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• Conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77

  - by Whiteyq

  I'm trying to install APC (Alternative PHP Cache) on a CentOs dedicated server. I've everything done apart from configuring phpize. Running :yum -y install php-devel gives me the following error file /usr/share/mysql/charsets/Index.xml from install of mysql-libs-5.1.57-1.el5.art.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386 etc etc for other languages So, i think the mysql version i have is too old & i more than likely need to upgrade mysql to version 5.1. Im reluctant to do this as a) its a live server (although only 3/4 domains) b) ive read ill read to recompile php if i upgrade To add to this i have plesk installed for managing domains & might need reinstalling/reconfiguring also. sorry for the long intro but its my first post & best to give as much info as possible, so my question is basically Is there any way i can run :yum -y install php-devel to get phpize working to complete installation of APC for the version of mysql i currently have installed? ie 5.0.77

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• Is this the correct way to set up has many with multiple associations?

  - by user323763

  I'm trying to set up a new project for a music site. I'm learning ROR and am a bit confused about how to make join models/tables. Does this look right? I have users, playlists, songs, and comments. Users can have multiple playlists. Users can have multiple comments on their profile. Playlists can have multiple songs. Playlists can have comments. Songs can have comments. class CreateTables < ActiveRecord::Migration def self.up create_table :users do |t| t.string :login t.string :email t.string :firstname t.string :lastname t.timestamps end create_table :playlists do |t| t.string :title t.text :description t.timestamps end create_table :songs do |t| t.string :title t.string :artist t.string :album t.integer :duration t.string :image t.string :source t.timestamps end create_table :comments do |t| t.string :title t.text :body t.timestamps end create_table :users_playlists do |t| t.integer :user_id t.integer :playlist_id t.timestamps end create_table :playlists_songs do |t| t.integer :playlist_id t.integer :song_id t.integer :position t.timestamps end create_table :users_comments do |t| t.integer :user_id t.integer :comment_id t.timestamps end create_table :playlists_comments do |t| t.integer :playlist_id t.integer :comment_id t.timestamps end create_table :songs_comments do |t| t.integer :song_id t.integer :comment_id t.timestamps end end def self.down drop_table :playlists drop_table :comments drop_table :songs_comments drop_table :users_comments drop_table :users_playlists drop_table :users drop_table :playlists drop_table :songs drop_table :playlists end end

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• JavaOne Latin America 2012 is a wrap!

  - by arungupta

  Third JavaOne in Latin America (2010, 2011) is now a wrap! Like last year, the event started with a Geek Bike Ride. I could not attend the bike ride because of pre-planned activities but heard lots of good comments about it afterwards. This is a great way to engage with JavaOne attendees in an informal setting. I highly recommend you joining next time! JavaOne Blog provides a a great coverage for the opening keynotes. I talked about all the great set of functionality that is coming in the Java EE 7 Platform. Also shared the details on how Java EE 7 JSRs are willing to take help from the Adopt-a-JSR program. glassfish.org/adoptajsr bridges the gap between JUGs willing to participate and looking for areas on where to help. The different specification leads have identified areas on where they are looking for feedback. So if you are JUG is interested in picking a JSR, I recommend to take a look at glassfish.org/adoptajsr and jump on the bandwagon. The main attraction for the Tuesday evening was the GlassFish Party. The party was packed with Latin American JUG leaders, execs from Oracle, and local community members. Free flowing food and beer/caipirinhas acted as great lubricant for great conversations. Some of them were considering the migration from Spring -> Java EE 6 and replacing their primary app server with GlassFish. Locaweb, a local hosting provider sponsored a round of beer at the party as well. They are planning to come with Java EE hosting next year and GlassFish would be a logical choice for them ;) I heard lots of positive feedback about the party afterwards. Many thanks to Bruno Borges for organizing a great party! Check out some more fun pictures of the party! Next day, I gave a presentation on "The Java EE 7 Platform: Productivity and HTML 5" and the slides are now available: With so much new content coming in the plaform: Java Caching API (JSR 107) Concurrency Utilities for Java EE (JSR 236) Batch Applications for the Java Platform (JSR 352) Java API for JSON (JSR 353) Java API for WebSocket (JSR 356) And JAX-RS 2.0 (JSR 339) and JMS 2.0 (JSR 343) getting major updates, there is definitely lot of excitement that was evident amongst the attendees. The talk was delivered in the biggest hall and had about 200 attendees. Also spent a lot of time talking to folks at the OTN Lounge. The JUG leaders appreciation dinner in the evening had its usual share of fun. Day 3 started with a session on "Building HTML5 WebSocket Apps in Java". The slides are now available: The room was packed with about 150 attendees and there was good interaction in the room as well. A collaborative whiteboard built using WebSocket was very well received. The following tweets made it more worthwhile: A WebSocket speek, by @ArunGupta, was worth every hour lost in transit. #JavaOneBrasil2012, #JavaOneBr @arungupta awesome presentation about WebSockets :) The session was immediately followed by the hands-on lab "Developing JAX-RS Web Applications Utilizing Server-Sent Events and WebSocket". The lab covers JAX-RS 2.0, Jersey-specific features such as Server-Sent Events, and a WebSocket endpoint using JSR 356. The complete self-paced lab guide can be downloaded from here. The lab was planned for 2 hours but several folks finished the entire exercise in about 75 mins. The wonderfully written lab material and an added incentive of Java EE 6 Pocket Guide did the trick ;-) I also spoke at "The Java Community Process: How You Can Make a Positive Difference". It was really great to see several JUG leaders talking about Adopt-a-JSR program and other activities that attendees can do to participate in the JCP. I shared details about Adopt a Java EE 7 JSR as well. The community keynote in the evening was looking fun but I had to leave in between to go through the peak Sao Paulo traffic time :) Enjoy the complete set of pictures in the album:

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• DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

  Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view  and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7  http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

  Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view  and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7  http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Create Music Playlists in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  One of the new features in Windows 7 Media Center is the ability to easily create music playlists without using Media Player. Today we’ll take a closer look at how to create them directly in Media Center. Create Manual Playlists Open Windows Media Center and select the Music Library. From within the Music Library, choose playlists from the top menu.   Then select Create Playlist. Give your new playlist a name, and select Next. Choose Music Library and select Next.    Select “songs” from the top menu, choose the songs for your playlist from your library, and select Next when finished. You can also click Select All to add all songs to your playlist, or clear all to remove them. Note: you can also sort by artist, album, genre, etc. from the top menu.   Now you can review and edit your playlist. Click the up and down pointers to move songs up and down in the playlist, or “X” to remove them. You can also go back and add additional songs by selecting Add More. Click Create when you are finished.   Auto Playlists Windows Media Center also allows you to create six different auto playlists. These are dynamic playlists based on pre-defined criteria. Auto Playlists include All Music, Music added in the last month, Music auto rated at 5 stars, Music played in the last month, Music played the most, and Music rated 4 or 5 stars. These Auto Playlists will change dynamically as your library and listening habits change. Your new music playlists can be found under playlists in the music library. Select play playlist to start the music. Now kick back and enjoy the music from your playlist. Conclusion While earlier versions of WMC allowed you to create playlists, you had to do it through Windows Media Player. This is a nice new feature for music lovers who use WMC and prefer to do everything with a remote. Do you already have playlists that you’ve created in Windows Media Player? Windows Media Center can play those too. If your playlists are in the default Music folder, Media Center will detect them automatically and add them to your Music Library. Plus, any playlists you create in Media Center are also available for Media Player. For more on creating Playlists in Media Player, check out our previous articles on how to create a custom playlist in Windows Media Player 12, and how to create auto playlists in WMP 12. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Rip a Music CD in Windows 7 Media CenterCreate Custom Playlists in Windows Media Player 12Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)How to Create Auto Playlists in Windows Media Player 12Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add Files TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7 Map the Stars with Stellarium

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• Beginner Geek: How to Burn an ISO Image to a Disc

  - by Mysticgeek

  There may be a time when you have an ISO image that you need to burn to a CD or DVD for use in a computer or other device. Today we show you how to do it using ImgBurn, ISO Recorder, and Windows Disc Image Burner in Windows 7. You might need to burn an ISO of an operating system, software app, CD, DVD…etc. It doesn’t matter what the ISO image is, burning an image is a fairly straight-forward process and here we’ll take a look at three free options to accomplish it. Using ImgBurn ImgBurn is an awesome free utility that will create ISO images, allow out burn almost anything, and a lot more. Although there are a lot advanced features available, burning an ISO to disc is easy. Download and install ImgBurn (link below) taking the defaults in the install wizard. The main thing to watch for and uncheck during installation is when it offers the worthless Ask Toolbar. The easiest way to use ImgBurn is to burn an image to disc is pop in a blank disc to the CD/DVD drive, right-click on the ISO file, and select Burn using ImgBurn. ImgBurn opens up with the source and destination fields already filled in. You can leave the default settings, then click the Write button. You’ll notice that the ImgBurn Log screen opens, this is by default and is meant to show error messages you may receive during the writing process.   A successful burn! That is all there is to it…click Ok and close out of ImgBurn. Use ISO Recorder ISO Recorder (link below) is another great utility for burning ISO images to disc. They have a version for XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit Versions). Pop your blank disc into your CD/DVD drive and right-click on the ISO image file and select Copy image to CD from the Context Menu. In the next screen the image file path is in the Source Image file field. Under Recorder select the drive with your blank disc, select a recording speed and click Next. You’ll see a progress screen while the data is written to the disc and finalizing… That’s it! Your disc will pop out and you can click Finish to close out of ISO Recorder. Use Windows 7 If You’re using Windows 7, use the built in Windows Disc Image Burner feature to burn ISO images to disc. The process is very straight-forward, and for a full walkthrough on this, check out our article on how to burn an ISO image in Windows 7. Conclusion You don’t need an expensive commercial application to burn an ISO image to disc. Using any one of these free utilities will get the job done quite nicely. Download ImgBurn Download ISO Recorder Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Make a Windows Vista Repair Disk If You Don’t Have OneHow to Create a Windows ISO from a Disc Using ImgBurnEasily Burn Discs With BurnAware Free EditionCreate A Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore DiscWhy is Amarok’s "Burn This Album" Disabled in Ubuntu? TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Google Translate (for animals) Out of 100 Tweeters Roadkill’s Scan Port scans for open ports Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 Cool Looking Screensavers for Windows If it were only this easy

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• Silverlight Cream for December 13, 2010 -- #1010

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Rénald Nollet, Benjamin Gavin, Dennis Doomen, Tim Greenfield, Mike Taulty, Jeff Blankenburg, Michael Crump, Laurent Duveau, Dragos Manolescu, KeyboardP, Yochay Kiriaty. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight RIA Services and Basic, Anonymous Authentication" Benjamin Gavin WP7: "lving Circular Navigation in Windows Phone Silverlight Applications" Yochay Kiriaty SQL Azure: "SQL Azure Database Manager – Part 1 : How to connect to your SQL Azure DB" Rénald Nollet Shoutouts: Yochay Kiriaty has a post up on the Windows Phone Devloper Blog about open source (MSPL) projects helping WP7 devs: Windows Phone Recipes – Helping the Community Jesse Liberty's latest Yet Another Podcast is up and thie time it's Joe Stagner: Yet Another Podcast #18 – Joe Stagner Josh Schwartzberg sent me this link to what is apparently his yearly web-only rock Christmas album: MetalXmas... done in Silverlight and RIA Services From SilverlightCream.com: SQL Azure Database Manager – Part 1 : How to connect to your SQL Azure DB Rénald Nollet posted Part 1 of a series on a SQL Azure database manager all in Silverlight... has a live demo running, some description, and is making us wait for the next part! Silverlight RIA Services and Basic, Anonymous Authentication Benjamin Gavin has a quick post up resolving a basic RIA Services problem that I bet a lot of folks are looking for the answer on... like 500 series errors... cool little find he ferreted out... A night of Silverlight, WPF, unit testing and Caliburn Micro Dennis Doomen in concert with his employer gave a couple talks at the local DotNED user group, and covered literally a cornucopia of topics... slides, and example code for both talks... lotsa material here... Tim Greenfield on PuzzleTouch WP7 Application Tim Greenfield is the latest WP7 app developer to be interviewed by the SilverlightShow crew... lots of interesting comments and insight from Tim. Rebuilding the PDC 2010 Silverlight Application (Part 4) Mike Taulty has part 4 of his PDC 2010 Silverlight app construction project up and is taking the app into Blend, and the considerations that brought to the table. What I Learned In WP7 – Issue #2 Jeff Blankenburg continues his "What I Learned" series with this discussion about fonts, the Non-Linear Navigation service I mention below, and possible WP7 jobs. Part 3 of 4 : Tips/Tricks for Silverlight Developers Michael Crump has Part 3 of his Tips/Tricks up today. Lots of goodies this time: underlining in a TextBlock, getting browser info, startup params, VisualTreeHelper, and child windows. My Windows Phone 7 presentation in Montreal Laurent Duveau gave a WP7 presentation in Montreal as part of the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Developer's Briefing, and has posted his materials and slide deck WP7 Code: Mocking Event Streams with IEnumerable Dragos Manolescu has a very cool post up on using IEnumerable to Mock event streams by leveraging the IObservable/IEnumerable duality, and uses the 2D bubble app that you can run and test in the emulator without needing an accelerometer Transparent Wallpapers – Video Tutorial KeyboardP has had so many queries about his Transparent wallpaper for WP7 that he produced a video tutorial for it... Solving Circular Navigation in Windows Phone Silverlight Applications Yochay Kiriaty discusses the first recipe they are releasing ... see the shoutout above, a Nonlinear Navigation Service ... to help with apps that have loops in navigation. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Mandatory look back at 2010

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  Yeah, it's one of those posts, sorry. First, the mildly depressing: the most popular post on this blog this year with 47,000 hits was a post from last year about a fix to a bug in ASP.NET. A content-less post except for that link to the KB article that people should have found by going directly to the support site in the first place. Then, the really depressing: the second most popular post this year with 34,000 hits was a post from 2005 about how to display message boxes on a web page. I mean come on. This was kind of fun five years ago and it did solve one of the most common n00b mistakes VB programmers trying to move to the web were making. But come on, we've traveled about 4.7 billion miles around the Earth since then. Do people still do that kind of stuff? I should probably put a big red banner on top of this post. Oh [supernatural entity of your choice]. Hand me that gun, please. Third most popular post with 24,000 hits is from 2004. It's about how to set a session variable before redirecting. That problem has been fixed a long time ago. Oh well. Fourth most popular post. 21,000 hits. 2007. How to work around a stupid bug in ASP.NET Ajax 1.0. Fixed in ASP.NET 3.5? ASP.NET Ajax 1.0? Need I say more? The fifth one (20,000 hits) is an old post as well but I'm kind of fond of it: it's about that photo album handler I've been organically growing for a few years. It reminds me that I need to refresh it and make a new release. Good SEO title too. Back to insanity with the sixth one (16,000) that's about working around a bug in IE6. IE6. Please just refuse to pander to that browser any more. It's about time. Let's move on, please. Actually, the first post from 2010 is 15th in the list. We have a trio of these actually with server-side image resizing and FluentPath. So what happened? Well, I like the ad money, but not to the point that I'm going to write my stuff to inflate it. Actually I think if I tried I would fail miserably (I mean, I would fail worse). What really happened this year was new stuff: Orchard, FluentPath and the stuff with the Netduino. That stuff needs time to get off the ground but my hope is that it's going to be useful in the long run and that five years from now I'll be lamenting on how well those posts are still doing. So, no regret. 2010 was a good year. Oh, and I was on This Developer's Life this year! Yay! Anyways, thank you all for reading me. Please continue doing that. And happy 2011!

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• Access Music from Amie Street in Boxee

  - by Mysticgeek

  One of our favorite sites for discovering new music is Amie Street. Today we take a look at the Amie Street app for Boxee that allows you to access your favorite tunes from the Boxee interface. Amie Street is a cool site that allows you to discover a lot of cool music from independent artists. What makes Amie Street unique is that most of the music starts out free, then the price goes up incrementally as its popularity grows. The Amie Street App for Boxee let’s you access music and playlists you’ve created on the site, with more features are on the way. For this example we’re using the mouse and keyboard, but of course you can also get to each section using your remote if you have one. Or you can turn your iPod touch into a Boxee remote too. Amie Street in Boxee To access the Amie Street app, launch Boxee and click on Apps from the main menu. Under the Search Sidebar type in Amie Street and select it from the results field.   Then you can add it to the My Apps section…and double-click on the icon. Click on Start to begin using it. You’ll be be presented with a Welcome screen where you can sign into your account. If you don’t have an account yet, there is also an option to go to the Amie Street site and create one. Enter in your account credentials… Now you’ll be able to access your Library, Playlists, Search for new tunes, and check out your Recommended bands and artists. Hover the pointer over an album to get a bit more info about it such as the music genre. You’ll be able to play the songs from the playlists you created on the Amie Street site. You can browse through the history of the music you’ve played as well. Not all the features of this app seem to work as you’d expect them to, and some of the features are not yet available like the Browse feature.   Conclusion At the time of this writing we weren’t able to purchase music or get additional information about the artists. As development continues on Boxee and this app, you can expect more of a full user experience and the ability to purchase music. Even though some of the features are a bit buggy or not available, if you’re a Boxee user and a fan of Amie Street, this is cool app to add to your collection. Download Boxee for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu Learn more about Amie Street on Boxee Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Amie Street Downloader Makes Purchasing Music EasierFind Free or Cheap Indie Music at Amie StreetIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Using Pandora in BoxeeGetting Started with Boxee TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Watch World Cup Online On These Sites Speed Up Windows With ReadyBoost Awesome World Cup Soccer Calendar Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like)

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• Oredev 2011 Trip Report

  - by arungupta

  Oredev had its seventh annual conference in the city of Malmo, Sweden last week. The name "Oredev" signifies to the part that Malmo is connected with Copenhagen with Oresund bridge. There were about 1000 attendees with several speakers from all over the world. The first two days were hands-on workshops and the next three days were sessions. There were different tracks such as Java, Windows 8, .NET, Smart Phones, Architecture, Collaboration, and Entrepreneurship. And then there was Xtra(ck) which had interesting sessions not directly related to technology. I gave two slide-free talks in the Java track. The first one showed how to build an end-to-end Java EE 6 application using NetBeans and GlassFish. The complete instructions to build the application are explained in detail here. This 3-tier application used Java Persistence API, Enterprsie Java Beans, Servlet, Contexts and Dependency Injection, JavaServer Faces, and Java API for RESTful Services. The source code built during the application can be downloaded here (LINK TBD). The second session, slide-free again, showed how to take a Java EE 6 application into production using GlassFish cluster. It explained: Create a 2-instance GlassFish cluster Front-end with a Web server and a load balancer Demonstrate session replication and fail over Monitor the application using JavaScript The complete instructions for this session are available here. Oredev has an interesting way of collecting attendee feedback. The attendees drop a green, yellow, or red card in a bucket as they walk out of the session. Not everybody votes but most do. Other than the instantaneous feedback provided on twitter, this mechanism provides a more coarse grained feedback loop as well. The first talk had about 67 attendees (with 23 green and 7 yellow) and the second one had 22 (11 green and 11 yellow). The speakers' dinner is a good highlight of the conference. It is arranged in the historic city hall and the mayor welcomed all the speakers. As you can see in the pictures, it is a very royal building with lots of history behind it. Fortunately the dinner was a buffet with a much better variety unlike last year where only black soup and geese were served, which was quite cultural BTW ;-) The sauna in 85F, skinny dipping in 35F ocean and alternating between them at Kallbadhus is always very Swedish. Also spent a short evening at a friend's house socializing with other speaker/attendees, drinking Glogg, and eating Pepperkakor.  The welcome packet at the hotel also included cinnamon rolls, recommended to drink with cold milk, for a little more taste of Swedish culture. Something different at this conference was how artists from Image Think were visually capturing all the keynote speakers using images on whiteboards. Here are the images captured for Alexis Ohanian (Reddit co-founder and now running Hipmunk): Unfortunately I could not spend much time engaging with other speakers or attendees because was busy preparing a new hands-on lab material. But was able to spend some time with Matthew Mccullough, Micahel Tiberg, Magnus Martensson, Mattias Karlsson, Corey Haines, Patrick Kua, Charles Nutter, Tushara, Pradeep, Shmuel, and several other folks. Here are a few pictures captured from the event: And the complete album here: Thank you Matthias, Emily, and Kathy for putting up a great show and giving me an opportunity to speak at Oredev. I hope to be back next year with a more vibrant representation of Java - the language and the ecosystem!

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• Oredev 2011 Trip Report

  - by arungupta

  Oredev had its seventh annual conference in the city of Malmo, Sweden last week. The name "Oredev" signifies to the part that Malmo is connected with Copenhagen with Oresund bridge. There were about 1000 attendees with several speakers from all over the world. The first two days were hands-on workshops and the next three days were sessions. There were different tracks such as Java, Windows 8, .NET, Smart Phones, Architecture, Collaboration, and Entrepreneurship. And then there was Xtra(ck) which had interesting sessions not directly related to technology. I gave two slide-free talks in the Java track. The first one showed how to build an end-to-end Java EE 6 application using NetBeans and GlassFish. The complete instructions to build the application are explained in detail here. This 3-tier application used Java Persistence API, Enterprsie Java Beans, Servlet, Contexts and Dependency Injection, JavaServer Faces, and Java API for RESTful Services. The source code built during the application can be downloaded here (LINK TBD). The second session, slide-free again, showed how to take a Java EE 6 application into production using GlassFish cluster. It explained: Create a 2-instance GlassFish cluster Front-end with a Web server and a load balancer Demonstrate session replication and fail over Monitor the application using JavaScript The complete instructions for this session are available here. Oredev has an interesting way of collecting attendee feedback. The attendees drop a green, yellow, or red card in a bucket as they walk out of the session. Not everybody votes but most do. Other than the instantaneous feedback provided on twitter, this mechanism provides a more coarse grained feedback loop as well. The first talk had about 67 attendees (with 23 green and 7 yellow) and the second one had 22 (11 green and 11 yellow). The speakers' dinner is a good highlight of the conference. It is arranged in the historic city hall and the mayor welcomed all the speakers. As you can see in the pictures, it is a very royal building with lots of history behind it. Fortunately the dinner was a buffet with a much better variety unlike last year where only black soup and geese were served, which was quite cultural BTW ;-) The sauna in 85F, skinny dipping in 35F ocean and alternating between them at Kallbadhus is always very Swedish. Also spent a short evening at a friend's house socializing with other speaker/attendees, drinking Glogg, and eating Pepperkakor.  The welcome packet at the hotel also included cinnamon rolls, recommended to drink with cold milk, for a little more taste of Swedish culture. Something different at this conference was how artists from Image Think were visually capturing all the keynote speakers using images on whiteboards. Here are the images captured for Alexis Ohanian (Reddit co-founder and now running Hipmunk): Unfortunately I could not spend much time engaging with other speakers or attendees because was busy preparing a new hands-on lab material. But was able to spend some time with Matthew Mccullough, Micahel Tiberg, Magnus Martensson, Mattias Karlsson, Corey Haines, Patrick Kua, Charles Nutter, Tushara, Pradeep, Shmuel, and several other folks. Here are a few pictures captured from the event: And the complete album here: Thank you Matthias, Emily, and Kathy for putting up a great show and giving me an opportunity to speak at Oredev. I hope to be back next year with a more vibrant representation of Java - the language and the ecosystem!

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• It happens only at Devoxx ...

  - by arungupta

  After attending several Java conferences world wide, this was my very first time at Devoxx. Here are some items I found that happens only at Devoxx ... Pioneers of theater-style seating - This not only provides comfortable seating for each attendee but the screens are very clearly visible to everybody in the room. Intellectual level of attendees is very high - Read more explanation on the Java EE 6 lab blog. In short, a lab, 1/3 of the content delivered at Devoxx 2011, could not be completed at other developer days in more than 1/3 the time. Snack box for lunches - Even though this suits well to the healthy lifestyle of multiple-snacks-during-a-day style but leaves attendees hungry sooner in the day. The longer breaks before the next snack in the evening does not help at all. Fortunately, Azure cupcakes and Android ice creams turned out to be handy. I finally carried my own apple :-) Wrist band instead of lanyard - The good part about this is that once tied to your hand then you are less likely to forget in your room. But OTOH you are a pretty much a branded conference attendee all through out the city. It was cost effective as it costed 20c as opposed to 1 euro for the lanyard. Live streaming from theater #8 (the biggest room) on parleys.com All talks recorded and released on parleys.com over next year. This allows attendees to not to miss any session and watch replay at their own leisure. Stephan promised to start sharing the sessions by mid December this year. No need to pre-register for a session - This is true for most of the conferences but bigger rooms (+ overflow room for key sessions) provide sufficient space for all those who want to attend the session. And of course all sessions are available on parleys.com anyway! Community votes on whiteboard - Devoxx attendees gets a chance to vote on topics ranging from their favorite non-Java language, operating system, or love from Oracle. Captured pictures at the end of Day 2 are shown below. Movie on the last but one night - This year it was The Adventures of Tintin and was lots of fun. Fries with mayo - This is a typical Belgian thing. Guys going in ladies room to avoid the long queues ... wow! Tweet wall everywhere and I mean literally everywhere, in rooms, hallways, front desk, and other places. The tweet picking algorithm was not very clear as I never saw my tweet appear on the wall ;-) You can also watch it at wall.devoxx.com. Cozy speaker dinner with great food and wine List of parallel and upcoming sessions displayed on the screen - This makes the information more explicit with the attendees. REST API with multiple mobile clients - This API is also used by some other conferences as well. And there always is iphone.devoxx.com. Steering committee members were recognized multiple times. The committee members were clearly identifiable wearing red hoodies. The wireless SSID was intuitive "Devoxx" but hidden to avoid some crap from Microsoft Windows. All of 9000 addresses were used up most of the times with each attendee having multiple devices. A 1 GB fibre optic cable was stretched to Metropolis to support the required network bandwidth. Stephan is already planning to upgrade the equipment and have a better infrastructure next year. Free water, soda, juice in a cooler Kinect connected to TV screens so that attendees can use their hands to browse through the list of sesssions. #devoxxblog, #devoxxwomen, #devoxxfrance, #devoxxgreat, #devoxxsuggestions And Devoxx attendees are called Devoxxians ... how cool is that ? :-) What other things do you think happen only at Devoxx ? And now the pictures from the community whiteboard: And a more complete album (including bigger pics of community votes) is available below:

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• SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Jacob Sebastian – Filestream – Wait Types – Wait Queues – Day 22 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  Jacob Sebastian is a SQL Server MVP, Author, Speaker and Trainer. Jacob is one of the top rated expert community. Jacob wrote the book The Art of XSD – SQL Server XML Schema Collections and wrote the XML Chapter in SQL Server 2008 Bible. See his Blog | Profile. He is currently researching on the subject of Filestream and have submitted this interesting article on the very subject. What is FILESTREAM? FILESTREAM is a new feature introduced in SQL Server 2008 which provides an efficient storage and management option for BLOB data. Many applications that deal with BLOB data today stores them in the file system and stores the path to the file in the relational tables. Storing BLOB data in the file system is more efficient that storing them in the database. However, this brings up a few disadvantages as well. When the BLOB data is stored in the file system, it is hard to ensure transactional consistency between the file system data and relational data. Some applications store the BLOB data within the database to overcome the limitations mentioned earlier. This approach ensures transactional consistency between the relational data and BLOB data, but is very bad in terms of performance. FILESTREAM combines the benefits of both approaches mentioned above without the disadvantages we examined. FILESTREAM stores the BLOB data in the file system (thus takes advantage of the IO Streaming capabilities of NTFS) and ensures transactional consistency between the BLOB data in the file system and the relational data in the database. For more information on the FILESTREAM feature, visit: http://beyondrelational.com/filestream/default.aspx FILESTREAM Wait Types Since this series is on the different SQL Server wait types, let us take a look at the various wait types that are related to the FILESTREAM feature. FS_FC_RWLOCK This wait type is generated by FILESTREAM Garbage Collector. This occurs when Garbage collection is disabled prior to a backup/restore operation or when a garbage collection cycle is being executed. FS_GARBAGE_COLLECTOR_SHUTDOWN This wait type occurs when during the cleanup process of a garbage collection cycle. It indicates that that garbage collector is waiting for the cleanup tasks to be completed. FS_HEADER_RWLOCK This wait type indicates that the process is waiting for obtaining access to the FILESTREAM header file for read or write operation. The FILESTREAM header is a disk file located in the FILESTREAM data container and is named “filestream.hdr”. FS_LOGTRUNC_RWLOCK This wait type indicates that the process is trying to perform a FILESTREAM log truncation related operation. It can be either a log truncate operation or to disable log truncation prior to a backup or restore operation. FSA_FORCE_OWN_XACT This wait type occurs when a FILESTREAM file I/O operation needs to bind to the associated transaction, but the transaction is currently owned by another session. FSAGENT This wait type occurs when a FILESTREAM file I/O operation is waiting for a FILESTREAM agent resource that is being used by another file I/O operation. FSTR_CONFIG_MUTEX This wait type occurs when there is a wait for another FILESTREAM feature reconfiguration to be completed. FSTR_CONFIG_RWLOCK This wait type occurs when there is a wait to serialize access to the FILESTREAM configuration parameters. Waits and Performance System waits has got a direct relationship with the overall performance. In most cases, when waits increase the performance degrades. SQL Server documentation does not say much about how we can reduce these waits. However, following the FILESTREAM best practices will help you to improve the overall performance and reduce the wait types to a good extend. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Filestream

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• Systems Solutions at COLLABORATE12

  - by ferhat

  Want to connect with fellow Oracle users and learn more about how to maximize your Oracle software environments with Oracle Systems?   Pack your bags for Las Vegas!   COLLABORATE 12  is right around the corner! COLLABORATE 12 Conference will be held at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, NV 22-26 April, 2012. This is an event designed and delivered by users just like you with sessions, interactive panel discussions and hands-on learning opportunities packed with first-hand experiences, case studies and practical “how-to” content.. This year’s event includes a number of educational sessions and demos for users interested in learning from the experts how to use Oracle Optimized Solutions to get the most out of their Oracle Technology and Application software. Oracle Optimized Solutions are proven blueprints that eliminate integration guesswork by combing best in class hardware and software components to deliver complete system architectures that are fully tested, and include documented best practices that reduce integration risks and deliver better application performance.  And because they are highly flexible by design,  Oracle Optimized Solutions   can be implemented as an end-to-end solution or easily adapted into existing environments. Follow Oracle Infrared at Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn  to catch the latest news, developments, announcements, and inside views from  Oracle Optimized Solutions. Please come by our Exhibition Booth #1273 to see the demos and meet 1-1 with the experts behind a number of  Oracle Optimized Solutions  including those for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft HCM, Oracle WebCenter, and Oracle Database.  Exhibitor Showcase Booth #1273 DAY TIME TITLE Monday  April 23 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm Welcome Reception in the Exhibitor Showcase Tuesday  April 24 10:15 am - 4:00 pm Exhibitor Showcase Open 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Dedicated Exhibitor Showcase Time 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm Exhibitor Showcase Happy Hour Wednesday  April 25 10:30 am - 3:00 pm Exhibitor Showcase Open 2:15 pm -3:00 pm Afternoon Break in Exhibitor Showcase  There are also a number of deep dive, educational sessions covering deployment best practices using Oracle’s engineered systems and best-in-class hardware, operating system and virtualization technologies.  Education Sessions DAY TIME TITLE LOCATION Monday  April 23 9:45 am - 10:45 am Architecting and Implementing Backup and Recovery Solutions Surf E Tuesday  April 24 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Oracle's High Performance Systems for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Mandalay Bay GH 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm Virtualization Boot Camp: What's New with Oracle VM Server for x86 Mandalay Bay C 9:30 am - 10:30 am Oracle on Oracle VM - Expert Panel Mandalay Bay L Wednesday  April 25 9:30 am - 10:30 am Cloud Computing Directions: Part II Understanding Oracle's Cloud Directions South Seas E  And don’t forget the keynotes and software roadmap sessions! Keynotes and Roadmap Sessions DAY TIME TITLE LOCATION Sunday  April 22 3:20 pm – 4:20 pm Oracle’s Cloud Computing Strategy Breakers B Monday  April 23 11:00 am – 12:00 pm JD Edwards - Vision, Promises and Execution: IT'S THE WAY WE ROLL and Why it Matters! Mandalay Bay A 11:00 am – 12:00 pm PeopleSoft Executive Update and Roadmap Mandalay Bay J 1:15 pm - 2:15 pm Oracle Database - Engineered for Innovation Mandalay Bay L 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Strategy and General Manager Update Mandalay Bay D Tuesday  April 24 9:15 am - 10:15 am IT at Oracle: The Art of IT Transformation to Enable Business Growth Mandalay Bay Ballroom H

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• links for 2011-01-13

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Webcast: Oracle WebCenter Suite: Giving Users a Modern Experience Speakers: Vince Casarez (VP Enterprise 2.0 Product Management, Oracle),  Erin Smith (Consulting Practice Manager – Portals, Oracle), Robert Wessa (Consulting Technical Director – Enterprise 2.0 Infrastructure, Oracle)  (tags: oracle otn webcenter webcast enterprise2.0) Oracle & StickyMinds.com Webcast: Load Testing Techniques for Enterprise Applications Mughees Minhas, Senior Director of Product Management, Oracle Server Technologies, answers your questions about the latest techniques for effectively and efficiently testing enterprise application performance. Thursday, January 20, 2011. 10am PT / 1pm ET. (tags: oracle otn stickymings webcast) Bay Area Coherence Special Interest Group (BACSIG) Jan 20, 5:30pm - 8:00pm PT. Presentations: Coherence 3.6 Clustering Features (Rob Lee), Efficient Management and Update of Coherence Clusters to Reduce Down Time ( Rao Bhethanabotla), How To Build a Coherence Practice (Christer Fahlgren). (tags: oracle, otn coherence bacsig) Podcast Show Notes: William Ulrich and Neal McWhorter on Business Architecture (ArchBeat) A four-part interview with the authors of  "Business Architecture: The Art and Practice of Business Transformation"  (tags: oracle otn podcast businessarchitecture) John Brunswick: Overlapping Social Networks in your Enterprise? Strategies to Understand and Govern "Overall it is important to consider if tacit knowledge being captured by the social systems is able to be retained and somehow summarized into an overall organizational directory." - John Brunswick (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 socialnetworking) Coherence - How to develop a custom push replication publisher (Middlewarepedia) Cosmin Todur describes "a way of developing a custom push replication publisher that publishes data to a database via JDBC."  (tags: oracle coherence grid) Aino Andriessen: Oracle Diagnostics Logging (ODL) for application development "Logging is a very important aspect of application development as it offers run-time access to the behaviour and data of the application. It’s important for debugging purposes but also to investigate exception situations on production." -- Aino Andriessen (tags: oracle odl java jdeveloper weblogic) Security issues when upgrading a Web Catalog from 10g to 11g Oracle BI By Bakboord "I blogged about upgrading from Oracle BI EE 10g to Oracle BI EE 11g R1 earlier. Although this is a very straight forward process, you could end up with some security issues." -- Daan Bakboord (tags: oracle businessintelligence obiee) Angelo Santagata: SOA Composite Sensors : Good Practice "A good best practice is that for any composites you create, consider publishing a composite sensor value using a primary key of some sort , e.g. orderId, that way if you need to manipulate/query composites you can easily look up the instanceId using the sensorid." - Angelo Santagata (tags: oracle soa sca) Javier Ductor: WebCenter Spaces 11g PS2 Task Flow Customization "Previously, I wrote about Spaces Template Customization. In order to adapt Spaces to customers prototype, it was necessary to change template and skin, as well as the members task flow. In this entry, I describe how to customize this task flow." - Javier Ductor (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 webcenter) RonBatra's blog: Cloud Computing Series: VI: Industry Directions "When someone says their 'Product/Solution is in the Cloud,' ask them basic questions to seperate the spin from the reality. I would start with 'tell me what that means' and see which way the conversation goes." - Oracle ACE Director Ron Batra (tags: oracle otn oracleace cloud) First JSRs Proposed for Java EE 7 (The Java Source) With the approval of Java SE 7 and Java SE 8 JSRs last month, attention is now shifting towards the Java EE platform. (tags: oracle java jsr javaee)

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• Create a Slide Show in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you looking for a nice way to create and display a slide show from your photo collection? Today we’ll show you how to create a slide show, how to add music to it, and watch it from the comfort of your couch in Windows 7 Media Center. Create Slide Show Launch Windows 7 Media Center and click on the Picture Library tile found under Pictures and Videos.   In the Pictures Library, scroll across to slide shows and click on Create Slide show.   Enter a name for the slide show and click Next.   If you are using a Windows Media Center remote, click on the OK button to bring up the onscreen keyboard. Use the directional buttons to navigate across the keyboard and press OK to select each letter. Click Done when finished. Select Picture Library and click Next. Select the pictures to include in your slide show. If using a remote, navigate through the images and press OK to select. If you are using a mouse, simply click on the selections. When you are finished, click Next.    Now, we can review and edit the slide show. Click the up or down pointing arrows to move pictures up and down in the order.  (more intuitive titles would be helpful in this case as opposed to the randomly generated titles in the example below) If you are finished, click Create. You can also choose to go back and add music to your slide show. (or even more pictures) We’ll take a look at adding some music in our example. Click on the Add More button.   Add Music to Your Slide Show Here we’ll select Music Library to add a song. Click Next.   You’ll now be able to browse your Music Library to select songs for your slide show. Select your songs and click Next.   When you are finished adding Music and Pictures click Create.   Once your slide show is saved, you can play it any time by going to clicking on slide shows in the Picture Library, then selecting the slide show title. Select play slide show when you’re ready to enjoy your new production.   If you ever want to edit or delete the slide show, select it in the Picture Library, and scroll to Actions. You’ll see those option under additional commands. You have the option to Edit Slide Show, Burn a CD/DVD, or Delete. Editing Slide Show Settings Within Media Center, go to Tasks… Click on Pictures…   Then choose Slide Shows. From the Slide Show settings you have the option to Show pictures in random order, Show picture information, Show song information, and Use Pan and zoom effect. You can also adjust the length of time to display each picture, and change the background color. Be sure to click Save to apply and changes before exiting. If you choose to show picture information, the picture title, date, and star rating will be displayed in the top right.   If your slide show is accompanied by music and you choose to show song information, you will get a translucent overlay for a few seconds at the beginning of each song to indicate the song, album, and artist. One of the really cool things about creating a slide show in Windows 7 Media Center is you can complete the entire process using just a Media Center remote. Can’t get enough slide shows? Check out how to turn your desktop into a picture slide show in Windows 7. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Add Color Coding to Windows 7 Media Center Program GuideIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Schedule Updates for Windows Media CenterTurn Your Desktop into a Picture Slideshow in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job? Find Downloads and Add-ins for Outlook Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons

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• It’s the thought that counts…

  - by Tony Davis

  I recently finished editing a book called Tribal SQL, and it was a fantastic experience. It’s a community-sourced book written by first-timers. Fifteen previously unpublished authors contributed one chapter each, with the seemingly simple remit to write about “what makes them passionate about working with SQL Server, something that all SQL Server DBAs and developers really need to know”. Sure, some of the writing skills were a bit rusty as one would expect from busy people, but the ideas and energy were sheer nectar. Any seasoned editor can deal easily with the problem of fixing the output of untrained writers. We can handle with the occasional technical error too, which is why we have technical reviewers. The editor’s real job is to hone the clarity and flow of ideas, making the author’s knowledge and experience accessible to as many others as possible. What the writer needs to bring, on the other hand, is enthusiasm, attention to detail, common sense, and a sense of the person behind the writing. If any of these are missing, no editor can fix it. We can see these essential characteristics in many of the more seasoned and widely-published writers about SQL. To illustrate what I mean by enthusiasm, or passion, take a look at the work of Laerte Junior or Fabiano Amorim. Both authors have English as a second language, but their energy, enthusiasm, sheer immersion in a technology and thirst to know more, drives them, with a little editorial help, to produce articles of far more practical value than one can find in the “manuals”. There’s the attention to detail of the likes of Jonathan Kehayias, or Paul Randal. Read their work and one begins to understand the knowledge coupled with incredible rigor, the willingness to bend and test every piece of advice offered to make sure it’s correct, that marks out the very best technical writing. There’s the common sense of someone like Louis Davidson. All writers, including Louis, like to stretch the grey matter of their readers, but some of the most valuable writing is that which takes a complicated idea, or distils years of experience, and expresses it in a way that sounds like simple common sense. There’s personality and humor. Contrary to what you may have been told, they can and do mix well with technical writing, as long as they don’t become a distraction. Read someone like Rodney Landrum, or Phil Factor, for numerous examples of articles that teach hard technical lessons but also make you smile at least twice along the way. Writing well is not easy and it takes a certain bravery to expose your ideas and knowledge for dissection by others, but it doesn’t mean that writing should be the preserve only of those trained in the art, or best left to the MVPs. I believe that Tribal SQL is testament to the fact that if you have passion for what you do, and really know your topic then, with a little editorial help, you can write, and people will learn from what you have to say. You can read a sample chapter, by Mark Rasmussen, in this issue of Simple-Talk and I hope you’ll consider checking out the book (if you needed any further encouragement, it’s also for a good cause, Computers4Africa). Cheers, Tony  

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• Adobe Photoshop CS5 vs Photoshop CS5 extended

  - by Edward

  Adobe Photoshop has been an industry standard for most web designers & photographers worldwide. Photoshop CS5 has made photography editing much more refined and the composition process has become much easier than ever before.  To study the advantage of Photoshop CS5 extended over Photoshop CS5 we have written this comparison article, with both a Designer’s & Photographer’s perspective. Hopefully it shall help you in your buying/upgrade decision. Photoshop CS5 Photoshop CS5 has refining feature with powerful photography tools. It made editing process easy as fewer steps are involved to remove noise, add grain, create vignettes, correct lens distortions, sharpen, and create HDR images. It has quick image correction and color and tone control for professional purpose. Intelligent image editing and enhancement , extraordinary advanced compositing has made it a better tool than earlier versions for photographers. It allows users to accelerate workflow with fast performance on 64-bit Windows® and Mac hardware systems and smoother interactions due to more GPU-accelerated features. It also boasts of a state-of-the-art processing with Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw 6 and helps to maximize creative impact. It provides for tremendous precision and freedom. It allows user to easily select intricate image elements, such as hair and create realistic painting effects. It also allows to remove any image element and see the space fill in almost magically. It has easy access to core editing and streamlined work flow and flexible work ambience. It has creative tools and contents. Photoshop CS5 Extended Photoshop CS5 extended is quite innovative and has incorporated 3D elements to 2D artwork directly within digital imaging application, which enables user to do an easy on-ramp to 3D image creation. It also provides for 3D editing. It has intelligent image editing and enhancement. It offers advance composing and has extraordinary painting and drawing toolset. It provides for video and animation designing. It helps to work with specialized images for architecture, manufacturing, engineering, science, and medicine. Where CS5 extended scores over CS5 CS5 extended has many features, which were not included in CS5. These features make it score more over CS5. These features are: Technology for creating 3D extrusion 3D material library and picker Field depth for 3D 3D merging and scene composition improvements 3D workflow improvement Customization of 3D features Image based light source Shadow catcher for shadow creation Enhanced ray tracer Context sensitive widgets, which allows easy control of objects, lights and cameras. Overlays for materials and mesh boundaries Photoshop CS5 extended is far better than CS5 as it incorporates all the features of CS5 and have more advanced features. It allows 3D creation and editing and has other advanced tools to make it better. Redefining the Image-Editing Experience  : A Photographer’s point of View Photoshop CS5 delivers amazing features and creative options so even new users can perform advanced image manipulations and compositions. Breath taking image intelligence behind Content-Aware Fill magically removes any image detail or object, examines the surroundings and seamlessly fills in the space left behind. Lighting, tone and noise of the surrounding area can be matched. New Refine Edge makes nearly-impossible image selections possible. Masking was never easier, the toughest types of edges, such as hair and foliage seem easier to fix. To sum up following are few advantages of CS5 extended over previous versions 64-bit processing Content Aware Fill Refine Edge, “makes nearly-impossible image selections impossible” HDR Pro, including ghost artifact removal and HDR toning, which gives the look of HDR with a single exposure New brush options Improved image management with enhanced Adobe Bridge Lens corrections Improved black-and-white conversions Puppet Warp: Precisely reposition or warp any image element Adobe Camera Raw 6 Upgrade Buy Online Pricing and Availability Adobe Photoshop CS5 and CS5 Extended are available through Adobe Authorized Resellers & the Adobe Store. Estimated street price for Adobe Photoshop CS5 is US$699 and US$999 for Photoshop CS5 Extended. Upgrade pricing and volume licensing are also available. Related posts:10 Free Alternatives for Adobe Photoshop Software Web based Alternatives to Photoshop 15 Useful Adobe Illustrator Tutorials For Designers

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• Gnome Shell Theme Problem on Ubuntu 11.10

  - by Khurram Majeed

  I am trying to install ANewStart GNOME shell themes on Ubuntu 11.10. I have installed gnome shell extension for themes: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/gnome3 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme I got the instructions from here ANewStart GNOME Shell Theme + AwOken Icons Theme = Pure Art. But when I go to "Advanced Settings - Shell Extensions" its empty... There is nothing. Also there is a orange triangle sign next to Shell Theme drop down in Advanced Settings - Theme. When I try to run the gnome-tweak-tool from terminal I get following error: imresh@imresh-laptop:~$ gnome-tweak-tool CRITICAL: Error parsing schema org.gnome.shell (/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/org.gnome.shell.gschema.xml) Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtweak/gsettings.py", line 45, in __init__ summary = key.getElementsByTagName("summary")[0].childNodes[0].data IndexError: list index out of range WARNING : Error detecting shell Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtweak/tweaks/tweak_shell_extensions.py", line 145, in __init__ shell = GnomeShellFactory().get_shell() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtweak/utils.py", line 38, in getinstance instances[cls] = cls() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtweak/gshellwrapper.py", line 123, in __init__ v = map(int,proxy.version.split(".")) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtweak/gshellwrapper.py", line 46, in version return json.loads(self.execute_js('const Config = imports.misc.config; Config.PACKAGE_VERSION')) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtweak/gshellwrapper.py", line 39, in execute_js result, output = self.proxy.Eval('(s)', js) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/overrides/Gio.py", line 148, in __call__ kwargs.get('flags', 0), kwargs.get('timeout', -1), None) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/types.py", line 43, in function return info.invoke(*args, **kwargs) GError: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.gnome.Shell was not provided by any .service files WARNING : Shell not running Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtweak/tweaks/tweak_shell.py", line 57, in __init__ self._shell = GnomeShellFactory().get_shell() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtweak/utils.py", line 38, in getinstance instances[cls] = cls() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtweak/gshellwrapper.py", line 123, in __init__ v = map(int,proxy.version.split(".")) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtweak/gshellwrapper.py", line 46, in version return json.loads(self.execute_js('const Config = imports.misc.config; Config.PACKAGE_VERSION')) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtweak/gshellwrapper.py", line 39, in execute_js result, output = self.proxy.Eval('(s)', js) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/overrides/Gio.py", line 148, in __call__ kwargs.get('flags', 0), kwargs.get('timeout', -1), None) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/types.py", line 43, in function return info.invoke(*args, **kwargs) GError: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.gnome.Shell was not provided by any .service files WARNING : Could not list shell extensions Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtweak/tweaks/tweak_shell.py", line 62, in __init__ extensions = self._shell.list_extensions() AttributeError: ShellThemeTweak instance has no attribute '_shell' (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed (gnome-tweak-tool:5323): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_get_preferred_height_for_width: assertion `width >= 0' failed Please help me in fixing this. I have also restarted the computer many times it does not make a difference.

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• Who Makes a Good Product Owner

  - by Robert May

  In general, the best product owners are those that care passionately about the customer of the product.  Note that I didn’t say about the product itself.  Actually, people that only care about the product, generally do not make good product owners.  Products only matter in relationship to their customers.  If a product doesn’t provide value to the customer, then the product has no value, no matter what a person might think of the product, and no matter what cool technologies exist inside of the product. A good product owner is also a good negotiator.  They recognize that many different priorities exist inside of a corporation, but that there can be only one list that developers work from.  A good product owner recognizes that its their job to help others around them prioritize (perhaps with a Product Council), but also understand that they alone have the final say about priorities and are willing to make the tough decisions required.  Deciding the priority between two perfectly valid stories is very difficult, especially when the stories are from two different departments! A good product owner is deeply interested in helping the team be successful.  They don’t seek to control the team, but instead seek to understand what the team can do and then work with the team to get the best product possible for the Customer.  A good product owner is never denigrating to team members, ever.  They recognize that such behavior would damage the trust that needs to be present between team members and product owners and will avoid it at all costs. In general, technical people (i.e. former or current developers) make poor product owners.  In their minds, they can’t separate implementation details from user functionality, so their stories end up sounding like implementation details.  For example, “The user enters their username on the password screen” is something that a technical product owner would write.  The proper wording for that story is “A user supplies the system with their credentials.”  Because technical people think different from the rest of the population, they are generally not a good fit. A good product owner is also a good writer.  Writing good stories demands good writing.  The art of persuasion, descriptiveness and just general good grammar are all required.  A good Product Owner must also be well spoken, since most of what will be conveyed will be conveyed with the spoken word, not just written word. A good product owner is a “People Person.”  They like talking to people and are very patient.  They don’t mind having questions repeated or fielding many questions, because they want to make sure that the ideas they’re conveying are properly understood so the customer gets the best product possible.  They are happy to answer any questions a team member may have and invite feedback and criticism of designs and stories, since they want a good product.  They really have little ego that gets in the way of building a great product. All of these qualities can be hard to find, but if you look close enough, you’ll find the right person in your organization.  Product owners can be found anywhere, not just in upper management.  Some of the best product owners are those that are very close to the customer.  In fact, check your customer support staff.  I’d bet that several great product owners are lurking there. Final note about what makes a good product owner.  You’re probably NOT going to find a good product owner in a manager, especially if they consider themselves a “Manager.”  Product owners don’t manage anything but the backlog, so be especially careful if the person you’re selecting for Product Owner is a manager. Up Next, “Messing with the Team.” Technorati Tags: Scrum,Product Owner

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• 7 reasons you had to be at JavaOne Latin America 2012

  - by Bruno.Borges

  Yesterday was 12/12/12, and everybody went crazy on Twitter with cool memes like this one. And maybe you are now wondering why I mentioned 7 (seven) on the blog title. Because I want to play numbers? Yes! Today is 7 days after JavaOne Latin America 2012 is over (... and I had to figure out an excuse for taking so long to blog about it...). So unless you were at JavaOne Latin America this year, here are 7 things you missed: OTN Lounge mini-theatreThere was a mini-theatre holding several lightning talks. We had people from SouJava JUG, GoJava JUG, Globalcode, and several other Java gurus and companies running demos, talks, and even more. For example, @drspockbr talked about the ScrumToys project, that demonstrates the power of JSF. Hands On Lab for JAX-RS and WebSocketsOne of the cool things to do during JavaOne is to come to these Hands On labs and really do something using new technologies with the help of experts. This one in particular, was covered by me, Arun Gupta, and Reza Rahman. The HOL had more people than laptops (and we had 48 laptops!) interested on understanding and learning about the new stuff that is coming within Java EE 7. Things like JAX-RS, Server-sent Events and WebSockets. Hey, if you want to try this HOL by yourself, it is available on Github, so go for it! If you have questions, just let me know! Java Community KeynoteThis keynote presented a lot of cool things like startups using Java in their projects, the Duke Awards, SouJava winning the JCP Outstanding Award, the Java Band, and even more! It was really a space where the Java community could present what they are doing and what they want to do. There's a lot of interest on the Adopt-a-JSR program and the Adopt-OpenJDK. There's also an Adopt-a-JavaEE-JSR program! Take a look if you want to participate and Make the Future Java. Java EE (JMS, JAX-RS) sessions from Reza Rahman, the HeavyMetal guyReza is a well know professional and Java EE enthusiast from the communitty who just joined Oracle this year. His sessions were very well attended, perhaps because of a high interest on the new things coming to Java EE 7 like JMS 2.0 and JAX-RS 2.0. If you want to look at what he did at this JavaOne edition, read his blog post. By the way, if you like Java and heavymetal, you should follow him on Twitter as well! :-) Java EE (WebSockets, HTML5) sessions from Arun Gupta, the GlassFish guyIf you don't know Arun Gupta, no worries. You will have time to know about him while you read his Java EE 6 Pocket Guide. Arun has been evangelizing Java EE for a long time, and is now spreading his word about the new upcoming version Java EE 7. He gave one talk about HTML5 Productivity on the Java EE 7 platform, and another one on building web apps with WebSockets. Pretty neat! Arun blogged about JavaOne Latin America as well. Read it here. Java Embedded and JavaFXIf there are two things that are really trending in the Java World right now besides Java EE 7, certainly they are JavaFX and Java Embedded. There were 14 talks covering Java Embedded, from Java Cards to Raspberry.pi, from Java ME to Java on your TV with Ginga-J. The Internet of Things is becoming true, and Java is the only platform today that can connect it all in an standardized and concise way. JavaFX gained a lot of attention too. There were 8 sessions covering what the platform has to offer in terms of Rich User Experience. The JavaFX Scene Builder is an awesome tool to start playing designing an UI, and coding for JavaFX is like coding Swing with 8 hands, one holding your coffee cup. You can achieve a lot, with your two hands (unless, you really have 8 hands, then you can achieve 4 times more :-). If you want to read more about JavaFX, go to Stephen Chin's blog post. GlassFish and Friends Party, 1st edition at JavaOne Lating AmericaThis is probably the thing that I'm most proud. We brought to Brasil the tradition of holding a happy hour for all GlassFish, Java EE friends. This party started almost 7 years ago in San Francisco, and it was about time to bring it to Brazil! The party happened on Tuesday night, right after JavaOne General Keynote, at the Tribeca Pub. We had about 80 attendees and met a lot of Java EE developers there! People from JUGs, Oracle, Locaweb and Red Hat showed up too, including some execs from Oracle that didn't resist and could not miss a party like this one.Lots of caipirinhas, beer and food to everyone, some cool music... even The Fish walking around the party with Juggy!You can see more photos from the party on an album I shared with the recently created GlassFish Brasil community on Google+ here (but you may be more interested in joining the GlassFish english community). There's also more pictures that Arun took and shared on this link. So now you may want to consider coming to Brazil next year! Java EE 7 is on its way, and Brazil is happily and patiently waiting for it, with a lot of enthusiasm. By the way, GlassFish and Java EE 6 just celebrated a Happy Birthday!

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• Speeding up procedural texture generation

  - by FalconNL

  Recently I've begun working on a game that takes place in a procedurally generated solar system. After a bit of a learning curve (having neither worked with Scala, OpenGL 2 ES or Libgdx before), I have a basic tech demo going where you spin around a single procedurally textured planet: The problem I'm running into is the performance of the texture generation. A quick overview of what I'm doing: a planet is a cube that has been deformed to a sphere. To each side, a n x n (e.g. 256 x 256) texture is applied, which are bundled in one 8n x n texture that is sent to the fragment shader. The last two spaces are not used, they're only there to make sure the width is a power of 2. The texture is currently generated on the CPU, using the updated 2012 version of the simplex noise algorithm linked to in the paper 'Simplex noise demystified'. The scene I'm using to test the algorithm contains two spheres: the planet and the background. Both use a greyscale texture consisting of six octaves of 3D simplex noise, so for example if we choose 128x128 as the texture size there are 128 x 128 x 6 x 2 x 6 = about 1.2 million calls to the noise function. The closest you will get to the planet is about what's shown in the screenshot and since the game's target resolution is 1280x720 that means I'd prefer to use 512x512 textures. Combine that with the fact the actual textures will of course be more complicated than basic noise (There will be a day and night texture, blended in the fragment shader based on sunlight, and a specular mask. I need noise for continents, terrain color variation, clouds, city lights, etc.) and we're looking at something like 512 x 512 x 6 x 3 x 15 = 70 million noise calls for the planet alone. In the final game, there will be activities when traveling between planets, so a wait of 5 or 10 seconds, possibly 20, would be acceptable since I can calculate the texture in the background while traveling, though obviously the faster the better. Getting back to our test scene, performance on my PC isn't too terrible, though still too slow considering the final result is going to be about 60 times worse: 128x128 : 0.1s 256x256 : 0.4s 512x512 : 1.7s This is after I moved all performance-critical code to Java, since trying to do so in Scala was a lot worse. Running this on my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S3), however, produces a more problematic result: 128x128 : 2s 256x256 : 7s 512x512 : 29s Already far too long, and that's not even factoring in the fact that it'll be minutes instead of seconds in the final version. Clearly something needs to be done. Personally, I see a few potential avenues, though I'm not particularly keen on any of them yet: Don't precalculate the textures, but let the fragment shader calculate everything. Probably not feasible, because at one point I had the background as a fullscreen quad with a pixel shader and I got about 1 fps on my phone. Use the GPU to render the texture once, store it and use the stored texture from then on. Upside: might be faster than doing it on the CPU since the GPU is supposed to be faster at floating point calculations. Downside: effects that cannot (easily) be expressed as functions of simplex noise (e.g. gas planet vortices, moon craters, etc.) are a lot more difficult to code in GLSL than in Scala/Java. Calculate a large amount of noise textures and ship them with the application. I'd like to avoid this if at all possible. Lower the resolution. Buys me a 4x performance gain, which isn't really enough plus I lose a lot of quality. Find a faster noise algorithm. If anyone has one I'm all ears, but simplex is already supposed to be faster than perlin. Adopt a pixel art style, allowing for lower resolution textures and fewer noise octaves. While I originally envisioned the game in this style, I've come to prefer the realistic approach. I'm doing something wrong and the performance should already be one or two orders of magnitude better. If this is the case, please let me know. If anyone has any suggestions, tips, workarounds, or other comments regarding this problem I'd love to hear them.

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• Tablet design guide, Endeca patterns now available

  - by JuergenKress

  UX Direct, an Oracle program that offers consultants, partners, and customers the same scientifically proven and reusable user experience best practices that Oracle uses to build Oracle Applications, recently added links to a new design guide for creating tablet-based solutions for enterprise applications, and to the recently published Endeca User Interface Design Pattern Library. The tablet design guide is available from the UX Direct Home page. Tap the button under “Latest patterns & tools” for “Oracle Applications UX Tablet Guide.” It provides basic help for designers, developers, and project managers trying to approach tablet design and testing from an enterprise point of view. To hear what developers are saying about it, follow the links from this post on the User Experience Assistance blog. The newly released Endeca User Interface Design Pattern Library is also available from the UX Direct Home page and from a post on the User Experience Assistance blog. It describes principled ways to solve common user interface (UI) design problems related to search, faceted navigation, and discovery. The link between Simplified UI and Oracle UX strategy, plus content you can share on the cloud, ADf, tailoring, and more Simplified User Interface in Oracle Fusion Applications Fronts Oracle Cloud Offerings This new article on Simplified UI has just been posted on Usable Apps. Learn about the three themes - simplicity, mobility, and extensibility – that Simplified UI embodies. These same principles are guiding the development of the next generation of the Oracle user experience. Oracle's Applications User Experience Strategy: One Cloud User Experience, with Optimized UIs Where and How You Want This podcast from Misha Vaughan, Director, User Experience, is now available on the Oracle University Knowledge Center. It is available for partners and Oracle employees at this iLearning Link. Oracle Partner Builds User Experience That Hits Right Note for New Employees This new article on the Usable Apps website explores the experience of consultants at IntraSee as they implement a PeopleSoft onboarding process for Invesco, a global asset management company. The Feng Shui of Fusion This article in Oracle Scene is from Grant Ronald, Director of Product Management, on the Tools of Fusion: Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF. Hands-On Workshop with Fusion Applications and ADF UX Desktop Design Patterns This post on the Voice of User Experience, or VoX, blog from Misha Vaughan describes a new kind of workshop for partners and a handful of internal Oracle sales folks on extending Oracle Fusion Applications and building custom applications with Application Development Framework (ADF) while maintaining the Oracle user experience. To learn more about the content that was delivered during this three-day workshop, visit the Usable Apps blog. Recent posts from a new blog series take a look at several of the topics discussed during the workshop. Applications User Experience Fundamentals Visual Design for any Enterprise User Interface / Art School in a Box Wireframing / Blueprinting Usable Applications Concepts. Tailoring videos This blog post from Richard Bingham, Applications Architect, on the Fusion Applications Developer Relations blog provides links to several videos that show many customization and development tasks using the Oracle Fusion Applications platform. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: UX,Architecture,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• regarding the Windows Phone 7 series, XNA and Visual Basic

  - by Chris Williams

  as long as we're talking about VB... I figured I would share this as well. Hi everyone, I'm about to express a sentiment that might ruffle a few feathers, but I think most of you know me well enough to know I love like accept VB for what it is and that what I'm about to say is with good intentions. (The rest of you, who don't know me, please take my word for it.) The world is full of VB developers, I was one of them for a long time. I think it's safe to assume that none of us are ignorant people who require handholding. We're working professionals, making a living by using our skills as developers. I'm also willing to bet that quite a few of us are fluent in C# as well as VB. It may not be your preferred language, but many of you can do it and you prove that nearly every day. Honestly, I don't know ANY developers or consultants that have only known ONE language ever. So it pains me greatly when I see the word "CAN'T" being tossed around like a crutch... as in "we CAN'T develop for the windows phone or we CAN'T develop XNA games." At MIX, Microsoft hath decreed that C# is the language of choice for developing for the Windows Phone 7. I think it's a safe bet that you won't see VB support if it isn't there already. (Just like XNA... which is up to version 4.0 by now.)  So what? (Yeah... I said it.) I think everyone here can agree that actual coding is only one part of software design and development. There is nothing stopping ANY of you from beginning the process of designing your killer phone app, writing up specs, requirements, doing UI design, workflow, mockups, storyboards, art, etc.... None of these things are language dependent. IF by the time you've got that stuff out of the way, and there's still no VB support, then start doing some rapid prototyping of your app in C# (I know, I know... heresy!)  You still have to spend time learning how the phone does things, what UI tricks do what, what paradigms make sense, how to use to accelerometer and the tilt and the multitouch functionality. I can guarantee you that time spent doing this is a great investment, no matter WHAT extension your code files have. Eventually, you may have a working prototype. IF by this time, there's STILL no VB support... fret not, you've made significant progress on your app. You've designed it, prototyped it, figured out how to use the phone specific features... so you might as well finish it and pat yourself on the back for learning something new... and possibly being first to market with your new app. I'll be happy to argue any and all of these points online or off with anyone who cares to do so, but there is one undeniable point that you simply can't argue:  Your potential customers do not care AT ALL what programming language you used to write the app they are about to purchase. They care that it works. If your biggest concern is being first to market, than stop complaining and get busy because you're running out of time and the 3000+ people who were at MIX certainly aren't waiting for you. They've already started working on their apps.

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