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• The busy developers guide to the Kinect SDK Beta

  - by mbcrump

  The Kinect is awesome. From day one, I’ve said this thing has got potential. After playing with several open-source Kinect projects, I am please to announce that Microsoft has released the official SDK beta on 6/16/2011. I’ve created this quick start guide to get you up to speed in no time flat. Let’s begin: What is it? The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a starter kit for applications developers that includes APIs, sample code, and drivers. This SDK enables the academic research and enthusiast communities to create rich experiences by using Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect sensor technology on computers running Windows 7. (defined by Microsoft) Links worth checking out: Download Kinect for Windows SDK beta – You can either download a 32 or 64 bit SDK depending on your OS. Readme for Kinect for Windows SDK Beta from Microsoft Research  Programming Guide: Getting Started with the Kinect for Windows SDK Beta Code Walkthroughs of the samples that ship with the Kinect for Windows SDK beta (Found in \Samples Folder) Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit – Lots of extension methods and controls for WPF and WinForms. Kinect Mouse Cursor – Use your hands to control things like a mouse created by Brian Peek. Kinect Paint – Basically MS Paint but use your hands! Kinect for Windows SDK Quickstarts Installing and Using the Kinect Sensor Getting it installed: After downloading the Kinect SDK Beta, double click the installer to get the ball rolling. Hit the next button a few times and it should complete installing. Once you have everything installed then simply plug in your Kinect device into the USB Port on your computer and hopefully you will get the following screen: Once installed, you are going to want to check out the following folders: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Research KinectSDK – This contains the actual Kinect Sample Executables along with the documentation as a CHM file. Also check out the C:\Users\Public\Documents\Microsoft Research KinectSDK Samples directory: The main thing to note here is that these folders contain the source code to the applications where you can compile/build them yourself. Audio NUI DEMO Time Let’s get started with some demos. Navigate to the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Research KinectSDK folder and double click on ShapeGame.exe. Next up is SkeletalViewer.exe (image taken from http://www.i-programmer.info/news/91-hardware/2619-microsoft-launch-kinect-sdk-beta.html as I could not get a good image using SnagIt) At this point, you will have to download Kinect Mouse Cursor – This is really cool because you can use your hands to control the mouse cursor. I actually used this to resize itself. Last up is Kinect Paint – This is very cool, just make sure you read the instructions! MS Paint on steroids! A few tips for getting started building Kinect Applications. It appears WPF is the way to go with building Kinect Applications. You must also use a version of Visual Studio 2010.  Your going to need to reference Microsoft.Research.Kinect.dll when building a Kinect Application. Right click on References and then goto Browse and navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Research KinectSDK and select Microsoft.Research.Kinect.dll. You are going to want to make sure your project has the Platform target set to x86. The Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit really makes things easier with extension methods and controls. Just note that this is for WinForms or WPF. Conclusion It looks like we have a lot of fun in store with the Kinect SDK. I’m very excited about the release and have already been thinking about all the applications that I can begin building. It seems that development will be easier now that we have an official SDK and the great work from Coding4Fun. Please subscribe to my blog or follow me on twitter for more information about Kinect, Silverlight and other great technology.  Subscribe to my feed

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• How to future-proof my touch-enabled web application?

  - by Rice Flour Cookies

  I recently went out and purchased a touch-screen monitor with the intention of learning how to program touch-enabled web applications. I had reviewed the MDN documentation about touch events, as well as the W3C specification. To get started, I wrote a very short test page with two event handlers: one for the mousedown event and one for the touchstart event. I fired up the web page in IE and touched the document and found that only the mousedown event fired. I saw the same behavior with Firefox, only to find out later that Firefox can be set to enable the touchstart event using about:config. When touch events are enabled, the touchstart event fires, but not mousedown. Chrome was even stranger: it fired both events when I touched the document: touchstart and mousedown, in that order. Only on my Android phone does it appear to be the case that only the touchstart event fires when I touch the document. I did a a Google search and ended up on two interesting pages. First, I found the page on CanIUse for touch events: http://caniuse.com/#feat=touch Can I Use clearly indicates that IE does not support touch events as of this writing, and Firefox only supports touch events if they are manually enabled. Furthermore, all four browsers I mentioned treat the touch in a completely different way. It boils down to this: IE: simulated mouse click Firefox with touch disabled: simulated mouse click Firefox with touch enabled: touch event Chrome: touch event and simulated mouse click Android: touch event What is more frustrating is that Google also found a Microsoft page called RethinkIE. RethinkIE brags about touch support in IE; as a matter of fact, one of their slogans is "Touch the Web". It links to a number of touch-based application. I followed some of these links, and as best I can tell, it's just like CanIUse described; no proper touch support; just simulated mouse clicks. The MDN (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Touch) and W3C (http://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/) documentation describe a far richer interface; an interface that doesn't just simulate mouse clicks, but keeps track of multiple touches at once, the contact area, rotation, and force of each touch, and unique identifiers for each touch so that they can be tracked individually. I don't see how simulated mouse clicks can ever touch the above described functionality, which, once again, is part of the W3C specification, although it is listed as "non-normative", meaning that a browser can claim to be standards-compliant without implementing it. (Why bother making it part of the standard, then?) What motivated my research is that I've written an HTML5 application that doesn't work on Android because Android doesn't fire mouse events. I'm now afraid to try to implement touch for my application because the browsers all behave so differently. I imagine that at some time in the future, the browsers might start handling touch similarly, but how can I tell how they might be handled in the future short of writing code to handle the behavior of each individual browser? Is it possible to write code today that will work with touch-enabled browsers for years to come? If so, how?

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• Page output caching for dynamic web applications

  - by Mike Ellis

  I am currently working on a web application where the user steps (forward or back) through a series of pages with "Next" and "Previous" buttons, entering data until they reach a page with the "Finish" button. Until finished, all data is stored in Session state, then sent to the mainframe database via web services at the end of the process. Some of the pages display data from previous pages in order to collect additional information. These pages can never be cached because they are different for every user. For pages that don't display this dynamic data, they can be cached, but only the first time they load. After that, the data that was previously entered needs to be displayed. This requires Page_Load to fire, which means the page can't be cached at that point. A couple of weeks ago, I knew almost nothing about implementing page caching. Now I still don't know much, but I know a little bit, and here is the solution that I developed with the help of others on my team and a lot of reading and trial-and-error. We have a base page class defined from which all pages inherit. In this class I have defined a method that sets the caching settings programmatically. For pages that can be cached, they call this base page method in their Page_Load event within a if(!IsPostBack) block, which ensures that only the page itself gets cached, not the data on the page. if(!IsPostBack) {     ...     SetCacheSettings();     ... } protected void SetCacheSettings() {     Response.Cache.AddValidationCallback(new HttpCacheValidateHandler(Validate), null);     Response.Cache.SetExpires(DateTime.Now.AddHours(1));     Response.Cache.SetSlidingExpiration(true);     Response.Cache.SetValidUntilExpires(true);     Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.ServerAndNoCache); } The AddValidationCallback sets up an HttpCacheValidateHandler method called Validate which runs logic when a cached page is requested. The Validate method signature is standard for this method type. public static void Validate(HttpContext context, Object data, ref HttpValidationStatus status) {     string visited = context.Request.QueryString["v"];     if (visited != null && "1".Equals(visited))     {         status = HttpValidationStatus.IgnoreThisRequest; //force a page load     }     else     {         status = HttpValidationStatus.Valid; //load from cache     } } I am using the HttpValidationStatus values IgnoreThisRequest or Valid which forces the Page_Load event method to run or allows the page to load from cache, respectively. Which one is set depends on the value in the querystring. The value in the querystring is set up on each page in the "Next" and "Previous" button click event methods based on whether the page that the button click is taking the user to has any data on it or not. bool hasData = HasPageBeenVisited(url); if (hasData) {     url += VISITED; } Response.Redirect(url); The HasPageBeenVisited method determines whether the destination page has any data on it by checking one of its required data fields. (I won't include it here because it is very system-dependent.) VISITED is a string constant containing "?v=1" and gets appended to the url if the destination page has been visited. The reason this logic is within the "Next" and "Previous" button click event methods is because 1) the Validate method is static which doesn't allow it to access non-static data such as the data fields for a particular page, and 2) at the time at which the Validate method runs, either the data has not yet been deserialized from Session state or is not available (different AppDomain?) because anytime I accessed the Session state information from the Validate method, it was always empty.

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• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part IV

  - by Tara Kizer

  This is the final blog for my PASS Summit 2011 series.  Well okay, a mini-series, I guess. On the last day of the conference, I attended Keith Elmore’ and Boris Baryshnikov’s (both from Microsoft) “Introducing the Microsoft SQL Server Code Named “Denali” Performance Dashboard Reports, Jeremiah Peschka’s (blog|twitter) “Rewrite your T-SQL for Great Good!”, and Kimberly Tripp’s (blog|twitter) “Isolated Disasters in VLDBs”. Keith and Boris talked about the lifecycle of a session, figuring out the running time and the waiting time.  They pointed out the transient nature of the reports.  You could be drilling into it to uncover a problem, but the session may have ended by the time you’ve drilled all of the way down.  Also, the reports are for troubleshooting live problems and not historical ones.  You can use Management Data Warehouse for historical troubleshooting.  The reports provide similar benefits to the Activity Monitor, however Activity Monitor doesn’t provide context sensitive drill through. One thing I learned in Keith’s and Boris’ session was that the buffer cache hit ratio should really never be below 87% due to the read-ahead mechanism in SQL Server.  When a page is read, it will read the entire extent.  So for every page read, you get 7 more read.  If you need any of those 7 extra pages, well they are already in cache.  I had a lot of fun in Jeremiah’s session about refactoring code plus I learned a lot.  His slides were visually presented in a fun way, which just made for a more upbeat presentation.  Jeremiah says that before you start refactoring, you should look at your system.  Investigate missing or too many indexes, out-of-date statistics, and other areas that could be leading to your code running slow.  He talked about code standards.  He suggested using common abbreviations for aliases instead of one-letter aliases.  I’m a big offender of one-letter aliases, but he makes a good point.  He said that join order does not matter to the optimizer, but it does matter to those who have to read your code.  Now let’s get into refactoring! Eliminate useless things – useless/unneeded joins and columns.  If you don’t need it, get rid of it! Instead of using DISTINCT/JOIN, replace with EXISTS Simplify your conditions; use UNION or better yet UNION ALL instead of OR to avoid a scan and use indexes for each union query Branching logic – instead of IF this, IF that, and on and on…use dynamic SQL (sp_executesql, please!) or use a parameterized query in the application Correlated subqueries – YUCK! Replace with a join Eliminate repeated patterns Last, but certainly not least, was Kimberly’s session.  Kimberly is my favorite speaker.  I attended her two-day pre-conference seminar at PASS Summit 2005 as well as a SQL Immersion Event last December.  Did I mention she’s my favorite speaker?  Okay, enough of that. Kimberly’s session was packed with demos.  I had seen some of it in the SQL Immersion Event, but it was very nice to get a refresher on these, especially since I’ve got a VLDB with some growing pains.  One key takeaway from her session is the idea to use a log shipping solution with a load delay, such as 6, 8, or 24 hours behind the primary.  In the case of say an accidentally dropped table in a VLDB, we could retrieve it from the secondary database rather than waiting an eternity for a restore to complete.  Kimberly let us know that in SQL Server 2012 (it finally has a name!), online rebuilds are supported even if there are LOB columns in your table.  This will simplify custom code that intelligently figures out if an online rebuild is possible. There was actually one last time slot for sessions that day, but I had an airplane to catch and my kids to see!

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• Beginner Geek: Scan Files for Viruses Before Using Them

  - by Mysticgeek

  To help avoid getting your computer infected by malicious software, it’s a good idea to scan files before executing them. Today we take a look at a couple of options that will let you scan files easily from your desktop. Scan File with Your Antivirus Software Most Antivirus software will put an option in the context menu so you can scan individual files. After downloading a file or email attachment, simply right-click the file and select the option to scan with your Antivirus software. If you want to scan more than one at a time, hold down the Ctrl key while you clicking each file you want to scan. Then right-click and select to scan with your Antivirus software. Here is our favorite Antivirus app, Microsoft Security Essentials scanning a couple of files. If a virus is found, your Antivirus app will delete it or put it in Quarantine so it cannot infect your system. Using VirusTotal Uploader To be very thorough and want a second opinion (actually 41), then you might want to check out the VirusTotal Uploader. This handy app will scan your files with 41 different Antivirus apps online. After installing VirusTotal Uploader, right-click the file, go to Send To, then VirusTotal. Alternately you can launch VirusTotal Uploader and Get and upload the file. It will send the file to VirusTotal.com and scan it with 41 different Antivirus apps and show you the results.   If you don’t want to install the Uploader, you can go to the VirusTotal site and upload a file from there to scan. We’ve noticed that occasionally there will be a false positive detected on files we know are clean. Sometimes the definition database of an Anti-malware app isn’t current, or an obscure Antivirus App will find something questionable. If that is the case, use your best judgment when viewing the results. Conclusion Most Antivirus apps today have real-time scanning and should be able to detect possible infections before you’re able to execute them. However, if they don’t or when in doubt, following these tips can save you a lot of headaches in the long run. If you use a lot of different flash drives throughout the day, check out our article on how to scan a thumb drive for viruses from the AutoPlay Dialog. Download Microsoft Security Essentials Download VirusTotal Uploader VirusTotal Website Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Scan Files for Viruses Before You Download With Dr.WebMake Microsoft Security Essentials Scan Faster by Excluding Certain File TypesBeginner Geek: Delete User Accounts in Windows 7Scan Your Thumb Drive for Viruses from the AutoPlay DialogSecure Computing: Free Anti-Virus Protection With AVG Free Edition TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7 Map the Stars with Stellarium Use ILovePDF To Split and Merge PDF Files TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox

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• My Take on Hadoop World 2011

  - by Jean-Pierre Dijcks

  I’m sure some of you have read pieces about Hadoop World and I did see some headlines which were somewhat, shall we say, interesting? I thought the keynote by Larry Feinsmith of JP Morgan Chase & Co was one of the highlights of the conference for me. The reason was very simple, he addressed some real use cases outside of internet and ad platforms. The following are my notes, since the keynote was recorded I presume you can go and look at Hadoopworld.com at some point… On the use cases that were mentioned: ETL – how can I do complex data transformation at scale Doing Basel III liquidity analysis Private banking – transaction filtering to feed [relational] data marts Common Data Platform – a place to keep data that is (or will be) valuable some day, to someone, somewhere 360 Degree view of customers – become pro-active and look at events across lines of business. For example make sure the mortgage folks know about direct deposits being stopped into an account and ensure the bank is pro-active to service the customer Treasury and Security – Global Payment Hub [I think this is really consolidation of data to cross reference activity across business and geographies] Data Mining Bypass data engineering [I interpret this as running a lot of a large data set rather than on samples] Fraud prevention – work on event triggers, say a number of failed log-ins to the website. When they occur grab web logs, firewall logs and rules and start to figure out who is trying to log in. Is this me, who forget his password, or is it someone in some other country trying to guess passwords Trade quality analysis – do a batch analysis or all trades done and run them through an analysis or comparison pipeline One of the key requests – if you can say it like that – was for vendors and entrepreneurs to make sure that new tools work with existing tools. JPMC has a large footprint of BI Tools and Big Data reporting and tools should work with those tools, rather than be separate. Security and Entitlement – how to protect data within a large cluster from unwanted snooping was another topic that came up. I thought his Elephant ears graph was interesting (couldn’t actually read the points on it, but the concept certainly made some sense) and it was interesting – when asked to show hands – how the audience did not (!) think that RDBMS and Hadoop technology would overlap completely within a few years. Another interesting session was the session from Disney discussing how Disney is building a DaaS (Data as a Service) platform and how Hadoop processing capabilities are mixed with Database technologies. I thought this one of the best sessions I have seen in a long time. It discussed real use case, where problems existed, how they were solved and how Disney planned some of it. The planning focused on three things/phases: Determine the Strategy – Design a platform and evangelize this within the organization Focus on the people – Hire key people, grow and train the staff (and do not overload what you have with new things on top of their day-to-day job), leverage a partner with experience Work on Execution of the strategy – Implement the platform Hadoop next to the other technologies and work toward the DaaS platform This kind of fitted with some of the Linked-In comments, best summarized in “Think Platform – Think Hadoop”. In other words [my interpretation], step back and engineer a platform (like DaaS in the Disney example), then layer the rest of the solutions on top of this platform. One general observation, I got the impression that we have knowledge gaps left and right. On the one hand are people looking for more information and details on the Hadoop tools and languages. On the other I got the impression that the capabilities of today’s relational databases are underestimated. Mostly in terms of data volumes and parallel processing capabilities or things like commodity hardware scale-out models. All in all I liked this conference, it was great to chat with a wide range of people on Oracle big data, on big data, on use cases and all sorts of other stuff. Just hope they get a set of bigger rooms next time… and yes, I hope I’m going to be back next year!

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• Increasing touch surface (#wp7dev)

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  When you design for Windows Phone 7 (or for any touch device, for that matter, and most especially small screens), you need to be very careful to give enough surface to your users’ fingers. It is easy to miss a touch on such small screens, and that can be horrifyingly frustrating. This is especially true when people are on the move, and trying to hit the control while walking and holding their device in one hand, or when the device is mounted in a car and vibrating with the engine. In my experience, a touch surface should be ideally minimum 60x60 pixels to be easy to activate on the Windows Phone 7 screen (which is, as we know, 800 pixels x 480 pixels). Ideally, I try to make my touch surfaces 80x80 pixels minimum. This causes a few design challenges of course. Using transparent backgrounds However, one thing is helping us tremendously: some surfaces can be made transparent, and yet react to touch. The secret is the following: If you have a panel that has a Null background (i.e. the Background is not set at all), then the empty surface does not react to touch. If however the Background is set to the Transparent color (or any color where the Alpha channel is set to 0), then it will react to touch. Setting a transparent background is easy. For example: <Grid Background="#00000000"> </Grid> or <Grid Background="Transparent"> </Grid> In C#: var grid = new Grid { Background = new SolidColorBrush( Colors.Transparent) }; Using negative margins Having a transparent background reactive to touch is a good start, but in addition, you must make sure that the surface is big enough for my clumsy fingers. One way to achieve that is to increase the transparent, touch-reactive surface, and reposition the element using negative margins. For example, consider the following UI. I changed the transparent background of the HyperlinkButton to Red, in order to visualize the touch surface. In this figure, the Settings HyperlinkButton is 105 pixels x 31 pixels. This is wide enough, but really small in height and easy to miss. To improve this, we can use negative margins, for instance: <HyperlinkButton Content="Settings" HorizontalAlignment="Right" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Height="60" Margin="0,0,0,-15" /> Notice the usage of negative bottom margin to bring the HyperlinkButton back at the bottom of the main Grid’s first row, where it belongs. And the result is: Notice how the touch surface is much bigger than before. This makes the HyperlinkButton easier to reach, and improves the user experience. With the background set back to normal, the UI looks exactly the same, as it should: In summary: Remember to maximize the touch surface for your controls. Plan your design in consequence by reserving enough room around each control to allow their hit surface to be expanded as shown in this article. Do not cram too many controls in one page. If REALLY needed, use an additional page (or even better: use a Pivot control with multiple pivot items) for the controls that don’t fit on the first one. This should ensure a smoother user experience and improved touch behavior. Happy coding! Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Would using a self-signed SSL certificate be appropriate in this scenario?

  - by Kevin Y

  Now I realize this topic has been discussed in a few questions before (specifically this one), but I'm still a little confused about the implications of using a self-signed certificate, and how I would be affected by doing so in this case. After reading various sources, I'm still a little confused about the exact details of using one. The biggest problem with a self-signed certificate, is a man-in-the-middle attack. Even if you are 100% sure that you are on the correct website and you completely trust the site (your email server for example), you could have someone intercept the connection and present you with their own self-signed certificate. You would think that you are using a secure connection with your email server but you are really using a secure connection to an attacker's email server. – SSL Shopper So somebody could switch out my self-signed certificate with their own, and I wouldn't be able to detect it? The way this site phrases it, it makes it sound worse to install a self-signed certificate than to leave your site without a certificate at all. Self-signed certificates cannot (by nature) be revoked, which may allow an attacker who has already gained access to monitor and inject data into a connection to spoof an identity if a private key has been compromised. CAs on the other hand have the ability to revoke a compromised certificate if alerted, which prevents its further use. - Wikipedia Does this mean that the only way someone could switch out their own certificate for mine is for them to find out the private key? I suppose this is more secure, but I'm still slightly confused about what exactly results from using a self-signed certificate. Is the only issue that obnoxious security warning that pops up in your browser when directed to the site, or is there more to it? Now in my case, I want to add the an SSL certificate to a minuscule Wordpress blog I run that I don't expect anyone else will read anytime soon; I mainly started it to get into the habit of blogging, and to learn more about the process of administrating a site (ex. what to do in situations like this one). Whenever I go to the login page and there's an HTTP:// instead of HTTPS://, I cringe a little. Submitting my password feels like I'm shouting my password out loud with hundreds of people listening. I don't plan on adding any other authors to the site, so I am the only person who would ever need to login. This isn't a site I'm trying to get page views from, or one that handles e-commerce or any sensitive info like that, simply my username and password to login with. One of the concerns (that I've gathered so far) of a self-signed certificate is that non-technical users might be scared by the security warning, but this would not be an issue in my case. TL;DR: If scaring visitors away isn't a concern (which it isn't in my case), is it acceptable to use a self-signed certificate for the purpose of encrypting my Wordpress blog's password, or are there added security issues I should be aware of? Essentially, I'm wondering whether adding a self-signed certificate will be safer than leaving my login page the way it is now, or if it adds the potential for more security breaches than leaving it sans-SSL.

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• Remove Ubuntu or XP from the Windows 7 Boot Menu

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  If you’ve ever used a dual-boot system and then removed one of the operating systems, it can still show up in Windows 7’s boot menu. We’ll show you how to get rid of old entries and speed up the boot process. To edit the boot menu, we will use a program called bcdedit that’s included with Windows 7. There are some third-party graphical applications that will edit the menu, but we prefer to use built-in applications when we can. First, we need to open a command prompt with Administrator privileges. Open the start menu and type cmd into the search box. Right click on the cmd program that shows up, and select Run as administrator. Alternatively, if you’ve disabled the search box, you can find the command prompt in All Programs > Accessories. In the command prompt, type in bcdedit and press enter. A list of the boot menu entries will appear. Find the entry that you would like to delete – in our case, this is the last one, with the description of “Ubuntu”. What we need is the long sequence of characters marked as the identifier. Rather than type it out, we will copy it to be pasted later. Right-click somewhere in the command prompt window and select Mark. By clicking the left mouse button and dragging over the appropriate text, select the identifier for the entry you want to delete, including the left and right curly braces on either end. Press the Enter button. This will copy the text to the clipboard. In the command prompt, type in: bcdedit /delete and then right-click somewhere in the command prompt window and select Paste. Press Enter to input the now completed command. The boot menu entry will now be deleted. Type in bcdedit again to confirm that the offending entry is now gone from the list. If you reboot your machine now, you will notice that the boot menu does not even come up, because there is only one entry in the list (unless you had more than two entries to begin with). You’ve shaved a few seconds off of the boot process! Not to mention the added effort of pressing the enter button. There’s a lot more that you can do with bcdedit, like change the description of boot menu entries, create new entries, and much more. For a list of what you can do with bcdedit, type the following into the Command Window. bcdedit /help While there are third-party GUI solutions for accomplishing the same thing, using this method will save you time by not having to go through the extra steps of installing an extra program. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reinstall Ubuntu Grub Bootloader After Windows Wipes it OutClean Up Ubuntu Grub Boot Menu After UpgradesHow To Switch to Console Mode for Ubuntu VMware GuestSet Windows as Default OS when Dual Booting UbuntuChange the GRUB Menu Timeout on Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3

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• Creating a branch for every Sprint

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  There are a lot of developers using version control these days, but a feature of version control called branching is very poorly understood and remains unused by most developers in favour of Labels. Most developers think that branching is hard and complicated. Its not! What is hard and complicated is a bad branching strategy. Just like a bad software architecture a bad branch architecture, or one that is not adhered to can prove fatal to a project. We I was at Aggreko we had a fairly successful Feature branching strategy (although the developers hated it) that meant that we could have multiple feature teams working at the same time without impacting each other. Now, this had to be carefully orchestrated as it was a Business Intelligence team and many of the BI artefacts do not lend themselves to merging. Today at SSW I am working on a Scrum team delivering a product that will be used by many hundreds of developers. SSW SQL Deploy takes much of the pain out of upgrading production databases when you are not using the Database projects in Visual Studio. With Scrum each Scrum Team works for a fixed period of time on a single sprint. You can have one or more Scrum Teams involved in delivering a product, but all the work must be merged and tested, ready to be shown to the Product Owner at the the Sprint Review meeting at the end of the current Sprint. So, what does this mean for a branching strategy? We have been using a “Main” (sometimes called “Trunk”) line and doing a branch for each sprint. It’s like Feature Branching, but with only ONE feature in operation at any one time, so no conflicts Figure: DEV folder containing the Development branches.   I know that some folks advocate applying a Label at the start of each Sprint and then rolling back if you need to, but I have always preferred the security of a branch. Like: being able to create a release from Main that has Sprint3 code even while Sprint4 is being worked on. being sure I can always create a stable build on request. Being able to guarantee a version (labels are not auditable) Be able to abandon the sprint without having to delete the code (rare I know, but would be a mess if it happened) Being able to see the flow of change sets through to a safe release It helps you find invalid dependencies when merging to Main as there may be some file that is in everyone’s Sprint branch, but never got checked in. (We had this at the merge of Sprint2) If you are always operating in this way as a standard it makes it easier to then add more scrum teams in the future. Muscle memory of this way of working. Don’t Like: Additional DB space for the branches Baseless merging between sprint branches when changes are directly ported Note: I do not think we will ever attempt this! Maybe a bit tougher to see the history between sprint branches since the changes go up through Main and down to another sprint branch Note: What you would have to do is see which Sprint the changes were made in and then check the history he same file in that Sprint. A little bit of added complexity that you would have to do anyway with multiple teams. Over time, you can end up with a lot of old unused sprint branches. Perhaps destroy with /keephistory can help in this case. Note: We ALWAYS delete the Sprint branch after it has been merged into Main. That is the theory anyway, and as you can see from the images Sprint2 has already been deleted. Why take the chance of having a problem rolling back or wanting to keep some of the code, when you can just abandon a branch and start a new one? It just seems easier and less painful to use a branch to me! What do you think?   Technorati Tags: TFS,TFS2010,Software Development,ALM,Branching

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• Installing Eclipse for OSB Development

  - by James Taylor

  OSB provides 2 methods for OSB development, the OSB console, and Eclipse. This post deals with a typical development environment with OSB installed on a remote server and the developer requiring an IDE on their PC for development. As at 11.1.1.4 Eclipse is only IDE supported for OSB development. We are hoping OSB will support JDeveloper in the future. To get the download for Eclipse use the download WebLogic Server with the Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, e.g. wls1034_oepe111161_win32.exe.To ensure the Eclipse version is compatible with your OSB version I recommend using the Eclipse that comes with the supported WLS server, e.g. OSB 11.1.1.4 you would install WLS 10.3.4+oepe.The install is a 2 step process, install the base Eclipse, then install the OSB plugins. In this example I'm using the 11.1.1.4 install for windows, your versions may differ. You need to download 2 programs, WebLogic Server with the oepe plugin for your OS, and the Oracle Service Bus which is generally generic. Place these files in a directory of your choice. Start the executable I create a new Oracle Home for this installation as it don't want to impact on my JDeveloper install or any other Oracle products installed on my machine. Ignore the support / email notifications Choose a custom install as we only want to install the minimum for Eclipse. If you really want you can do a typical and install everything. Deselect all products then select the Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. This will select the minimum prerequisites required for install. As I'm only going to use this home for OSB Development I deselect the JRockit JVM. Accept the locations for the installs. If running on a Windows environment you will be asked to start a Node Manger service. This is optional. I have chosen to ignore. Select the user permissions you require, I have set to default. Do a last check to see if the values are correct and continue to install. The install should start. The install should complete successfully. I chose not to run the Quick Start. Extract the OSB download to a location of your choice and double click on the setup.exe. You may be asked to supply a correct java location. Point this to the java installed in your OS. I'm running Windows 7 so I used the 64bit version. Skip the software updates. Set the OSB home to the location of the WLS home installed above Choose a custom install as all we want to install is the OSB Eclipse Plugins. Select OSB IDE. For the rest of the install screens accept the defaults. Start the install There is no need to configure a WLS domain if you only intend to deploy to the remote server. If you need to do this there are other sites how to configure via the configuration wizard. Start Eclipse to make sure the OSB Plugin has been created. In the top right drop down you should see OSB as an option. Connecting to the remote server, select the Server Tab at the bottom Right-click in that frame and select Server. Chose the remote server version and the hostname Provide and name for your server if necessary, and accept the defaults Enter connection details for the remote server Click on the Remote server and it should validate stating its status.Now you ready to develop, Happy developing!

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• Access Music from Amie Street in Boxee

  - by Mysticgeek

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

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• Exposed: Fake Social Marketing

  - by Mike Stiles

  Brands and marketers who want to build their social popularity on a foundation of lies are starting to face more of an uphill climb. Fake social is starting to get exposed, and there are a lot of emperors getting caught without any clothes. Facebook is getting ready to do a purge of “Likes” on Pages that were a result of bots, fake accounts, and even real users who were duped or accidentally Liked a Page. Most of those accidental Likes occur on mobile, where it’s easy for large fingers to hit the wrong space. Depending on the degree to which your Page has been the subject of such activity, you may see your number of Likes go down. But don’t sweat it, that’s a good thing. The social world has turned the corner and assessed the value of a Like. And the verdict is that a Like is valuable as an opportunity to build a real relationship with a real customer. Its value pales immensely compared to a user who’s actually engaged with the brand. Those fake Likes aren’t doing you any good. Huge numbers may once have impressed, but it’s not fooling anybody anymore. Facebook’s selling point to marketers is the ability to use a brand’s fans to reach friends of those fans. Consequently, there has to be validity and legitimacy to a fan count. Speaking of mobile, Trademob recently reported 40% of clicks are essentially worthless, because 22% of them are accidental (again with the fat fingers), while 18% are trickery. Publishers will but huge banner ads next to tiny app buttons to increase the odds of an accident. Others even hide a banner behind another to score 2 clicks instead of 1. Pontiflex and Harris Interactive last year found 47% of users were more likely to click a mobile ad accidentally than deliberately. Beyond that, hijacked devices are out there manipulating click data. But to what end for a marketer? What’s the value of a click on something a user never even saw? What’s the value of a seen but accidentally clicked ad if there’s no resulting transaction? Back to fake Likes, followers and views; they’re definitely for sale on numerous sites, none of which I’ll promote. $5 can get you 1,000 Twitter followers. You can even get followers targeted by interests. One site was set up by an unemployed accountant out of his house in England. He gets them from a wholesaler in Brooklyn, who gets them from a 19-year-old supplier in India. The unemployed accountant is making $10,000 a day. That means a lot of brands, celebrities and organizations are playing the fake social game, apparently not coming to grips with the slim value of the numbers they’re buying. But now, in addition to having paid good money for non-ROI numbers, there’s the embarrassment factor. At least a couple of sites have popped up allowing anyone to see just how many fake and inactive followers you have. Britain’s Fake Follower Check and StatusPeople are the two getting the most attention. Enter any Twitter handle and the results are there for all to see. Fake isn’t good, period. “Inactive” could be real followers, but if they’re real, they’re just watching, not engaging. If someone runs a check on your Twitter handle and turns up fake followers, does that mean you’re suspect or have purchased followers? No. Anyone can follow anyone, so most accounts will have some fakes. Even account results like Barack Obama’s (70% fake according to StatusPeople) and Lady Gaga’s (71% fake) don’t mean these people knew about all those fakes or initiated them. Regardless, brands should realize they’re now being watched, and users are judging the legitimacy of their social channels. Use one of any number of tools available to assess and clean out fake Likes and followers so that your numbers are as genuine as possible. And obviously, skip the “buying popularity” route of social marketing strategy. It doesn’t work and it gets you busted…a losing combination.

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• Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video Review by Diethard Steiner, Packt Publishing

  - by Compudicted

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2014/06/01/building-a-data-mart-with-pentaho-data-integration-video-review-again.aspx The Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video by Diethard Steiner from Packt Publishing is more than just a course on how to use Pentaho Data Integration, it also implements and uses the principals of the Data Warehousing (and I even heard the name of Ralph Kimball in the video). Indeed, a video watcher should be familiar with its concepts as the Star Schema, Slowly Changing Dimension types, etc. so I suggest prior to watching this course to consider skimming through the Data Warehouse concepts (if unfamiliar) or even better, read the excellent Ralph’s The Data Warehouse Tooolkit. By the way, the author expands beyond using Pentaho along to MySQL and MonetDB which is a real icing on the cake! Indeed, I even suggest the name of the course should be ‘Building a Data Warehouse with Pentaho’. To successfully complete the course one needs to know some Linux (Ubuntu used in the course), the VI editor and the Bash command shell, but it seems that similar requirements would also apply to the Windows OS. Additionally, knowing some basic SQL would not hurt. As I had said, MonetDB is used in this course several times which seems to be not anymore complex than say MySQL, but based on what I read is very well suited for fast querying big volumes of data thanks to having a columnstore (vertical data storage). I don’t see what else can be a barrier, the material is very digestible. On this note, I must add that the author does not cover how to acquire the software, so here is what I found may help: Pentaho: the free Community Edition must be more than anyone needs to learn it. Or even go into a POC. MonetDB can be downloaded (exists for both, Linux and Windows) from http://goo.gl/FYxMy0 (just see the appropriate link on the left). The author seems to be using Eclipse to run SQL code, one can get it from http://goo.gl/5CcuN. To create, or edit database entities and/or schema otherwise one can use a universal tool called SQuirreL, get it from http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net.   Next, I must confess Diethard is very knowledgeable in what he does and beyond. However, there will be some accent heard to the user of the course especially if one’s mother tongue language is English, but it I got over it in a few chapters. I liked the rate at which the material is being presented, it makes me feel I paid for every second Eventually, my impressions are: Pentaho is an awesome ETL offering, it is worth learning it very much (I am an ETL fan and a heavy user of SSIS) MonetDB is nice, it tickles my fancy to know it more Data Warehousing, despite all the BigData tool offerings (Hive, Scoop, Pig on Hadoop), using the traditional tools still rocks Chapters 2 to 6 were the most fun to me with chapter 8 being the most difficult.   In terms of closing, I highly recommend this video to anyone who needs to grasp Pentaho concepts quick, likewise, the course is very well suited for any developer on a “supposed to be done yesterday” type of a project. It is for a beginner to intermediate level ETL/DW developer. But one would need to learn more on Data Warehousing and Pentaho, for such I recommend the 5 star Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook. Enjoy it! Disclaimer: I received this video from the publisher for the purpose of a public review.

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• Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video Review by Diethard Steiner, Packt Publishing

  - by Compudicted

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2014/06/01/building-a-data-mart-with-pentaho-data-integration-video-review.aspx The Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video by Diethard Steiner from Packt Publishing is more than just a course on how to use Pentaho Data Integration, it also implements and uses the principals of the Data Warehousing (and I even heard the name of Ralph Kimball in the video). Indeed, a video watcher should be familiar with its concepts as the Star Schema, Slowly Changing Dimension types, etc. so I suggest prior to watching this course to consider skimming through the Data Warehouse concepts (if unfamiliar) or even better, read the excellent Ralph’s The Data Warehouse Tooolkit. By the way, the author expands beyond using Pentaho along to MySQL and MonetDB which is a real icing on the cake! Indeed, I even suggest the name of the course should be ‘Building a Data Warehouse with Pentaho’. To successfully complete the course one needs to know some Linux (Ubuntu used in the course), the VI editor and the Bash command shell, but it seems that similar requirements would also apply to the Weindows OS. Additionally, knowing some basic SQL would not hurt. As I had said, MonetDB is used in this course several times which seems to be not anymore complex than say MySQL, but based on what I read is very well suited for fast querying big volumes of data thanks to having a columnstore (vertical data storage). I don’t see what else can be a barrier, the material is very digestible. On this note, I must add that the author does not cover how to acquire the software, so here is what I found may help: Pentaho: the free Community Edition must be more than anyone needs to learn it. Or even go into a POC. MonetDB can be downloaded (exists for both, Linux and Windows) from http://goo.gl/FYxMy0 (just see the appropriate link on the left). The author seems to be using Eclipse to run SQL code, one can get it from http://goo.gl/5CcuN. To create, or edit database entities and/or schema otherwise one can use a universal tool called SQuirreL, get it from http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net.   Next, I must confess Diethard is very knowledgeable in what he does and beyond. However, there will be some accent heard to the user of the course especially if one’s mother tongue language is English, but it I got over it in a few chapters. I liked the rate at which the material is being presented, it makes me feel I paid for every second Eventually, my impressions are: Pentaho is an awesome ETL offering, it is worth learning it very much (I am an ETL fan and a heavy user of SSIS) MonetDB is nice, it tickles my fancy to know it more Data Warehousing, despite all the BigData tool offerings (Hive, Scoop, Pig on Hadoop), using the traditional tools still rocks Chapters 2 to 6 were the most fun to me with chapter 8 being the most difficult.   In terms of closing, I highly recommend this video to anyone who needs to grasp Pentaho concepts quick, likewise, the course is very well suited for any developer on a “supposed to be done yesterday” type of a project. It is for a beginner to intermediate level ETL/DW developer. But one would need to learn more on Data Warehousing and Pentaho, for such I recommend the 5 star Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook. Enjoy it! Disclaimer: I received this video from the publisher for the purpose of a public review.

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• Project structure: where to put business logic

  - by Mister Smith

  First of all, I'm not asking where does business logic belong. This has been asked before and most answers I've read agree in that it belongs in the model: Where to put business logic in MVC design? How much business logic should be allowed to exist in the controller layer? How accurate is "Business logic should be in a service, not in a model"? Why put the business logic in the model? What happens when I have multiple types of storage? However people disagree in the way this logic should be distributed across classes. There seem to exist three major currents of thought: Fat model with business logic inside entity classes. Anemic model and business logic in "Service" classes. It depends. I find all of them problematic. The first option is what most Fowlerites stick to. The problem with a fat model is that sometimes a business logic funtion is not only related to a class, and instead uses a bunch of other classes. If, for example, we are developing a web store, there should be a function that calcs an order's total. We could think of putting this function inside the Order class, but what actually happens is that the logic needs to use different classes, not only data contained in the Order class, but also in the User class, the Session class, and maybe the Tax class, Country class, or Giftcard, Payment, etc. Some of these classes could be composed inside the Order class, but some others not. Sorry if the example is not very good, but I hope you understand what I mean. Putting such a function inside the Order class would break the single responsibility principle, adding unnecesary dependences. The business logic would be scattered across entity classes, making it hard to find. The second option is the one I usually follow, but after many projects I'm still in doubt about how to name the class or classes holding the business logic. In my company we usually develop apps with offline capabilities. The user is able to perform entire transactions offline, so all validation and business rules should be implemented in the client, and then there's usually a background thread that syncs with the server. So we usually have the following classes/packages in every project: Data model (DTOs) Data Access Layer (Persistence) Web Services layer (Usually one class per WS, and one method per WS method). Now for the business logic, what is the standard approach? A single class holding all the logic? Multiple classes? (if so, what criteria is used to distribute the logic across them?). And how should we name them? FooManager? FooService? (I know the last one is common, but in our case it is bad naming because the WS layer usually has classes named FooWebService). The third option is probably the right one, but it is also devoid of any useful info. To sum up: I don't like the first approach, but I accept that I might have been unable to fully understand the Zen of it. So if you advocate for fat models as the only and universal solution you are welcome to post links explaining how to do it the right way. I'd like to know what is the standard design and naming conventions for the second approach in OO languages. Class names and package structure, in particular. It would also be helpful too if you could include links to Open Source projects showing how it is done. Thanks in advance.

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• Silverlight Cream for January 12, 2011 -- #1025

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Amyo Kabir, Rob Eisenberg, Doug Rathbone, John Papa, Jeff Blankenburg(-2-), Mike Taulty, Peter Kuhn, Laurent Bugnion, Vangos Pterneas, and Senthil Kumar. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight Popup sample" Amyo Kabir WP7: "Navigation in a #WP7 application with MVVM Light" Laurent Bugnion XNA: "XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 0 - Why should I care?" Peter Kuhn Shoutouts: Mohamed Mosallem posted a video of an Expression Blend demo he gave recently: Expression Blend Demo Rob Eisenberg posted the winners of the Caliburn.Micro Contest he was running .. and a nice bunch of swag too! Announcing the Caliburn.Micro Contest Winners! Dan Moyer is a LightSwitch enthusiast and writes Why I Believe Visual Studio LightSwitch will be a Win... good well-thought-out and written take on Lightswitch. From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Popup sample Amyo Kabir has a post up that is short on description but long on demo and the code is available... put this in the 'a picture is worth 1,000 words category' :) Caliburn.Micro Soup to Nuts Part 7 - All About Conventions The 7th episode of Rob Eisenberg's tutorial series on Caliburn.Micro is up. This episode about some of the conventions that you get out-of-the-box with Caliburn.Micro, what it'll do for you, and how you can modify the behavior of the convention to suit your own taste/style. Two little tips for working with Silverlight chart DateTime Axes Doug Rathbone has been working with the Toolkit Charts for WP7 and finding it difficult to get the info he needs, and now that he's worked it out... he's sharing... particularly information about DateTimeAxis. Silverlight TV 56: WCF RIA Services and Azure The first Silverlight TV of 2011 was John Papa discussing WCF RIA Services and Azure with Saurabh Plant. What I Learned In WP7 – Issue 14 As usual, Jeff Blankenburg is a couple ahead of me... his Issue 14 is about some panorama trickery... like navigating to a specific place in one, or preventing wrapping. What I Learned In WP7 – Issue 15 In Jeff Blankenburg's latest WP7 post, he's sharing some interesting insight into Trial Mode and app sales... from the standpoint of someone selling apps. Blend Bits 20–Group Into Mike Taulty has Part 20 of his Blend Bits series up. This one is demonstrating grouping, and what all can be accomplished (or not) with grouping in Blend. XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 0 - Why should I care? Peter Kuhn has the beginning of a series on WP7 and XNA up at SilverlightShow... this looks to be a good intro and way to get your head wrapped around XNA on the phone. Navigation in a #WP7 application with MVVM Light Laurent Bugnion discusses WP7 navigation via MVVM Light, resolving many of the communication/navigation complexities you can get involved in without a tool like his. Motion detection in Silverlight Vangos Pterneas has a followup postto the one on facial detection... this one is on Motion Detection in Silverlight. If you've got a webcam hooked up, you can give a demo app a dance via a link he has in the post. Adding ApplicationBar in Windows Phone 7 using Expression Blend Senthil Kumar follows up a post about using VS to add an application bar to a WP7 app with this one using Expression Blend Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Drawing transparent glyphs on the HTML canvas

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  The HTML canvas has a set of methods, createImageData and putImageData, that look like they will enable you to draw transparent shapes pixel by pixel. The data structures that you manipulate with these methods are pseudo-arrays of pixels, with four bytes per pixel. One byte for red, one for green, one for blue and one for alpha. This alpha byte makes one believe that you are going to be able to manage transparency, but that’s a lie. Here is a little script that attempts to overlay a simple generated pattern on top of a uniform background: var wrong = document.getElementById("wrong").getContext("2d"); wrong.fillStyle = "#ffd42a"; wrong.fillRect(0, 0, 64, 64); var overlay = wrong.createImageData(32, 32), data = overlay.data; fill(data); wrong.putImageData(overlay, 16, 16); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } where the fill method is setting the pixels in the lower-left half of the overlay to opaque red, and the rest to transparent black. And here’s how it renders: As you can see, the transparency byte was completely ignored. Or was it? in fact, what happens is more subtle. What happens is that the pixels from the image data, including their alpha byte, replaced the existing pixels of the canvas. So the alpha byte is not lost, it’s just that it wasn’t used by putImageData to combine the new pixels with the existing ones. This is in fact a clue to how to write a putImageData that works: we can first dump that image data into an intermediary canvas, and then compose that temporary canvas onto our main canvas. The method that we can use for this composition is drawImage, which works not only with image objects, but also with canvas objects. var right = document.getElementById("right").getContext("2d"); right.fillStyle = "#ffd42a"; right.fillRect(0, 0, 64, 64); var overlay = wrong.createImageData(32, 32), data = overlay.data; fill(data); var overlayCanvas = document.createElement("canvas"); overlayCanvas.width = overlayCanvas.height = 32; overlayCanvas.getContext("2d").putImageData(overlay, 0, 0); right.drawImage(overlayCanvas, 16, 16); And there is is, a version of putImageData that works like it should always have:

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, February 06, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, February 06, 2011Popular ReleasesMVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 (4): There was a small issue with the previous release that caused errors when installing the templates in VS10 Express. This release corrects the error. Only use this if you encountered issues when installing the previous release. No changes in the binaries.Finestra Virtual Desktops: 1.0: Finally the version 1.0 release! Sorry for the long delay since the last release, but I think that you'll find this release to be really smooth, really stable, and a really great enhancement to Windows. New features include: Windows 7 taskbar integration Major performance and usability improvements Redesigned look and feel New name: Finestra Better automatic updating Much faster full-screen switcher Fixes Windows 7 hotkey collisions by default Updated installerEnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.4 ALPHA: 2.3.3 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.06 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Updated Unheeded ...Nuclex Framework: R1323: This release is a pure XNA 4.0 release that no longer includes any XNA 3.1 binaries or projects. All x86 assemblies have been compiled targeting the .NET 4.0 Client Profile. Requires either Visual C# 2010 Express or Visual Studio 2010, both with XNA Game Studio 4.0. 3rd party libraries needed to compile and run the source code are included, so everything will compile out of the box. Changes: - Thanks to a generous contribution by Adrian Tsai, the TrueType importer now accepts standard Windo...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V43: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has added some features / bugfixes: Bugfix: Now supporting multi-line headers in all headers ;) / Thanks to Kai Schätzl for reporting this! Debug output optimized / Added a "Copy to clipboard" button in the debug windowFacebook C# SDK: 5.0.2 (BETA): PLEASE TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO GIVE US SOME FEEDBACK: Facebook C# SDK Survey This is third BETA release of the version 5 branch of the Facebook C# SDK. Remember this is a BETA build. Some things may change or not work exactly as planned. We are absolutely looking for feedback on this release to help us improve the final 5.X.X release. This release contains some breaking changes. Particularly with authentication. After spending time reviewing the trouble areas that people are having using th...ASP.NET MVC SiteMap provider: MvcSiteMapProvider 3.0.0 for MVC3: Using NuGet?MvcSiteMapProvider is also listed in the NuGet feed. Learn more... Like the project? Consider a donation!Donate via PayPal via PayPal. ChangelogTargeting ASP.NET MVC 3 and .NET 4.0 Additional UpdatePriority options for generating XML sitemaps Allow to specify target on SiteMapTitleAttribute One action with multiple routes and breadcrumbs Medium Trust optimizations Create SiteMapTitleAttribute for setting parent title IntelliSense for your sitemap with MvcSiteMapSchem...Rawr: Rawr 4.0.18 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance: SharePoint Guidance 2010 Hands On Lab: SharePoint Guidance 2010 Hands On Lab consists of six labs: one for logging, one for service location, and four for application setting manager. Each lab takes about 20 minutes to walk through. Each lab consists of a PDF document. You can go through the steps in the doc to create solution and then build/deploy the solution and run the lab. For those of you who wants to save the time, we included the final solution so you can just build/deploy the solution and run the lab.Value Injecter - object(s) to -> object mapper: 2.3: it lets you define your own convention-based matching algorithms (ValueInjections) in order to match up (inject) source values to destination values. inject from multiple sources in one InjectFrom added ConventionInjectionTweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 10: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 9 ChangesAdded support for trends Added support for Silverlight 4 Elevated WP7 fixes Third Party Library VersionsHammock v1.1.7: http://hammock.codeplex.com Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: http://json.codeplex.comFacebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.7: Version 0.7 updates (2 Feb 2011)new Facebook Graph objects: Link, Note, StatusMessage new publish features: status update, post with link attachment new Graph Api connections in User object: statuses, links, notes internal code path improvement on Api object bug fixed: extra "r" character appears for strings with "\r" symbols in Json Objects bug fixed: error when performing Postback to the same page Tutorial and documentation available at http://fbgraph.computerbeacon.netChemistry Add-in for Word: Chemistry Add-in for Word - Version 1.0: On February 1, 2011, we announced the availability of version 1 of the Chemistry Add-in for Word, as well as the assignment of the open source project to the Outercurve Foundation by Microsoft Research and the University of Cambridge. System RequirementsHardware RequirementsAny computer that can run Office 2007 or Office 2010. Software RequirementsYour computer must have the following software: Any version of Windows that can run Office 2007 or Office 2010, which includes Windows XP SP3 and...Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.4: Updated mcmap, now supports new block types. Added a Worlds->'View Cache Folder' menu item.StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.15005.000: Applied patch from rodpl for merging of stylecop setting files with settings in parent folder. Previous release: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new Objec...Minecraft Tools: Minecraft Topographical Survey 1.4: MTS requires version 4 of the .NET Framework - you must download it from Microsoft if you have not previously installed it. This version of MTS adds MCRegion support and fixes bugs that caused rendering to fail for some users. New in this version of MTS: Support for rendering worlds compressed with MCRegion Fixed rendering failure when encountering non-NBT files with the .dat extension Fixed rendering failure when encountering corrupt NBT files Minor GUI updates Note that the command...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 0.8: Fixed the following bugs: *Variable name error in the jvascript file that prevented the use of the deleted item template of the Datagrid *Now after the changes applied to an item of the DataGrid are cancelled all input fields are reset to the very initial value they had. *Other minor bugs. Added: *This version is available both for MVC2, and MVC 3. The MVC 3 version has a release number of 0.85. This way one can install both version. *Client Validation support has been added to all control...Office Web.UI: Beta preview (Source): This is the first Beta. it includes full source code and all available controls. Some designers are not ready, and some features are not finalized allready (missing properties, draft styles) ThanksASP.net Ribbon: Version 2.2: This release brings some new controls (part of Office Web.UI). A few bugs are fixed and it includes the "auto resize" feature as you resize the window. (It can cause an infinite loop when the window is too reduced, it's why this release is not marked as "stable"). I will release more versions 2.3, 2.4... until V3 which will be the official launch of Office Web.UI. Both products will evolve at the same speed. Thanks.xUnit.net - Unit Testing for .NET: xUnit.net 1.7: xUnit.net release 1.7Build #1540 Important notes for Resharper users: Resharper support has been moved to the xUnit.net Contrib project. Important note for TestDriven.net users: If you are having issues running xUnit.net tests in TestDriven.net, especially on 64-bit Windows, we strongly recommend you upgrade to TD.NET version 3.0 or later. This release adds the following new features: Added support for ASP.NET MVC 3 Added Assert.Equal(double expected, double actual, int precision) Ad...New ProjectsADE: ADE cmsAlicia - Elastic LoadBalancer: Alicia is a HTTP & HTTPS LoadBalancer. It is meant to be put in front of a server cluster. It implements a simple round robin mechanism. The default ports used are 1) HTTP 10080 2) HTTPS 10443 3) Admin 10010CMake syntax highlighting for Visual Studio 2010: CMake (http://cmake.org) is a cross platform build tool that works just as well with Visual Studio as it does with Xcode or the gnu make environment. This project aims to add syntax highlighting for the CMake script language to Visual Studio 2010 and is written in C#. ConCatJS: ConCatJS is a simple application that is capable of recursively processing directories and concatenating the JavaScript files therein into a single file.FicusFactor Image Watermarking Plugin for Windows Live Photo Gallery: Simple plugin for Windows Live Photo Gallery that can be used for applying watermarks to images. Can configure text, font, and placement of watermarks.FlMML: FlMML is a actionscript 3.0 library. It is made for generating sounds with MML. GSMock: GSMock is a mocking utility for the Google Search Appliance. It enables search responses to be mocked for search requests. GUIMaLoRT: The GUI for the MaLoRT.HushDB: This is a simple relational database. Its main purpose is to help people improve the understanding of how RDBMS is implemented after taking the database cource in university.Medical Log: Crear un registro de consultas medicas que facilite la gestión de los pacientes y manejo de información por reportes. Medical Log facilita el uso de registros de pacientes a médicos para obtener mayor información y más rápida de sus pacientes. Desarrollado con WPF .NET 4.0 MetaMold: semantic data through dynamic objects: MetaMold is a library to simplify the manipulation of semantic data through the usage of dynamic objects and pluggable convention-based mappings.My First Facebook Application: This is devoted to my first Facebook application.Nintemulator: A single software solution that offers support for a wide array of nintendo consoles.Orchard Facebook Like Widget: This is the project for the Facebook Like Widget module for the Orchard Project.Peggle: Its 2d game developed in c++ using qt and box2d. it helps developers to understand how to use box2d and qt efficiently. Pet Shelter - ASP.NET MVC 3 Learning Experiment: A web site for pet shelter managers and simple users who try to find their own pets, or to adopt one. This project is basically an ASP.NET MVC 3 learning experiment so if you want to join please contact me. It is developed in .NET 4.0, specifically C#. Robot-One ITI Cesena: Programma e documentazione per il Robot-One, il robottone cingolato dell'ITI di Cesena. Running Portal: Portal of 100loopRunning SharePoint List Based 404 Handler: A SharePoint WSP that customises the 404 handler for a web application, allowing you to define how to handle missing page requests via a SharePoint list.SharpSerializer: SharpSerializer is an open source XML and binary serializer for .NET Framework, .NET Compact Framework and Silverlight. It was developed with C#. Actually SharpSerializer can serialize to Xml and to its own binary format.SocialTank: Fill up the tank with social stuff!SQL Space Map: SQL Space Map is a tool that lets you quickly and easily view the relative size of database objects on a map, so you can compare them visually. It helps identify large objects, objects with a high index/data ratio, and tables which may be growing more quickly than expected.Supernover framework: SAF( SuperNover Application Framework)ToolBlog: Space reserved for the ToolBlog, which is a study about a site/blog in ASP.NET MVC 3Useful C# Extensions and Code generator: Initially a private repository, I want to make my collection of extensions and a code generating framework public. XnaLoop: simple test of xna game loop

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• Oracle OpenWorld Update: Demo Pods and Hands-on Labs

  - by Doug Reid

  0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Less than one week away until the start of Oracle OpenWorld 2012 and the Data Integration Solutions team is ready to go!  We have an exciting line up for you this year which we have summarized for you in the Oracle OpenWorld Focus on Data Integration Solutions document. In past posts we have discussed session themes and our customer panel, but today I would like to summarize our Hands-on Labs and Demo Pods that we have available for attendees. For Oracle GoldenGate Hands-On Labs we have two labs that we are running this year. Deep Dive into Oracle GoldenGate Thursday October 4th at 11:15AM in the Marriott Marquis Salon 1/2 Oracle GoldenGate provides real-time log-based change data capture and delivery between heterogeneous systems. It enables cost-effective, low-impact, real-time data integration and continuous availability solutions. This session covers Oracle GoldenGate 11g’s internal product architecture and includes a hands-on lab that covers configuration examples for target database instantiation and real-time change data capture and delivery. The participants will configure Oracle GoldenGate to instantiate a secondary database that can be used for disaster recovery or a reporting instance. Come learn how easy it is to use and how this can be a very valuable and easy technology solution for your organization. Introduction to Oracle GoldenGate Veridata Wednesday October 3rd 10:15AM in the Marriott Marquis Sales 1/2 Oracle GoldenGate Veridata compares one set of data with another and identifies data that is out of synchronization. In this hands-on lab, you will be introduced to the key features of this product. Using the Oracle GoldenGate Veridata Web client, you will have the opportunity to configure comparison objects and rules, initiate a comparison, review the status and output of a comparison, and review out-of-sync data. As a bonus this year, we have recorded the labs and made them available on youtube.com/oraclegoldengate. These will be available the day of the labs. Our demo pods are an opportunity for attendees to see our products but more so to meet the product management and development teams. I would like to point out that we have two Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 demo pods, one in the database camp and the other in the middleware camp. The one in the middleware camp will be focused on all platforms while the one in the database camp will have a focus on the Oracle platform. The other two I would like to point out are the Monitoring Oracle GoldenGate and the Oracle Enterprise Manager demo pods; both of these pods will focus on methods to monitor GoldenGate but the OEM demo pod will have a specific focus on the Oracle GoldenGate Management Pack plug-in for OEM. Below is a list of our demo pods and their locations. Monitoring Oracle GoldenGate for End-to-End Visibility Moscone South, Right - S-241 Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate for Oracle Applications Moscone South, Right - S-240 Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 New Features Moscone South, Right - S-239 Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2: Real-Time, Transactional Database Replication     Moscone South, Left - S-027 Oracle GoldenGate Veridata and Adapters Moscone South, Right - S-242 Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone South, Left - S-040 Keep tuned to our blog during the show for news and highlights from the Data Integration Solutions team. See you there.

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• Code Contracts: validating arrays and collections

  - by DigiMortal

  Validating collections before using them is very common task when we use built-in generic types for our collections. In this posting I will show you how to validate collections using code contracts. It is cool how much awful looking code you can avoid using code contracts. Failing code Let’s suppose we have method that calculates sum of all invoices in collection. We have class Invoice and one of properties it has is Sum. I don’t introduce here any complex calculations on invoices because we have another problem to solve in this topic. Here is our code. public static decimal CalculateTotal(IList<Invoice> invoices) {     var sum = invoices.Sum(p => p.Sum);     return sum; } This method is very simple but it fails when invoices list contains at least one null. Of course, we can test if invoice is null but having nulls in lists like this is not good idea – it opens green way for different coding bugs in system. Our goal is to react to bugs ASAP at the nearest place they occur. There is one more way how to make our method fail. It happens when invoices is null. I thing it is also one common bugs during development and it even happens in production environments under some conditions that are usually hardly met. Now let’s protect our little calculation method with code contracts. We need two contracts: invoices cannot be null invoices cannot contain any nulls Our first contract is easy but how to write the second one? Solution: Contract.ForAll Preconditions in code are checked using Contract.Ensures method. This method takes boolean value as argument that sais if contract holds or not. There is also method Contract.ForAll that takes collection and predicate that must hold for that collection. Nice thing is ForAll returns boolean. So, we have very simple solution. public static decimal CalculateTotal(IList<Invoice> invoices) {     Contract.Requires(invoices != null);     Contract.Requires(Contract.ForAll<Invoice>(invoices, p => p != null));       var sum = invoices.Sum(p => p.Sum);     return sum; } And here are some lines of code you can use to test the contracts quickly. var invoices = new List<Invoice>(); invoices.Add(new Invoice()); invoices.Add(null); invoices.Add(new Invoice()); //CalculateTotal(null); CalculateTotal(invoices); If your code is covered with unit tests then I suggest you to write tests to check that these contracts hold for every code run. Conclusion Although it seemed at first place that checking all elements in collection may end up with for-loops that does not look so nice we were able to solve our problem nicely. ForAll method of contract class offered us simple mechanism to check collections and it does it smoothly the code-contracts-way. P.S. I suggest you also read devlicio.us blog posting Validating Collections with Code Contracts by Derik Whittaker.

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• Project Euler 17: (Iron)Python

  - by Ben Griswold

  In my attempt to learn (Iron)Python out in the open, here’s my solution for Project Euler Problem 17.  As always, any feedback is welcome. # Euler 17 # http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=17 # If the numbers 1 to 5 are written out in words: # one, two, three, four, five, then there are # 3 + 3 + 5 + 4 + 4 = 19 letters used in total. # If all the numbers from 1 to 1000 (one thousand) # inclusive were written out in words, how many letters # would be used? # # NOTE: Do not count spaces or hyphens. For example, 342 # (three hundred and forty-two) contains 23 letters and # 115 (one hundred and fifteen) contains 20 letters. The # use of "and" when writing out numbers is in compliance # with British usage. import time start = time.time() def to_word(n): h = { 1 : "one", 2 : "two", 3 : "three", 4 : "four", 5 : "five", 6 : "six", 7 : "seven", 8 : "eight", 9 : "nine", 10 : "ten", 11 : "eleven", 12 : "twelve", 13 : "thirteen", 14 : "fourteen", 15 : "fifteen", 16 : "sixteen", 17 : "seventeen", 18 : "eighteen", 19 : "nineteen", 20 : "twenty", 30 : "thirty", 40 : "forty", 50 : "fifty", 60 : "sixty", 70 : "seventy", 80 : "eighty", 90 : "ninety", 100 : "hundred", 1000 : "thousand" } word = "" # Reverse the numbers so position (ones, tens, # hundreds,...) can be easily determined a = [int(x) for x in str(n)[::-1]] # Thousands position if (len(a) == 4 and a[3] != 0): # This can only be one thousand based # on the problem/method constraints word = h[a[3]] + " thousand " # Hundreds position if (len(a) >= 3 and a[2] != 0): word += h[a[2]] + " hundred" # Add "and" string if the tens or ones # position is occupied with a non-zero value. # Note: routine is broken up this way for [my] clarity. if (len(a) >= 2 and a[1] != 0): # catch 10 - 99 word += " and" elif len(a) >= 1 and a[0] != 0: # catch 1 - 9 word += " and" # Tens and ones position tens_position_value = 99 if (len(a) >= 2 and a[1] != 0): # Calculate the tens position value per the # first and second element in array # e.g. (8 * 10) + 1 = 81 tens_position_value = int(a[1]) * 10 + a[0] if tens_position_value <= 20: # If the tens position value is 20 or less # there's an entry in the hash. Use it and there's # no need to consider the ones position word += " " + h[tens_position_value] else: # Determine the tens position word by # dividing by 10 first. E.g. 8 * 10 = h[80] # We will pick up the ones position word later in # the next part of the routine word += " " + h[(a[1] * 10)] if (len(a) >= 1 and a[0] != 0 and tens_position_value > 20): # Deal with ones position where tens position is # greater than 20 or we have a single digit number word += " " + h[a[0]] # Trim the empty spaces off both ends of the string return word.replace(" ","") def to_word_length(n): return len(to_word(n)) print sum([to_word_length(i) for i in xrange(1,1001)]) print "Elapsed Time:", (time.time() - start) * 1000, "millisecs" a=raw_input('Press return to continue')

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• The Changing Face of PASS

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’m starting my sixth year on the PASS Board.  I served two years as the Program Director, two years as the Vice-President of Marketing and I’m starting my second year as the Executive Vice-President of Finance.  There’s a pretty good chance that if PASS has done something you don’t like or is doing something you don’t like, that I’m involved in one way or another. Andy Leonard asked in a comment on his blog if the Board had ever reversed itself based on community input.  He asserted that it hadn’t.  I disagree.  I’m not going to try and list all the changes we make inside portfolios based on feedback from and meetings with the community.  I’m going to focus on major governance issues since I was elected to the Board. Management Company The first big change was our management company.  Our old management company had a standard approach to running a non-profit.  It worked well when PASS was launched.  Having a ready-made structure and process to run the organization enabled the organization to grow quickly.  As time went on we were limited in some of the things we wanted to do.  The more involved you were with PASS, the more you saw these limitations.  Key volunteers were regularly providing feedback that they wanted certain changes that were difficult for us to accomplish.  The Board at that time wanted changes that were difficult or impossible to accomplish under that structure. This was not a simple change.  Imagine a $2.5 million dollar company letting all its employees go on a Friday and starting with a new staff on Monday.  We also had a very narrow window to accomplish that so that we wouldn’t affect the Summit – our only source of revenue.  We spent the year after the change rebuilding processes and putting on the Summit in Denver.  That’s a concrete example of a huge change that PASS made to better serve its members.  And it was a change that many in the community were telling us we needed to make. Financials We heard regularly from our members that they wanted our financials posted.  Today on our web site you can find audited financials going back to 2004.  We publish our budget at the start of each year.  If you ask a question about the financials on the PASS site I do my best to answer it.  I’m also trying to do a better job answering financial questions posted in other locations.  (And yes, I know I owe a few of you some blog posts.) That’s another concrete example of a change that our members asked for that the Board agreed was a good decision. Minutes When I started on the Board the meeting minutes were very limited.  The minutes from a two day Board meeting might fit on one page.  I think we did the bare minimum we were legally required to do.  Today Board meeting minutes run from 5 to 12 pages and go into incredible detail on what we talk about.  There are certain topics that are NDA but where possible we try to list the topic we discussed but that the actual discussion was under NDA.  We also publish the agenda of Board meetings ahead of time. This is another specific example where input from the community influenced the decision.  It was certainly easier to have limited minutes but I think the extra effort helps our members understand what’s going on. Board Q&A At the 2009 Summit the Board held its first public Q&A with our members.  We’d always been available individually to answer questions.  There’s a benefit to getting us all in one room and asking the really hard questions to watch us squirm.  We learn what questions we don’t have good answers for.  We get to see how many people in the crowd look interested in the various questions and answers. I don’t recall the genesis of how this came about.  I’m fairly certain there was some community pressure though. Board Votes Until last November, the Board only reported the vote totals and not how individual Board members voted.  That was one of the topics at a great lunch I had with Tim Mitchell and Kendal van Dyke at the Summit.  That was also the topic of the first question asked at the Board Q&A by Kendal.  Kendal expressed his opposition to to anonymous votes clearly and passionately and without trying to paint anyone into a corner.  Less than 24 hours later the PASS Board voted to make individual votes public unless the topic was under NDA.  That’s another area where the Board decided to change based on feedback from our members. Summit Location While this isn’t actually a governance issue it is one of the more public decisions we make that has taken some public criticism.  There is a significant portion of our members that want the Summit near them.  There is a significant portion of our members that like the Summit in Seattle.  There is a significant portion of our members that think it should move around the country.  I was one that felt strongly that there were significant, tangible benefits to our attendees to being in Seattle every year.  I’m also one that has been swayed by some very compelling arguments that we need to have at least one outside Seattle and then revisit the decision.  I can’t tell you how the Board will vote but I know the opinion of our members weighs heavily on the decision. Elections And that brings us to the grand-daddy of all governance issues.  My thesis for this blog post is that the PASS Board has implemented policy changes in response to member feedback.  It isn’t to defend or criticize our election process.  It’s just to say that is has been under going continuous change since I’ve been on the Board.  I ran for the Board in the fall of 2005.  I don’t know much about what happened before then.  I was actively volunteering for PASS for four years prior to that as a chapter leader and on the program committee.  I don’t recall any complaints about elections but that doesn’t mean they didn’t occur.  The questions from the Nominating Committee (NomCom) were trivial and the selection process rudimentary (For example, “Tell us about your accomplishments”).  I don’t even remember who I ran against or how many other people ran.  I ran for the VP of Marketing in the fall of 2007.  I don’t recall any significant changes the Board made in the election process for that election.  I think a lot of the changes in 2007 came from us asking the management company to work on the election process.  I was expecting a similar set of puff ball questions from my previous election.  Boy, was I in for a shock.  The NomCom had found a much better set of questions and really made the interview portion difficult.  The questions were much more behavioral in nature.  I’d already written about my vision for PASS and my goals.  They wanted to know how I handled adversity, how I handled criticism, how I handled conflict, how I handled troublesome volunteers, how I motivated people and how I responded to motivation. And many, many other things. They grilled me for over an hour.  I’ve done a fair bit of technical sales in my time.  I feel I speak well under pressure addressing pointed questions.  This interview intentionally put me under pressure.  In addition to wanting to know about my interpersonal skills, my work experience, my volunteer experience and my supervisory experience they wanted to see how I’d do under pressure.  They wanted to see who would respond under pressure and who wouldn’t.  It was a bit of a shock. That was the first big change I remember in the election process.  I know there were other improvements around the process but none of them stick in my mind quite like the unexpected hour-long grilling. The next big change I remember was after the 2009 elections.  Andy Warren was unhappy with the election process and wanted to make some changes.  He worked with Hannes at HQ and they came up with a better set of processes.  I think Andy moved PASS in the right direction.  Nonetheless, after the 2010 election even more people were very publicly clamoring for changes to our election process.  In August of 2010 we had a choice to make.  There were numerous bloggers criticizing the Board and our upcoming election.  The easy change would be to announce that we were changing the process in a way that would satisfy our critics.  I believe that a knee-jerk response to criticism is seldom correct. Instead the Board spent August and September and October and November listening to the community.  I visited two SQLSaturdays and asked questions of everyone I could.  I attended chapter meetings and asked questions of as many people as they’d let me.  At Summit I made it a point to introduce myself to strangers and ask them about the election.  At every breakfast I’d sit down at a table full of strangers and ask about the election.  I’m happy to say that I left most tables arguing about the election.  Most days I managed to get 2 or 3 breakfasts in. I spent less time talking to people that had already written about the election.  They were already expressing their opinion.  I wanted to talk to people that hadn’t spoken up.  I wanted to know what the silent majority thought.  The Board all attended the Q&A session where our members expressed their concerns about a variety of issues including the election. The PASS Board also chose to create the Election Review Committee.  We wanted people from the community that had been involved with PASS to look at our election process with fresh eyes while listening to what the community had to say and give us some advice on how we could improve the process.  I’m a part of this as is Andy Warren.  None of the other members are on the Board.  I’ve sat in numerous calls and interviews with this group and attended an open meeting at the Summit.  We asked anyone that wanted to discuss the election to come speak with us.  The ERC held an open meeting at the Summit and invited anyone to attend.  There are forums on the ERC web site where we’ve invited people to participate.  The ERC has reached to key people involved in recent elections.  The years that I haven’t mentioned also saw minor improvements in the election process.  Off the top of my head I don’t recall what exact changes were made each year.  Specifically since the 2010 election we’ve gone out of our way to seek input from the community about the process.  I’m not sure what more we could have done to invite feedback from the community. I think to say that we haven’t “fixed” the election process isn’t a fair criticism at this time.  We haven’t rushed any changes through the process.  If you don’t see any changes in our election process in July or August then I think it’s fair to criticize us for ignoring the community or ask for an explanation for what we’ve done. In Summary Andy’s main point was that the PASS Board hasn’t changed in response to our members wishes.  I think I’ve shown that time and time again the PASS Board has changed in response to what our members want.  There are only two outstanding issues: Summit location and elections.  The 2013 Summit location hasn’t been decided yet.  Our work on the elections is also in progress.  And at every step in the election review we’ve gone out of our way to listen to the community and incorporate their feedback on the process. I also hope I’m not encouraging everyone that wants some change in the organization to organize a “blog rush” against the Board.  We take public suggestions very seriously but we also take the time to evaluate those suggestions and learn what the rest of our members think and make a measured decision.

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• View AccuWeather Forecasts in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Being able to keep an eye on the weather while at work or browsing the Internet is definitely helpful. If you like detailed forecasts then join us as we take a look at the Forecastfox Weather extension for Google Chrome. Getting Started As soon as the Forecastfox Weather extension has finished installing you will automatically be presented with the “Customize Forecastfox Page”. The default setting is for New York with English measurement units. Enter your location into the blank and hit “Enter” to display the listing for your city/area. If you are presented multiple options to choose from simply click on the appropriate listing. Once you have your city/area displayed you will notice that it is possible to have access to weather forecasts for multiple locations. You can easily remove any unneeded listings with the “Remove Link”. For our example we removed the New York listing. Note: Click on desired locations and measurement units to automatically set them as defaults (no save button required). Forecastfox Weather in Action You can hover your mouse over the “Toolbar Button” to see the current weather conditions. Clicking on the “Toolbar Button” opens a popup window with the current conditions, 7 day forecast, and a static satellite image. If desired you can access additional details for the current weather conditions. Clicking on “details” opens a new tab with a nice bit of information such as UV Index, Moon Phases, Cloud Ceiling, etc. Note: AccuWeather.com webpages will have some ads displayed. Perhaps you need the Hourly Forecast… Once again a new tab will be opened with the predicted hourly weather conditions for the current day. Going back to the popup window you may also select a specific day from the 7 day forecast. You will be presented with a “Day & Night” forecast for the chosen day with links to view “Additional Details & Hourly” information. Interested in the satellite image instead? You can click on either of the available links for larger images. Once the new tab is open you can choose from a variety of different satellite images. Conclusion If you have been wanting a solid weather forecast extension for your Chrome browser then Forecastfox Weather is definitely a recommended install. Links Download the Forecastfox Weather extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Weather Forecasts to Google ChromeView Weather Underground Forecasts in Google ChromeView the Time & Date in Chrome When Hiding Your TaskbarView Maps and Get Directions in Google ChromeGoogle Image Search Quick Fix TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi LocPDF is a Visual PDF Search Tool Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar

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• Big Data – Operational Databases Supporting Big Data – Columnar, Graph and Spatial Database – Day 14 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases in the Big Data Story. In this article we will understand the role of Columnar, Graph and Spatial Database supporting Big Data Story. Now we will see a few of the examples of the operational databases. Relational Databases (The day before yesterday’s post) NoSQL Databases (The day before yesterday’s post) Key-Value Pair Databases (Yesterday’s post) Document Databases (Yesterday’s post) Columnar Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Graph Databases (Today’s post) Spatial Databases (Today’s post) Columnar Databases  Relational Database is a row store database or a row oriented database. Columnar databases are column oriented or column store databases. As we discussed earlier in Big Data we have different kinds of data and we need to store different kinds of data in the database. When we have columnar database it is very easy to do so as we can just add a new column to the columnar database. HBase is one of the most popular columnar databases. It uses Hadoop file system and MapReduce for its core data storage. However, remember this is not a good solution for every application. This is particularly good for the database where there is high volume incremental data is gathered and processed. Graph Databases For a highly interconnected data it is suitable to use Graph Database. This database has node relationship structure. Nodes and relationships contain a Key Value Pair where data is stored. The major advantage of this database is that it supports faster navigation among various relationships. For example, Facebook uses a graph database to list and demonstrate various relationships between users. Neo4J is one of the most popular open source graph database. One of the major dis-advantage of the Graph Database is that it is not possible to self-reference (self joins in the RDBMS terms) and there might be real world scenarios where this might be required and graph database does not support it. Spatial Databases  We all use Foursquare, Google+ as well Facebook Check-ins for location aware check-ins. All the location aware applications figure out the position of the phone with the help of Global Positioning System (GPS). Think about it, so many different users at different location in the world and checking-in all together. Additionally, the applications now feature reach and users are demanding more and more information from them, for example like movies, coffee shop or places see. They are all running with the help of Spatial Databases. Spatial data are standardize by the Open Geospatial Consortium known as OGC. Spatial data helps answering many interesting questions like “Distance between two locations, area of interesting places etc.” When we think of it, it is very clear that handing spatial data and returning meaningful result is one big task when there are millions of users moving dynamically from one place to another place & requesting various spatial information. PostGIS/OpenGIS suite is very popular spatial database. It runs as a layer implementation on the RDBMS PostgreSQL. This makes it totally unique as it offers best from both the worlds. Courtesy: mushroom network Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about very important components of the Big Data Ecosystem – Hive. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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