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• MS Marketing Strategy

  - by Aaron Kowall

  I found this week’s Windows Phone 8 event interesting.  Not just because it looks like some fantastic new features in the new OS but because of the wait for release.  If I were a Nokia shareholder (which I am not) I’d be very unhappy with MS announcing that Windows Phone 8 will NOT work with current hardware.  So, there are some very nice Lumia devices that are now end-of-life that have arrived relatively recently at carriers and retailers. I understand that MS needs to demonstrate progress against iOS and Android and that there is some Windows 8 tie-in that they are trying to capitalize (and MS IS still all about Windows).  However, it’s a bit of a kick to partners that have invested in the platform with pretty decent devices (Samsung, HTC and of course Nokia). Personally, I’m still using a Samsung Foucs.  I was seriously considering upgrading to a Lumia 900 (we just got Lync mobile available) but will now wait it out until new devices arrive with Windows 8.  If MS had waited to announce, I would happily have upgraded to the Lumia and when I found out it couldn’t be upgraded then that would be a gamble I took and lost and I’d live with it.  Now, however, I can see the future and know that waiting is the better option for me so that is 1 sale Nokia will miss out on.  Based on some chats I’ve seen on mobile forums I’m certainly far from the only one. I’m sure glad I’m not in charge of marketing at MS.  There are tough decisions to be made there and I’m pretty sure you piss somebody off regardless. Technorati Tags: WP8,Lumia,Nokia,Samsung

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• How to run around another football player

  - by Lumis

  I have finished a simple 2D one-on-one indoor football Android game. The thing that it seemed so simple to me, a human being, turned out to be difficult for a computer: how to go around the opponent … At the moment the game logic of the computer player is that if it hits into the human player will step back few points on the pixel greed and then try again to go towards the ball. The problem is if the human player is in-between then the computer player will oscillate in one place, which does not look very nice and the human opponent can use this weakness to control the game. You can see this in the photo – at the moment the computer will go along the red line indefinitely. I tried few ideas but it proved not easy to do it when both the human player and the ball are constantly moving so at each step computer would change directions and “oscillate” again. Once when the computer player reaches the ball it will kick it with certain amount of random strength and direction towards the human’s goal. The question here is how to formulate the logic of going around the ever moving human opponent and how to translate it into the co-ordinate system and frame by frame animation… any suggestions welcome.

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• Need Directions to become a programmer [closed]

  - by Omin

  Before youguys go on about how there are many types of programmers, please read through the post. Long term goal: Develop my own software (company) Short term goal: Get a job that involves coding/programming Current status: Support Analyst (at a software company but does not involve any programming) with 40k salary, 3rd year computer engineering student I had everything figured out. I'm going to develop a 2D scrolling game for iphone or android, publish the app, sell a bunch, and then apply at a studios as a software developer. And then something hit me. I think I need to get a job that involes programming to learn as much as I can in the shortest time possible. So I got a phone interview at a fast growing start up software company, passed that no problem, but then had to take an online technical assessment. That failed miserably. I thought that if I could just present myself, show that I am hard working, positive attitude, eager to make self improvements, type of a guy, I could get the job. I was wrong. And now, I am lost. Im thinking of staying with my job until I find a new one as a programmer. I will be working, self studying, and trying to make this happen without finishing university. I forgot to mention that the online technical assessment was based on data structures/algorithms, OO design, runtime complexity. I was hoping that I could get some guidence. Should I be focusing on app development or study computer science fundamentals? I have a list of books I can be going through: Learning C# O'Reilly (I got interested in C# because of Unity3D and Mono), C# 5.0 in a Nutshell, Head First Design Patterns, Code Complete, Introduction to Algorithms, Programming Interviews Exposed, Cracking the Coding Interview, The Google Resume.

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• Artists and music - Need Help Deciding on a CMS

  - by infty

  A friend has asked me to build a site with the following options: staff members must be able to add new music and artists to the page a gallery must be provided - it is also good if each artist has the ability to have his/her own smaller gallery users must be able to vote for artists users must be able to alter in discussions (forums or comments sections) staff members must be able to blog staff members must be able to write articles I did a small project where i actually implemented all of these features, but I want to use an existing content management system for all of these features so that future developers can, hopefully, more easy extend the website. And also, so that I don't have to provide too much documentation. I have never developed a website using an external CMS like Drupal or Wordpress and after seeing hours of tutorial videos of both systems, I still can't make up my mind on whether i should : a) use Drupal 7 b) use Wordpress 3 c) create my own cms I can imagine that staff members would also want to create content using iPhone or android based mobile devices, but this is not a required feature. Can someone, with experience, please tell me about their experiences with larger projects like this? The site will have approximately 400 000 - 500 000 visitors (not daily visitors, based on numbers from last year in a period of 4 months)

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• Why is my USB data transfer so slow?

  - by Dave M G

  Whenever I do any kind of file transfer using USB, whether to a USB stick, or with my Android phone, or anything else, it is ridiculously slow. It says 59.8 KB/sec, which would be an awesome speed if this were 1991 and I was using a modem to dial up to my local BBS. Surely USB technology is better than that...? 37 seconds to move less data than the equivelent of 1 MP3 file? Also, regardless of what it says about speed and time, the reality is much, much slower. I routinely see it say something like "37 seconds left" and have to wait for minutes. Sometimes, if I want to move large amounts of files, it can say it will take 8 hours or more. Is this normal? My computer may not be the most awesome on the market, and about a year old, but it's an i5 with 4GB RAM and modern components, so surely this isn't the hardware's fault. What can I do to get better USB data transfer performance? Also, I did look at this question, but my newbie eyes don't see anything that look like an actual solution, just a lot of discussion about what transfer rates could or should be. Update: As requested in the comments, I've generated a whole bunch of output from the command line, and put it on Ubuntu Pastebin. Please see it here.

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• Oracle Secure Global Desktop (SGD) 5.1

  - by wcoekaer

  Last week, we released the latest update of Oracle Secure Global Desktop. Release 5.1 introduces a number of bug fixes and smaller changes but the most interesting one is definitely increased support for html5-based client access. In SGD 5.0 we added support for Apple iPads using Safari to connect to SGD and display your session right inside the browser. The traditional model for SGD is that you connect using a webbrowser to the webtop and applications that are displayed locally using a local client (tta). This client gets installed the first time you connect. So in the traditional model (which works very well...) you need a webbrowser, java and the tta client. With the addition of html5 support, there's no longer a need to install a local client, in fact, there is also no longer a need to have java installed. We currently support Chrome as a browser to enable html5 clients. This allows us to enable html5 on the android devices and also on desktops running Chrome (Windows, MacOS X, Linux). Connections will work transparently across proxy servers as well. So now you can run any SGD published app or desktop right from your webbrowser inside a browser window. This is very convenient and cool.

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• C#, .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012

  - by subodhnpushpak

  While I continue my affair with iOS / Android (which is now my bread / butter literally ); I also have managed to keep myself excited enough for all of new windows Stuff. Thanks to Priti Pushpak (my wife) for all the amazing Windows Phone 7 apps she is creating and uploading on appHub… I kind of like refreshing feel of win8 and apps. I also have fair bit of exposure on iPhone / iPad; Mac apps and I do put my two cents for win8 as well. If not an instant hit; win8 apps surely grows on you. So eventually win8 platform is here to stay. (oh yes and I cannot tell you how much hope I have for WP8 platform as well). Nevertheless; here is few topics I covered in a session on .Net 4.5  and on popular demand I am posting it all here… Note that for the demo you must have Win8 installed along with VS2012. The Demo includes a ASP .NET Web API http://www.slideshare.net/spushpak/new-features-in-net-45-c-and-vs2012 New features in .NET 4.5, C# and VS2012 from Subodh Pushpak The slide deck, demo and the session recording is at: http://sdrv.ms/R1thCf and https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0ogfayv0djfafyg/hfw5mNLaz9

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• Create Adjustable Depth of Field Photos with a DSLR

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you’re fascinating by the Lytro camera–a camera that let’s you change the focus after you’ve taken the photo–this DSLR hack provides a similar post-photo focus processing without the $400 price tag. Photography tinkers at The Chaos Collective came up with a clever way of mimicking the adjustable depth-of-field adjustment effect from the Lytro camera. The secret sauce in their technique is setting the camera to manual focus and capturing a short 2-3 second video clip while they rotate the focus through the entire focal range. From there, they use a simple applet to separate out each frame of the video. Check out the interactive demo below: Anywhere you click in the photo shifts the focus to that point, just like the post processing in the Lytro camera. It’s a different approach to the problem but it yields roughly the same output. Hit up the link below for the full run down on their technique and how you can get started using it with your own video-enabled DLSR. Camera HACK: DOF-Changeable Photos with an SLR [via Hack A Day] Secure Yourself by Using Two-Step Verification on These 16 Web Services How to Fix a Stuck Pixel on an LCD Monitor How to Factory Reset Your Android Phone or Tablet When It Won’t Boot

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• Feedback on meeting of the MSCC - 20.07.2013

  Impression of our meetup on 20.07.2013 Low quantity but high quality! Meetup summary: Quick introduction to ?MSCC? and interesting topics in general, especially for freshman from/at university. It also seems that the open concept of OUYA (Android-based gaming console) got some attention and hopefully new fans. More info is available online: http://www.ouya.tv/ Design contest The design contest is still going on... There's currently only one submission. Come on, you web & graphic designers in Mauritius - SHOW YOUR WORKAny draft will be published over here: MSCC Design Contest - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.200036533488751.1073741829.181737551985316&type=3 Goodies give-away And the first 2 one-month subscriptions for Pluralsight have been well received by attendees, too. Unfortunately, we didn't have any free WiFi at Talking Drums - so, we might have to consider another location for the next meetup. Change of schedule As we spoke about the advantages of gathering during the weekend, we worked out a schedule that could be applied to future meetups of the MSCC. I'm going to address this tomorrow during our regular meetings on Wednesday to see about the response of other members, too.

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• New Nokia SDK 2.0 for Java (beta)

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Nokia recently launched the Asha 305, 306, and 311, which are full touch devices with smartphone-like functionality at a low price. This makes them particularly attractive to consumers in the developing and developed world who may not be able to afford a smartphone but have a strong demand for apps and the smartphone experience. The Asha phones are the latest addition to Nokia's Series 40 platform, all of which support Java ME. The SDK includes new Full Touch API's (e.g. supporting pinch zoom) and Sensor support delivering an enhanced App experience. It also adds improved Maps API support for creating socio-local apps. There are a number of improvements in the tools including the Nokia IDE for Java ME with in-build Device-SDK Manager. Many code examples, training videos, webinars and sample code will help get you started. Porting guides and sample code show you how to port your android app to Java ME. If you don't have access to the hardware you can use Remote Device Access to test on real hardware that's remotely hosted for free. You can also find Light Weight UI Toolkit (LWUIT) support, which can speed development significantly. Both In-App Advertising and In-App Purchase (beta) is supported. Here's a great revenue-making opportunity for developers and a great way of reaching a new app-hungry mass-market audience. Download the new Nokia SDK 2.0 for Java (Beta) and get developing! 

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• What's the benefit to learn Java programming?

  - by user30139

  I'm from the PHP world. Recently I'm trying to learn about Java. Because simply I'm a bit interested in Android development. Learning about Java gives more control about my cellphone. Say I could fine tune some applications to fit my personal requirements or even make my own ones. Still Java is a new world to me. I guess I'm already too comfortable with weak typed languages such as PHP. Honestly I think application development of no matter which kind wouldn't make too much difference. Because just as web development mostly framework based, what the developer do is to fill the blanks meaning to follow the protocols the given by the framework. Most of the code is still about business logic, that's what application development all about, right? The big difference seems to lie on the programming languages. Comparing to PHP, Java holds a whole package of constraints and practices. At this point, what are the benefits to learn programming in it?

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• How to build an API on top of an existing Rails app with NodeJs and what architecture to use?

  - by javiayala

  The explanation I was recently hired by a company that has an old RoR 2.3 application with more than 100k users, a strong SEO strategy with more than 170k indexed urls, native android and ios applications and other custom-made mobile and web applications that rely on a not so good API from the same RoR app. They recently merged with a company from another country as an strategy to grow the business and the profit. They have almost the same stats, a similar strategy and mobile apps. We have just decided that we need to merge the data from both companies and to start a new app from scratch since the RoR app is to old and heavily patched and the app from the other company was built with a custom PHP framework without any documentation. The only good news is that both databases are in MySQL and have a similar structure. The challenge I need to build a new version that: can handle a lot of traffic, preserves the SEO strategies of both companies, serve 2 different domains, and have a strong API that can support legacy mobile apps from both companies and be ready for a new set of native apps. I want to use RoR 3.2 for the main web apps and NodeJs with a Restful API. I know that I need to be very careful with the mobile apps and handle multiple versions of the API. I also think that I need to create a service that can handle a lot IO request since the apps is heavily used to create orders for restaurants at a certain time of the day. The questions With all this in mind: What type of architecture do you recommend me to follow? What gems or node packages do you think will work the best? How do I build a new rails app and keep using the same database structure? Should I use NodeJS to build an API or just build a new service with Ruby? I know that I'm asking to much from you guys, but please help me by answering any topic that you can or by pointing me on the right direction. All your comments and feedback will be extremely appreciated! Thanks!

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• How can I better manage far-reaching changes in my code?

  - by neuviemeporte

  In my work (writing scientific software in C++), I often get asked by the people who use the software to get their work done to add some functionality or change the way things are done and organized right now. Most of the time this is just a matter of adding a new class or a function and applying some glue to do the job, but from time to time, a seemingly simple change turns out to have far-reaching consequences that require me to redesign a substantial amount of existing code, which takes a lot of time and effort, and is difficult to evaluate in terms of time required. I don't think it has as much to do with inter-dependence of modules, as with changing requirements (admittedly, on a smaller scale). To provide an example, I was thinking about the recently-added multi-user functionality in Android. I don't know whether they planned to introduce it from the very beginning, but assuming they didn't, it seems hard to predict all the areas that will be affected by the change (apps preferences, themes, need to store account info somehow, etc...?), even though the concept seems simple enough, and the code is well-organized. How do you deal with such situations? Do you just jump in to code and then sort out the cruft later like I do? Or do you do a detailed analysis beforehand of what will be affected, what needs to be updated and how, and what has to be rewritten? If so, what tools (if any) and approaches do you use?

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• Wireless (Broadcom) just stopped working after putting machine to sleep!

  - by tommed

  Had the wireless working on my Dell Studio 15 for months now (Ubuntu 10.04 64bit, now 10.10 64bit). But I shut the lid this morning, which put the machine to sleep; when I openend it again the wireless would no longer connect to anything :'( I rebooted the machine, but that didn't help. I then did ifconfig eth1 {down,up}, but that didn't help, then I did iwconfig eth1 power {down,on}, but that didn't work. So I uninstalled the wireless driver (Broadcom STA) from additional drivers (reboot in the middle), but it still won't work anymore!! This is the trace from daemon.log, looks like it is a driver issue? Nov 28 12:26:39 ulap NetworkManager[1218]: (eth1): supplicant connection state: disconnected - scanning Nov 28 12:26:39 ulap NetworkManager[1218]: (eth1): supplicant connection state: scanning - disconnected Nov 28 12:26:45 ulap NetworkManager[1218]: (eth1): supplicant connection state: disconnected - scanning Nov 28 12:26:50 ulap wpa_supplicant[1295]: Trying to associate with MY_MAC_CODE (SSID='MY_WIRESS_SSID' freq=2417 MHz) Nov 28 12:26:50 ulap wpa_supplicant[1295]: Association request to the driver failed Nov 28 12:26:50 ulap NetworkManager[1218]: (eth1): supplicant connection state: scanning - associating Nov 28 12:26:51 ulap wpa_supplicant[1295]: Associated with MY_MAC_CODE Nov 28 12:26:51 ulap NetworkManager[1218]: (eth1): supplicant connection state: associating - associated Nov 28 12:27:01 ulap wpa_supplicant[1295]: Authentication with MY_MAC_CODE timed out. Nov 28 12:27:01 ulap NetworkManager[1218]: (eth1): supplicant connection state: associated - disconnected Anyone seen this, or know how I can get around this issue? It had been working fine up until now?! Even ran update-manager, but there wasn't any changes to the wireless drivers (or any related networking areas). Running the most up-to-date version of 10.10 x64. My android phone and other devices are still working on the wireless.

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• What is the best approach for deploying apps to companies

  - by Supercell

  What is the best approach for the following scenario: 1) A publicly available app (available in app stores) which is used by end users to make use of services offered by multiple companies. 2) These companies maintain their services also using a mobile app. I'm not sure on how to solve the second part. Having one app for both enduser and admin functionality, secured by username/password doesn't sound like a good idea. This would leave the only option of developing a separate admin application for the companies. What is the best approach to deploy "admin" like mobile apps to companies only, for Android, iOS and Windows Phone? Some additional information: Public App ---- Servers ----- Multiple Company Apps The public app shows all companies offering their services. An end user uses the public app to order something from a specific company. The order is sent to our servers. Our servers send the order to the associated company. This order is displayed on the company's admin app and given the option to accept the order.

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• When and how does one become a good programmer these days? [closed]

  - by YoungMoney

  I mean, good enough to make software people want and get paid for it. Maybe even good enough to launch a company or something. I'm also concerned that I'm not applying the finer points of my algorithms/data structures/software design knowledge. Background: I'm 20 and have been struggling with programming for about two years now, trying to become a software engineer. I started with a few university courses that I did quite poorly in. I learned how to make websites with HTML/JavaScript and PHP/MySQL, but feel like I know very relevant theory for making good databases - how does something like Facebook serve hundreds of millions of people? What would be smart ways to store data? I don't know. Now I'm doing some android application development, but again I have no idea about good Java design theory (I use static variables like they're going out of fashion) and feel more like I'm gluing stuff together and letting Eclipse slowly autocomplete my project. In short, I'm not sure if I'm becoming a legitimate software developer or just "doing what's cool". At least I've taken some data structures and Algorithms courses and plan to take more in the next years. But I'm having a really tough time applying this stuff to my fun little apps that I'm building. Every language higher level than C++ seems to have its own quicksort function already built-in, for example. Similarly, I can't remember ever needing to implement a linked-list, heap, binary tree, or or worry about pointers and memory management. But maybe this is a good thing so that I focus on other things? I'm not too sure what those other things are though. Hopefully something more than building another photo sharing app. Anyways that's it for me, I look forward to your responses!

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• Which field of programming is known as the best practice for Java? [closed]

  - by user1276509

  I'm a CS student and I have some programming background such as PHP, JavaScript and Pascal. Since Java is so popular among local companies and Java is known as market skill, I'm going to learn it. But I don't know in which field I can use it. So I wonder, what can I do with Java? I heard that Java is not good for web development, although there is Play! Framework. I know a lot of people who prefer to use Python, Ruby and PHP for web development instead of Java and its Play. I also heard that Java is not good to write destkop applications, although it's cross-platform. Many programmers prefer C# for destkop. So I see there's only one field which I can use Java for it - is Android development. But I'm not interested in mobile application development. So my question is which field of programming is known as the best practice for Java? Thanks in advance.

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• Windows Server or Linux for final project

  - by user1433490

  A few weeks ago I came up with an idea to develop a mobile app which will direct students in my university to the nearest printer availiable. The whole thing is part of my final project. The Android based app will need to perform the following tasks: The user's location in the campus is sent to the server. Assume this part works just fine. The server sends an SNMP request to the printers in the user's vicinity. I'll probably use PHP or Python for that part. The data requested by SNMP is processed and sent back to the client My question concerns the server. The university's IT manager offered me a designated server for development, which sounds great. Now I need to choose which OS I want installed on the server - Windows server or Linux (don't know which versions). I don't have any server programming/operating experince, but generally speaking I feel more comfortable in Windows enviroment (just because that has always been my OS). I don't have much time for learning a new OS, but when does it make sense generally to host or develop server side applications on a Windows environment versus a Linux environment?

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• Do I have to change my company to make sure I'm good enough? [closed]

  - by superM

  I have been working as a developer since my fourth year of university until now. I'm getting my master's degree next year (in math modeling). I've worked for the same company all the time, first on .Net, then on Android, and now .Net again. It seems I'm doing quite well in my current company. Some of my coursemates have tried to work in my company, but they failed after some time. This (and not only this) makes me think that I'm really worth something. But we're working on a very specific project. I was wondering if I am good enough and if I can make it in another company. I love my current job, but sometimes I have a feeling that I'm not moving on. So, is it possible to keep improving when working at the same company with the same technology and at similar tasks? I know that most of the programmers go from one place to another very frequently. Is it the only way?

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• Social Network ( Help) [on hold]

  - by brunocascio

  I am in a great "problem" so to speak , and I need opinions to decide. The problem is to create a social network without knowing the number of users who use it (but if thinking if they were sufficient ) . The question is which language and framework to use .... I do not mind having to learn new technologies and / or languages ??. I am among PHP ( Laravel - Symfony - other? ) Ruby ( Ruby on Rails 4? ) Javascript ( Ember , express, locomotive , other? ) Python ( Django ) Java ( Grails , Play, other?) I have experience in both PHP and frameworks. In Symfony developed part of it, but I got tired having to do a thousand configurations for all . I know very little about Ruby , but I saw very easy . I do not know are saying the performance. Javascript costs me to get used to their paradigm , and do not know if at all sure to cover everything with Javascript. Django and python ( very poor knowledge ) Java , experience in data structure and android , but not web . Regarding the / s databases: In my head I have to MongoDB and costs change of opinion by another database with respect to documentation and EASE performance . But .......... frameworks have no support at all clear . I also thought of mixing technologies for using a tecnlogía backend and the frontend other. As I read in the new social network Origo . They use Symfony for REST and javascript for the frontend . ( Backbone , Underscore and RequireJS ) What do you recommend me ?

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• window.requestFileSystem fails/events firing multiple times in PhoneGap Cordova 3

  - by ezycheez

  cordova 3.1.0-0.2.0 Droid Razr M Android 4.1.2 Windows 7 New to PhoneGap/Cordova. Running one of the filesystem demos from http://docs.phonegap.com/en/3.1.0/cordova_file_file.md.html#File. Using "cordova run android" to compile the code and run it on the phone attached via USB. Problem #1: When the app first starts I get alert("1") twice and then nothing else. Problem #2: When I kick of the code via the button onclick I get the following alert pattern: 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 5, 7, 4, 6, 5, 7. Some of that makes sense based on the code flow but most of them are firing twice. I'm suspecting problem #2 is being caused by some asynchronous calls hanging out from the first attempt but no matter how long I wait those events don't fire until I kick of the code via the button. So why is the requestFileSystem call failing even though it is waiting for deviceready and why is the other code getting intermingled? Any thoughts are appreciated. <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>FileReader Example</title> <script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="cordova.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"> // Wait for device API libraries to load // document.addEventListener("deviceready", onDeviceReady, false); // device APIs are available // function onDeviceReady() { alert("1"); window.requestFileSystem(LocalFileSystem.PERSISTENT, 0, gotFS, fail); } function gotFS(fileSystem) { alert("2"); fileSystem.root.getFile("readme.txt", null, gotFileEntry, fail); } function gotFileEntry(fileEntry) { alert("3"); fileEntry.file(gotFile, fail); } function gotFile(file) { alert("4"); readDataUrl(file); alert("5"); readAsText(file); } function readDataUrl(file) { alert("6"); var reader = new FileReader(); reader.onloadend = function (evt) { console.log("Read as data URL"); console.log(evt.target.result); }; reader.readAsDataURL(file); } function readAsText(file) { alert("7"); var reader = new FileReader(); reader.onloadend = function (evt) { console.log("Read as text"); console.log(evt.target.result); }; reader.readAsText(file); } function fail(error) { alert("8"); console.log(error.code); } </script> </head> <body> <h1>Example</h1> <p>Read File</p> <button onclick="onDeviceReady();">Read File</button> </body> </html>

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• Feedback on "market manipulation", a peripheral game mechanic for a satirical MMO

  - by BerndBrot

  This question asks for feedback on a specific game-mechanic. Since there is not one right feedback on a game mechanic, I tried to provide enough context and guidelines to still make it possible for users to rate answers and to accept an answer as the best answer (following these criteria from Writer.SE's meta website). Please comment if you have any suggestions on how I could improve the question in that regard. So, let's begin with the game itself and some of its elements which are relevant for this question. Context I'm working on a satirical, text-based multiplayer adventure and role-playing game set in modern-day London. The game resolves around the concept of sin and features a myriad of (venomous) allusions to all the things that go wrong in this world. Players can choose between character classes like bullshit artist (consultant), bankster, lawyer, mobster, celebrity, politician, etc. In order to complete the game, the player has to live so sinfully with regard to any of the seven deadly sins that a demon is willing to offer them a contract of sponsorship. On their quest to live a sinful live, characters explore more and more locations of modern-day London (on a GoogleMap), fight "monsters" like insurance sales agents or Jehovah's Witnesses, and complete quests, like building a PowerPoint presentation out of marketing buzz words or keeping up a number of substance abuse effects in order to progress on the gluttony path. Battles are turn based with both combatants having a deck of cards, with which they try to make their enemy give in to temptations of all sorts. Tempted enemies sometimes become contacts (an item drop mechanic), which can be exploited for various benefits, depending on their area of influence (finance, underworld, bureaucracy, etc.), level of influence, and kind of sway that the player has over them (bribed, seduced, threatened, etc.) Once a contract has been exploited, the player loses that contact. Most actions require turns. Turns are limited, but refill each day. Criteria A number of peripheral game mechanics are supposed to represent real world abuses and mischief in a humorous way integrate real world data and events to strengthen the feeling of relevance of the game's humor with regard to real world problems add fun ways of interacting with other players add ways for players to express themselves through game-play Market manipulation is one such peripheral game mechanic and should fulfill all of these goals. Market manipulation This is my initial design of the mechanic: Players can enter the London Stock Exchange (LSE) (without paying a turn) LSE displays the stock prices of a number of companies in industries like weapons or tobacco as well as some derivatives based on wheat and corn. The stock prices are calculated based on the actual stock prices of these companies and derivatives (in real time) any market manipulations that were conducted by the players any market corrections of the system Players can buy and sell shares with cash, a resource in the game, at current in-game market value (without paying a turn). Players can manipulate the market, i.e. let the price of a share either rise or fall, by some amount, over a certain period of time. Manipulating the market requires 1 turn A contact in the financial sector (see above). The higher the level of influence of the contact, the stronger the effect of the manipulation on the stock price, and/or the shorter it takes for the manipulation to manifest itself. Market manipulation also adds a crime to the player's record. (There are a multitude of ways to take care of that, but it is still another "cost" of market manipulations.) The system continuously corrects market manipulations by letting the in-game prices converge towards their real world counterparts at a rate of 2% of the difference between the two per hour. Because of this market correction mechanism, pushing up prices (and screwing down prices) becomes increasingly difficult the higher (lower) the price already is. Whenever food prices reach a certain level, in-game stories are posted about hunger catastrophes happening somewhere far, far away (maybe with links to real world news stories). Whenever a player sells a certain number of shares with a sufficiently high margin, they are mentioned in that day's in-game financial news. Since the number of stock options is very limited, players will inevitably collide in their efforts to manipulate the market in their favor. Hopefully, it will also be a fun side-arena for guilds and covenants to fight each other. Question(s) What do you think of this mechanism given the criteria for peripheral game mechanics that I specified for my game? Do you have any ideas how the mechanic could be improved with regard to these criteria (or otherwise)? Could it be improved to allow for more expressive game-play, or involve an allusion to some other real world madness (like short selling, leveraging, or some other banking magic)? Are there any game-theoretic problems with this mechanic, like maybe certain dominant individual strategies that, collectively, lead to every player profiting and thus eliminating the idea of market manipulation PVP? Also, if you like (or dislike) this question, feel free to participate in the discussion on GDSE meta: "Should we be more lax with regard to SE's question/answer format to make game design questions possible?"

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• SharePoint Saturday Michigan 2010 Recap, Slides, and Photos

  - by Brian Jackett

  This past weekend I attended SharePoint Saturday Michigan (SPSMI) in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  For those unfamiliar, SharePoint Saturday is a community driven event where various speakers gather to present at a FREE conference on all topics related to SharePoint.  This made my third SharePoint Saturday attended and second I’ve spoken at.  I believe today it was announced that about 210 people total attended the event.  I was very happy with the turnout, especially the ratio of male to female attendees.  Typically with computer related conferences the ratio leans towards more males attending, but both Peter Serzo (one of conference organizers) and I both commented to each other that at the end of the day it appeared to be close to 40% women in the crowd.  So here’s my recap of the weekend. Arrival     Friday afternoon I drove up from Columbus, OH to Ann Arbor, MI and arrived around 4pm.  I was attempting to avoid the rush hour traffic and construction backups.  Turned out to be a good idea because other speakers coming up Friday got stuck on a highway which literally closed down in both directions due to a bad accident.  I was talking my friend Sean McDonough through the highway closing and this was the first time I had seen a solid black traffic line on Google Maps.  Most of us are familiar with Green, Yellow, and Red, but this line was black if that tells you how bad it got. Speaker “Dinner”     Fast forward a few hours and it was time for the speaker “dinner.”  I put “dinner” in quotes because with this night alone SPSMI set a new bar for nicest and most extravagant speaker appreciation events for SharePoint Saturday.  By tapping into some very influential contacts, the conference organizers were able to provide a truck limo (yep you heard right) with refreshments, access to an underground suite at the Palace of Auburn Hills, and courtside tickets to see the Detroit Pistons play that night.  Being a Michigan native I have to say that I was absolutely floored by this experience and very thankful to our conference organizers Peter, Sebastian, and Jesse along with Trillium Teamologies. Sessions     The actual conference started Saturday morning at 9am with the keynote by Rob Collie who is the Microsoft program manager for PowerPivot.  The day continued and I attended the following sessions: Mike Watson (@mikewat) – “SharePoint 2010 Fight Night: Devs vs. Admins” Karl Swedeberg (@kswedberg) – “A Walk on the Client Side with jQuery“ [my session] Brian Jackett (@briantjackett) - “Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions” Jeff Willinger (@jwillie) - “Social Computing and Collaboration Inside and Outside the 4 Walls” Paul Schaeflein (@paulschaeflein) – “PowerShell for the SharePoint Developer” My Presentation     I had a great time presenting my session on Deploying SharePoint 2007 Solutions, but it wasn’t without its fair share of technical issues.  As my session was right after lunch I came in to my room 10 mins early to set up my laptop, slides, and demos.  As a quick background note, a few months ago I got an upgraded laptop from my company Sogeti and have been dual booting it between XP (factory installed) and Windows Server 2008 R2 w/ Hyper-V.  As such I had prepared all of my demo virtual machines to run under Hyper-V.  About 3 minutes before my session was scheduled to start though it became apparent that I did not have the correct display drivers to connect Windows Server 2008 R2 to the projector…     As you can imagine this was a slight cause for concern as I was potentially going to be unable to give my presentation.  Luckily for me I usually prepare for such unforeseen issues and had my presentation and some spare VMs that would run on XP on my external hard drive.  Knowing this I rebooted my machine into XP and began my presentation without slides until about 5 mins into the session when everything was up and running on XP.  Despite this being the first time I gave this presentation I have to say it was one of my favorites I’ve given so far.  The audience was very engaged in the session and I received some great, positive feedback afterwards.  Thanks to all who attended my session, I appreciate it very much. Link to Presentation Files     For those of you who attended my session and would like my slides or demo PowerShell scripts they can be found on my SkyDrive at the link below.  Also, if you have a few minutes and wouldn’t mind rating my session I have this session posted on SpeakerRate.  As speakers we always appreciate any and all feedback attendees offer, so thank you if you are able to provide any. SkyDrive folder with session files Rate my SharePoint 2007 Solutions session   Picture Albums     For everyone else, here are my pictures from the weekend.  The first link is to my FaceBook album which will have tagging (recommend this one.)  The second is to my Live album if you care for higher resolution images. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2154482&id=21905041&l=a3fb72ee8c View Full Album Conclusion     A big thank you goes out to all of the organizers, speakers, sponsors, and attendees of SPSMI.  As I’ve said so many times, without each and every one of you these events wouldn’t be possible.  I thoroughly enjoyed this trip back to my home state and presenting a new session.  For those interested in my upcoming schedule I will be giving two sessions on PowerShell at SharePoint Saturday Charlotte in April, helping plan Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition in May, and I’m submitting sessions to Day of .Net Ann Arbor in May as well.  Beyond that I haven’t planned out any travels.  Thanks for reading my recap.  Look forward to more technical posts now that I have a short break in conferences.         -Frog Out   links: Michigan image

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• Configuring Expert Search in Communicator 14 and SharePoint 2010

  Communicator 14 provides functionality to be able to search for contacts not just by name, but by skill.  For example a customer service agent at an airline can search for other agents with Travel Advisory experience by typing the search criteria into the Communicator search box and performing a search by keyword.  The search results will return users who have specified that skill in their profile on their SharePoint My Site.  This is actually pretty easy to configure, Ill show you how. Create Search and People Search Results Pages in SharePoint Communicator 14 Expert Search works by using the SharePoint 2010 Search Service to search SharePoint for user profiles with matching keywords.  This requires that you have an Enterprise Search site in your site collection which includes the search service and also the People Results pages.  The easiest way to do this is to create a Search Center site in your site collection. Note: I get an error when trying to create an Enterprise Search site in a Team Site in the SharePoint 2010 RTM bits, so I created it as a site collection that is evident in the URLs you see below. In the screenshots below, you can see that the URL of the SharePoint search service in the Search site collection is http://sps2010/sites/search/_vti_bin/search.asmx, and the URL of the People Search Results page is http://sps2010/sites/Search/Pages/peopleresults.aspx. Point Communications Server 14 to Search and People Search Results Pages For Communicator 14 to be able to perform an Expert Search, you need to configure Communications Server 14 to point to the Search Service and People Search Results page URLs. From a server with the OCS Core bits installed, fire up the Communications Server Management Shell and type Get-CsClientPolicy. Scroll down to the bottom of the output, were interested in setting the values of: SPSearchInternalURL SPSearchExternalURL SPSearchCenterInternalURL SPSearchCenterExternalURL SPSearchInternalURL and SPSearchExternalURL correspond to the internal and external URLs of the SharePoint search service in the Search site collection, while SPSearchCenterInternalURL and SPSearchCenterExternalURL correspond to the internal and external URLs of the people search results pages. Well use the Communications Server Management Shell to set the values of these CS policy properties. For simplicity, Im only going to set the internal URLs here. Set-CsClientPolicy SPSearchInternalURL http://sps2010/sites/search/_vti_bin/search.asmx     -SPSearchCenterInternalURL http://sps2010/sites/Search/Pages/peopleresults.aspx Log out and back into Communicator.  You can verify that these settings were applied by running the Get-CsClientPolicy cmdlet again from the Communications Server Management Shell. However, theres another super-secret ninja trick to verify that the settings were applied: Find the Communicator icon in the Windows System Tray Hold down the Ctrl button Click (left) the Communicator icon in the Windows System Tray do not depress the Ctrl button You should now see an extra menu item called Configuration Information, click it. Scroll down and locate the Expert Search URL and SharePoint Search Center URL keys and verify that their values correspond to those you set using the Set-CsClientPolicy PowerShell cmdlet. Configure a Sharepoint User Profile Import Im not going to provide detailed steps here except to say that you need to configure the SharePoint 2010 User Profile  Service Application to import user account details from Active Directory on a scheduled basis. This is a critical step because there are several user profile properties e.g. SipAddress that are only populated by a user profile import.  When performing an Expert Search, Communicator can only render results for users who have a SipAddress specified. Add Skills to User Profiles Navigate to your My Site and click on My Profile.  This page allows you to set many contact details that are searchable in SharePoint.  Were particularly interested in the Ask Me About property of a users profile.  Expert Search searches against this property to find users with matching skills. Configure a SharePoint Search Crawl Ensure that you have a scheduled job to crawl your Local SharePoint Sites content source.  Depending on how you have this configured, it will also crawl the My Site site collection and add user properties such as Ask Me About to the search index. Thats It! SharePoint 2010 provides new social and collaboration features to help users find other users with similar skills or interests. Expert Search extends this functionality directly into Microsoft Communicator 14, allowing you to interact with the users directly from the search results. 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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• doubleTwist is an iTunes Alternative that Supports Several Devices

  - by Mysticgeek

  There are a lot of iTunes users out there, but unfortunately you can’t use it with all of your portable devices. Today we take a look at doubleTwist, which allows you to sync your media with a multitude of portable devices and easily share it as well. Note: You can run doubleTwist on Windows or Mac, and here we take a look at the Windows version. Install & Setup doubleTwist Download and install doubleTwist using the defaults in the wizard… Installation takes several moments and you’ll see the progress while it finishes up. After installation is complete, sign up for an account if you don’t already have one. If you do have an account you can login right away. Enter in your username, email address, and password then click Sign Up.   You’ll get an confirmation email and need to activate the account before you can sign in. Once you’re all signed up, launch doubleTwist and you’ll be ready to start using it. doubleTwist Music The default music store is Amazon MP3 store which might appeal to those of you who are tired of the iTunes music store. A lot of times the music is cheaper and available at higher bit rates. You can start searching for music in the Amazon Music Store and previewing songs. To purchase anything though you will need to sign into your Amazon account.   Under Playlists it allows you to import your playlists from iTunes and Windows Media Player, which is a handy feature if you don’t want to set them up again. Of course you can play your songs through the music player on your desktop. Devices One of the coolest things about doubleTwist is that it supports a lot of different portable media devices including iPod, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android, PSP, Smartphones, and much more. Unfortunately for Zune users…there isn’t any support for the Zune of Zune HD yet. Here we have a Creative Zen attached and can sync songs, pictures, and podcasts. An HTC-S620 Smartphone running Windows Mobile… Even a simple USB drive will be recognized and you can transfer your media to it as well.   Podcasts Finding your favorite audio and video podcasts is easy with the search feature. You can easily manage and subscribe to podcasts in the subscriptions section.   You can watch the video podcasts directly in doubleTwist. Sharing Media Also you can share digital media with your friends or add it to Flickr and YouTube. You can send any pictures, videos, or music in your library to other people by dragging it over. You can email users individually… Or access contacts from your Gmail and Yahoo accounts. There is a limit to how much you can send of video podcasts… only the first 10 minutes. The person you send it to will get a link in their email that points to your My Feed page on the doubleTwist site.   There they can access the media you sent…in this example it’s a video podcast but you can share any media. Other Features Under My Profile you can change your avatar and personal information.   In Preferences you can choose where media is stored, its startup actions, podcast subscriptions, and manage device syncing. Conclusion It’s still in beta stage so expect some bugs, but overall doubleTwist is a solid media player that is easy to use with a clean interface. It’s simple and doesn’t try to do too much so is fairly easy on system resources. The main annoyance is it tries to catalog all of your media out of the box. Which may be alright for some users with smaller media collections, but very irritating to advanced users with large collections. Also there is currently no support for the Zune, but according to their forums, it’s on the way. At the time of this writing it’s in public beta and can be downloaded for XP, Vista, Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit), and Mac OSX. If you’re looking for an iTunes alternative that works with several different portable devices, you might want to give DoubleTwist a try. Download DoubleTwist Public Beta See If Your Media Device is Supported by doubleTwist Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips MusicBee is a Fast and Powerful Music ManagerAvoid the Apple QuickTime Bloat with QT LiteBeginner Geek: Set Default Programs in Windows 7 and VistaBeginner Geeks: OpenOffice is a Free Cross Platform Alternative to MS OfficeManage Devices the Easy Way with Device Stage 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more

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