensue between people with common interests. With the trend towards electronic formats for books, I imagine that we’ll see books continue to adapt to incorporate different forms of media and better ways to keep the information current. At the moment, I wish I had a better way to help readers with my last two Reporting Services books. In the case of the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Reporting Services Step by Step book, I have heard many cases of readers having problems with the sample database that shipped on CD – either the database was missing or it was corrupt. So I’ve provided a copy of the database on my site for download from http://datainspirations.com/uploads/rs2005sbsDW.zip. Then for the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2008 Reporting Services Step by Step book, we decided to avoid the database problem by using the AdventureWorks2008 samples that Microsoft published on Codeplex (although code samples are still available on CD). We had this silly idea that the URL for the download would remain constant, but it seems that expectation was ill-founded. Currently, the sample database is found at http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/releases/view/37109 but I have no idea how long that will remain valid. My latest books (#9 and #10 which are milestones I never anticipated), Building Integrated Business Intelligence Solutions with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Office 2010 (McGraw Hill, 2011) and Business Intelligence in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (Microsoft Press, 2011), will not ship with a CD, but will provide all code samples for download at a site maintained by the respective publishers. I expect that the URLs for the downloads for the book will remain valid, but there are lots of references to other sites that can change or disappear over time. Does that mean authors shouldn’t make reference to such sites? Personally, I think the benefits to be gained from including links are greater than the risks of the links becoming invalid at some point. Do you think the time for technology books has come to an end? Is the delivery of books in electronic format enough to keep them alive? If technological barriers were no object, what would make a book more valuable to you than other formats through which you can obtain information?

  Read the article

• Highlights from the Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  The Oracle Customer Experience Summit was the first-ever event covering the full breadth of Oracle's CX portfolio -- Marketing, Sales, Commerce, and Service. The purpose of the Summit was to articulate the customer experience imperative and to showcase the suite of Oracle products that can help our customers create the best possible customer experience. This topic has always been a very important one, but now that there are so many alternative companies to do business with and because people have such public ways to voice their displeasure, it's necessary for vendors to have multiple listening posts in place to gauge consumer sentiment. They need to know what is going on in real time and be able to react quickly to turn negative situations into positive ones. Those can then be shared in a social manner to enhance the brand and turn the customer into a repeat customer. The Summit was focused on Oracle's portfolio of products and entirely dedicated to customers who are committed to building great customer experiences within their businesses. Rather than DBAs, the attendees were business people looking to collaborate with other like-minded experts and find out how Oracle can help in terms of technology, best practices, and expertise. The event was at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco as part of Oracle OpenWorld. We had eight hundred people attend, which was great for the first year. Next year, there's no doubt in my mind, we can raise that number to 5,000. Alignment and Logic Oracle's Customer Experience portfolio is made up of a combination of acquired and organic products owned by many people who are new to Oracle. We include homegrown Fusion CRM, as well as RightNow, Inquira, OPA, Vitrue, ATG, Endeca, and many others. The attendees knew of the acquisitions, so naturally they wanted to see how the products all fit together and hear the logic behind the portfolio. To tell them about our alignment, we needed to be aligned. To accomplish that, a cross functional team at Oracle agreed on the messaging so that every single Oracle presenter could cover the big picture before going deep into a product or topic. Talking about the full suite of products in one session produced overflow value for other products. And even though this internal coordination was a huge effort, everyone saw the value for our customers and for our long-term cooperation and success. Keynotes, Workshops, and Tents of Innovation We scored by having Seth Godin as our keynote speaker ? always provocative and popular. The opening keynote was a session orchestrated by Mark Hurd, Anthony Lye, and me. Mark set the stage by giving real-world examples of bad customer experiences, Anthony clearly articulated the business imperative for addressing these experiences, and I brought it all to life by taking the audience around the Customer Lifecycle and showing demos and videos, with partners included at each of the stops around the lifecycle. Brian Curran, a VP for RightNow Product Strategy, presented a session that was in high demand called The Economics of Customer Experience. People loved hearing how to build a business case and justify the cost of building a better customer experience. John Kembel, another VP for RightNow Product Strategy, held a workshop that customers raved about. It was based on the journey mapping methodology he created, which is a way to talk to customers about where they want to make improvements to their customers' experiences. He divided the audience into groups led by facilitators. Each person had the opportunity to engage with experts and peers and construct some real takeaways. The conference hotel was across from Union Square so we used that space to set up Innovation Tents. During the day we served lunch in the tents and partners showed their different innovative ideas. It was very interesting to see all the technologies and advancements. It also gave people a place to mix and mingle and to think about the fringe of where we could all take these ideas. Product Portfolio Plus Thought Leadership Of course there is always room for improvement, but the feedback on the format of the conference was positive. Ninety percent of the sessions had either a partner or a customer teamed with an Oracle presenter. The presentations weren't dry, one-way information dumps, but more interactive. I just followed up with a CEO who attended the conference with his Head of Marketing. He told me that they are using John Kembel's journey mapping methodology across the organization to pull people together. This sort of thought leadership in these highly competitive areas gives Oracle permission to engage around the technology. We have to differentiate ourselves and it's harder to do on the product side because everyone looks the same on paper. But on thought leadership ? we can, and did, take some really big steps. David Vap Group Vice President Oracle Applications Product Development

  Read the article

• Moving DataSets through BizTalk

  - by EltonStoneman

  [Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman] Yuck. But sometimes you have to, so here are a couple of things to bear in mind: Schemas Point a codegen tool at a WCF endpoint which exposes a DataSet and it will generate an XSD which describes the DataSet like this: <xs:elementminOccurs="0"name="GetDataSetResult"nillable="true">  <xs:complexType>     <xs:annotation>       <xs:appinfo>         <ActualTypeName="DataSet"                     Namespace="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/System.Data"                     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/" />       </xs:appinfo>     </xs:annotation>     <xs:sequence>       <xs:elementref="xs:schema" />       <xs:any />     </xs:sequence>  </xs:complexType> </xs:element>  In a serialized instance, the element of type xs:schema contains a full schema which describes the structure of the DataSet – tables, columns etc. The second element, of type xs:any, contains the actual content of the DataSet, expressed as DiffGrams: <GetDataSetResult>  <xs:schemaid="NewDataSet"xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"xmlns=""xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata">     <xs:elementname="NewDataSet"msdata:IsDataSet="true"msdata:UseCurrentLocale="true">       <xs:complexType>         <xs:choiceminOccurs="0"maxOccurs="unbounded">           <xs:elementname="Table1">             <xs:complexType>               <xs:sequence>                 <xs:elementname="Id"type="xs:string"minOccurs="0" />                 <xs:elementname="Name"type="xs:string"minOccurs="0" />                 <xs:elementname="Date"type="xs:string"minOccurs="0" />               </xs:sequence>             </xs:complexType>           </xs:element>         </xs:choice>       </xs:complexType>     </xs:element>  </xs:schema>  <diffgr:diffgramxmlns:diffgr="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-diffgram-v1"xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata">     <NewDataSetxmlns="">       <Table1diffgr:id="Table11"msdata:rowOrder="0"diffgr:hasChanges="inserted">         <Id>377fdf8d-cfd1-4975-a167-2ddb41265def</Id>         <Name>157bc287-f09b-435f-a81f-2a3b23aff8c4</Name>         <Date>a5d78d83-6c9a-46ca-8277-f2be8d4658bf</Date>       </Table1>     </NewDataSet>  </diffgr:diffgram> </GetDataSetResult> Put the XSD into a BizTalk schema and it will fail to compile, giving you error: The 'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema:schema' element is not declared. You should be able to work around that, but I've had no luck in BizTalk Server 2006 R2 – instead you can safely change that xs:schema element to be another xs:any type: <xs:elementminOccurs="0"name="GetDataSetResult"nillable="true">  <xs:complexType>     <xs:sequence>       <xs:any />       <xs:any />     </xs:sequence>  </xs:complexType> </xs:element>  (This snippet omits the annotation, but you can leave it in the schema). For an XML instance to pass validation through the schema, you'll also need to flag the any attributes so they can contain any namespace and skip validation:  <xs:elementminOccurs="0"name="GetDataSetResult"nillable="true">  <xs:complexType>     <xs:sequence>       <xs:anynamespace="##any"processContents="skip" />       <xs:anynamespace="##any"processContents="skip" />     </xs:sequence>  </xs:complexType> </xs:element>  You should now have a compiling schema which can be successfully tested against a serialised DataSet. Transforms If you're mapping a DataSet element between schemas, you'll need to use the Mass Copy Functoid to populate the target node from the contents of both the xs:any type elements on the source node: This should give you a compiled map which you can test against a serialized instance. And if you have a .NET consumer on the other side of the mapped BizTalk output, it will correctly deserialize the response into a DataSet.

  Read the article

• Specs, Form and Function – What am I Missing?

  - by Barry Shulam

  0 0 1 628 3586 08041 29 8 4206 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA 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-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:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Friday October 26th the Microsoft Surface RT arrived at the office.  I was summoned to my boss’s office for the grand unpacking.  If I had planned ahead I could have used my iPhone 4 to film the event and post it on YouTube however the desire to hold the device and turn it ON was more inviting than becoming a proxy reviewer for Engadget’s website.  1980 was the first time we had a personal computer in our house.  It was a  Kaypro computer. It weighed 29 pounds more than any persons lap could hold.  Then the term “portable computer” meant you could remove it from the building and take it else where.  Today I am typing on this entry on a Macbook Air which weighs 2.38 pounds. This morning Amazons front page main title is: “Much More for Much Less” I was born at the right time to start with the CPM operating system on the Kaypro thru the DOS, Windows, Linux, Mac OSX and mobile phone operating systems and languages.  If you are not aware Technology is moving at a rapid pace.  The New iPad (those who are keeping score – iPad4) is replacing a 7 month old machine the New iPad (iPad 3) I have used and owned many technology devices in my life.  The main point that most of the reader who are in the USA overlook is the fact that we are in the USA.  The devices we purchase have a great digital garden to support them.  The Kaypro computer had a 7-inch screen.  It was a TV tube with two colors – Black and Green.  You could see the 80-column screen flicker with characters – have you every played Pac-Man emulated on the screen with the ABC characters. Traveling across the world you will find that not all apps on your device will function as they did back home because they are not offered outside of your country of origin. I think the main question a buyer of technology should be asking is Function.  The greatest Specs with out function limit you.  The most beautiful form with out function is the same as a crystal vase on your shelf – not a good cereal bowl in the morning. Microsoft Surface RT, Amazon Kindle Fire and Apple iPad all great devices in their respective customers hands. My advice for those looking to purchase on this year:  If the device is your only technology device you buy what you WANT and LIKE. Consider this parallel universe if its not your only device?  Ever go shopping for clothing, shoes, and accessories with your wife, girlfriend, sister or mother?  If you listen carefully you will hear the little voices coming out of there heads saying:  “This goes well with that and I can use it also with that outfit” ”Do you think this clashes with that?”  “Ohh I love how that combination looks on you”.  Portable devices such as tablets and computers can offer a whole lot more when they are combined with the digital echo system you have at home and the manufacturer offers online. Pros of each Device: Microsoft Surface RT: There is a new functionality named SmartGlass which will let you share the content off your tablet to your XBOX 360.  Microsoft office is loaded on the tablet.  You can have more than one user profile on the tablet if you share it with others.   Amazon Kindle or Kindle HD: If you are an Amazon consumer with an annual Amazon Prime service you can consume videos and read books off the Amazon site.  Its the cheapest device.  Its a step up from the kindle reader in many ways.   Apple Ipad or Ipad mini: Over 270 Thousand applications.  Airplay permits you the ability to share to your TV screen. If you are a cord cutter (a person who gets their entertainment content over the web or air vs Cable Providers) the Airplay or Smart glass are a huge bonus.  iPad mini or not: The mini will fit in a purse where the larger one will not.  Its lighter which makes it nice to hold for prolonged periods.  It has an option for LTE wireless which non of the other sub 9 inch tables offer.  The screen is non retina which means the applications are smaller.  Speaking with individuals who are above 50 in age that wear glasses they retina does not make a difference for them however they prefer the larger iPad over the new mini.   Happy Shopping this Channuka Season.   The Kosher Coder.   Follow me on twitter @KosherCoder

  Read the article

• Microsoft BUILD 2013 Day 1&ndash;Keynote

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/microsoft-build-2013-day-1ndashkeynote.aspx This one is going to be a little long because the keynote was jam-packed so bare with me. The keynote for the first day of BUILD 2013 was kicked off by Steve Balmer.  He made it very clear that Microsoft’s focus is on accelerating its time to market with products and product updates.  His quote was that “Rapid release” is the new norm.  He continued by showing off several new Lumias that have been buzzing around the internet for a while and announce that Sprint will now be carrying the HTC 8XT and Samsung ATIV. Balmer is known for repeating words or phrase for affect.  This time it was “Rapid release, rapid release” and “Touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, …”.  This was fun, but even more fun was when he announce that all attendees would receive an Acer Iconia 8” tablet. SCORE! The next subject Balmer focused on is new apps.  The three new ones were Flipboard, Facebook and NFL Fantasy Football.  I liked the first two because these are ones that people coming from other platforms are missing.  The NFL app is great just because it targets a demographic that can be fanatical.  If these types of apps keep coming than the missing app argument goes away. While many Negative Nancy’s are describing Windows 8.1 as Windows 180 Steve Balmer chose to call it a “refined blend” as in a coffee that has been improved with a new mix.  This includes more multi-tasking options and leveraging Bing straight throughout the entire ecosystem. He ended this first section by explaining that this will also bring more Bing development opportunities to the community. Steve Balmer was followed by Julie Larson-Green who spent her time on stage selling us on Windows 8 all over again from my point of view.  Something that I would not have thought was needed until I had listened to some other attendees who had a number of concerns and complaints.  She showed a number of new gestures that will come with Windows 8.1, and while they were cool I was left wondering if they really improved the experience.  I guess only time will tell. I did like the fact that it the UI implementation to bring up “All Apps” now mirrors that of Windows Phone.  The consistency is a big step forward that I hope to see continue.  The cool factor went up from there as she swiped content from a desktop (mega-tablet) to the XBox One.  This seamless experience I believe is what is really needed for any future platform to be relevant. I was much more enthused by the presentation of Antoine Leblond who humbled us by letting us know that there are 5k new API.  How that can be or how anyone would ever use all of them is another question.  His announcement was that the Visual Studio 2013 preview would be available today along with the Windows 8.1 bits.  One of the features of VS2013 that he demonstrated is the power consumption profiler.  With battery life being a key factor with consumer consumption devices this is a welcome addition. He didn’t limit his presentation to VS2013 features though.  He showed how the Store has been redesigned to enable better search and discoverability of apps and how Win 8.1 can perform multiple screen scales depending on the resolution of the device automatically.  The last feature he demoed was the real time video streaming API which he made sure we understood by attaching a Surface to a little robot.  Oh, but there was one more thing.  Antoine and Julie announce that all attendees would also be getting Surface Pros.  BONUS! How much more could there be?  Gurdeep Singh Pall was about to pile on.  He introduced us to Bing as a platform (BaaP?).  He said if they (Microsoft) could do something with and API that is good 3rd party developers can do something that is dynamite and showed us some of the tools they had produced.  These included natural user interface improvements such as voice commands that looked to put Siri to shame.  Add to that 3D, OCR and translation capabilities and the future looks to be full of opportunities. Balmer then came out to show us one last thing.  Project Spark is a game design environment that will be available for Windows 8.1, XBox 360 and XBox One.  All I can say is that if my kids get their hands on this they are going to be able to learn some of what dad does in a much more enjoyable way. At the end of it all I was both exhausted and energized by what I saw.  What could they have possibly left for the day 2 keynote?  I hear it will feature Scott Hanselman.  If that is right we are in for a treat.  See you there. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Windows 8.1,Winodws Phone,XAML,Keynote,Bing,Visual Studio 2013,Project Spark

  Read the article

• Taking a Flying Leap

  - by Lance Shaw

  Yesterday, I went skydiving with three of my children.  It was thrilling, scary, invigorating and exciting. While there is obvious risk involved, the reward and feeling of success was well worth it. You might already be wondering what skydiving would have to with WebCenter, so let me explain. Implementing a skydiving program and becoming an instructor does not happen overnight.  It does not happen with the purchase of the needed technology. Not one of us would go out, buy a parachute, the harnesses, helmet and all the gear and be able to convince anyone that we are now ready to be a skydiving instructor. The fact is that obtaining the technology is merely a small piece of the overall process and so is the case with managing content in your company. You don't just buy the right software (Oracle WebCenter Content) and go to your boss and declare information management success. There is planning, research and effort that goes into deploying software of any kind and especially when it is as mission-critical to the success of your business as Enterprise Content Management. To become a certified skydiving instructor takes at least 3 years of commitment and often longer. In the United States, candidates must complete over 500 solo jumps of their own over a minimum of 36 months and then must complete additional rigorous training under observation.  When you consider the amount of time and effort involved, it's not unlike getting a college degree and anyone that has trusted their lives to one of these instructors will no doubt appreciate their dedication to the curriculum.  Implementing an ECM system won't take that long, but it certainly requires commitment, analysis and consideration. But guess what?  Humans are involved and that means that mistakes can happen and that rules change.  This struck me while reading an excellent post on darkreading.com by Glenn S. Phillips entitled "Mission Impossible: 4 Reasons Compliance is Impossible".  His over-arching point was that with information management and security, environments change and people are involved meaning the work is never done.  He stated that you can never claim your compliance efforts are complete because of the following reasons. People are involved.  And lets face it, some are more trustworthy than others. Change is Constant. There is always some new technology coming along that is disruptive. Consumer grade cloud file sharing and sync tools come to mind here. Compliance is interpreted, not defined.  Laws and the judges that read them are always on the move. Technology is a tool, not a complete solution. There is no magic pill. The skydiving analogy holds true here as well.  Ultimately, a single person packs your parachute.  For obvious reasons, you prefer that this person be trustworthy but there are no absolute guarantees of a 100% error-free scenario.  Weather and wind conditions are never a constant and the best-laid plans for a great day of skydiving are easily disrupted by forces outside of your control.  Rules and regulations vary by location and may be updated at any time and as I mentioned early on, even the best technology on its own will only get you started. The good news is that, like skydiving, with the right technology, the right planning, the right team and a proper understanding of the rules and regulations that govern your industry, your ECM deployment can be a great success.  Failure to plan for any of the 4 factors that Glenn outlined in his article will certainly put your deployment and maybe even your company at risk, so consider them carefully. As a final aside, for those of you who consider skydiving an incredibly dangerous and risky pastime, consider this comparative statistic.  In 2012, the U.S. Parachute Association recorded 19 fatal skydiving accidents in the U.S. out of roughly 3.1 million jumps.  That’s 0.006 fatalities per 1,000 jumps. By comparison, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that there were 34,080 deaths due to car accidents in 2012.  Based on the percentages, one could argue that it is safer to jump out of a plane than to drive to the airport where the skydiving will take place. While the way you manage, secure, classify, control, retain and dispose of company files may not carry as much risk as driving or skydiving, it certainly carries risk for the organization when not planned and deployed appropriately.  Consider all the factors involved in your organization as you make your content management plans.  For additional areas of consideration, be sure to download our free whitepaper on the topic entitled "The Top 10 Criteria for Choosing an ECM System" which is available for download here.

  Read the article

• My Feelings About Microsoft Surface

  - by Valter Minute

  Advice: read the title carefully, I’m talking about “feelings” and not about advanced technical points proved in a scientific and objective way I still haven’t had a chance to play with a MS Surface tablet (I would love to, of course) and so my ideas just came from reading different articles on the net and MS official statements. Remember also that the MVP motto begins with “Independent” (“Independent Experts. Real World Answers.”) and this is just my humble opinion about a product and a technology. I know that, being an MS MVP you can be called an “MS-fanboy”, I don’t care, I hope that people can appreciate my opinion, even if it doesn’t match theirs. The “Surface” brand can be confusing for techies that knew the “original” surface concept but I think that will be a fresh new brand name for most of the people out there. But marketing department are here to confuse people… so I can understand this “recycle” of an existing name. So Microsoft is entering the hardware arena… for me this is good news. Microsoft developed some nice hardware in the past: the xbox, zune (even if the commercial success was quite limited) and, last but not least, the two arc mices (old and new model) that I use and appreciate. In the past Microsoft worked with OEMs and that model lead to good and bad things. Good thing (for microsoft, at least) is market domination by windows-based PCs that only in the last years has been reduced by the return of the Mac and tablets. Google is also moving in the hardware business with its acquisition of Motorola, and Apple leveraged his control of both the hardware and software sides to develop innovative products. Microsoft can scare OEMs and make them fly away from windows (but where?) or just lead the pack, showing how devices should be designed to compete in the market and bring back some of the innovation that disappeared from recent PC products (look at the shelves of your favorite electronics store and try to distinguish a laptop between the huge mass of anonymous PCs on displays… only Macs shine out there…). Having to compete with MS “official” hardware will force OEMs to develop better product and bring back some real competition in a market that was ruled only by prices (the lower the better even when that means low quality) and no innovative features at all (when it was the last time that a new PC surprised you?). Moving into a new market is a big and risky move, but with Windows 8 Microsoft is playing a crucial move for its future, trying to be back in the innovation run against apple and google. MS can’t afford to fail this time. I saw the new devices (the WinRT and Pro) and the specifications are scarce, misleading and confusing. The first impression is that the device looks like an iPad with a nice keyboard cover… Using “HD” and “full HD” to define display resolution instead of using the real figures and reviving the “ClearType” brand (now dead on Win8 as reported here and missed by people who hate to read text on displays, like myself) without providing clear figures (couldn’t you count those damned pixels?) seems to imply that MS was caught by surprise by apple recent “retina” displays that brought very high definition screens on tablets.Also there are no specifications about the processors used (even if some sources report NVidia Tegra for the ARM tablet and i5 for the x86 one) and expected battery life (a critical point for tablets and the point that killed Windows7 x86 based tablets). Also nothing about the price, and this will be another critical point because other platform out there already provide lots of applications and have a good user base, if MS want to enter this market tablets pricing must be competitive. There are some expansion ports (SD and USB), so no fixed storage model (even if the specs talks about 32-64GB for RT and 128-256GB for pro). I like this and don’t like the apple model where flash memory (that it’s dirt cheap used in thumdrives or SD cards) is as expensive as gold (or cocaine to have a more accurate per gram measurement) when mounted inside a tablet/phone. For big files you’ll be able to use external media and an SD card could be used to store files that don’t require super-fast SSD-like access times, I hope. To be honest I really don’t like the marketplace model and the limitation of Windows RT APIs (no local database? from a company that based a good share of its success on VB6+Access!) and lack of desktop support on the ARM (even if the support is here and has been used to port office). It’s a step toward the consumer market (where competitors are making big money), but may impact enterprise (and embedded) users that may not appreciate Windows 8 new UI or the limitations of the new app model (if you aren’t connected you are dead ). Not having compatibility with the desktop will require brand new applications and honestly made all the CPU cycles spent to convert .NET IL into real machine code in the past like a huge waste of time… as soon as a new processor architecture is supported by Windows you still have to rewrite part of your application (and MS is pushing HTML5+JS and native code more than .NET in my perception). On the other side I believe that the development experience provided by Visual Studio is still miles (or kilometres) ahead of the competition and even the all-uppercase menu of VS2012 hasn’t changed this situation. The new metro UI got mixed reviews. On my side I should say that is very pleasant to use on a touch screen, I like the minimalist design (even if sometimes is too minimal and hides stuff that, in my opinion, should be visible) but I should also say that using it with mouse and keyboard is like trying to pick your nose with boxing gloves… Metro is also very interesting for embedded devices where touch screen usage is quite common and where having an application taking all the screen is the norm. For devices like kiosks, vending machines etc. this kind of UI can be a great selling point. I don’t need a new tablet (to be honest I’m pretty happy with my wife’s iPad and with my PC), but I may change my opinion after having a chance to play a little bit with those new devices and understand what’s hidden under all this mysterious and generic announcements and specifications!

  Read the article

• CPU Usage in Very Large Coherence Clusters

  - by jpurdy

  When sizing Coherence installations, one of the complicating factors is that these installations (by their very nature) tend to be application-specific, with some being large, memory-intensive caches, with others acting as I/O-intensive transaction-processing platforms, and still others performing CPU-intensive calculations across the data grid. Regardless of the primary resource requirements, Coherence sizing calculations are inherently empirical, in that there are so many permutations that a simple spreadsheet approach to sizing is rarely optimal (though it can provide a good starting estimate). So we typically recommend measuring actual resource usage (primarily CPU cycles, network bandwidth and memory) at a given load, and then extrapolating from those measurements. Of course there may be multiple types of load, and these may have varying degrees of correlation -- for example, an increased request rate may drive up the number of objects "pinned" in memory at any point, but the increase may be less than linear if those objects are naturally shared by concurrent requests. But for most reasonably-designed applications, a linear resource model will be reasonably accurate for most levels of scale. However, at extreme scale, sizing becomes a bit more complicated as certain cluster management operations -- while very infrequent -- become increasingly critical. This is because certain operations do not naturally tend to scale out. In a small cluster, sizing is primarily driven by the request rate, required cache size, or other application-driven metrics. In larger clusters (e.g. those with hundreds of cluster members), certain infrastructure tasks become intensive, in particular those related to members joining and leaving the cluster, such as introducing new cluster members to the rest of the cluster, or publishing the location of partitions during rebalancing. These tasks have a strong tendency to require all updates to be routed via a single member for the sake of cluster stability and data integrity. Fortunately that member is dynamically assigned in Coherence, so it is not a single point of failure, but it may still become a single point of bottleneck (until the cluster finishes its reconfiguration, at which point this member will have a similar load to the rest of the members). The most common cause of scaling issues in large clusters is disabling multicast (by configuring well-known addresses, aka WKA). This obviously impacts network usage, but it also has a large impact on CPU usage, primarily since the senior member must directly communicate certain messages with every other cluster member, and this communication requires significant CPU time. In particular, the need to notify the rest of the cluster about membership changes and corresponding partition reassignments adds stress to the senior member. Given that portions of the network stack may tend to be single-threaded (both in Coherence and the underlying OS), this may be even more problematic on servers with poor single-threaded performance. As a result of this, some extremely large clusters may be configured with a smaller number of partitions than ideal. This results in the size of each partition being increased. When a cache server fails, the other servers will use their fractional backups to recover the state of that server (and take over responsibility for their backed-up portion of that state). The finest granularity of this recovery is a single partition, and the single service thread can not accept new requests during this recovery. Ordinarily, recovery is practically instantaneous (it is roughly equivalent to the time required to iterate over a set of backup backing map entries and move them to the primary backing map in the same JVM). But certain factors can increase this duration drastically (to several seconds): large partitions, sufficiently slow single-threaded CPU performance, many or expensive indexes to rebuild, etc. The solution of course is to mitigate each of those factors but in many cases this may be challenging. Larger clusters also lead to the temptation to place more load on the available hardware resources, spreading CPU resources thin. As an example, while we've long been aware of how garbage collection can cause significant pauses, it usually isn't viewed as a major consumer of CPU (in terms of overall system throughput). Typically, the use of a concurrent collector allows greater responsiveness by minimizing pause times, at the cost of reducing system throughput. However, at a recent engagement, we were forced to turn off the concurrent collector and use a traditional parallel "stop the world" collector to reduce CPU usage to an acceptable level. In summary, there are some less obvious factors that may result in excessive CPU consumption in a larger cluster, so it is even more critical to test at full scale, even though allocating sufficient hardware may often be much more difficult for these large clusters.

  Read the article

• What is Happening vs. What is Interesting

  - by Geertjan

  Devoxx 2011 was yet another confirmation that all development everywhere is either on the web or on mobile phones. Whether you looked at the conference schedule or attended sessions or talked to speakers at any point at all, it was very clear that no development whatsoever is done anymore on the desktop. In fact, that's something Tim Bray himself told me to my face at the speakers dinner. No new developments of any kind are happening on the desktop. Everyone who is currently on the desktop is working overtime to move all of their applications to the web. They're probably also creating a small subset of their application on an Android tablet, with an even smaller subset on their Android phone. Then you scratch that monolithic surface and find some interesting results. Without naming any names, I asked one of these prominent "ah, forget about the desktop" people at the Devoxx speakers dinner (and I have a witness): "Yes, the desktop is dead, but what about air traffic control, stock trading, oil analysis, risk management applications? In fact, what about any back office application that needs to be usable across all operating systems? Here there is no concern whatsoever with 100% accessibility which is, after all, the only thing that the web has over the desktop, (except when there's a network failure, of course, or when you find yourself in the 3/4 of the world where there's bandwidth problems)? There are 1000's of hidden applications out there that have processing requirements, security requirements, and the requirement that they'll be available even when the network is down or even completely unavailable. Isn't that a valid use case and aren't there 1000's of applications that fall into this so-called niche category? Are you not, in fact, confusing consumer applications, which are increasingly web-based and mobile-based, with high-end corporate applications, which typically need to do massive processing, of one kind or another, for which the web and mobile worlds are completely unsuited?" And you will not believe what the reply to the above question was. (Again, I have a witness to this discussion.) But here it is: "Yes. But those applications are not interesting. I do not want to spend any of my time or work in any way on those applications. They are boring." I'm sad to say that the leaders of the software development community, including those in the Java world, either share the above opinion or are led by it. Because they find something that is not new to be boring, they move on to what is interesting and start talking like the supposedly-boring developments don't even exist. (Kind of like a rapper pretending classical music doesn't exist.) Time and time again I find myself giving Java desktop development courses (at companies, i.e., not hobbyists, or students, but companies, i.e., the places where dollars are earned), where developers say to me: "The course you're giving about creating cross-platform, loosely coupled, and highly cohesive applications is really useful to us. Why do we never find information about this topic at conferences? Why can we never attend a session at a conference where the story about pluggable cross-platform Java is told? Why do we get the impression that we are uncool because we're not on the web and because we're not on a mobile phone, while the reason for that is because we're creating $1000,000 simulation software which has nothing to gain from being on the web or on the mobile phone?" And then I say: "Because nobody knows you exist. Because you're not submitting abstracts to conferences about your very interesting use cases. And because conferences tend to focus on what is new, which tends to be web related (especially HTML 5) or mobile related (especially Android). Because you're not taking the responsibility on yourself to tell the real stories about the real applications being developed all the time and every day. Because you yourself think your work is boring, while in fact it is fascinating. Because desktop developers are working from 9 to 5 on the desktop, in secure environments, such as banks and defense, where you can't spend time, nor have the interest in, blogging your latest tip or trick, as opposed to web developers, who tend to spend a lot of time on the web anyway and are therefore much more inclined to create buzz about the kind of work they're doing." So, next time you look at a conference program and wonder why there's no stories about large desktop development projects in the program, here's the short answer: "No one is going to put those items on the program until you start submitting those kinds of sessions. And until you start blogging. Until you start creating the buzz that the web developers have been creating around their work for the past 10 years or so. And, yes, indeed, programmers get the conference they deserve." And what about Tim Bray? Ask yourself, as Google's lead web technology evangelist, how many desktop developers do you think he talks to and, more generally, what his frame of reference is and what, clearly, he considers to be most interesting.

  Read the article

• Windows Phone 8 Announcement

  - by Tim Murphy

  As if the Surface announcement on Monday wasn’t exciting enough, today Microsoft announce that Windows Phone 8 will be coming this fall.  That itself is great news, but the features coming were like confetti flying in all different directions.  Given this speed I couldn’t capture every feature they covered.  A summary of what I did capture is listed below starting with their eight main features. Common Core The first thing that they covered is that Windows Phone 8 will share a core OS with Windows 8.  It will also run natively on multiple cores.  They mentioned that they have run it on up to 64 cores to this point.  The phones as you might expect will at least start as dual core.  If you remember there were metrics saying that Windows Phone 7 performed operations faster on a single core than other platforms did with dual cores.  The metrics they showed here indicate that Windows Phone 8 runs faster on comparable dual core hardware than other platforms. New Screen Resolutions Screen resolution has never been an issue for me, but it has been a criticism of Windows Phone 7 in the media.  Windows Phone 8 will supports three screen resolutions: WVGA 800 x 480, WXGA 1280 x 768, and 720 1280x720.  Hopefully this makes pixel counters a little happier. MicroSD Support This was one of my pet peeves when I got my Samsung Focus. With Windows Phone 8 the operating system will support adding MicroSD cards after initial setup.  Of course this is dependent on the hardware company on implementing it, but I think we have seen that even feature phone manufacturers have not had a problem supporting this in the past. NFC NFC has been an anticipated feature for some time.  What Microsoft showed today included the fact that they didn’t just want it to be for the phone.  There is cross platform NFC functionality between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.  The demos , while possibly a bit fanciful, showed would could be achieved even in a retail environment.  We are getting closer and closer to a Minority Report world with these technologies. Wallet Windows Phone 8 isn’t the first platform to have a wallet concept.  What they have done to differentiate themselves is to make it sot that it is not dependent on a SIM type chip like other platforms.  They have also expanded the concept beyond just banks to other types of credits such as airline miles. Nokia Mapping People have been envious of the Lumia phones having the Nokia mapping software.  Now all Windows Phone 8 devices will use NavTeq data and will have the capability to run in an offline fashion.  This is a major step forward from the Bing “touch for the next turn” maps. IT Administration The lack of features for enterprise administration and deployment was a complaint even before the Windows Phone 7 was released.  With the Windows Phone 8 release such features as Bitlocker and Secure boot will be baked into the OS. We will also have the ability to privately sign and distribute applications. Changing Start Screen Joe Belfiore made a big deal about this aspect of the new release.  Users will have more color themes available to them and the live tiles will be highly customizable. You will have the ability to resize and organize the tiles in a more dynamic way.  This allows for less important tiles or ones with less information to be made smaller.  And There Is More So what other tidbits came out of the presentation?  Later this summer the API for WP8 will be available.  There will be developer events coming to a city near you.  Another announcement of interest to developers is the ability to write applications at a native code level.  This is a boon for game developers and those who need highly efficient applications. As a topper on the cake there was mention of in app payment. On the consumer side we also found out that all updates will be available over the air.  Along with this came the fact that Microsoft will support all devices with updates for at least 18 month and you will be able to subscribe for early updates.  Update coming for Windows Phone 7.5 customers to WP7.8.  The main enhancement will be the new live tile features.  The big bonus is that the update will bypass the carriers.  I would assume though that you will be brought up to date with all previous patches that your carrier may not have released. There is so much more, but that is enough for one post.  Needless to say, EXCITING! del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 8,WP8,Windows Phone 7,WP7,Announcements,Microsoft

  Read the article

• 2012&ndash;The End Of The World Review

  - by Tim Murphy

  The end of the world must be coming.  Not because the Mayan calendar says so, but because Microsoft is innovating more than Apple.  It has been a crazy year, with pundits declaring not that the end of the world is coming, but that the end of Microsoft is coming.  Let’s take a look at what 2012 has brought us. The beginning of year is a blur.  I managed to get to TechEd in June which was the first time that I got to take a deep dive into Windows 8 and many other things that had been announced in 2011.  The promise I saw in these products was really encouraging.  The thought of being able to run Windows 8 from a thumb drive or have Hyper-V native to the OS told me that at least for developers good things were coming. I finally got my feet wet with Windows 8 with the developer preview just prior to the RTM.  While the initial experience was a bit of a culture shock I quickly grew to love it.  The media still seems to hold little love for the “reimagined” platform, but I think that once people spend some time with it they will enjoy the experience and what the FUD mongers say will fade into the background.  With the launch of the OS we finally got a look at the Surface.  I think this is a bold entry into the tablet market.  While I wish it was a little more affordable I am already starting to see them in the wild being used by non-techies. I was waiting for Windows Phone 8 at least as much as Windows 8, probably more.  The new hardware, better marketing and new OS features I think are going to finally push us to the point of having a real presence in the smartphone market.  I am seeing a number of iPhone users picking up a Nokia Lumia 920 and getting rid of their brand new iPhone 5.  The only real debacle that I saw around the launch was when they held back the SDK from general developers. Shortly after the launch events came Build 2012.  I was extremely disappointed that I didn’t make it to this year’s Build.  Even if they weren’t handing out Surface and Lumia devices I think the atmosphere and content were something that really needed to be experience in person.  Hopefully there will be a Build next year and it’s schedule will be announced soon.  As you would expect Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development were the mainstay of the conference, but improvements in Azure also played a key role.  This movement of services to the cloud will continue and we need to understand where it best fits into the solutions we build. Lower on the radar this year were Office 2013, SQL Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012.  Their glory stolen by the consumer OS and hardware announcements, these new releases are no less important.  Companies will see significant improvements in performance and capabilities if they upgrade.  At TechEd they had shown some of the new features of Windows Server 2012 around hardware integration and Hyper-V performance which absolutely blew me away.  It is our job to bring these important improvements to our company’s attention so that they can be leveraged. Personally, the consulting business in 2012 was the busiest it has been in a long time.  More companies were ready to attack new projects after several years of putting them on the back burner.  I also worked to bring back momentum to the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Both the community and clients are excited about the new technologies that have come out in 2012 and now it is time to deliver. What does 2013 have in store.  I don’t see it be quite as exciting as 2012.  Microsoft will be releasing the Surface Pro in January and it seems that we will see more frequent OS update for Windows.  There are rumors that we may see a Surface phone in 2013.  It has also been announced that there will finally be a rework of the XBox next fall.  The new year will also be a time for us in the development community to take advantage of these new tools and devices.  After all, it is what we build on top of these platforms that will attract more consumers and corporations to using them. Just as I am 99.999% sure that the world is not going to end this year, I am also sure that Microsoft will move on and that most of this negative backlash from the media is actually fear and jealousy.  In the end I think we have a promising year ahead of us. del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft,Pundits,Mayans,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Surface

  Read the article

• What are the industry metrics for average spend on dev hardware and software? [on hold]

  - by RationalGeek

  I'm trying to budget for my dev shop and compare our budget items to industry expectations. I'm hoping to find some information on what percentage of a dev's salary is generally spent on tooling, both hardware and software. Where can I find such information? If instead there is a source that looks at raw dollars that is useful, too. I can extrapolate what I need from that. NOTE: Your anecdotal evidence from your own job will not be very helpful. I'm looking for industry average statistics from a credible source. EDIT: I'm reluctant to even keep this question going based on the passionate negative responses of commenters, but I do think this is valuable information (assuming anyone will care to answer) so let me make one attempt to clarify why I'm looking for this information, and then leave it at that. I'm not sure why understanding and validating my motives is a necessary step to providing the information, but apparently that is the case, so I will do my best. Firstly, let me respond to the idea that us "management types" shouldn't use these types of metrics to evaluate budgets. I agree in part. Ideally, you should spend whatever is necessary on developers in order to keep them fully happy and productive. And this is true of all employees. However, companies operate in a world of limited resources, and every dollar spent in one area means a dollar not spent in another. So it is not enough to simply say "I need to spend $10,000 per developer next year" without having some way to justify that position. One way to help justify it is to compare yourself against the industry. If it is the case that on average a software shops spends 5% (making up that number) of their total development budget (salaries being the large portion of the other 95%, for arguments sake), and I'm only spending 3%, it helps in the justification process. So, it is not my intent to use this information to limit what I spend on developers, but rather to arm myself with the necessary justification to spend what I need to spend on developers to give them the best tools I can. I have been a developer for many years and I understand the need for proper tooling. Next, let's examine the idea that even considering the relationship between a spend on developer salaries and developer tooling is ludicrous and should be banned from budgetary thinking. As Jimmy Hoffa put it in their comment, it's like saying "I'm going to spend no more than 10% of median employee salary on light bulbs and coffee from now on.". Well, yes, it is like saying that, and from a budgeting perspective, this is a useful way to look at things. If you know that, on average, an employee consumes X dollars of coffee a year, then you can project a coffee budget based on that. And you can compare it to an industry metric to understand where you fall: do you spend more on coffee than other companies or less? Why might this be? If you are a coffee supply manager, that seems like a useful thought process. The same seems to hold true for developers. Now, on to the idea that I need to compare "apples to apples" and only look at other shops that are in the same place geographically, the same business, the same application architecture, and the same development frameworks. I guess if I could find such a statistic that said "a shop that is exactly identical to yours spends X on developer tooling" it would be wonderful. But there is plenty of value in an average statistic. Here's an analogy: let's say you are working on a household budget and need to decide how much to spend on groceries. Is it enough to know that the average consumer spends 15% on groceries and therefore decide that you will budget exactly 15%? No. You have to tweak your budget based on your individual needs and situation. But the generalized statistic does help in this evaluation. You can know if your budget is grossly off from what others are doing, and this can help you figure out why this is. So, I will concede the point that it would be better to find statistics that align to my shop, though I think any statistics I could find would be useful for what I'm doing. In that light, let's say that my shop is mostly focused on ASP.NET web applications. That doesn't map perfectly to reality because large enterprises have very heterogenous IT environments. But if I was going to pick one technology that is our focus that would be it. But, if you were to point me at some statistics that are related to a Linux shop doing embedded Java applications, I would still find it useful as a point of comparison. SUMMARY: Let me try to rephrase my question. I'm trying to find industry metrics on how much dev shops spend on developer tooling, both hardware and software. I don't so much care whether it is expressed as a percentage of total budget or as X dollars per dev or as Y percentage of salary. Any metric would be useful. If there are metrics that are specific to ASP.NET dev shops in the Northeast US, all the better, but I would be happy to find anything.

  Read the article

• Windows 8 for productivity?

  - by Charles Young

  At long last I’ve started using Windows 8.  I boot from a VHD on which I have installed Office, Visio, Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc.  For a week, now, I’ve been happily writing code and documents and using Visio and PowerPoint.  I am, very much, a ‘productivity’ user rather than a content consumer.   I spend my days flitting between countless windows and browser tabs displayed across dual monitors.  I need to access a lot of different functionality and information in as fluid a fashion as possible. With that in mind, and like so many others, I was worried about Windows 8.  The Metro interface is primarily about content consumption on touch-enabled screens, and not really geared for people like me sitting in front of an 8-core non-touch laptop and an additional Samsung monitor.  I still use a mouse, not my finger.  And I create more than I consume. Clearly, Windows 8 won’t be viable for people like me unless Metro keeps out of my hair when using productivity and development tools.  With this in mind, I had long expected Microsoft to provide some mechanism for switching Metro off.  There was a registry hack in last year’s Developer Preview, but this capability has been removed.   That’s brave.  So, how have things worked out so far? Well, I am really quite surprised.  When I played with the Developer Preview last year, it was clear that Metro was unfinished and didn’t play well enough with the desktop.  Obviously I expected things to improve, but the context switching from desktop to full-screen seemed a heavy burden to place on users.  That sense of abrupt change hasn’t entirely gone away (how could it), but after a few days, I can’t say that I find it burdensome or irritating.   I’ve got used very quickly to ‘gesturing’ with my mouse at the bottom or top right corners of the screen to move between applications, using the Windows key to toggle the Start screen and generally finding my way around.   I am surprised at how effective the Start screen is, given the rather basic grouping features it provides.  Of course, I had to take control of it and sort things the way I want.  If anything, though, the Start screen provides a better navigation and application launcher tool than the old Start menu. What I didn’t expect was the way that Metro enhances the productivity story.  As I write this, I’ve got my desktop open with a maximised Word window.  However, the desktop extends only across about 85% of the width of my screen.  On the left hand side, I have a column that displays the new Metro email client.  This is currently showing me a list of emails for my main work account.  I can flip easily between different accounts and read my email within that same column.  As I work on documents, I want to be able to monitor my inbox with a quick glance. The desktop, of course, has its own snap feature.  I could run the desktop full screen and bring up Outlook and Word side by side.  However, this doesn’t begin to approach the convenience of snapping the Metro email client.  Consider that when I snap a window on the desktop, it initially takes up 50% of the screen.  Outlook doesn’t really know anything about snap, and doesn’t adjust to make effective use of the limited screen estate.  Even at 50% screen width, it is difficult to use, so forget about trying to use it in a Metro fashion. In any case, I am left with the prospect of having to manually adjust everything to view my email effectively alongside Word.  Worse, there is nothing stopping another window from overlapping and obscuring my email.  It becomes a struggle to keep sight of email as it arrives.  Of course, there is always ‘toast’ to notify me when things arrive, but if Outlook is obscured, this just feels intrusive. The beauty of the Metro snap feature is that my email reader now exists outside of my desktop.   The Metro app has been crafted to work well in the fixed width column as well as in full-screen.  It cannot be obscured by overlapping windows.  I still get notifications if I wish.  More importantly, it is clear that careful attention has been given to how things work when moving between applications when ‘snapped’.  If I decide, say to flick over to the Metro newsreader to catch up with current affairs, my desktop, rather than my email client, obligingly makes way for the reader.  With a simple gesture and click, or alternatively by pressing Windows-Tab, my desktop reappears. Another pleasant surprise is the way Windows 8 handles dual monitors.  It’s not just the fact that both screens now display the desktop task bar.  It’s that I can so easily move between Metro and the desktop on either screen.  I can only have Metro on one screen at a time which makes entire sense given the ‘full-screen’ nature of Metro apps.  Using dual monitors feels smoother and easier than previous versions of Windows. Overall then, I’m enjoying the Windows 8 improvements.  Strangely, for all the hype (“Windows reimagined”, etc.), my perception as a ‘productivity’ user is more one of evolution than revolution.  It all feels very familiar, but just better.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, January 13, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, January 13, 2011Popular ReleasesMVC Music Store: MVC Music Store v2.0: This is the 2.0 release of the MVC Music Store Tutorial. This tutorial is updated for ASP.NET MVC 3 and Entity Framework Code-First, and contains fixes and improvements based on feedback and common questions from previous releases. The main download, MvcMusicStore-v2.0.zip, contains everything you need to build the sample application, including A detailed tutorial document in PDF format Assets you will need to build the project, including images, a stylesheet, and a pre-populated databas...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.6.7 GA Released: Hi, Today we are releasing Visifire 3.6.7 GA with the following feature: * Inlines property has been implemented in Title. Also, this release contains fix for the following bugs: * In Column and Bar chart DataPoint’s label properties were not working as expected at real-time if marker enabled was set to true. * 3D Column and Bar chart were not rendered properly if AxisMinimum property was set in x-axis. You can download Visifire v3.6.7 here. Cheers, Team VisifireFluent Validation for .NET: 2.0: Changes since 2.0 RC Fix typo in the name of FallbackAwareResourceAccessorBuilder Fix issue #7062 - allow validator selectors to work against nullable properties with overriden names. Fix error in German localization. Better support for client-side validation messages in MVC integration. All changes since 1.3 Allow custom MVC ModelValidators to be added to the FVModelValidatorProvider Support resource provider for custom property validators through the new IResourceAccessorBuilder ...EnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.2 ALPHA: 2.3.1 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Quick update to ...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.6: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager new stuff: paging for the lookup lookup with multiselect changes: the css classes used by the framework where renamed to be more standard the lookup controller requries an item.ascx (no more ViewData["structure"]), and LookupList action renamed to Search all the...pwTools: pwTools: Changelog v1.0 base release??????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2011-01-12: 2011???????All-In-One Code Framework（??） 2011?1??????！！http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 ?????release?，???????ASP.NET, AJAX, WinForm, Windows Shell????13?Sample Code。???，??????????sample code。 ?????：http://blog.csdn.net/sjb5201/archive/2011/01/13/6135037.aspx ??，??????MSDN????????????。 http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/zh-CN/codezhchs/threads ?????????????????，??Email ????patterns & practices – Enterprise Library: Enterprise Library 5.0 - Extensibility Labs: This is a preview release of the Hands-on Labs to help you learn and practice different ways the Enterprise Library can be extended. Learning MapCustom exception handler (estimated time to complete: 1 hr 15 mins) Custom logging trace listener (1 hr) Custom configuration source (registry-based) (30 mins) System requirementsEnterprise Library 5.0 / Unity 2.0 installed SQL Express 2008 installed Visual Studio 2010 Pro (or better) installed AuthorsChris Tavares, Microsoft Corporation ...Orchard Project: Orchard 1.0: Orchard Release Notes Build: 1.0.20 Published: 1/12/2010 How to Install OrchardTo install the Orchard tech preview using Web PI, follow these instructions: http://www.orchardproject.net/docs/Installing-Orchard.ashx Web PI will detect your hardware environment and install the application. --OR-- Alternatively, to install the release manually, download the Orchard.Web.1.0.20.zip file. The zip contents are pre-built and ready-to-run. Simply extract the contents of the Orchard folder from ...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.6.1: The Umbraco 4.6.1 (codename JUNO) release contains many new features focusing on an improved installation experience, a number of robust developer features, and contains nearly 200 bug fixes since the 4.5.2 release. Getting Started A great place to start is with our Getting Started Guide: Getting Started Guide: http://umbraco.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?DownloadId=197051 Make sure to check the free foundation videos on how to get started building Umbraco sites. They're ...Google URL Shortener API for .NET: Google URL Shortener API v1: According follow specification: http://code.google.com/apis/urlshortener/v1/reference.htmlStyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14986.000: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Features: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new ObjectBasedEnvironment object does not resolve the StyleCop installation path, thus it does not return the ...SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQL Monitor 3.1 beta 1: 1. support alert message template 2. dynamic toolbar commands depending on functionality 3. fixed some bugs 4. refactored part of the code, now more stable and more clean upFacebook C# SDK: 4.2.1: - Authentication bug fixes - Updated Json.Net to version 4.0.0 - BREAKING CHANGE: Removed cookieSupport config setting, now automatic. This download is also availible on NuGet: Facebook FacebookWeb FacebookWebMvcHawkeye - The .Net Runtime Object Editor: Hawkeye 1.2.5: In the case you are running an x86 Windows and you installed Release 1.2.4, you should consider upgrading to this release (1.2.5) as it appears Hawkeye is broken on x86 OS. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it appears Hawkeye 1.2.4 (and probably previous versions) doesn't run on x86 Windows (See issue http://hawkeye.codeplex.com/workitem/7791). This maintenance release fixes this broken behavior. This release comes in two flavors: Hawkeye.125.N2 is the standard .NET 2 build, was compile...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (January 2011): Another release build for daily use; it contains many new features, enhanced compatibility with latest PHP opensource applications and several issue fixes. To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phalanger. Changes made within this release include following: New features available only in Phalanger. Full support of Multi-Script-Assemblies was implemented; you can build your application into several DLLs now. Deploy them separately t...AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.3: A message will be displayed when there's an update available Shows a list of recent mastery files in the Editor Tab (requested by quite a few people) Updater: Update information is now scrollable Added a buton to launch AutoLoL after updating is finished Updated the UI to match that of AutoLoL Fix: Detects and resolves 'Read Only' state on Version.xmlTweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 7: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 7 ChangesFixes the regression issue in OAuth from Preview 6 Preview 6 ChangesMaintenance release with user reported fixes Preview 5 ChangesMaintenance release with user reported fixes Third Party Library VersionsHammock v1.0.6: http://hammock.codeplex.com Json.NET 3.5 Release 8: http://json.codeplex.comExtended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.3.0: What's in the 1.3.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner ChildWindow ColorPicker - Updated (Breaking Changes) DateTimeUpDown - New Control Magnifier - New Control MaskedTextBox - New Control MessageBox NumericUpDown RichTextBox RichTextBoxFormatBar - Updated .NET 3.5 binaries and SourcePlease note: The Extended WPF Toolkit 3.5 is dependent on .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit. You must install .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit in order to use any features in the To...Ionics Isapi Rewrite Filter: 2.1 latest stable: V2.1 is stable, and is in maintenance mode. This is v2.1.1.25. It is a bug-fix release. There are no new features. 28629 29172 28722 27626 28074 29164 27659 27900 many documentation updates and fixes proper x64 build environment. This release includes x64 binaries in zip form, but no x64 MSI file. You'll have to manually install x64 servers, following the instructions in the documentation.New Projects4chan: Project for educational purposesAE.Net.Mail - POP/IMAP Client: C# POP/IMAP client libraryAlmathy: Application communautaire pour le partage de données basée sur le protocole XMPP. Discussion instantanée, mail, échange de données, travaux partagés. Développée en C#, utilisant les Windows Forms.AMK - Associação Metropolitana de Kendo: Projeto do site versão 2011 da Associação Metropolitana de Kendo. O site contará com: - Cadastro de atletas e eventos; - Controle de cadastro junto a CBK e histórico de graduações; - Calendário de treinos; Será desenvolvido usando .NET, MVC2, Entity Framework, SQL Server, JQueryAzke: New: Azke is a portal developed with ASP.NET MVC and MySQL. Old: Azke is a portal developed with ASP.net and MySQL.BuildScreen: A standalone Windows application to displays project build statuses from TeamCity. It can be used on a large screen for the whole development team to watch their build statuses as well as on a developer machine.CardOnline: CardOnline GameLobby GameCAudioEndpointVolume: The CAudioEndpointVolume implements the IAudioEndpointVolume Interface to control the master volume in Visual Basic 6.0 for Windows Vista and later operating systems.Cloudy - Online Storage Library: The goal of Cloudy is to be an online storage library to enable access for the most common storage services : DropBox, Skydrive, Google Docs, Azure Blob Storage and Amazon S3. It'll work in .NET 3.5 and up, Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 (WP7).ContentManager: Content Manger for SAP Kpro exports the data pool of a content-server by PHIOS-Lists (txt-files) into local binary files. Afterwards this files can be imported in a SAP content-repository . The whole List of the PHIOS Keys can also be downloaded an splitted in practical units.CSWFKrad: private FrameworkDiego: Diegodoomhjx_javalib: this is my lib for the java project.Eve Planetary Interaction: Eve Planetary InteractionEventWall: EventWall allows you to show related blogposts and tweets on the big screen. Just configure the hashtag and blog RSS feeds and you're done.Google URL Shortener API for .NET: Google URL Shortener API for .NET is a wrapper for the Google Project below: http://code.google.com/apis/urlshortener/v1/reference.html With Google URL Shortener API, you may shorten urls and get some analytics information about this. It's developer in C# 4.0 and VS2010. HtmlDeploy: A project to compile asp's Master page into pure html files. The idea is to use jQuery templating to do all the "if" and "for" when it comes to generating html output. Inventory Management System: Inventory Management System is a Silverlight-based system. It aims to manage and control the input raw material activites, output of finished goods of a small inventory.koplamp kapot: demo project voor AzureMSAccess SVN: Access SVN adds to Microsoft Access (MS Access) support for SVN Source controlMultiConvert: console based utility primary to convert solid edge files into data exchange formats like *.stp and *.dxf. It's using the API of the original software and can't be run alone. The goal of this project is creating routines with desired pre-instructions for batch conversionsNGN Image Getter: Nationalgeographic has really stunning photos! They allow to download them via website. This program automates that process.OOD CRM: Project CRM for Object Oriented Development final examsOpen NOS Client: Open NOS Rest ClientopenEHR.NET: openEHR.NET is a C# implementation of openEHR (http://openehr.org) Reference Model (RM) and Archetype Model (AM) specifications (Release 1.0.1). It allows you to build openEHR applications by composing RM objects, validate against AM objects and serialise to/from XML.OpenGL Flow Designer: OpenGL Flow Designer allows writing pseudo-C code to build OpenGL pipeline and preview results immediately.Orchard Translation Manager: An Orchard module that aims at facilitating the creation and management of translations of the Orchard CMS and its extensions.pwTools: A set of tools for viewing/editing some perfect world client/server filesServerStatusMobile: Server availability monitoring application for windows mobile 6.5.x running on WVGA (480x800) devices. Supports autorun, vibration & notification when server became unavailable, text log files for each server. .NET Compact Framework 3.5 required for running this applicationSimple Silverlight Multiple File Uploader: The project allows you to achieve multiple file uploading in Silverlight without complex, complicated, or third-party applications. In just two core classes, it's very simple to understand, use, and extend. Snos: Projet Snos linker Snes multi SupportT-4 Templates for ASP.NET Web Form Databound Control Friendly Logical Layers: This open source project includes a set of T-4 templates to enable you to build logical layers (i.e. DAL/BLL) with just few clicks! The logical layers implemented here are based on Entity Framework 4.0, ASP.NET Web Form Data Bound control friendly and fully unit testable.The Media Store: The Media StoreUM: source control for the um projecturBook - Your Address Book Manager: urBook is and Address Book Manager that can merge all your contacts on all web services you use with your phone contacts to have one consistent Address Book for all your contacts and to update back your web services contacts with the one consistent address bookWindows Phone Certificate Installer: Helps install Trusted Root Certificates on Windows Phone 7 to enable SSL requests. Intended to allow developers to use localhost web servers during development without requiring the purchase of an SSL certificate. Especially helpful for ws-trust secured web service development.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 07, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 07, 2012Popular ReleasesHarness - Internet Explorer Automation: Harness 2.0.3: support the operation fo frameset, frame and iframe Add commands SwitchFrame GetUrl GoBack GoForward Refresh SetTimeout GetTimeout Rename commands GetActiveWindow to GetActiveBrowser SetActiveWindow to SetActiveBrowser FindWindowAll to FindBrowser NewWindow to NewBrowser GetMajorVersion to GetVersionBetter Explorer: Better Explorer 2.0.0.861 Alpha: - fixed new folder button operation not work well in some situations - removed some unnecessary code like subclassing that is not needed anymore - Added option to make Better Exlorer default (at least for WIN+E operations) - Added option to enable file operation replacements (like Terracopy) to work with Better Explorer - Added some basic usability to "Share" button - Other fixesLightFarsiDictionary - ??????? ??? ?????/???????: LightFarsiDictionary - v1: LightFarsiDictionary - v1WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.3: Version: 2.5.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete [O] WAF: Mark the StringBuilderExtensions class as obsolete because the AppendInNewLine method can be replaced with string.Jo...RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: RiP-Ripper 2.9.30: changes NEW: Added Support for "DirectUpload.net" links NEW: Added Support for "PixRoute.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImagePicasa.com" links FIXED: "PixHub.eu" linksCommunity TFS Build Extensions: April 2012: Release notes to follow...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.65.2: Aside from many bug fixes we now have Conditional Formatting The conditional formatting was sponsored by http://www.bewing.nl (big thanks) New on v0.65.1 Fixed issue when loading conditional formatting with default values for icon sets New on v0.65.2 Fixed issue loading conditional formatting Improved inserts performanceLiberty: v3.2.0.0 Release 4th April 2012: Change Log-Added -Halo 3 support (invincibility, ammo editing) -Halo 3: ODST support (invincibility, ammo editing) -The file transfer page now shows its progress in the Windows 7 taskbar -"About this build" settings page -Reach Change what an object is carrying -Reach Change which node a carried object is attached to -Reach Object node viewer and exporter -Reach Change which weapons you are carrying from the object editor -Reach Edit the weapon controller of vehicles and turrets -An error dia...MSBuild Extension Pack: April 2012: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack April 2012 release provides a collection of over 435 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUID’...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.05: Major Highlights Fixed issue that stopped users from creating vocabularies when the portal ID was not zero Fixed issue that caused modules configured to be displayed on all pages to be added to the wrong container in new pages Fixed page quota restriction issue in the Ribbon Bar Removed restriction that would not allow users to use a dash in page names. Now users can create pages with names like "site-map" Fixed issue that was causing the wrong container to be loaded in modules wh...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.3.1: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.3.11. [assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers] has been added back into the AssemblyInfo.cs file to prevent failures with other assemblies in Medium trust environments. 2. The Lite data embedded into the assembly has been updated to include devices from December 2011. The 42 new RingMark properties will return Unknown if RingMark data is not available. Changes to Version 2.1.2.11Code Changes 1. The project is now licenced under the Mozilla...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.0.0: Added Support for Mvc4 beta and WebApi The SafeqQuery and HttpSafeQuery IQueryable implementations that works as wrappers aroung any IQueryable to protect it from unwished queries. "Client Side" pager specialized in paging javascript data coming either from a remote data source, or from local data. LinQ like fluent javascript api to build queries either against remote data sources, or against local javascript data, with exactly the same interface. There are 3 different query objects exp...ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.2: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-04-04 v3.1.2 -??IE?????????????BUG（??"about:blank"?...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.50: Highlight features & improvements: • Significant performance optimization. • Allow store owners to create several shipments per order. Added a new shipping status: “Partially shipped”. • Pre-order support added. Enables your customers to place a Pre-Order and pay for the item in advance. Displays “Pre-order” button instead of “Buy Now” on the appropriate pages. Makes it possible for customer to buy available goods and Pre-Order items during one session. It can be managed on a product variant ...WiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 RC0: WiX v3.6 RC0 (3.6.2803.0) provides support for VS11 and a more stable Burn engine. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/4/3/WiX-v3.6-Release-Candidate-Zero-availableSageFrame: SageFrame 2.0: Sageframe is an open source ASP.NET web development framework developed using ASP.NET 3.5 with service pack 1 (sp1) technology. It is designed specifically to help developers build dynamic website by providing core functionality common to most web applications.iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.5.4475: Fix to parse empty playlists in iTunes LibraryDocument.Editor: 2012.2: Whats New for Document.Editor 2012.2: New Save Copy support New Page Setup support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsVidCoder: 1.3.2: Added option for the minimum title length to scan. Added support to enable or disable LibDVDNav. Added option to prompt to delete source files after clearing successful completed items. Added option to disable remembering recent files and folders. Tweaked number box to only select all on a quick click.MJP's DirectX 11 Samples: Light Indexed Deferred Rendering: Implements light indexed deferred using per-tile light lists calculated in a compute shader, as well as a traditional deferred renderer that uses a compute shader for per-tile light culling and per-pixel shading.New ProjectsAdvertising Management: Ph?n m?m qu?n lý qu?ng cáoAgile Compact Database: It is database for all. AssemblyTransformer: AssemblyTransformer is a tool for modifying .NET assemblies using Mono Cecil. It handles the entire transformation process including strong name signing and offers a simple command-line interface and a basic framework for creating and configuring specific transformations.Cafe For You: Ph?n m?m gi?i thi?u và qu?n lý quán cafeClient-side Templated Script Control: Allows a developer to add a repeater-style templated list control to a web page that will be data bound client-side, and may respond to client events. The control may be data bound by a web service call on initialization, and may also have it's data source set via client code.CRM Project - Beginner Sample: Sample to help beginners to start in C# development. Ejemplo para ayudar a quienes inician con el desarrollo en C#.Deployment Made Easy: The goal of this project is to make deployments to windows servers easy using the web deployment toolEasyCMS: EasyCMSExcel to SQL Server Database Bulk Transfer: Quick and simple WPF tool to allow users export data from an Excel spreadsheet to a SQL Server database table. Provided as is. But if you need any help let me know. HTML Client demo for WCF RIA Services: Demo application with HTML client (upshot.js + knockout.js) on WCF RIA ServicesKOI: Kinect Open Interface: Kinect Open Interface, KOI, provides a way to detect and have the user confirm 11 gestures for your UI. Please read my blog for info: http://www.kinecthelp.com/2012/04/koi-kinect-open-interface.htmlLazyWinAdmin: LazyWinAdmin is a Powershell script to manage local or remote machine ressources.LCDSmartie dll to display Audio spectrum on Windows 7: An LCDSmartie plugin that displays anything being played as an audio spectrum.LiveHelpChatApp: With Live chat help you can provide online / Offline help to your client it has facebook style chat for online and offline users Download and EnjoyMailSender: Small tool for sending mail messages contains multiple attachements with sum size bigger than allowed size. You can drag'n'drop attachments and click send - application split all attachments to parts and sent it separately. There is not address book yet. Mauricio: Mauricio Lima PageMiddleware and Enterprise services foundation: Define a model of deployment and management for Middleware and enterprise applicationsMyFirstPro: This is a test projOld Games Launcher: Old Games Launcher is a combined DosBox frontend & a Direct Draw game/application starter.Pharmakos Studio: Pharmakos Studio is an extensible IDE. It was originally written specifically as an UnrealScript editor for the UDK, however it is being written so that any language can be supported via plugins.Proyecto Eclipse-Android: Proyectos con Eclipse-AdroidProyectos II: Proyecto para Farmaciapullsource: pull source directsource filterQuizzer: Awesome program for quizzes and tests.Solution Settings for Visual Studio: Solution Settings for Visual Studio allows a file containing settings such as formatting, fonts and colors to be included with a project. When the solution is opened, these settings are automatically applied, and when it is closed, the changes are reverted.sundance: test test testWebcomic Reader: A little Idea for an on-, and offline usable, touch-friendly Windows 7 Webcomic Reader.WinRT PathTextBlock: WinRT PathTextBlock is a control that overcomes some of the limitations in the built in WinRT TextBlock, such as not being able to outline the text, and not being able to distort the text, for example to draw it along a circle. Previously, you could use a tool like Expression Design to create the text and export it as a Path, but this wouldn't work for text that needed to be specified at run time. This control allows you to specify the Text property and it will generate the proper Path obj...Yaplex open source projects: Yaplex open source projects????API SDK-VB6(oauth2): ????API SDK-VB6(oauth2)????????API SDK VB6: ??????????API SDK vb?

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, April 06, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, April 06, 2012Popular ReleasesBetter Explorer: Better Explorer 2.0.0.861 Alpha: - fixed new folder button operation not work well in some situations - removed some unnecessary code like subclassing that is not needed anymore - Added option to make Better Exlorer default (at least for WIN+E operations) - Added option to enable file operation replacements (like Terracopy) to work with Better Explorer - Added some basic usability to "Share" button - Other fixesLightFarsiDictionary - ??????? ??? ?????/???????: LightFarsiDictionary - v1: LightFarsiDictionary - v1WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.3: Version: 2.5.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete [O] WAF: Mark the StringBuilderExtensions class as obsolete because the AppendInNewLine method can be replaced with string.Jo...Community TFS Build Extensions: April 2012: Release notes to follow...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.65.2: Aside from many bug fixes we now have Conditional Formatting The conditional formatting was sponsored by http://www.bewing.nl (big thanks) New on v0.65.1 Fixed issue when loading conditional formatting with default values for icon sets New on v0.65.2 Fixed issue loading conditional formatting Improved inserts performanceLiberty: v3.2.0.0 Release 4th April 2012: Change Log-Added -Halo 3 support (invincibility, ammo editing) -Halo 3: ODST support (invincibility, ammo editing) -The file transfer page now shows its progress in the Windows 7 taskbar -"About this build" settings page -Reach Change what an object is carrying -Reach Change which node a carried object is attached to -Reach Object node viewer and exporter -Reach Change which weapons you are carrying from the object editor -Reach Edit the weapon controller of vehicles and turrets -An error dia...MSBuild Extension Pack: April 2012: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack April 2012 release provides a collection of over 435 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUID’...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.05: Major Highlights Fixed issue that stopped users from creating vocabularies when the portal ID was not zero Fixed issue that caused modules configured to be displayed on all pages to be added to the wrong container in new pages Fixed page quota restriction issue in the Ribbon Bar Removed restriction that would not allow users to use a dash in page names. Now users can create pages with names like "site-map" Fixed issue that was causing the wrong container to be loaded in modules wh...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.3.1: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.3.11. [assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers] has been added back into the AssemblyInfo.cs file to prevent failures with other assemblies in Medium trust environments. 2. The Lite data embedded into the assembly has been updated to include devices from December 2011. The 42 new RingMark properties will return Unknown if RingMark data is not available. Changes to Version 2.1.2.11Code Changes 1. The project is now licenced under the Mozilla...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.0.0: Added Support for Mvc4 beta and WebApi The SafeqQuery and HttpSafeQuery IQueryable implementations that works as wrappers aroung any IQueryable to protect it from unwished queries. "Client Side" pager specialized in paging javascript data coming either from a remote data source, or from local data. LinQ like fluent javascript api to build queries either against remote data sources, or against local javascript data, with exactly the same interface. There are 3 different query objects exp...ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.2: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-04-04 v3.1.2 -??IE?????????????BUG（??"about:blank"?...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.50: Highlight features & improvements: • Significant performance optimization. • Allow store owners to create several shipments per order. Added a new shipping status: “Partially shipped”. • Pre-order support added. Enables your customers to place a Pre-Order and pay for the item in advance. Displays “Pre-order” button instead of “Buy Now” on the appropriate pages. Makes it possible for customer to buy available goods and Pre-Order items during one session. It can be managed on a product variant ...WiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 RC0: WiX v3.6 RC0 (3.6.2803.0) provides support for VS11 and a more stable Burn engine. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/4/3/WiX-v3.6-Release-Candidate-Zero-availableSageFrame: SageFrame 2.0: Sageframe is an open source ASP.NET web development framework developed using ASP.NET 3.5 with service pack 1 (sp1) technology. It is designed specifically to help developers build dynamic website by providing core functionality common to most web applications.iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.5.4475: Fix to parse empty playlists in iTunes LibraryDocument.Editor: 2012.2: Whats New for Document.Editor 2012.2: New Save Copy support New Page Setup support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsDotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 1.2 with Examples: Tested and adapted to the latest version of Highcharts 2.2.1 Fixed Issue 359: Not implemented serialization array of type: System.Drawing.Color[] Fixed Issue 364: Crosshairs defined as array of CrosshairsForamt generates bad Highchart code For the example project: Added newest version of Highcharts 2.2.1 Added new demos to How To's section: Bind Data From Dictionary Bind Data From Object List Custom Theme Tooltip Crosshairs Theming The Reset Button Plot Band EventsVidCoder: 1.3.2: Added option for the minimum title length to scan. Added support to enable or disable LibDVDNav. Added option to prompt to delete source files after clearing successful completed items. Added option to disable remembering recent files and folders. Tweaked number box to only select all on a quick click.MJP's DirectX 11 Samples: Light Indexed Deferred Rendering: Implements light indexed deferred using per-tile light lists calculated in a compute shader, as well as a traditional deferred renderer that uses a compute shader for per-tile light culling and per-pixel shading.Pcap.Net: Pcap.Net 0.9.0 (66492): Pcap.Net - March 2012 Release Pcap.Net is a .NET wrapper for WinPcap written in C++/CLI and C#. It Features almost all WinPcap features and includes a packet interpretation framework. Version 0.9.0 (Change Set 66492)March 31, 2012 release of the Pcap.Net framework. Follow Pcap.Net on Google+Follow Pcap.Net on Google+ Files Pcap.Net.DevelopersPack.0.9.0.66492.zip - Includes all the tutorial example projects source files, the binaries in a 3rdParty directory and the documentation. It include...New Projects.Net Mutation Testing Tool: This tool will help for making and unit testing mutation changes. Mutation tests improve unit tests and applications.African Honey Bee Application Suite: This is the home of the software behind the African Honey Bee community enrichment project.Create Schema: Object extension method that generates schema creation scripts in SQL (MS SQL SERVER) from c# classes to rapidly get database tables from an existing class structure. Just edit the scripts (they are just guesses of how the database should look) to make them fit your database needs and then run them as a query in SQL Server. Check out vecklare.blogspot.se for more examples. CrtTfsDemo: demo project to test code review tool integration with tfsDolphins Salaam: This Library is a Cross Platform, UDP Broadcast solution for Peer to Peer network client detection. It is written in pure C# and is Mono and .Net compatible. It has been tested on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, Xbox and it is expected to be compatible with every other Mono compatible platform. The library is ready to use out of box and there is almost zero configurations needed for it to start working, regarding that, it is also flexible and configurable for your needs.Enhanced Content Query Webpart: This Enhanced Content Query Webpart for SharePoint 2010 is meant for the advanced application developer. You will be able to create any rollup of pages of any Content Type(s), Site Column(s) from any subsite(s) with (any) style you want. Xslt skills are required.fangxue: huijiaFrameworkComponent: frameworkcomponent 4 companyFsXna3DGame: 3D game written in XNA and F# (still very much a work in progress)GeoLock: GeoLock is a proof of concept (PoC). GeoLock demonstrates how to retrieve geolocation data from surrounding Wi-Fi networks triangulation without Global Positioning System (GPS) hardware. grab-libs: A quick hack to bundle up the shared libraries needed to run an i386 executable on an x86_64 machine.Logical Game Of Life: Make Logic Component with a game of life algoritmMagic Box: Magic Box is the application for "hiding" files in NTFS file system. NTFS Alternate Data Streams are used for this.Notes: Application to create fast notes on your Windows Phone.Orchard Google Infographics: **NOTE: Only works with Orchard >= v1.4** This module leverages Google's Infographics api for generating QR codes for each content item that uses the Orchard.Autoroute part. The api documentation may be found at https://developers.google.com/chart/infographics/docs/qr_codesOutlook Calendar Cleaner: If you port your email from a Lotus Notes server to Exchange Server or to Office 365, your Mac Outlook calendar items may be missing. This includes calendar appointments and meeting requests. This may include items that were ported over and also new items created after the port.Polarity: Polarity is a plugin-oriented bot written in C# for deviantArt chat written with simplicity and ease of use for plugin developers as the number one goal.Pool Game Paradise: Pool Game Club of Augmentum Inc. Wuhan Site.RCT2 DatChecker: A utility for Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 that catalogs, displays, and helps manage object files (*.DAT). Examine objects frame by frame or copy object images to the clipboard. Sort objects by size, type, or content. Use DatChecker to find and remove unwanted or duplicate objects, or RecipeML Manager: This project creates C# classes that support the RecipeML standard. It also enhances that standard to support full daily and weekly menus.s0t0o0c0k3246352543: 345234324324324324ScoutGames: scout games portalSharePoint All Page Scripting: This solution is the skeleton of the JavaScript loading in all pages on the SharePoint site collection. This solution can be deployed as a "sandbox solution". Supports the Office365 of course. ??????????SharePoint ?????????????????????????Java?????????????。 ????????????????????????。 ???、????Office365?????????。testtom04052012git02: testtom04052012git02testtom04052012tfs01: testtom04052012tfs01testtom04052012tfs03: testtom04052012tfs03Visual Studio Pattern Automation Toolkit (VSPAT): VSPAT is a set of development and deployment tools from Microsoft that generate and execute Visual Studio extensions called 'Pattern Toolkits' that redeliver best practices, expertise and proven solutions faster, more reliably and more consistently. If you are an *IT professional* are you are looking to build and deploy custom solutions that include proven best practices to improve quality, consistency and time to market. And if you wish to spend significantly less time having to learn all...Wet: Wet, the game.WPF Data Editors: WPF Data Editor controls contains most of editor controls in WPF.xSolon Instructions: Framework to run scripts

  Read the article

• Understanding the value of Customer Experience & Loyalty for the Telecommunications Industry

  - by raul.goycoolea

  Worried by economic woes and market forces, especially in mature markets, communications service providers (CSPs) increasingly focus on improving customer experience. In fact, it seems difficult to find a major message by a C-level executive in the developed world that does not include something on "meeting and exceeding customers' needs". Frequently in customer satisfaction studies by prominent firms, CSPs fall short of the leadership demonstrated by other industries that take customer-centric approaches to their bottom-line strategies. Consider the following:Despite the continued impact of global economic crisis, in July 2010, Apple Computer posted record revenue and net quarterly profit. Those who attribute the results primarily to the iPhone 4 launch should note that Apple also shipped around 30% more Macintosh computers than the same period the previous year. Even sales of the iPod line increased by 8% in a highly commoditized, shrinking media player market. Finally, Apple began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of more than 3 million units. What does Apple have that the others lack? Well, some great products (and services) to be sure, but it also excels at customer service and support, marketing, and distribution, and has one of the strongest brands globally. Its products are useful, simple to use, easy to acquire and augment, high quality, and considered very cool. They also evoke such an emotional response from many of Apple's customers, which they turn up their noses at competitive products.In other words, Apple appears to have mastered virtually every aspect of customer experience and the resultant loyalty of its customer base - even in difficult financial times. Through that unwavering customer focus, Apple continues to drive its revenues and profits to new heights. Other customer loyalty leaders like Wal-Mart, Google, Toyota and Honda are also doing well by focusing on customer experience as an essential driver of profitability. Service providers should note this performance and ask themselves how they might leverage the same principles to increase their own profitability. After all, that is what customer experience and loyalty are all about: profitability.To successfully manage all the critical touch points of customer experience, CSPs must shun the one-size-fits-all approach. They can no longer afford to view customer service fundamentally as an act of altruism - which mentality dates back to the industry's civil service days, when CSPs were typically government organizations that were critical to economic development and public safety.As regulators and public officials have pushed, and continue to push, service providers to new heights of reliability - using incentives and punishments - most CSPs already have some of the fundamental building blocks of customer service in place. Yet despite that history and experience, service providers still lag other industries in providing what is seen as good customer service.As we observed in the TMF's 2009 Insights Research report, Customer Experience Management: Driving Loyalty & Profitability there has been resurgence in interest by CSPs. More and more of them have stated ambitions to catch up other industries, and they are realizing that good customer service is a powerful strategy for increasing business performance and profitability, not an act of good will.CSPs are recognizing the connection between customer experience and profitability, as demonstrated in many studies. For example, according to research by Bain & Company, a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates can yield as much as a 75 percent increase in profits for companies across a range of industries.After decades of customer experience strategy formulation, Bain partner and business author, Frederick Reichheld, considers "would you recommend us to a friend?" as the ultimate question for a customer. How many times have you or your friends recommended an iPod, iPhone or a Mac? What do your children recommend to their peers? Their peers to them?There are certain steps service providers have to take to create more personalized relationships with their customers, as well as reduce churn and increase profitability, all while becoming leaner and more agile. First, they have to define customer experience, we define it as the result of the sum of observations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings arising from interactions and relationships between customers and their service provider(s). Virtually every customer touch point - whether directly or indirectly linked to service providers and their partners - contributes to customer perception, satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately profitability. Gaining leadership in customer experience and satisfaction will not be a simple task, as it is affected by virtually every customer-facing aspect of the service provider, and in turn impacts the service provider deeply - especially on the all-important bottom line. The scope of issues affecting customer experience is complex and dynamic.With new services, devices and applications extending the basis of customer experience to domains beyond the direct control of the service provider, it is likely to increase in complexity and dynamism.Customer loyalty = increased profitsAs stated earlier, customer experience programs are not fundamentally altruistic exercises, but a strategic means of improving competitiveness and profitability in the short and long term. Loyalty is essential to deriving long term profits from customers.Some of the earliest loyalty programs date back to the 1930s, when packaged goods companies offered embedded coupons for rewards to buyers, and eventually retail chains began offering reward programs to frequent shoppers. These programs continued for decades but were leapfrogged in the 1980s by more aggressive programs from the airlines.This movement was led by American Airlines, which launched the first full-scale loyalty marketing program of the modern era with the AAdvantage frequent flyer scheme. It was the first to reward frequent fliers with notional air miles that could be accumulated and later redeemed for free travel. Figure 1: Opportunities example of Customer loyalty driven profitOther airlines and travel providers were quick to grasp the incredible value of providing customers with an incentive to use their company exclusively. Within a few years, dozens of travel industry companies launched similar initiatives and now loyalty programs are achieving near-ubiquity in many service industries, especially those in which it is difficult to differentiate offerings by product attributes.The belief is that increased profitability will result from customer retention efforts because:•    The cost of acquisition occurs only at the beginning of a relationship: the longer the relationship, the lower the amortized cost;•    Account maintenance costs decline as a percentage of total costs, or as a percentage of revenue, over the lifetime of the relationship;•    Long term customers tend to be less inclined to switch and less price sensitive which can result in stable unit sales volume and increases in dollar-sales volume;•    Long term customers may initiate word-of-mouth promotions and referrals, which cost the company nothing and arguably are the most effective form of advertising;•    Long-term customers are more likely to buy ancillary products and higher margin supplemental products;•    Long term customers tend to be satisfied with their relationship with the company and are less likely to switch to competitors, making market entry or competitors gaining market share difficult;•    Regular customers tend to be less expensive to service, as they are familiar with the processes involved, require less 'education', and are consistent in their order placement;•    Increased customer retention and loyalty makes the employees' jobs easier and more satisfying. In turn, happy employees feed back into higher customer satisfaction in a virtuous circle. Figure 2: The virtuous circle of customer loyaltyFigure 2 represents a high-level example of a virtuous cycle driven by customer satisfaction and loyalty, depicting how superiority in product and service offerings, as well as strong customer support by competent employees, lead to higher sales and ultimately profitability. As stated above, this is not a new concept, but succeeding with it is difficult. It has eluded many a company driven to achieve profitability goals. Of course, for this circle to be virtuous, the customer relationship(s) must be profitable.Trying to maintain the loyalty of unprofitable customers is not a viable business strategy. It is, therefore, important that marketers can assess the profitability of each customer (or customer segment), and either improve or terminate relationships that are not profitable. This means each customer's 'relationship costs' must be understood and compared to their 'relationship revenue'. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the most commonly used metric here, as it is generally accepted as a representation of exactly how much each customer is worth in monetary terms, and therefore a determinant of exactly how much a service provider should be willing to spend to acquire or retain that customer.CLV models make several simplifying assumptions and often involve the following inputs:•    Churn rate represents the percentage of customers who end their relationship with a company in a given period;•    Retention rate is calculated by subtracting the churn rate percentage from 100;•    Period/horizon equates to the units of time into which a customer relationship can be divided for analysis. A year is the most commonly used period for this purpose. Customer lifetime value is a multi-period calculation, often projecting three to seven years into the future. In practice, analysis beyond this point is viewed as too speculative to be reliable. The model horizon is the number of periods used in the calculation;•    Periodic revenue is the amount of revenue collected from a customer in a given period (though this is often extended across multiple periods into the future to understand lifetime value), such as usage revenue, revenues anticipated from cross and upselling, and often some weighting for referrals by a loyal customer to others; •    Retention cost describes the amount of money the service provider must spend, in a given period, to retain an existing customer. Again, this is often forecast across multiple periods. Retention costs include customer support, billing, promotional incentives and so on;•    Discount rate means the cost of capital used to discount future revenue from a customer. Discounting is an advanced method used in more sophisticated CLV calculations;•    Profit margin is the projected profit as a percentage of revenue for the period. This may be reflected as a percentage of gross or net profit. Again, this is generally projected across the model horizon to understand lifetime value.A strong focus on managing these inputs can help service providers realize stronger customer relationships and profits, but there are some obstacles to overcome in achieving accurate calculations of CLV, such as the complexity of allocating costs across the customer base. There are many costs that serve all customers which must be properly allocated across the base, and often a simple proportional allocation across the whole base or a segment may not accurately reflect the true cost of serving that customer;  This is made worse by the fragmentation of customer information, which is likely to be across a variety of product or operations groups, and may be difficult to aggregate due to different representations.In addition, there is the complexity of account relationships and structures to take into consideration. Complex account structures may not be understood or properly represented. For example, a profitable customer may have a separate account for a second home or another family member, which may appear to be unprofitable. If the service provider cannot relate the two accounts, CLV is not properly represented and any resultant cancellation of the apparently unprofitable account may result in the customer churning from the profitable one.In summary, if service providers are to realize strong customer relationships and their attendant profits, there must be a very strong focus on data management. This needs to be coupled with analytics that help business managers and those who work in customer-facing functions offer highly personalized solutions to customers, while maintaining profitability for the service provider. It's clear that acquiring new customers is expensive. Advertising costs, campaign management expenses, promotional service pricing and discounting, and equipment subsidies make a serious dent in a new customer's profitability. That is especially true given the rising subsidies for Smartphone users, which service providers hope will result in greater profits from profits from data services profitability in future.  The situation is made worse by falling prices and greater competition in mature markets.Customer acquisition through industry consolidation isn't cheap either. A North American service provider spent about $2,000 per subscriber in its acquisition of a smaller company earlier this year. While this has allowed it to leapfrog to become the largest mobile service provider in the country, it required a total investment of more than $28 billion (including assumption of the acquiree's debt).While many operating cost synergies clearly made this deal more attractive to the acquiring company, this is certainly an expensive way to acquire customers: the cost per subscriber in this case is not out of line with the prices others have paid for acquisitions.While growth by acquisition certainly increases overall revenues, it often creates tremendous challenges for profitability. Organic growth through increased customer loyalty and retention is a more effective driver of profit, as well as a stronger predictor of future profitability. Service providers, especially those in mature markets, are increasingly recognizing this and taking steps toward a creating a more personalized, flexible and satisfying experience for their customers.In summary, the clearest path to profitability for companies in virtually all industries is through customer retention and maximization of lifetime value. Service providers would do well to recognize this and focus attention on profitable customer relationships.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, April 04, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, April 04, 2012Popular ReleasesExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.2: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-04-04 v3.1.2 -??IE?????????????BUG（??"about:blank"?...totalem: version 2012.04.04.1: devel releaseNShape - .Net Diagramming Framework for Industrial Applications: NShape 2.0.0: Changes in 2.0.0:New / Changed / Extended Interfaces: public interface ISecurityManager public interface ISecurityDomainObject public interface IModelObject : ISecurityDomainObject public interface ILayerCollection : ICollection<Layer> public interface IRepository public interface ICommand public interface IModelMapping For details on interface changes, see documentation. For more changes on namespaces and base classes, see ReadMe.txt (installation folder) or Changes.txt in the s...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.65.1: Aside from many bug fixes we now have Conditional Formatting The conditional formatting was sponsored by http://www.bewing.nl (big thanks) New on v0.65.1 Fixed issue when loading conditional formatting with default values for icon setsnopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.50: Highlight features & improvements: • Significant performance optimization. • Allow store owners to create several shipments per order. Added a new shipping status: “Partially shipped”. • Pre-order support added. Enables your customers to place a Pre-Order and pay for the item in advance. Displays “Pre-order” button instead of “Buy Now” on the appropriate pages. Makes it possible for customer to buy available goods and Pre-Order items during one session. It can be managed on a product variant ...SkyDrive Connector for SharePoint: SkyDriveConnector for SharePoint: SkyDriveConnector for SharePointWiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 RC0: WiX v3.6 RC0 (3.6.2803.0) provides support for VS11 and a more stable Burn engine. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/4/3/WiX-v3.6-Release-Candidate-Zero-availableSageFrame: SageFrame 2.0: Sageframe is an open source ASP.NET web development framework developed using ASP.NET 3.5 with service pack 1 (sp1) technology. It is designed specifically to help developers build dynamic website by providing core functionality common to most web applications.Lightbox Gallery Module for DotNetNuke: 01.11.00: This version of the Lightbox Gallery Module adds the following features/bug fixes: Feature: Read image EXIF information Bug Fix: URL parsing bug for any folder provider Minimum System Requirements Please ensure that your environment meets or exceeds the following system requirements: DotNetNuke® Version 06.00.00 or higher SQL Server 2005 or later .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 or lateriTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.5.4475: Fix to parse empty playlists in iTunes LibraryGoogleMap Control: Google Geocoder 1.3: Geo types changes to string type and GeoAddressType enum changes to static class with some known types as constants in order to resolve the problems with new and not defined geo types.Document.Editor: 2012.2: Whats New for Document.Editor 2012.2: New Save Copy support New Page Setup support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsVidCoder: 1.3.2: Added option for the minimum title length to scan. Added support to enable or disable LibDVDNav. Added option to prompt to delete source files after clearing successful completed items. Added option to disable remembering recent files and folders. Tweaked number box to only select all on a quick click.MJP's DirectX 11 Samples: Light Indexed Deferred Rendering: Implements light indexed deferred using per-tile light lists calculated in a compute shader, as well as a traditional deferred renderer that uses a compute shader for per-tile light culling and per-pixel shading.Pcap.Net: Pcap.Net 0.9.0 (66492): Pcap.Net - March 2012 Release Pcap.Net is a .NET wrapper for WinPcap written in C++/CLI and C#. It Features almost all WinPcap features and includes a packet interpretation framework. Version 0.9.0 (Change Set 66492)March 31, 2012 release of the Pcap.Net framework. Follow Pcap.Net on Google+Follow Pcap.Net on Google+ Files Pcap.Net.DevelopersPack.0.9.0.66492.zip - Includes all the tutorial example projects source files, the binaries in a 3rdParty directory and the documentation. It include...Extended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.6.0: Want an easier way to install the Extended WPF Toolkit?The Extended WPF Toolkit is available on Nuget. What's in the 1.6.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner Calculator CalculatorUpDown CheckListBox - Breaking Changes CheckComboBox - New Control ChildWindow CollectionEditor CollectionEditorDialog ColorCanvas ColorPicker DateTimePicker DateTimeUpDown DecimalUpDown DoubleUpDown DropDownButton IntegerUpDown Magnifier MaskedTextBox MessageBox MultiLineTex...Media Companion: MC 3.434b Release: General This release should be the last beta for 3.4xx. If there are no major problems, by the end of the week it will upgraded to 3.500 Stable! The latest mc_com.exe should be included too! TV Bug fix - crash when using XBMC scraper for TV episodes. Bug fix - episode count update when adding new episodes. Bug fix - crash when actors name was missing. Enhanced TV scrape progress text. Enhancements made to missing episodes display. Movies Bug fix - hide "Play Trailer" when multisaev...Better Explorer: Better Explorer 2.0.0.831 Alpha: - A new release with: - many bugfixes - changed icon - added code for more failsafe registry usage on x64 systems - not needed regfix anymore - added ribbon shortcut keys - Other fixes Note: If you have problems opening system libraries, a suggestion was given to copy all of these libraries and then delete the originals. Thanks to Gaugamela for that! (see discussion here: 349015 ) Note2: I was upload again the setup due to missing file!MonoGame - Write Once, Play Everywhere: MonoGame 2.5: The MonoGame team are pleased to announce that MonoGame v2.5 has been released. This release contains important bug fixes, implements optimisations and adds key features. MonoGame now has the capability to use OpenGLES 2.0 on Android and iOS devices, meaning it now supports custom shaders across mobile and desktop platforms. Also included in this release are native orientation animations on iOS devices and better Orientation support for Android. There have also been a lot of bug fixes since t...Circuit Diagram: Circuit Diagram 2.0 Alpha 3: New in this release: Added components: Microcontroller Demultiplexer Flip & rotate components Open XML files from older versions of Circuit Diagram Text formatting for components New CDDX syntax Other fixesNew ProjectsASP.Net MVC Composite Application Framework: ASP.NET MVC Composite Application FrameworkaTimer : Take a break timer: This timer will help programmers and other people who work on computer for long periods, users will be able to set their time period for work and break, whether you want to enforce the break by hibernating or making your computer sleep. Will be good for eyes, a lot! Still under development and will be monthly revised.Avilander Maven: Projeto Disciplina Branquinho.Banner from Databases: make a banner from database informationCrmXpress OptionSet Manager For Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: CrmXpress OptionSet Manager For Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011CSharpCodeLineCounter: Count code lines as Code Metrics do.Decatec Sharepoint code: Various Decatec Sharepoint codeDevWebServer: DevWebServer is a simple, lightweight web server which can be used for unit testing HTTP client applications. It is developed in C#, has minimal dependencies and is provided as a single assembly.Effect Architect: A real-time effect editor (currently) aimed at Direct3D9. The idea is to bring features that popular IDEs provide to HLSL coding, as well as features that are specific to graphical coding.Gpu Hough: Demo project performing Hough transformation on GPUHappyHourWin8: This project contains several Metro-App development approaches. There will be an RSS-Reader, a task list and a game. Home Media Center: Home Media Center is a server application for UPnP / DLNA compatible devices. It supports streaming and transcoding media files, Windows desktop and video from webcams. This project is developed in C#, C++ and uses DirectShow, Media Foundation.INSTEON Mayhem Module: INSTEON module for Mayhem application.ISService: ISServiceKEITH: Kinect for hospitalsKnowledge Exchange: KnowledgeExchangeLightweight Test Automation Framework: The Lightweight Test Automation Framework for ASP.NET was developed and is currently used by the ASP.NET QA Team to automate regression tests for the product. It is designed to run within an ASP.NET application. Tests can be written in any .NET Framework language. They use an APlinewatchdk: linewatchdkLuaForMono: c#?lua?????,??LuaInterface??luaSharp???,?????????(luaInterface)??lua??c#?????????(luasharp),??mono?linux????????lua??.Metro App Toolkit: The Metro App Toolkit provides the developer community with key components and functionality that are commonly used in Metro Apps for WindowsPhone, Windows8 and the web, including Networking! Toolkit releases include samples & docs. From the community, for the community. My IE Accelerators: 1. dict.cn ie accelaratorofm: ofmOrchard Clippy module: Orchard Clippy moduleOrchard Twitter module: Orchard Twitter modulePersian Subtitle For Programming Courses: This project is created for collecting all programming course's PERSIAN SUBTITLE and help Persian language student to learn programming and every thing related to their major, by Meysam Hooshmandpicking: pickingPomodoro Timer for Visual Studio: Keep track of your Pomodoro Technique (from the Pomodoro Technique® official website – www.pomodorotechnique.com) sessions in Visual Studio.ScriptSafe: A simple powershell wrapper around source control aimed at admins to enable simple source control for their scripts.SkyDrive Connector for SharePoint: SkyDrive Connector for SharePoint is a sandbox web part that can help manage documents stored on skydrive on sharepoint by adding additional metadata. This helps the document to be discoverable on SharePoint. Also SkyDrive provides 25GB for free space for live users.SkypeTranslator: Help users to translate incoming message from Skype and Outlook applications to specified language. In core was use Elysium , log4net , and WPF frameworks, WPF Toolkit Extended,TPL,WCFTalking Heads: The TalkingHeads is a simple social network written in ASP .NET 4.0. It is intended for demonstrating and exploring application monitoring features of AVIcode technology. It works great with AVIcode 5.7, as well as with APM feature in System Center 2012. Unik Project: Unik is a Unified Framework makes easier to create enterprise .NET applications based on architecture best practice.WV-CU950 System Controller .NET Library.: WV-CU950 System Controller .NET library for Panasonic WV-CU950 System Controller. This library contains data processing method.YO JACK!: <Project name>Yo Jack!</Project name> Gather evidence to track down a physical theft of your computer, and turn over to the police. Free to the public.???????: ???????？

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 08, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 08, 2012Popular ReleasesExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.3: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-04-08 v3.1.3 -??Language="zh_TW"?JS???BUG（??）。 +?D...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.5.5: New Controls ChatBubble ChatBubbleTextBox OpacityToggleButton New Stuff TimeSpan languages added: RU, SK, CS Expose the physics math from TimeSpanPicker Image Stretch now on buttons Bug Fixes Layout fix so RoundToggleButton and RoundButton are exactly the same Fix for ColorPicker when set via code behind ToastPrompt bug fix with OnNavigatedTo Toast now adjusts its layout if the SIP is up Fixed some issues with Expression Blend supportHarness - Internet Explorer Automation: Harness 2.0.3: support the operation fo frameset, frame and iframe Add commands SwitchFrame GetUrl GoBack GoForward Refresh SetTimeout GetTimeout Rename commands GetActiveWindow to GetActiveBrowser SetActiveWindow to SetActiveBrowser FindWindowAll to FindBrowser NewWindow to NewBrowser GetMajorVersion to GetVersionBetter Explorer: Better Explorer 2.0.0.861 Alpha: - fixed new folder button operation not work well in some situations - removed some unnecessary code like subclassing that is not needed anymore - Added option to make Better Exlorer default (at least for WIN+E operations) - Added option to enable file operation replacements (like Terracopy) to work with Better Explorer - Added some basic usability to "Share" button - Other fixesText Designer Outline Text: Version 2 Preview 2: Added Fake 3D demos for C++ MFC, C# Winform and C# WPFLightFarsiDictionary - ??????? ??? ?????/???????: LightFarsiDictionary - v1: LightFarsiDictionary - v1WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.3: Version: 2.5.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete [O] WAF: Mark the StringBuilderExtensions class as obsolete because the AppendInNewLine method can be replaced with string.Jo...GeoMedia PostGIS data server: PostGIS GDO 1.0.1.2: This is a new version of GeoMeda PostGIS data server which supports user rights. It means that only those feature classes, which the current user has rights to select, are visible in GeoMedia. Issues fixed in this release Fixed problem with renaming and deleting feature classes - IMPORTANT! - the gfeatures view must be recreated so that this issue is completely fixed. The attached script "GFeaturesView2.sql" can be used to accomplish this task. Another way is to drop and recreate the metadat...SkyDrive Connector for SharePoint: SkyDrive Connector for SharePoint: Fixed a few bugs pertaining to live authentication Removed dependency on Shared Documents Removed CallBack web part propertyClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.65.2: Aside from many bug fixes we now have Conditional Formatting The conditional formatting was sponsored by http://www.bewing.nl (big thanks) New on v0.65.1 Fixed issue when loading conditional formatting with default values for icon sets New on v0.65.2 Fixed issue loading conditional formatting Improved inserts performanceLiberty: v3.2.0.0 Release 4th April 2012: Change Log-Added -Halo 3 support (invincibility, ammo editing) -Halo 3: ODST support (invincibility, ammo editing) -The file transfer page now shows its progress in the Windows 7 taskbar -"About this build" settings page -Reach Change what an object is carrying -Reach Change which node a carried object is attached to -Reach Object node viewer and exporter -Reach Change which weapons you are carrying from the object editor -Reach Edit the weapon controller of vehicles and turrets -An error dia...MSBuild Extension Pack: April 2012: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack April 2012 release provides a collection of over 435 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUID’...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.05: Major Highlights Fixed issue that stopped users from creating vocabularies when the portal ID was not zero Fixed issue that caused modules configured to be displayed on all pages to be added to the wrong container in new pages Fixed page quota restriction issue in the Ribbon Bar Removed restriction that would not allow users to use a dash in page names. Now users can create pages with names like "site-map" Fixed issue that was causing the wrong container to be loaded in modules wh...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.3.1: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.3.11. [assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers] has been added back into the AssemblyInfo.cs file to prevent failures with other assemblies in Medium trust environments. 2. The Lite data embedded into the assembly has been updated to include devices from December 2011. The 42 new RingMark properties will return Unknown if RingMark data is not available. Changes to Version 2.1.2.11Code Changes 1. The project is now licenced under the Mozilla...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.0.0: Added Support for Mvc4 beta and WebApi The SafeqQuery and HttpSafeQuery IQueryable implementations that works as wrappers aroung any IQueryable to protect it from unwished queries. "Client Side" pager specialized in paging javascript data coming either from a remote data source, or from local data. LinQ like fluent javascript api to build queries either against remote data sources, or against local javascript data, with exactly the same interface. There are 3 different query objects exp...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.50: Highlight features & improvements: • Significant performance optimization. • Allow store owners to create several shipments per order. Added a new shipping status: “Partially shipped”. • Pre-order support added. Enables your customers to place a Pre-Order and pay for the item in advance. Displays “Pre-order” button instead of “Buy Now” on the appropriate pages. Makes it possible for customer to buy available goods and Pre-Order items during one session. It can be managed on a product variant ...WiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 RC0: WiX v3.6 RC0 (3.6.2803.0) provides support for VS11 and a more stable Burn engine. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/4/3/WiX-v3.6-Release-Candidate-Zero-availableSageFrame: SageFrame 2.0: Sageframe is an open source ASP.NET web development framework developed using ASP.NET 3.5 with service pack 1 (sp1) technology. It is designed specifically to help developers build dynamic website by providing core functionality common to most web applications.iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.5.4475: Fix to parse empty playlists in iTunes LibraryDocument.Editor: 2012.2: Whats New for Document.Editor 2012.2: New Save Copy support New Page Setup support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsNew ProjectsCameraSudokuSolver: Sudoku solver through camera for AndroidCardboardBox: This is a WPF based client application for the danbooru.donmai.us image board.Cloud in Net: Cloud in NetDataStoreCleaner: DataStoreCleaner clears "DataStore" folder which manages Windows Update History. It is useful for fixing WU error, or tune up Windows start-up. It's developed in C#.E-Ticaret - Sanal Magaza: Temel olarak gelismis e-ticaret sistemlerinin temel özelliklerini bulundurucak ve yönetecek bir sistem olacaktir. Sonrasinda ek gelistirmeler için özel çalismalar yapilacaktir.Finding all factors: this is a simple Winform application for finding all factors or divisors of a given number. i think is a simple example for learning how to work with essential backgroundWorker class .FlashGraphicBuilder: Simple graphic builder on AS3IpPbxImportRR: Command-line tool to import or export routing records to/from a SwyxWare VoIP PBX. This is a sample application showing how to use the SwyxWare Configuration API (CDS API). Use it at your own risk.KNX.net: KNX.net provides a KNX API for C#LevelDesigner: LevelDesignerN2F Yverdon Sanitizers: A system to help ease the pain of sanitizing data. The system comes with some basic sanitizers as well as the framework necessary to enable easy development of custom sanitizers.nAPI for Windows Phone: Windows Phone library for using Naver(R)'s open API service. (This project is 3rd party library project, NOT a NHN/Naver's official project) For more info about Naver Open API: http://dev.naver.com/openapi/NJena (Semantic Web Framework for .NET): A .NET source-level port of the Jena frameworkNWTCompiler: NWTCompiler is for those interested in creating their own compiled database of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures from the watchtower.org sources. Formats such as e-Sword are supported.Odin Game Engine: Odin is an attempt at mixing Windows Forms and XNA in the goal of making a game engine.qq: qqRanmal MVC Work: It is my Knowledge Exchange projectRichCode: RichCode is a UserControl that is easy to use, allows the custom syntax highlighting without much effortRUPSY Download manager: RUPSY Download managerSDCBCWEB: This is a web application for a class project. The goal is to create a content management system to be used for educational purposes by a nonprofit.Snake Game: Kursinis darbasSpec Pattern: Spec Pattern is a simple yet powerful implementation of specification pattern in C#. Relying in IQueryable it covers the three requirements this patterns aims to solve - Validation - Querying - BuildingSteel Brain: An open source project which aims to implement a neural net framework in unmanaged C++. The longer term describes why I chose C++ over the phenomenal C# which is creating a neural net that can harness the power of GPGPU's by using the OpenCL library. (I'm not a beleiver of projects that tries to provide solutions to developers who dont want to come out of the managed, cozy C# context) Sunday: Another Web Content Management System.TO7 License Plate Recognition: This project is part of a college assignment.ts: tsUnofficial RunUO: This project is a fork of the popular Ultima Online emulation software RunUO ( http://www.runuo.com ) The main difference between this repository and the official RunUO is that this project is fully set up and ready to launch in Visual Studio 2010, with full .NET 4.0 support!VibroStudio: Application for edit, view and process vibrosignalsWindows Phone AR.Drone controller: The Windows Phone AR.Drone controller is a controller library and client application for Windows Phone 7.1. It is written in C#.XamlImageConverter: A tool to convert Xaml to images. - It implements an MSBuild task that can be imported in any project to convert xaml to images in a project - It implements a HttpHandler that converts xaml to images on the fly. XEFFEX: XEFFEX is a play off the piano gadget. The shapes were manipulated and the sounds are set to different effects. The end goal was too have the pads play a sound and execute a program the user can pre-choose. The options menu allows quit access to your files. XiaMiRingtone: ?????windows phone??。 ???????，????????，???????????。

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, April 09, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, April 09, 2012Popular ReleasesStyleCop+: StyleCop+ 1.8: Built over StyleCop 4.7.17.0 According to http://stylecop.codeplex.com/workitem/7156, it should be the last version which is released without new features and only for compatibility reasons. Do not forget to Unblock the file after downloading (more details) Stay tuned!Path Copy Copy: 10.1: This release addresses the following work items: 11357 11358 11359 This release is a recommended upgrade, especially for users who didn't install the 10.0.1 version.ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.3: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-04-08 v3.1.3 -??Language="zh_TW"?JS???BUG（??）。 +?D...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.5.5: New Controls ChatBubble ChatBubbleTextBox OpacityToggleButton New Stuff TimeSpan languages added: RU, SK, CS Expose the physics math from TimeSpanPicker Image Stretch now on buttons Bug Fixes Layout fix so RoundToggleButton and RoundButton are exactly the same Fix for ColorPicker when set via code behind ToastPrompt bug fix with OnNavigatedTo Toast now adjusts its layout if the SIP is up Fixed some issues with Expression Blend supportHarness - Internet Explorer Automation: Harness 2.0.3: support the operation fo frameset, frame and iframe Add commands SwitchFrame GetUrl GoBack GoForward Refresh SetTimeout GetTimeout Rename commands GetActiveWindow to GetActiveBrowser SetActiveWindow to SetActiveBrowser FindWindowAll to FindBrowser NewWindow to NewBrowser GetMajorVersion to GetVersionBetter Explorer: Better Explorer 2.0.0.861 Alpha: - fixed new folder button operation not work well in some situations - removed some unnecessary code like subclassing that is not needed anymore - Added option to make Better Exlorer default (at least for WIN+E operations) - Added option to enable file operation replacements (like Terracopy) to work with Better Explorer - Added some basic usability to "Share" button - Other fixesText Designer Outline Text: Version 2 Preview 2: Added Fake 3D demos for C++ MFC, C# Winform and C# WPFLightFarsiDictionary - ??????? ??? ?????/???????: LightFarsiDictionary - v1: LightFarsiDictionary - v1WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.3: Version: 2.5.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete [O] WAF: Mark the StringBuilderExtensions class as obsolete because the AppendInNewLine method can be replaced with string.Jo...GeoMedia PostGIS data server: PostGIS GDO 1.0.1.2: This is a new version of GeoMeda PostGIS data server which supports user rights. It means that only those feature classes, which the current user has rights to select, are visible in GeoMedia. Issues fixed in this release Fixed problem with renaming and deleting feature classes - IMPORTANT! - the gfeatures view must be recreated so that this issue is completely fixed. The attached script "GFeaturesView2.sql" can be used to accomplish this task. Another way is to drop and recreate the metadat...SkyDrive Connector for SharePoint: SkyDrive Connector for SharePoint: Fixed a few bugs pertaining to live authentication Removed dependency on Shared Documents Removed CallBack web part propertyClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.65.2: Aside from many bug fixes we now have Conditional Formatting The conditional formatting was sponsored by http://www.bewing.nl (big thanks) New on v0.65.1 Fixed issue when loading conditional formatting with default values for icon sets New on v0.65.2 Fixed issue loading conditional formatting Improved inserts performanceLiberty: v3.2.0.0 Release 4th April 2012: Change Log-Added -Halo 3 support (invincibility, ammo editing) -Halo 3: ODST support (invincibility, ammo editing) -The file transfer page now shows its progress in the Windows 7 taskbar -"About this build" settings page -Reach Change what an object is carrying -Reach Change which node a carried object is attached to -Reach Object node viewer and exporter -Reach Change which weapons you are carrying from the object editor -Reach Edit the weapon controller of vehicles and turrets -An error dia...MSBuild Extension Pack: April 2012: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack April 2012 release provides a collection of over 435 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUID’...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.05: Major Highlights Fixed issue that stopped users from creating vocabularies when the portal ID was not zero Fixed issue that caused modules configured to be displayed on all pages to be added to the wrong container in new pages Fixed page quota restriction issue in the Ribbon Bar Removed restriction that would not allow users to use a dash in page names. Now users can create pages with names like "site-map" Fixed issue that was causing the wrong container to be loaded in modules wh...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.3.1: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.3.11. [assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers] has been added back into the AssemblyInfo.cs file to prevent failures with other assemblies in Medium trust environments. 2. The Lite data embedded into the assembly has been updated to include devices from December 2011. The 42 new RingMark properties will return Unknown if RingMark data is not available. Changes to Version 2.1.2.11Code Changes 1. The project is now licenced under the Mozilla...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.0.0: Added Support for Mvc4 beta and WebApi The SafeqQuery and HttpSafeQuery IQueryable implementations that works as wrappers aroung any IQueryable to protect it from unwished queries. "Client Side" pager specialized in paging javascript data coming either from a remote data source, or from local data. LinQ like fluent javascript api to build queries either against remote data sources, or against local javascript data, with exactly the same interface. There are 3 different query objects exp...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.50: Highlight features & improvements: • Significant performance optimization. • Allow store owners to create several shipments per order. Added a new shipping status: “Partially shipped”. • Pre-order support added. Enables your customers to place a Pre-Order and pay for the item in advance. Displays “Pre-order” button instead of “Buy Now” on the appropriate pages. Makes it possible for customer to buy available goods and Pre-Order items during one session. It can be managed on a product variant ...WiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 RC0: WiX v3.6 RC0 (3.6.2803.0) provides support for VS11 and a more stable Burn engine. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/4/3/WiX-v3.6-Release-Candidate-Zero-availableSageFrame: SageFrame 2.0: Sageframe is an open source ASP.NET web development framework developed using ASP.NET 3.5 with service pack 1 (sp1) technology. It is designed specifically to help developers build dynamic website by providing core functionality common to most web applications.New ProjectsAprilSpring: Common Framework by pansq and huangghASP.Net MVC Dynamic JS/CSS Script Compression Framework: ASP.Net MVC JS and CSS dynamic script compression and composite script library. Also resolves virtual content urls in CSS files.BANews: ???????????????????，??SQL+Server2008，C#，asp.net????，??????Jquery?CSS+DIV??。??????，?????????????，????????，??????，??。Blazonisation: If have emblem of some state, but don't know anything about it, you can use this tool to resolve your problem. Controle de Campenato: Outro Projeto com alunos da Infnet onde desenvolveremos um controle de campeonato...Controle Financeiro Pessoal Web: Projeto desenvolvido com os alunos do curso Oficial da Microsoft na INFNET. Consiste em controlar as despesas e receitas durante o mes e realizar uma projeção sobre os próximos meses. Bons Estudos, Prof. Carlos PedroCoPro - The .NET Content Provisioning Framework: CoPro makes content management, localization and globalization for ASP.NET Developers easier. It provides a framework which takes care of all management and provisioning activities and the developer only has to create the content and place it on the site. It is developed in C#.cppERF: Class ERF function. Test on VC++ 2008 express, and cygwin.Dev Studio 17 Web-Based FTP Client: Dev Studio 17 Web-Based FTP Client is a web based ftp application built using asp.net, c#.EasyCRMNet: EasyCRMNetEnterpriseLibrary Azure Backing Store: Most developers face difficulties in migrating the application, which is using caching block of Enterprise library, to azure due to unavailability of app fabric cache backing store for Enterprise Library. This library provides an app fabric backing store for enterprise library.Event Aggregator: One of the key aspects in application design is managing dependencies between modules. Good architecture might begin to suffer from strong coupling as long as the project grows. All this affects further development by making it harder to change modules (a change in one module usually forces a ripple effect of changes in other modules), also strongly coupled modules are harder to reuse and test. Message coupling is a good choice in developing loosely coupled architecture. This is the looses...FarhadYazdan-Panah Personal Repsitory: A place for backupFluent Assertions MVC: MVC Extensions for Fluent Assertions library. Source Code is on GitHub: https://github.com/CaseyBurns/FluentAssertions.MVCGboot: GtalkBotGetPicture: GetPicture is a project that get some pictures at a website.It is not good,just use to study.gmfbridge: clone for gmfbridge http://www.gdcl.co.uk/gmfbridge/GoodStore: ??????????，??B/S??，asp.net?sqlserver???，???????，?????????。。。JSLint for Resharper: Adds highlighting of JSLint validation errors to Resharper. kiemtien: Alpha state website, very unstable.nuIDE Kinect Prototype (Experimental): Prototype for Kinect-integrated Visual Studio extension concept. (Not yet alpha - throw away code)PB-LOG-Quick and easy XML logger for .NET: PB-LOG is a quick and easy XML logger for all kink of .NET application. You can insert log associated to a user. There're 4 kind of log: Error, Info, Warning, Event. It's developed in C# 4. There's also a PB-LOG for WP7.PB-LOG-WP7-Quick and easy XML logger for Windows Phone 7: PB-LOG is a quick and easy XML logger for all Windows Phone 7. You can insert log associated to a user. There're 4 kind of log: Error, Info, Warning, Event. It's developed in C# 4.Persian_Calendar_for_Microsoft_Office: "Persian_Calendar_for_Microsoft_Office" makes it easier for Office user group to do their tasks according to time-sheets in IRAN. You'll no longer have to depend on other forms of calendar. It would be developed in any programming language esp C#.Projeto Agenda FPU: Projeto AgendaPS Framework: PS.Framework is an Application Framework to simplify the developement of .NET Applications. It's containing many helpfull classes and functions e.g. an RemotingInterface to simplify the use of .NET Remoting.Quizzer123: Awesome application for quizzes and tests!SharePoint 2010 Automatic Content Database Selection: This solution for SharePoint 2010 automatically selects the smallest content database when you create a new site collection in a web application.SIToFb2: samizdat to bf2 converterSmart Logger: SmartLogger is a web service that can consume exceptions thrown from client applications. The exceptions can be categorized based on severity, applications and exception time stamp. It also includes a search feature to drill down the exceptions log based on search criteria. The release 1.0 will include logging exceptions with search feature. Adding new applications and user right management will follow.Sync Sync: [image:365572] A SharePoint ETL and migration toolTestCuttingStockUsingSolverFoundation: using solver foundation from msft to solve civ e 606 group assignment 2, the cutting stock problem.Vote: ?，???????????????！??，????，?????！WebFurniture: Web-?????????? ??? ?????????????? ????????? ???????yammyy2: yammyy2 zhongjh: ?????????，???????。

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 05, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 05, 2012Popular ReleasesCommunity TFS Build Extensions: April 2012: Release notes to follow...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.65.2: Aside from many bug fixes we now have Conditional Formatting The conditional formatting was sponsored by http://www.bewing.nl (big thanks) New on v0.65.1 Fixed issue when loading conditional formatting with default values for icon sets New on v0.65.2 Fixed issue loading conditional formatting Improved inserts performanceLiberty: v3.2.0.0 Release 4th April 2012: Change Log-Added -Halo 3 support (invincibility, ammo editing) -Halo 3: ODST support (invincibility, ammo editing) -The file transfer page now shows its progress in the Windows 7 taskbar -"About this build" settings page -Reach Change what an object is carrying -Reach Change which node a carried object is attached to -Reach Object node viewer and exporter -Reach Change which weapons you are carrying from the object editor -Reach Edit the weapon controller of vehicles and turrets -An error dia...MSBuild Extension Pack: April 2012: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack April 2012 release provides a collection of over 435 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUID’...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.05: Major Highlights Fixed issue that stopped users from creating vocabularies when the portal ID was not zero Fixed issue that caused modules configured to be displayed on all pages to be added to the wrong container in new pages Fixed page quota restriction issue in the Ribbon Bar Removed restriction that would not allow users to use a dash in page names. Now users can create pages with names like "site-map" Fixed issue that was causing the wrong container to be loaded in modules wh...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.3.1: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.3.11. [assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers] has been added back into the AssemblyInfo.cs file to prevent failures with other assemblies in Medium trust environments. 2. The Lite data embedded into the assembly has been updated to include devices from December 2011. The 42 new RingMark properties will return Unknown if RingMark data is not available. Changes to Version 2.1.2.11Code Changes 1. The project is now licenced under the Mozilla...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.0.0: Added Support for Mvc4 beta and WebApi The SafeqQuery and HttpSafeQuery IQueryable implementations that works as wrappers aroung any IQueryable to protect it from unwished queries. "Client Side" pager specialized in paging javascript data coming either from a remote data source, or from local data. LinQ like fluent javascript api to build queries either against remote data sources, or against local javascript data, with exactly the same interface. There are 3 different query objects exp...ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.2: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-04-04 v3.1.2 -??IE?????????????BUG（??"about:blank"?...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.50: Highlight features & improvements: • Significant performance optimization. • Allow store owners to create several shipments per order. Added a new shipping status: “Partially shipped”. • Pre-order support added. Enables your customers to place a Pre-Order and pay for the item in advance. Displays “Pre-order” button instead of “Buy Now” on the appropriate pages. Makes it possible for customer to buy available goods and Pre-Order items during one session. It can be managed on a product variant ...WiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 RC0: WiX v3.6 RC0 (3.6.2803.0) provides support for VS11 and a more stable Burn engine. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/4/3/WiX-v3.6-Release-Candidate-Zero-availableSageFrame: SageFrame 2.0: Sageframe is an open source ASP.NET web development framework developed using ASP.NET 3.5 with service pack 1 (sp1) technology. It is designed specifically to help developers build dynamic website by providing core functionality common to most web applications.iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.5.4475: Fix to parse empty playlists in iTunes LibraryDocument.Editor: 2012.2: Whats New for Document.Editor 2012.2: New Save Copy support New Page Setup support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsDotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 1.2 with Examples: Tested and adapted to the latest version of Highcharts 2.2.1 Fixed Issue 359: Not implemented serialization array of type: System.Drawing.Color[] Fixed Issue 364: Crosshairs defined as array of CrosshairsForamt generates bad Highchart code For the example project: Added newest version of Highcharts 2.2.1 Added new demos to How To's section: Bind Data From Dictionary Bind Data From Object List Custom Theme Tooltip Crosshairs Theming The Reset Button Plot Band EventsVidCoder: 1.3.2: Added option for the minimum title length to scan. Added support to enable or disable LibDVDNav. Added option to prompt to delete source files after clearing successful completed items. Added option to disable remembering recent files and folders. Tweaked number box to only select all on a quick click.MJP's DirectX 11 Samples: Light Indexed Deferred Rendering: Implements light indexed deferred using per-tile light lists calculated in a compute shader, as well as a traditional deferred renderer that uses a compute shader for per-tile light culling and per-pixel shading.Pcap.Net: Pcap.Net 0.9.0 (66492): Pcap.Net - March 2012 Release Pcap.Net is a .NET wrapper for WinPcap written in C++/CLI and C#. It Features almost all WinPcap features and includes a packet interpretation framework. Version 0.9.0 (Change Set 66492)March 31, 2012 release of the Pcap.Net framework. Follow Pcap.Net on Google+Follow Pcap.Net on Google+ Files Pcap.Net.DevelopersPack.0.9.0.66492.zip - Includes all the tutorial example projects source files, the binaries in a 3rdParty directory and the documentation. It include...Extended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.6.0: Want an easier way to install the Extended WPF Toolkit?The Extended WPF Toolkit is available on Nuget. What's in the 1.6.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner Calculator CalculatorUpDown CheckListBox - Breaking Changes CheckComboBox - New Control ChildWindow CollectionEditor CollectionEditorDialog ColorCanvas ColorPicker DateTimePicker DateTimeUpDown DecimalUpDown DoubleUpDown DropDownButton IntegerUpDown Magnifier MaskedTextBox MessageBox MultiLineTex...Media Companion: MC 3.434b Release: General This release should be the last beta for 3.4xx. If there are no major problems, by the end of the week it will upgraded to 3.500 Stable! The latest mc_com.exe should be included too! TV Bug fix - crash when using XBMC scraper for TV episodes. Bug fix - episode count update when adding new episodes. Bug fix - crash when actors name was missing. Enhanced TV scrape progress text. Enhancements made to missing episodes display. Movies Bug fix - hide "Play Trailer" when multisaev...Better Explorer: Better Explorer 2.0.0.831 Alpha: - A new release with: - many bugfixes - changed icon - added code for more failsafe registry usage on x64 systems - not needed regfix anymore - added ribbon shortcut keys - Other fixes Note: If you have problems opening system libraries, a suggestion was given to copy all of these libraries and then delete the originals. Thanks to Gaugamela for that! (see discussion here: 349015 ) Note2: I was upload again the setup due to missing file!New Projects20120229Site1: 29/02/2012 site5B12: Un servizio WCF .NET 4.0 fruibile in modalità REST da Android e IOS IPhone e IPad. Realizzato dai ragazzi di 5BI Informatica dell'ITIS L. Da Vinci - Rimini A.S. 2011/12Accept Language Setter: Accept Language Setter is a System Tray application that lets you quickly set your browser's Accept Language without having to navigate through your browser's menus. It is ideal for developers and testers who work on internationalized websites and need to switch languages often.AGatherBot: C# 5.0 (.NET Framework 4.5) based Counter-Strike 1.6 Gatherbot, highly extensible (using MEF) and configurable.Aweber API .NET SDK: The Aweber API .NET SDK makes it easier communicating with Aweber's API. It covers the basic parts of the API including, lists, subscribers, campaigns and accounts. It is developed in C# .NET 4.0CINET: Continuous Integration Server developed in .Net with MonoClipster: Manage & watch your videos instantly. A project for the course Human Computer Interaction, CS3240 in National University of SingaporeDyna Bomber: With my friend we will try to reborn old game called Dyna Bober.Fer. CR: Pruebas de Software 2012 - DemoFreeDAM: While looking at DAM (Digital Asset Management) solutions, I have found that some of the paid versions are actually just putting a front-end on top of free tools that are actually doing the heavy lifting. This project will give you the freedom to choose a free-dam solution.golang: Go language LLVM compilerHSDLL: HSDLLJsQueryExpression: JsQueryExpression aims to create a javascript library to generate URIs by using QueryExpression (name is inspired from Microsoft Dynamics CRM but structure is different) object model to query OData resources.KunalPishewsccsemb: KunalPishewsccsembLightFarsiDictionary - ??????? ??? ?????/???????: A light weight farsi-english / engilsh-farsi dictionary optimized for fixing common typo mistakes. ??????? ??? ? ???? ????? ?? ??????? / ??????? ?? ????? ?? ???? ?????? ?????? ?????? ?? ????? ?? ???.losezhang: ???TFS??，???30????！MIC Thailand #9 Foursquare: Sample for Maps and GeolocatiohnMtk: Mtk is a toolkit for ASP.NET MVC and FluentNHibernate.MyTest: test test testOpenSocial container on .NET: .NET implementation of OpenSocial containerOrchard Bootstrap: Bootstrap is an Orchard theme constructed using the Bootstrap template system from Twitter.PetroManager: this is a basic data management application.Portable Xna Components: Portable Xna Components makes it easier and faster for Xna game developers to create their games. Developers using this library don't have to worry about rudimentary tasks like drawing and collision detection. It is written in C#Project Management Plug-Ins: Restores functionality to create Microsoft Visio diagrams from Microsoft Project data, via a Microsoft Project AddIn.Project vit: some projectpruebas2012-1: demo de pruebas de softwarePSW20121: demo de pruebas de swPWS 2012-1: Demo para el curso de PWS UPN Cajamarca 2012 - 1Pws2012-1: Demo de calidad prueba de softwarePWSmodelo-2012-1: Demo Para le curso de pws upnradscommerce: Multi shop ecommerce system for web hoster, retailer for Indian Market and then for others.Randata: A DataProvider framework.Robots In Donutland: A solution for a project at DMU - Intelligent systems and roboticsShopScan - Application WP7 winner of Hackathon le Mobile 2012: Application WP7 winner of Hackathon le Mobile 2012Silverlight Printer Map: This printer map makes it easier for an end user in an enterprise to find and install networked printers. The end user need only find the closest printer on the map of the organization, click on it once and it then allow the program to map the printer, install the driver and set it as default printer. It's developed in C# The backend of this program relies on SharePoint 2010 libraries. See documentation for further information.SquareTasks: Gestionnaire de tâchesStructurizer: A tool to generate tiles for DNA self-assembly. Outputs a 2-dimensional map with corresponding glues which allow for use with any core substrate.WCF Duplex Service on Azure using a Silverlight Client: I had some trouble to build correctly a simple WCF Duplex Service that run on Windows AZURE while the Connection is made anonymously, after a lot of research I decided to share my solutionWord to MS-Test: Converts MS-Word document in a format similiar to FitNesse, to MS-Test source code.WPFModalDialog: Custom modal dialog in Wpf, contains basic controls in dialog window, also allow you to inform user about loading operations, using animated watcherXRM Developer Framework: XRM Developer Framework provides you with a Framework & Tools to easily build Enterprise Dynamics CRM 2011 Solutions using patterns & best practices. The Framework builds on many available technologies such as Visual Studio, CRM Developer Toolkit & Moq.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 24, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 24, 2012Popular ReleasesJayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.0 RC1 Refresh 2: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript developers to query and update data from different sources like webSQL, indexedDB, OData, Facebook or YQL. See it in action in this 6 minutes video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlJHgj1y0CU Overview Knockout.js integrationUsing the Knockout.js module, your UI can be automatically refreshed when the data model changes, so you can develop the front-end of your data manager app even faster. Querying 1:N relations in WebSQL & SQLite SQ...????SDK for .Net 4.X: 2012?5?25??: ?Google Code????，???????????? *??????? *??????? *?????，????????????API?????Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: 00.00.08 for DNN6: BEFORE USE YOU need to install the MSBuild Community Tasks available from http://msbuildtasks.tigris.org For best results you should configure your development environment as described in this blog post Then read this latest blog post about customizing and using these custom templates. Installation is simple To use this template place the ZIP (not extracted) file in your My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#\Web OR for VB My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Te...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.53: fix issue #18106, where member operators on numeric literals caused the member part to be duplicated when not minifying numeric literals ADD NEW FEATURE: ability to create source map files! The first mapfile format to be supported is the Script# format. Use the new -map filename switch to create map files when building your sources.BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.3: 2012.05.22 Ver5.6.3 　(1) HTTP????????、ftp://??????????????????????LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.12.5.22: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionThis release is fixing start up issue.DragonDen: SHARK-PROMPT: The ultimate Command Prompt for creating, deleting, editing, opening files with the option to change theme of window. It displays messages, clears screen, shows directory info also. SHARK PROMPT IS ALL IN ONE!!Internals Viewer (updated) for SQL Server 2008 R2.: Internals Viewer for SSMS 2008 R2: Updated code to work with SSMS 2008 R2. Changed dependancies, removing old assemblies no longer present and replacing them with updated versions.Orchard Project: Orchard 1.4.2: This is a service release to address 1.4 and 1.4.1 bugs. Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.4.2: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-4-Release-NotesSharePoint Euro 2012 - UEFA European Football Predictor: havivi.euro2012.wsp (1.0): New fetures:View other users predictions Hide/Show background image (web part property) Installing SharePoint Euro 2012 PredictorSharePoint Euro 2012 Predictor has been developed as a SharePoint Sandbox solution to support SharePoint Online (Office 365) Download the solution havivi.euro2012.wsp from the download page: Downloads Upload this solution to your Site Collection via the solutions area. Click on Activate to make the web parts in the solution available for use in the Site C...Metadata Document Generator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Metadata Document Generator (2.0.0.0): New UI Metro style New features Save and load settings to/from file Export only OptionSet attributes Use of Gembox Spreadsheet to generate Excel (makes application lighter : 1,5MB instead of 7MB)NN Crew Calculator: Calculator v1.0: This is our first version of our calculator which includes a Basic view and Advanced view Basic View includes: Basic Math Operations Square Root Factorial Squared Percentage Negative E and Pi Advanced View includes: Everything from Basic View Trignometric Functions Take the Root of any number Take a number^of another number Mod of some number Degrees or Radians optionStackr Programming Language: DCPU-16 Assembly Compiler: Version 1.0 release of the DCPU-16 Assembly trans-compiler. See DCPU-16 Compiler Reference for usage.Silverlight socket component: Smark.NetDisk: Smark.NetDisk?????Silverlight ?.net???????????，???????????????????????。Smark.NetDisk??????????，????.net???????????????????????tcp??；???????Silverlight??????????????????????ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.6: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://demo.extasp.net/ ??：http://doc.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-05-20 v3.1.6 -??RowD...Dynamics XRM Tools: Dynamics XRM Tools BETA 1.0: The Dynamics XRM Tools 1.0 BETA is now available Seperate downloads are available for On Premise and Online as certain features are only available On Premise. This is a BETA build and may not resemble the final release. Many enhancements are in development and will be made available soon. Please provide feedback so that we may learn and discover how to make these tools better.PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.7: See Change Log for details of the new features and bugfixes included in this release. BREAKING CHANGE! From PHPExcel 1.7.8 onwards, the 3rd-party tcPDF library will no longer be bundled with PHPExcel for rendering PDF files through the PDF Writer. The PDF Writer is being rewritten to allow a choice of 3rd party PDF libraries (tcPDF, mPDF, and domPDF initially), none of which will be bundled with PHPExcel, but which can be downloaded seperately from the appropriate sites.GhostBuster: GhostBuster Setup (91520): Added WMI based RestorePoint support Removed test code from program.cs Improved counting. Changed color of ghosted but unfiltered devices. Changed HwEntries into an ObservableCollection. Added Properties Form. Added Properties MenuItem to Context Menu. Added Hide Unfiltered Devices to Context Menu. If you like this tool, leave me a note, rate this project or write a review or Donate to Ghostbuster. Donate to GhostbusterEXCEL??、??、????????：DataPie（??MSSQL 2008、ORACLE、ACCESS 2007）: DataPie_V3.2: V3.2, 2012?5?19? ????ORACLE??????。AvalonDock: AvalonDock 2.0.0795: Welcome to the Beta release of AvalonDock 2.0 After 4 months of hard work I'm ready to upload the beta version of AvalonDock 2.0. This new version boosts a lot of new features and now is stable enough to be deployed in production scenarios. For this reason I encourage everyone is using AD 1.3 or earlier to upgrade soon to this new version. The final version is scheduled for the end of June. What is included in Beta: 1) Stability! thanks to all users contribution I’ve corrected a lot of issues...New ProjectsAmazon S3 Library for Lucene.Net: A library with all the needed classes to run Lucene.Net off the cloud (on Amazon S3 storage).atomWaterMark: The atomWatermark plugin is a lightweight Jquery plugin that helps you watermark your text box and text area html elements. Its a tiny plugin if you are bothered about speed. Less than a KB. by atomSoft Technologies $('input').atomWaterMark(); // Thats allDaily Integration: A collection of tools to support daily code integration and TFS check in eventsDelete any type of files: This is a small utility which can be used to delete any type of file from any directory (and it's sub-directories) based on their modified date. You can control all settings via app.config and DeleteFile.config files. Everybody Edits Account Manager: If you have got more than one everybody edits account, Everybody Edits Account Manager is just made for you! It is created to allow players of the game Everybody Edits with two or more Accounts easily switch between their accounts with one click. Without having to enter their email and password every time. It supports Regular and Facebook accounts and even guests.Incremental Save Visual Studio Extension: A Visual Studio Extension that keeps a local file history on disk.LINQ_Koans: This is a set of Koans to help you learn LINQ syntax by writing code in VS2010.LiteIoC: Super Small IOC container library specifically crafted for the .Net Micro Framework. MediaCentral: A lightweight, easy to use multimedia center solution for SharePoint, as developed primarily for the EUSP Hackathon.Microsoft Touch Mouse Plus: A little utility to alter some default behaviors of the Touch Mouse by Microsoft.Move My Car: car owners parking in CBD need social network to share information about swapping parking places, share parking zones info and connect to parking web servicesMuki Accounting System: *Project Description* {project:description} Purchases Goods Receivable Notes Accounts Payable Items and Inventory Manufacturing Sales Management Accounts Receivable Workflow ???? ???? ??? ????/???? ???? ???? ??? ??? e-mail ： 1027842@qq.com myManga: Clean Metro-Style simple to use Manga Reader written in WPF C#. Download and organize your manga from various sites across the internet in an easy to use application.Open Xml as Butter: This project aims to manage Document Templates ( .docx ) and their related data ; those data are divided into families, each of those families describe an area of a business activity. For Sales you will find Product , Customer, Sale, ... families. All of that is stored in a repository, an object database ( db4o ). It's a web application made in C#, with Open XML SDK 2.0 that not only manages Templates ( Document & Data ) but also lets your modify .docx in MSWord 2007 or more recent. ...Pranav Sharma: I am a Microsoft Certified SharePoint Solution Developer (MCTS) & SharePoint IT Professional (MCITP) with 4+ years of combined SharePoint experience. Currently working as a Senior SharePoint Consultant with Portal Solutions specializing in the Architecture & Development of complex custom solutions. I have worked with clients such as GirlScouts of USA, Conservation International, ECS, Fraunhofer Prometric & AVMA. Until recently, I was a consulting analyst with Accenture Technology Consulting w...PythonEngine: PythonEngine is an engine for building and executing python scripts from a web application. It includes: 1. script datasource & database schema; 2. script engine, with an in-memory cache of compiled code; 3. controls to add script from web applications. It was used, in an older version, on a production environment for years. It uses unity for building instances.quiz245: application for quizRoleplay-Functional RunUO: Roleplay RunUO is a fork of the popular Ultima Online Emulation, it focuses primarily on Roleplay shards. This release is intended to include everything needed to run a roleplay shard from scratch, including: A fully operational Race System A fully operational Alignment System A fully operational Class System A fully operational Guard System A fully operation Feat System. and more.sendine core: This project is aim to contains common process methods, includes Binary utility, I/O utility, Configuration, Net Protocol Simulator, Web Router, Security ... Now we recommend you should using .NET 3.5 or later version for more powerful features.Skyhook.PhotoViewer: The Skyhook Photo Viewer will be a tutorial project using many different design patterns and practices.Stellar Results: Astronomical Tracking System for IUPUI CSCI506 - Fall 2007, Team2Student Teaching Database: This is a C# application to manage student teaching placements for Missouri State University. It uses Entity Framework and SQL Server Express.Super Simple ClickOnce Updater Utility: This is a project for ClickOnce that helps with updating other projects that have been deployed with... Microsoft's ClickOnce!TBCorp: DescTextPioneer: This is vis project to discribe text.VisGroup: visgroup project by Sherryweihao, FrogcherryVotanet Open Vote: Sistema de votaciones onlineWinPath: WinPath is a command-line tool for Windows that makes the edition of the PATH environment variable simple. WinPath has been especially designed to simplify environment setup during application deployments but it has also been thought to be reused and integrated by other .NET applications.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46  | Next Page >