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  • Real life example of an agile game development process outputs

    - by Ken
    I'm trying to learn about applying agile methodologies to game development. But seems to be impossible to find real life examples. There seems to be plenty of material discussing how 'in principle' agile is applied to a game. But that is NOT what I am looking for. I have the Keith book. What I AMlooking for are real EXAMPLES of things like; Initial user stories Final user stories (complete, covering the entire game requirements) Acceptance criteria Task list Sprint backlogs (before and after each sprint) The agile books seem to have some limited examples, many of which seem contrived or limited. In this era of open source software, there must be a publicly available documented example of the process applied to a real game. I am asking specifically about games because they are so different from normal applications. Regular applications are built to all users to complete specific tasks in order to get stuff done(book a room, print a report etc). People play games for much less tangible reasons, so I think the process is significantly different. [it doesn't have to be scrum, it could be any process, just needs to be a real life example game and be reasonably complete]

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  • Process development lifecycle in Oracle BPM 11g

    - by mesriniv
       Oracle BPM 11g platform provides two modeling tools tailored to different audience. The BPM Process Composer component is a web-based, role-driven, collaborative platform for discovery, design and documentation of business processes aimed at business audience. It empowers the business user to participate in the definition, feedback and design of business processes. The other modeling tool is Oracle BPM Studio that runs in the JDeveloper IDE .  Irrespective of the tool used, same BPMN and related artifacts are authored - that is , this is not import/export but just multiple tools working with same assets. In addition to BPMN 2.0, both tools provides editors for process data, organizational roles, human tasks (including assignment and user interface), business rules. The Oracle BPM design-time repository (Oracle Metadata Services Repository) is the glue that facilitates shared work environment across multiple BPM Composer and Studio clients.This document explains how to create snapshots and versions of your BPM projects and captures best practices for shared process development lifecycle. http://java.net/projects/oraclebpmsuite11g/downloads/directory/Samples/bpm-122-processdevelopment-lifecycle

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  • Getting Started with Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Development

    So the news is out! Silverlight IS the platform for Windows Phone 7 Series development! Sweet. We also made available an update to Silverlight 4 that you might be interested in too! You may be wondering how you get started. If you are new to Silverlight, I recommend getting familiar with Silverlight first. You can find all the tools you will need at the Silverlight community site. In addition to the core tools youll want to get the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP. This will add to your Visual...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Tools/Tips to reduce the files/directories in C: which is SSD on Windows 7.

    - by prosseek
    I bought a SSD to install it as C: drive on Windows 7. As the SSD size is relatively small, I need to come up with an idea to reduce the files/directories in C:. What I found is as follows. Run WinDirStat to check how the C: is used. Remove the hibernate file (if you don't use it) powercfg –h off http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/windows-7-delete-hibernation-file-hiberfil-sys/ Symbolic link files and directories to different drive. I'm not sure if this is safe way to go, I asked another post to ask about it. mklink /d e:\windows\installer c:\windows\installer Install software to E: directory, not C: directory. Create E:\Program Files What other tools or tips do you have?

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  • Revamped Google Webmaster Tools

    With a positive surprise I realized today that Google's Webmaster Tools had some minor overhauling and provide some more details than before. Most obvious are the changes on the dashboard where the Top Search Queries now provide information about impressions and clicktroughs instead of the rankings before. Only the links of the search expressions are missing. It seems that the Top search queries were in the focus of this update. The section is now spiced with detailed graphs about what happened during selectable periods on your site. Well, seems that the Webmaster Tools mimic a stripped-down version of Google Analytics... I was very pleased by the details that are offered when you click on a single query term. Really nice to see the search rankings and your responsible URLs at the same time. Before, you had to put two browser instances side-by-side to achieve this kind of overview. Personally, I like the approach to visualize statistics the way Google or other providers do. It gives you a quick and informative overview, and enables you to dig further into details about peaks and lows on your visits, page impressions or clickthroughs.

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  • The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools [Infographic]

    - by ETC
    If your geeking out extends from the workbench to the kitchen counter, you’ll love this swanky infographic detailing the families of utensils in your kitchen drawers and cupboards. The poster showcases everything from scissors to strainers in a retro-style poster. If you can find a culinary tool in your kitchen that isn’t on the chart then you’re obviously a culinary wizard of the highest order. You can hit up the link below to check out the poster in full-size and downloadable glory or head over to the design company that created it here (and pre-order a printed copy for your kitchen). A Complete Guide to Your Kitchen Tools [Fast Co. Design via Design Sponge] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools [Infographic] Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker

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  • Webmaster Tools, www and no-www, duplicate content and subdomains

    - by Jay
    I have not come to any conclusive answers on the following after many hours of research on many websites to the specific issue that I am trying to figure out. My company has two websites a main one at www.example.com and one at subdomain.example.com which is a subdomain of the first and is our self hosted blog. The way Google sees these with the www or no-www (called naked for now on) is that each of these actually are different when the www or naked version is used/not used in the front of the domain. I completely understand this. It is also advised that both should be set up in the Google Webmaster Tools, which I have done. Correct me if I am wrong on that in regard to having both set up. Now the way it appears is that we can set a preferred domain up in Webmaster Tools only at the root domain level. The subdomain can not have this and actually says the following "Restricted to root level domains only". So it appears that the domain should follow what the root domain says which on our preferred one says to display the www.example.com. and not the naked version. That is one issue I have in that one displays one way and the other displays another. Is it that we have the wrong redirects in place for the subdomain? Another question is does this have any affect on SEO in regards to duplicate content on the web in how we have set this up?

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  • Application Development: Python or Java (or PHP)

    - by luckysmack
    I'm looking to get into application development, such as Facebook or Android apps and games. I am doing this for fun and to learn. Once my skills are to par I would like to have some side income from the apps, but I'm not banking on living off that (just so you know where I'm coming from and know what my end goals are). Currently I know and am familiar with PHP and frameworks such as cakephp and yii. However, I have been wanting to learn another language to broaden my horizons and to become a better developer. So I have narrowed it down to 2 languages. Python, and Java (I can already hear people cringing at the difference in the languages I have chosen, but I have some reasons). Python: closer to PHP that Java. Cross platformability. Also great as a general scripting language and has many file system level benefits that PHP does not. Cleaner syntax, readability, blah blah and the list goed on. Python will work great for cross platform apps and can be run on many OS's and is supported by Facebook for app development. But there is no support on Android (for full fledged apps). Java: a much stronger typed language, very robust community and corporate backing. Knowing Java is also good for personal marketability for enterprises, if you're into that. The main benefit here is that Java can write apps natively for Android and the apps can be ported for web versions to play on Facebook. So while I have seen many developers prefer Java over the two, Java has this significant advantage, where I can market my apps in both markets and in the future build more potential income. But like I said it is for fun. While money isn't the goal, it would still be nice. PHP: I'm putting this here because I know it already, and I'm sure a case could be made for it. It obviously works great for Facebook but like Python does not do so well on android. While it's mostly the realm of 'application development' that appeals to me, I do find Android apps fairly interesting and something that has a ton of potential to. But then again Facebook has a ton more users and the apps can also potentially be more immersive (desktop vs. mobile). So this is why I'm kinda stuck on what route to choose. Python for Facebook and web apps, with likely faster development to production times, or Java which can be developed for any of the platforms to make apps. Side note: I'm not really trying to get into 3D development, mostly 2D. And I also want to make an app with real-time play (websockets, etc). Someone mentioned node, js to me for that but Python seems to be more globally versatile for my goals. So, to anyone that does Facebook or Android development in either language: what do you suggest? Any input is valuable and I do appreciate it. And sorry for being long winded. EDIT: as mentioned in one of the answers, my primary goal is gaming. Although I do have some plans for non gaming apps such as general web based and desktop based ones. But gaming is my main goal with the possibility of income. EDIT: Another consideration could be Jython. Writing Python code which is converted into Java bytecode. This would allow the ability to do Android apps using Python. I could be wrong though, I'm still looking into it. Update 1-26-11: I recently acquired a new job which required I learn .NET using C#. Im sure some of you are cringing already but I really like the whole system and how it all works together between desktop and web development. But, as I am still interested in Python very much, and after some research I have decided I will learn Python as well as the IronPython implementation for .NET. But (again: I know...) since .NET is mostly a Windows thing and not as cross-compatible as I like, I will be learning Mono which is a cross platform implementation of .NET where I can use what I learn at work using C# and what I want to learn, Python/IronPython. So while learning and writing C#/.NET @ work I will be learning Python - Mono - Iron Python for what I want to do personally. And the benefit of them all being very closely related will help me out a lot, I think. What do you guys think? I almost feel like that should be another question, but there's not much of a question. Either way, you guys gave very helpful input.

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  • Windows 7 Phone Developer Tools CTP download

    - by mbcrump
    For those that don’t know, you can download the W7 Phone developer tools now. It is available here. I have installed it and wanted to share my experience so far. You can read the pre-release documentation here. First, here is what it comes with the install: The Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP includes the following: Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP Windows Phone Emulator CTP Silverlight for Windows Phone CTP XNA 4.0 Game Studio CTP First impressions: No ISO image install (Bad for me because I use multiple machine and have to install from a bootstrapper. Its around 228mb download. I already have the VS2010 RC, but it still makes me install the VS2010 Express Edition. Windows Phone Emulator will only work with VS2010. No support for 05/08. Need at least a DX10 graphics compatible card. Final Word: (you are probably going to need this info) To start a new project, go to Installed Templates and select Silverlight for Windows Phone and Windows Phone Application. Use Silverlight for WPF style applications or XNA for W7 Games.

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  • Don't Miss the Social Engagement Center -- See How Social Cloud Tools Can Work for You

    - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team
    Are you ready to get social at Oracle OpenWorld? Stop by the Oracle Social Engagement Center in Moscone South Upper Lobby (near the South Meetup location) and see Oracle Cloud Social Services in action. Ask Oracle's social experts how they're using next-generation enterprise social tools to deliver extreme engagement. Watch in near real-time as Oracle reaches out to inform, inspire, and engage global communities. We're showing: -     Collective Intellect for specific data sets on 2 large screens-     Vitrue analytics and Vitrue publishing on 2 large screens-     Relative Twitter activity across the hash tags #OOW, #OOW12, #openworld, #oracle, and accounts @oracle, and @openworld on 1 large screenPlus we have 5 computers where we're actively working with the Collective Intellect and Vitrue technologies, so you can how they function. So come visit the Social Engagement Center to learn how Oracle is using and engaging with these tools.  And don't forget the Social Plaza @ OpenWorld event on Tuesday from noon - 8:00 p.m. Join us for food, drink, the afternoon keynote, and some cool libations on a hot afternoon.

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  • Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools Screencast

    - by Steve Michelotti
    Microsoft just released the Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools extension and it is awesome. A summary of all the features can be found here and it is available in the Visual Studio Gallery here. There are a bunch of great features but, in my opinion, the best one is the replacement for the Add Reference dialog. This gives sub-string search capabilities as well as the ability to add multiple references without having to continually re-open the dialog. For this feature alone, you should install the Pro Power Tools right now. There are a few blogs posts that do a good job describing all the features but what I wanted to do here was to post a quick screencast (7 minutes) that shows the features that I think are really cool. I show most (but not all) of the features focusing on the ones I think are the best. The features I cover are: Installation with the Extension Manager Add Reference Dialog replacement Tab Well including pinned tabs, pinned tabs in second row, fixed close button, colorized tabs, dirty indicator Highlight current line Triple Click for full-line selection Ctrl + Click for Go To Definition Colorized Parameter Help Enjoy! (Right-click and Zoom to view in full screen)

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  • SSMS Tools Pack 2.5.3 is out with bug fixes and improved licensing

    - by Mladen Prajdic
    Licensing for SSMS Tools Pack 2.5 has been quite a hit and I received some awesome feedback. The version 2.5.3 contains a few bug fixes and desired licensing improvements. Changes include more licensing options, prices in Euros because of book keeping reasons (don't you just love those :)) and generally easier purchase and licensing process for users. Licensing now offers four options: Per machine license. (€25) Perfect if you do all your work from a single machine. Plus one OS reinstall activation. Personal license (€75) Up to 4 machine activations. Plus 2 OS reinstall activations and any number of virtual machine activations. Team license (€240) Up to 10 machine activations. Plus 4 OS reinstall activations and any number of virtual machine activations. Enterprise license (€350+) For more than 10 machine activations any number of virtual machine activations. 30 days license. Time based demo license bound to a machine. You can view all the details on the Licensing page . If you want to receive email notifications when new version of SSMS Tools Pack is out you can do that on the Main page or on the Download page . Version 2.7 is expected in the first half of February and won't support SSMS 2005 and 2005 Express anymore. Enjoy it!

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  • bash-like features in sqlplus, rman and other Oracle command line tools

    - by Gilles Haro
    As far as I can remember, I have always been complaining about the lack of “recall last command” from within sqlplus. Such a basic thing, available in any bash shell or windows cmd terminal, remains missing with Oracle command lines tools. Thanks to davidw who published a post in the french blog EASYTEAM, it is now possible to use a simple rpm package rlwrap to enhance sqlplus, dgmgrl, rman, … tools and give them bash “recall/completion” capabilities. I installed it in a few minutes and I am already wondering how can people work without it. The steps are here : Get the rpm file from sites like RPM PBone. AS root, install the package rpm -ivh rlwrap-0.37-1.el5.x86_64.rpm As Oracle, create a dictionnary file (for autocompletion) . This file is made of a series of words to be used for autocompletion. Put in it the list of dictionary tables, the list of sql commands, the list of sqlplus commands… whatever your like. And use the <tab> key as you would in a bash shell. $HOME/.oracle_keywords Create an alias for sqlplus alias sqlplus='/usr/bin/rlwrap -if $HOME/.oracle_keywords $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus' And enjoy it !!! Thank you DavidW. Gilles Haro Technical Expert - Core Technology, Oracle Consulting  Technorati Tags: rlwrap bash sqlplus

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  • Where to start with game development?

    - by steven_desu
    I asked this earlier in this thread at stackoverflow.com. One of the early comments redirected me here to gamedev.stackexchange.com, so I'm reposting here. Searching for related questions I found a number of very specific questions, but I'm afraid the specifics have proved fruitless for me and after 4 hours on Google I'm no closer than I started, so I felt reaching out to a community might be in order. First, my goal: I've never made a game before, although I've muddled over the possibility several times. I decided to finally sit down and start learning how to code games, use game engines, etc. All so that one day (hopefully soon) I'll be able to make functional (albeit simple) games. I can start adding complexity later, for now I'd be glad to have a keyboard-controlled camera moving in a 3D world with no interaction beyond that. My background: I've worked in SEVERAL programming languages ranging from PHP to C++ to Java to ASM. I'm not afraid of any challenges that come with learning the new syntax or limitations inherent in a new language. All of my past programming experience, however, has been strictly non-graphical and usually with little or extremely simple interaction during execution. I've created extensive and brilliant algorithms for solving logical and mathematical problems as well as graphing problems. However in every case input was either defined in a file, passed form an HTML form, or typed into the console. Real-time interaction with the user is something with which I have no experience. My question: Where should I start in trying to make games? Better yet- where should I start in trying to create a keyboard-navigable 3D environment? In searching online I've found several resources linking to game engines, graphics engines, and physics engines. Here's a brief summary of my experiences with a few engines I tried: Unreal SDK: The tutorial videos assume that you already have in-depth knowledge of 3D modeling, graphics engines, animations, etc. The "Getting Started" page offers no formal explanation of game development but jumps into how Unreal can streamline processes it assumes you're already familiar with. After downloading the SDK and launching it to see if the tools were as intuitive as they claimed, I was greeted with about 60 buttons and a blank void for my 3D modeling. Clicking on "add volume" (to attempt to add a basic cube) I was met with a menu of 30 options. Panicking, I closed the editor. Crystal Space: The website seemed rather informative, explaining that Crystal Space was just for graphics and the companion software, CEL, provided entity logic for making games. A demo game was provided, which was built using "CELStart", their simple tool for people with no knowledge of game programming. I launched the game to see what I might look forward to creating. It froze several times, the menus were buggy, there were thousands of graphical glitches, enemies didn't respond to damage, and when I closed the game it locked up. Gave up on that engine. IrrLicht: The tutorial assumes I have Visual Studio 6.0 (I have Visual Studio 2010). Following their instructions I was unable to properly import the library into Visual Studio and unable to call any of the functions that they kept using. Manually copying header files, class files, and DLLs into my project's folder - the project failed to properly compile. Clearly I'm not off to a good start and I'm going in circles. Can someone point me in the right direction? Should I start by downloading a program like Blender and learning 3D modeling, or should I be learning how to use a graphics engine? Should I look for an all-inclusive game engine, or is it better to try and code my own game logic? If anyone has actually made their own games, I would prefer to hear how they got their start. Also- taking classes at my school is not an option. Nothing is offered.

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  • Where to start with game development?

    - by steven_desu
    Searching for related questions I found a number of very specific questions, but I'm afraid the specifics have proved fruitless for me and after 4 hours on Google I'm no closer than I started, so I felt reaching out to a community might be in order. First, my goal: I've never made a game before, although I've muddled over the possibility several times. I decided to finally sit down and start learning how to code games, use game engines, etc. All so that one day (hopefully soon) I'll be able to make functional (albeit simple) games. I can start adding complexity later, for now I'd be glad to have a keyboard-controlled camera moving in a 3D world with no interaction beyond that. My background: I've worked in SEVERAL programming languages ranging from PHP to C++ to Java to ASM. I'm not afraid of any challenges that come with learning the new syntax or limitations inherent in a new language. All of my past programming experience, however, has been strictly non-graphical and usually with little or extremely simple interaction during execution. I've created extensive and brilliant algorithms for solving logical and mathematical problems. However in every case input was either defined in a file, passed form an HTML form, or typed into the console. Real-time interaction with the user is something with which I have no experience. My question: Where should I start in trying to make games? Better yet- where should I start in trying to create a keyboard-navigable 3D environment? In searching online I've found several resources linking to game engines, graphics engines, and physics engines. Here's a brief summary of my experiences with a few engines I tried: Unreal SDK: The tutorial videos assume that you already have in-depth knowledge of 3D modeling, graphics engines, animations, etc. The "Getting Started" page offers no formal explanation of game development but jumps into how Unreal can streamline processes it assumes you're already familiar with. After downloading the SDK and launching it to see if the tools were as intuitive as they claimed, I was greeted with about 60 buttons and a blank void for my 3D modeling. Clicking on "add volume" (to attempt to add a basic cube) I was met with a menu of 30 options. Panicking, I closed the editor. Crystal Space: The website seemed rather informative, explaining that Crystal Space was just for graphics and the companion software, CEL, provided entity logic for making games. A demo game was provided, which was built using "CELStart", their simple tool for people with no knowledge of game programming. I launched the game to see what I might look forward to creating. It froze several times, the menus were buggy, there were thousands of graphical glitches, enemies didn't respond to damage, and when I closed the game it locked up. Gave up on that engine. IrrLicht: The tutorial assumes I have Visual Studio 6.0 (I have Visual Studio 2010). Following their instructions I was unable to properly import the library into Visual Studio and unable to call any of the functions that they kept using. Manually copying header files, class files, and DLLs into my project's folder - the project failed to properly compile. Clearly I'm not off to a good start and I'm going in circles. Can someone point me in the right direction? Should I start by downloading a program like Blender and learning 3D modeling, or should I be learning how to use a graphics engine? Should I look for an all-inclusive game engine, or is it better to try and code my own game logic? If anyone has actually made their own games, I would prefer to hear how they got their start. Also- taking classes at my school is not an option. Nothing is offered.

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  • UDK SettingsScene variable

    - by Ricket
    I am in the process of porting a script from UT3 to UDK. The script is for class ZOUIFrontEnd_MainMenu extends UTUIFrontEnd_MainMenu. I'm getting the following compiler error: C:\UDK\UDK-2010-03\Development\Src\FixIt\Classes\ZOUIFrontEnd_MainMenu.uc(18) : Error, Bad or missing expression in Call to 'OpenSceneByName', parameter 1 The referenced line is as follows: OpenSceneByName(SettingsScene); Okay, so I figured the OpenSceneByName function changed in UDK. Tracing the path of inheritance all the way up to UDKUIScene.uc, I found the definition: function UIScene OpenSceneByName(string SceneToOpen, bool bSkipAnimation=false, optional delegate<OnSceneActivated> SceneDelegate=None) Assuming SettingsScene is a string, everything looks fine, right? So I figured I would find SettingsScene to make sure it's a string. Well doing a search for "SettingsScene" in all files turned up only one other line; UTGameReplicationInfo.uc line 334: UTPC.OpenUIScene(class'UTUIFrontEnd_MainMenu'.default.SettingsScene); But UTUIFrontEnd_MainMenu doesn't have a SettingsScene variable in it! Just to check, I changed my line of code to match: OpenSceneByName(class'UTUIFrontEnd_MainMenu'.default.SettingsScene); And indeed, I get the following compile error now: C:\UDK\UDK-2010-03\Development\Src\FixIt\Classes\ZOUIFrontEnd_MainMenu.uc(18) : Error, Unknown Property 'SettingsScene' in 'Class UTGame.UTUIFrontEnd_MainMenu' How does UTGameReplicationInfo.uc successfully compile? Where is the SettingsScene variable?

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  • 8 Backup Tools Explained for Windows 7 and 8

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Backups on Windows can be confusing. Whether you’re using Windows 7 or 8, you have quite a few integrated backup tools to think about. Windows 8 made quite a few changes, too. You can also use third-party backup software, whether you want to back up to an external drive or back up your files to online storage. We won’t cover third-party tools here — just the ones built into Windows. Backup and Restore on Windows 7 Windows 7 has its own Backup and Restore feature that lets you create backups manually or on a schedule. You’ll find it under Backup and Restore in the Control Panel. The original version of Windows 8 still contained this tool, and named it Windows 7 File Recovery. This allowed former Windows 7 users to restore files from those old Windows 7 backups or keep using the familiar backup tool for a little while. Windows 7 File Recovery was removed in Windows 8.1. System Restore System Restore on both Windows 7 and 8 functions as a sort of automatic system backup feature. It creates backup copies of important system and program files on a schedule or when you perform certain tasks, such as installing a hardware driver. If system files become corrupted or your computer’s software becomes unstable, you can use System Restore to restore your system and program files from a System Restore point. This isn’t a way to back up your personal files. It’s more of a troubleshooting feature that uses backups to restore your system to its previous working state. Previous Versions on Windows 7 Windows 7′s Previous Versions feature allows you to restore older versions of files — or deleted files. These files can come from backups created with Windows 7′s Backup and Restore feature, but they can also come from System Restore points. When Windows 7 creates a System Restore point, it will sometimes contain your personal files. Previous Versions allows you to extract these personal files from restore points. This only applies to Windows 7. On Windows 8, System Restore won’t create backup copies of your personal files. The Previous Versions feature was removed on Windows 8. File History Windows 8 replaced Windows 7′s backup tools with File History, although this feature isn’t enabled by default. File History is designed to be a simple, easy way to create backups of your data files on an external drive or network location. File History replaces both Windows 7′s Backup and Previous Versions features. Windows System Restore won’t create copies of personal files on Windows 8. This means you can’t actually recover older versions of files until you enable File History yourself — it isn’t enabled by default. System Image Backups Windows also allows you to create system image backups. These are backup images of your entire operating system, including your system files, installed programs, and personal files. This feature was included in both Windows 7 and Windows 8, but it was hidden in the preview versions of Windows 8.1. After many user complaints, it was restored and is still available in the final version of Windows 8.1 — click System Image Backup on the File History Control Panel. Storage Space Mirroring Windows 8′s Storage Spaces feature allows you to set up RAID-like features in software. For example, you can use Storage Space to set up two hard disks of the same size in a mirroring configuration. They’ll appear as a single drive in Windows. When you write to this virtual drive, the files will be saved to both physical drives. If one drive fails, your files will still be available on the other drive. This isn’t a good long-term backup solution, but it is a way of ensuring you won’t lose important files if a single drive fails. Microsoft Account Settings Backup Windows 8 and 8.1 allow you to back up a variety of system settings — including personalization, desktop, and input settings. If you’re signing in with a Microsoft account, OneDrive settings backup is enabled automatically. This feature can be controlled under OneDrive > Sync settings in the PC settings app. This feature only backs up a few settings. It’s really more of a way to sync settings between devices. OneDrive Cloud Storage Microsoft hasn’t been talking much about File History since Windows 8 was released. That’s because they want people to use OneDrive instead. OneDrive — formerly known as SkyDrive — was added to the Windows desktop in Windows 8.1. Save your files here and they’ll be stored online tied to your Microsoft account. You can then sign in on any other computer, smartphone, tablet, or even via the web and access your files. Microsoft wants typical PC users “backing up” their files with OneDrive so they’ll be available on any device. You don’t have to worry about all these features. Just choose a backup strategy to ensure your files are safe if your computer’s hard disk fails you. Whether it’s an integrated backup tool or a third-party backup application, be sure to back up your files.

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  • Welcome to the Red Gate BI Tools Team blog!

    - by BI Tools Team
    Welcome to the first ever post on the brand new Red Gate Business Intelligence Tools Team blog! About the team Nick Sutherland (product manager): After many years as a software developer and project manager, Nick took an MBA and turned to product marketing. SSAS Compare is his second lean startup product (the first being SQL Connect). Follow him on Twitter. David Pond (developer): Before he joined Red Gate in 2011, David made monitoring systems for Goodyear. Follow him on Twitter. Jonathan Watts (tester): Jonathan became a tester after finishing his media degree and joining Xerox. He joined Red Gate in 2004. Follow him on Twitter. James Duffy (technical author): After a spell as a writer in the video game industry, James lived briefly in Tokyo before returning to the UK to start at Red Gate. What we're working on We launched a beta of our first tool, SSAS Compare, last month. It works like SQL Compare but for SSAS cubes, letting you deploy just the changes you want. It's completely free (for now), so check it out. We're still working on it, and we're eager to hear what you think. We hope SSAS Compare will be the first of several tools Red Gate develops for BI professionals, so keep an eye out for more from us in the future. Why we need you This is your chance to help influence the course of SSAS Compare and our future BI tools. If you're a business intelligence specialist, we want to hear about the problems you face so we can build tools that solve them. What do you want to see? Tell us! We'll be posting more about SSAS Compare, business intelligence and our journey into BI in the coming days and weeks. Stay tuned!

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  • Welcome to the Red Gate BI Tools Team blog!

    - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team
    Welcome to the first ever post on the brand new Red Gate Business Intelligence Tools Team blog! About the team Nick Sutherland (product manager): After many years as a software developer and project manager, Nick took an MBA and turned to product marketing. SSAS Compare is his second lean startup product (the first being SQL Connect). Follow him on Twitter. David Pond (developer): Before he joined Red Gate in 2011, David made monitoring systems for Goodyear. Follow him on Twitter. Jonathan Watts (tester): Jonathan became a tester after finishing his media degree and joining Xerox. He joined Red Gate in 2004. Follow him on Twitter. James Duffy (technical author): After a spell as a writer in the video game industry, James lived briefly in Tokyo before returning to the UK to start at Red Gate. What we’re working on We launched a beta of our first tool, SSAS Compare, last month. It works like SQL Compare but for SSAS cubes, letting you deploy just the changes you want. It’s completely free (for now), so check it out. We’re still working on it, and we’re eager to hear what you think. We hope SSAS Compare will be the first of several tools Red Gate develops for BI professionals, so keep an eye out for more from us in the future. Why we need you This is your chance to help influence the course of SSAS Compare and our future BI tools. If you’re a business intelligence specialist, we want to hear about the problems you face so we can build tools that solve them. What do you want to see? Tell us! We’ll be posting more about SSAS Compare, business intelligence and our journey into BI in the coming days and weeks. Stay tuned!

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  • Welcome to the Red Gate BI Tools Team blog!

    - by BI Tools Team
    Welcome to the first ever post on the brand new Red Gate Business Intelligence Tools Team blog! About the team Nick Sutherland (product manager): After many years as a software developer and project manager, Nick took an MBA and turned to product marketing. SSAS Compare is his second lean startup product (the first being SQL Connect). Follow him on Twitter. David Pond (developer): Before he joined Red Gate in 2011, David made monitoring systems for Goodyear. Follow him on Twitter. Jonathan Watts (tester): Jonathan became a tester after finishing his media degree and joining Xerox. He joined Red Gate in 2004. Follow him on Twitter. James Duffy (technical author): After a spell as a writer in the video game industry, James lived briefly in Tokyo before returning to the UK to start at Red Gate. What we're working on We launched a beta of our first tool, SSAS Compare, last month. It works like SQL Compare but for SSAS cubes, letting you deploy just the changes you want. It's completely free (for now), so check it out. We're still working on it, and we're eager to hear what you think. We hope SSAS Compare will be the first of several tools Red Gate develops for BI professionals, so keep an eye out for more from us in the future. Why we need you This is your chance to help influence the course of SSAS Compare and our future BI tools. If you're a business intelligence specialist, we want to hear about the problems you face so we can build tools that solve them. What do you want to see? Tell us! We'll be posting more about SSAS Compare, business intelligence and our journey into BI in the coming days and weeks. Stay tuned!

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  • Learning content for MCSDs: Web Applications and Windows Store Apps using HTML5

    Recently, I started again to learn for various Microsoft certifications. First candidate on my way to MSCD: Web Applications is the Exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3. Motivation to go for a Microsoft exam I guess, this is quite personal but let me briefly describe my intentions to go that exam. First, I'm doing web development since the 1990's. Working with HTML, CSS and Javascript is happening almost daily in my workspace. And honestly, I do not only do 'pure' web development but already integrated several HTML/CSS/Javascript frontend UIs into an existing desktop application (written in Visual FoxPro) inclusive two-way communication and data exchange. Hm, might be an interesting topic for another blog article here... Second, this exam has a very interesting aspect which is listed at the bottom of the exam's details: Credit Toward Certification When you pass Exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3, you complete the requirements for the following certification(s): Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Specialist Exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3: counts as credit toward the following certification(s): MCSD: Web Applications MCSD: Windows Store Apps using HTML5 So, passing one single exam will earn you specialist certification straight-forward, and opens the path to higher levels of certifications. Preparations and learning path Well, due to a newsletter from Microsoft Learning (MSL) I caught interest in picking up the circumstances and learning materials for this particular exam. As of writing this article there is a promotional / voucher code available which enables you to register for this exam for free! Simply register yourself with or log into your existing account at Prometric, choose the exam for a testing facility near to you and enter the voucher code HTMLJMP (available through 31.03.2013 or while supplies last). Hurry up, there are restrictions... As stated above, I'm already very familiar with web development and the programming flavours involved into this. But of course, it is always good to freshen up your knowledge and reflect on yourself. Microsoft is putting a lot of effort to attract any kind of developers into the 'App Development'. Whether it is for the Windows 8 Store or the Windows Phone 8 Store, doesn't really matter. They simply need more apps. This demand for skilled developers also comes with a nice side-effect: Lots and lots of material to study. During the first couple of hours, I could easily gather high quality preparation material - again for free! Following is just a small list of starting points. If you have more resources, please drop me a message in the comment section, and I'll be glad to update this article accordingly. Developing HTML5 Apps Jump Start This is an accelerated jump start video course on development of HTML5 Apps for Windows 8. There are six modules that are split into two video sessions per module. Very informative and intense course material. This is packed stuff taken from an official preparation course for exam 70-480. Developing Windows Store Apps with HTML5 Jump Start Again, an accelerated preparation video course on Windows 8 Apps. There are six modules with two video sessions each which will catapult you to your exam. This is also related to preps for exam 70-481. Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Kraig Brockschmidt delves into the ups and downs of Windows 8 App development over 800+ pages. Great eBook to read, study, and to practice the samples - best of all, it's for free. codeSHOW() This is a Windows 8 HTML/JS project with the express goal of demonstrating simple development concepts for the Windows 8 platform. Code, code and more code... absolutely great stuff to study and practice. Microsoft Virtual Academy I already wrote about the MVA in a previous article. Well, if you haven't registered yourself yet, now is the time. The list is not complete for sure, but this might keep you busy for at least one or even two weeks to go through the material. Please don't hesitate to add more resources in the comment section. Right now, I'm already through all videos once, and digging my way through chapter 4 of Kraig's book. Additional material - Pluralsight Apart from those free online resources, I also following some courses from the excellent library of Pluralsight. They already have their own section for Windows 8 development, but of course, you get companion material about HTML5, CSS and Javascript in other sections, too. Introduction to Building Windows 8 Applications Building Windows 8 Applications with JavaScript and HTML Selling Windows 8 Apps HTML5 Fundamentals Using HTML5 and CSS3 HTML5 Advanced Topics CSS3 etc... Interesting to see that Michael Palermo provides his course material on multiple platforms. Fantastic! You might also pay a visit to his personal blog. Hm, it just came to my mind that Aaron Skonnard of Pluralsight publishes so-called '24 hours Learning Paths' based on courses available in the course library. Would be interested to see a combination for Windows 8 App development using HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript in the future. Recommended workspace environment Well, you might have guessed it but this requires Windows 8, Visual Studio 2012 Express or another flavour, and a valid Developers License. Due to an MSDN subscription I working on VS 2012 Premium with some additional tools by Telerik. Honestly, the fastest way to get you up and running for Windows 8 App development is the source code archive of codeSHOW(). It does not only give you all source code in general but contains a couple of SDKs like Bing Maps, Microsoft Advertising, Live ID, and Telerik Windows 8 controls... for free! Hint: Get the Windows Phone 8 SDK as well. Don't worry, while you are studying the material for Windows 8 you will be able to leverage from this knowledge to development for the phone platform, too. It takes roughly one to two hours to get your workspace and learning environment, at least this was my time frame due to slow internet connection and an aged spare machine. ;-) Oh, before I forget to mention it, as soon as you're done, go quickly to the Windows Store and search for ClassBrowserPlus. You might not need it ad hoc for your development using HTML5, CSS and Javascript but I think that it is a great developer's utility that enables you to view the properties, methods and events (along with help text) for all Windows 8 classes. It's always good to look behind the scenes and to explore how it is made. Idea: Start/join a learning group The way you learn new things or intensify your knowledge in a certain technology is completely up to your personal preference. Back in my days at the university, we used to meet once or twice a week in a small quiet room to exchange our progress, questions and problems we ran into. In general, I recommend to any software craftsman to lift your butt and get out to exchange with other developers. Personally, I like this approach, as it gives you new points of view and an insight into others' own experience with certain techniques and how they managed to solve tricky issues. Just keep it relaxed and not too formal after all, and you might a have a good time away from your dull office desk. Give your machine a break, too.

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  • Down Tools Week Cometh: Kissing Goodbye to CVs/Resumes and Cover Letters

    - by Bart Read
    I haven't blogged about what I'm doing in my (not so new) temporary role as Red Gate's technical recruiter, mostly because it's been routine, business as usual stuff, and because I've been trying to understand the role by doing it. I think now though the time has come to get a little more radical, so I'm going to tell you why I want to largely eliminate CVs/resumes and cover letters from the application process for some of our technical roles, and why I think that might be a good thing for candidates (and for us). I have a terrible confession to make, or at least it's a terrible confession for a recruiter: I don't really like CV sifting, or reading cover letters, and, unless I've misread the mood around here, neither does anybody else. It's dull, it's time-consuming, and it's somewhat soul destroying because, when all is said and done, you're being paid to be incredibly judgemental about people based on relatively little information. I feel like I've dirtied myself by saying that - I mean, after all, it's a core part of my job - but it sucks, it really does. (And, of course, the truth is I'm still a software engineer at heart, and I'm always looking for ways to do things better.) On the flip side, I've never met anyone who likes writing their CV. It takes hours and hours of faffing around and massaging it into shape, and the whole process is beset by a gnawing anxiety, frustration, and insecurity. All you really want is a chance to demonstrate your skills - not just talk about them - and how do you do that in a CV or cover letter? Often the best candidates will include samples of their work (a portfolio, screenshots, links to websites, product downloads, etc.), but sometimes this isn't possible, or may not be appropriate, or you just don't think you're allowed because of what your school/university careers service has told you (more commonly an issue with grads, obviously). And what are we actually trying to find out about people with all of this? I think the common criteria are actually pretty basic: Smart Gets things done (thanks for these two Joel) Not an a55hole* (sorry, have to get around Simple Talk's swear filter - and thanks to Professor Robert I. Sutton for this one) *Of course, everyone has off days, and I don't honestly think we're too worried about somebody being a bit grumpy every now and again. We can do a bit better than this in the context of the roles I'm talking about: we can be more specific about what "gets things done" means, at least in part. For software engineers and interns, the non-exhaustive meaning of "gets things done" is: Excellent coder For test engineers, the non-exhaustive meaning of "gets things done" is: Good at finding problems in software Competent coder Team player, etc., to me, are covered by "not an a55hole". I don't expect people to be the life and soul of the party, or a wild extrovert - that's not what team player means, and it's not what "not an a55hole" means. Some of our best technical staff are quiet, introverted types, but they're still pleasant to work with. My problem is that I don't think the initial sift really helps us find out whether people are smart and get things done with any great efficacy. It's better than nothing, for sure, but it's not as good as it could be. It's also contentious, and potentially unfair/inequitable - if you want to get an idea of what I mean by this, check out the background information section at the bottom. Before I go any further, let's look at the Red Gate recruitment process for technical staff* as it stands now: (LOTS of) People apply for jobs. All these applications go through a brutal process of manual sifting, which eliminates between 75 and 90% of them, depending upon the role, and the time of year**. Depending upon the role, those who pass the sift will be sent an assessment or telescreened. For the purposes of this blog post I'm only interested in those that are sent some sort of programming assessment, or bug hunt. This means software engineers, test engineers, and software interns, which are the roles for which I receive the most applications. The telescreen tends to be reserved for project or product managers. Those that pass the assessment are invited in for first interview. This interview is mostly about assessing their technical skills***, although we're obviously on the look out for cultural fit red flags as well. If the first interview goes well we'll invite candidates back for a second interview. This is where team/cultural fit is really scoped out. We also use this interview to dive more deeply into certain areas of their skillset, and explore any concerns that may have come out of the first interview (these obviously won't have been serious or obvious enough to cause a rejection at that point, but are things we do need to look into before we'd consider making an offer). We might subsequently invite them in for lunch before we make them an offer. This tends to happen when we're recruiting somebody for a specific team and we'd like them to meet all the people they'll be working with directly. It's not an interview per se, but can prove pivotal if they don't gel with the team. Anyone who's made it this far will receive an offer from us. *We have a slightly quirky definition of "technical staff" as it relates to the technical recruiter role here. It includes software engineers, test engineers, software interns, user experience specialists, technical authors, project managers, product managers, and development managers, but does not include product support or information systems roles. **For example, the quality of graduate applicants overall noticeably drops as the academic year wears on, which is not to say that by now there aren't still stars in there, just that they're fewer and further between. ***Some organisations prefer to assess for team fit first, but I think assessing technical skills is a more effective initial filter - if they're the nicest person in the world, but can't cut a line of code they're not going to work out. Now, as I suggested in the title, Red Gate's Down Tools Week is upon us once again - next week in fact - and I had proposed as a project that we refactor and automate the first stage of marking our programming assessments. Marking assessments, and in fact organising the marking of them, is a somewhat time-consuming process, and we receive many assessment solutions that just don't make the cut, for whatever reason. Whilst I don't think it's possible to fully automate marking, I do think it ought to be possible to run a suite of automated tests over each candidate's solution to see whether or not it behaves correctly and, if it does, move on to a manual stage where we examine the code for structure, decomposition, style, readability, maintainability, etc. Obviously it's possible to use tools to generate potentially helpful metrics for some of these indices as well. This would obviously reduce the marking workload, and would provide candidates with quicker feedback about whether they've been successful - though I do wonder if waiting a tactful interval before sending a (nicely written) rejection might be wise. I duly scrawled out a picture of my ideal process, which looked like this: The problem is, as soon as I'd roughed it out, I realised that fundamentally it wasn't an ideal process at all, which explained the gnawing feeling of cognitive dissonance I'd been wrestling with all week, whilst I'd been trying to find time to do this. Here's what I mean. Automated assessment marking, and the associated infrastructure around that, makes it much easier for us to deal with large numbers of assessments. This means we can be much more permissive about who we send assessments out to or, in other words, we can give more candidates the opportunity to really demonstrate their skills to us. And this leads to a question: why not give everyone the opportunity to demonstrate their skills, to show that they're smart and can get things done? (Two or three of us even discussed this in the down tools week hustings earlier this week.) And isn't this a lot simpler than the alternative we'd been considering? (FYI, this was automated CV/cover letter sifting by some form of textual analysis to ideally eliminate the worst 50% or so of applications based on an analysis of the 20,000 or so historical applications we've received since 2007 - definitely not the basic keyword analysis beloved of recruitment agencies, since this would eliminate hardly anyone who was awful, but definitely would eliminate stellar Oxbridge candidates - #fail - or some nightmarishly complex Google-like system where we profile all our currently employees, only to realise that we're never going to get representative results because we don't have a statistically significant sample size in any given role - also #fail.) No, I think the new way is better. We let people self-select. We make them the masters (or mistresses) of their own destiny. We give applicants the power - we put their fate in their hands - by giving them the chance to demonstrate their skills, which is what they really want anyway, instead of requiring that they spend hours and hours creating a CV and cover letter that I'm going to evaluate for suitability, and make a value judgement about, in approximately 1 minute (give or take). It doesn't matter what university you attended, it doesn't matter if you had a bad year when you took your A-levels - here's your chance to shine, so take it and run with it. (As a side benefit, we cut the number of applications we have to sift by something like two thirds.) WIN! OK, yeah, sounds good, but will it actually work? That's an excellent question. My gut feeling is yes, and I'll justify why below (and hopefully have gone some way towards doing that above as well), but what I'm proposing here is really that we run an experiment for a period of time - probably a couple of months or so - and measure the outcomes we see: How many people apply? (Wouldn't be surprised or alarmed to see this cut by a factor of ten.) How many of them submit a good assessment? (More/less than at present?) How much overhead is there for us in dealing with these assessments compared to now? What are the success and failure rates at each interview stage compared to now? How many people are we hiring at the end of it compared to now? I think it'll work because I hypothesize that, amongst other things: It self-selects for people who really want to work at Red Gate which, at the moment, is something I have to try and assess based on their CV and cover letter - but if you're not that bothered about working here, why would you complete the assessment? Candidates who would submit a shoddy application probably won't feel motivated to do the assessment. Candidates who would demonstrate good attention to detail in their CV/cover letter will demonstrate good attention to detail in the assessment. In general, only the better candidates will complete and submit the assessment. Marking assessments is much less work so we'll be able to deal with any increase that we see (hopefully we will see). There are obviously other questions as well: Is plagiarism going to be a problem? Is there any way we can detect/discourage potential plagiarism? How do we assess candidates' education and experience? What about their ability to communicate in writing? Do we still want them to submit a CV afterwards if they pass assessment? Do we want to offer them the opportunity to tell us a bit about why they'd like the job when they submit their assessment? How does this affect our relationship with recruitment agencies we might use to hire for these roles? So, what's the objective for next week's Down Tools Week? Pretty simple really - we want to implement this process for the Graduate Software Engineer and Software Engineer positions that you can find on our website. I will be joined by a crack team of our best developers (Kevin Boyle, and new Red-Gater, Sam Blackburn), and recruiting hostess with the mostest Laura McQuillen, and hopefully a couple of others as well - if I can successfully twist more arms before Monday.* Hopefully by next Friday our experiment will be up and running, and we may have changed the way Red Gate recruits software engineers for good! Stay tuned and we'll let you know how it goes! *I'm going to play dirty by offering them beer and chocolate during meetings. Some background information: how agonising over the initial CV/cover letter sift helped lead us to bin it off entirely The other day I was agonising about the new university/good degree grade versus poor A-level results issue, and decided to canvas for other opinions to see if there was something I could do that was fairer than my current approach, which is almost always to reject. This generated quite an involved discussion on our Yammer site: I'm sure you can glean a pretty good impression of my own educational prejudices from that discussion as well, although I'm very open to changing my opinion - hopefully you've already figured that out from reading the rest of this post. Hopefully you can also trace a logical path from agonising about sifting to, "Uh, hang on, why on earth are we doing this anyway?!?" Technorati Tags: recruitment,hr,developers,testers,red gate,cv,resume,cover letter,assessment,sea change

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