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• 3 Reasons You Need To Know Something About Every Technology

  - by Tim Murphy

  I make my living as a consultant and a general technologist.  I credit my success to the fact that I have never been afraid to pick up any product, language or platform needed to get the job done.  While Microsoft technologies I my mainstay, I have done work on mainframe and UNIX platforms and have worked with a wide variety of database engines.  Each one has it’s use and most times it is less expensive to find a way to communicate with an existing system than to replace it. So what are the main benefits of expending the effort to learn a new technology? New ways to solve problems Accelerate development Advise clients and get new business opportunities By new technology I mean ones that you haven’t had experience with before.  They don’t have to be the the one that just came out yesterday.  As they say, those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.  If you can learn something from an older technology it can be just as valuable as the shiny new one.  Either way, when you add another tool to your kit you get a new view on each problem you face.  This makes it easier to create a sound solution. The next thing you can learn from working with different products and techniques is how to more efficiently develop solve problems.  Many times if you are working with a new language you will find that there are specific design patterns that are used with it in normal use.  These can usually be applied with most languages.  You just needed to be exposed to them. The last point is about helping your clients and helping yourself.  If you can get in on technologies early you will have advantage over your competition in the market.  You will also be able to honestly advise you client on why they should or should not go with a new product.  Being able to compare products and their features is always an ability that stake holders appreciate. You don’t need to learn every detail of a product.  Learn enough to function and get an idea of how to use the technology.  Keep eating those technology Wheaties and you will be ready to go the distance in any project. del.icio.us Tags: Technology,technologists,technology generalist,Software Architecture

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• SharePoint Thoughts

  - by Tim Murphy

  I was listening to .NET Rocks episode #713 and it got me thinking about a number of SharePoint related topics. I have been working with SharePoint since the 2001 product came out and have watched it evolve over the years.  Today SharePoint is one of the most powerful and flexible products in the market.  Of course that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement (a lot of improvement in fact) and with much power comes much responsibility. My main gripe these days is that you have to develop on a server instance.  This adds a real barrier to entry for developers.  You either have to run VMWare or Hyper-V on your developer machine or actually develop on your dev server for most tasks.  Yes, there is a way to setup a Windows 7 machine with the SharePoint components but it is very hackish. Beyond that the tools in VS2010 are a great leap forward from past generations.  Not requiring a separate package creation tool is not the least of the improvements.  Better workflow and web part development have also eased the burden of many developers. The other thing the show brought up in my thoughts was more around usage.  Users want to be able to self server everything without regard to what affect that has on leveraging their data from a corporate perspective.  My coworkers who work on Lotus Notes ask why the user can’t just do what ever they want? Part of the reason is that those features have not been built, but the other part is that giving them those features is often like giving an infant a loaded hand gun.  You can do it but it doesn’t make it the smart thing to do. As with any tool that is going to be used in the enterprise it should be subject to governance.  If controls are not in place as they said in the episode of DNR the document libraries and I believe SharePoint in general starts to look as disarrayed and unusable as a shared drive.  Consider these factors before giving into every whim of the users.  You should be able to explain to them the tradeoffs of giving them full control versus being able to leverage the information they collect to the benefit of the organization. These are just a couple of the thoughts that were triggered by the show.  I’m sure there are more discussions that can be had.  Feel free to leave your comments about the pros and cons of SharePoint. del.icio.us Tags: .NET Rocks,SharePoint,software development

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• TechEd 2012: Windows 8 And Metro

  - by Tim Murphy

  Windows 8 is here (or at least very close) and that was the main feature of this morning’s key note.  Antoine LeBlond started off by apologizing to the IT professionals since he planned on showing code.  I’m not sure if IT Pros are that easily confused or why you would need such a disclaimer.  Developers do real work, IT Pros just play with toys (just kidding). The highlights of the Windows 8 keynote for me started with some of the UI design elements that I had not seen when I was shown one of the Build tablets.  Specifically I liked the AppBar features that we have become used to with Windows Phone and some of the gesture features.  Even though they have been available on other platforms before I think Microsoft really got them right. Two other great features of Windows 8 that they demonstrated were the Hyper-V capabilities and the ability to run Windows 8 anywhere from a USB key.  My jaw dropped through the floor seeing a feature rich OS boot off of a thumb drive. WOW!  I also can’t wait to get rid of dual booting just to run Hyper-V images when developing. The morning continued with a session on Metro XAML development with Tim Heuer.  While included a lot of great XAML Metro demos, I was pleasantly surprised by some of the things I found out about Visual Studio 2012.  Finding out that Blend is now integrated with VS2012 was a nice addition after working with them as separate applications was an encouraging start. Moving on to Metro he introduced the nugget that WinRT is Async everywhere.  How deep this model goes will be an interesting thing to find out as I learn more about developing for the platform.  Thankfully he followed that up with a couple of new keywords, await and async, that eliminates a lot of plumbing that has been required in the past for asynchronous transactions. Tim also related that since the Metro framework is relatively small and most apps will use a significant amount of it the entire surface is referenced by default.  This is a contrast to adding namespace and assemblies one after another as we normally do. This was such a power packed session that I can’t detail it all here so here is the teaser list. New icons in VS2012 for extension methods Emulator/simulator testing features for gestures Portable class libraries XAML no longer managed code And so much more …   del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,Metro,Tim Heuer,XAML,Widows Phone,Hyper-V,Antoine LeBlond,TechEd,TechEd 2012,Visual Studio 2012,Visual Studio

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• Discovering Your Project

  - by Tim Murphy

  The discovery phase of any project is both exciting and critical to the project’s success.  There are several key points that you need to keep in mind as you navigate this process. The first thing you need to understand is who the players in the project are and what their motivations are for the project.  Leaving out a key stakeholder in the resulting product is one of the easiest ways to doom your project to fail.  The better the quality of the input you have at this early phase the better chance you will have of creating a well accepted deliverable. The next task you should tackle is to gather the goals for the project.  Specifically, what does the company expect to get for the money they are about to layout.  This seems like a common sense task, but you would be surprised how many teams to straight to building the system.  Even if you are following an agile methodology I believe that this is critical. Inventorying the resources that already exists gives you an idea what you are going to have to build and what you can leverage at lower risk.  This list should include documentation, servers, code repositories, databases, languages, security systems and supporting teams.  All of these are “resources” that can effect the cost and delivery schedule of your project. Finally, you need to verify what you have found and documented with the stakeholders and subject matter experts.  Documentation that has not been reviewed is actually a list of assumptions and we all know that assumptions are the mother of all screw ups. If you give the discovery phase of your project the attention that it deserves your project has a much better chance of success. I would love to hear what other people find important for this phase.  Please leave comments on this post so we can share the knowledge. del.icio.us Tags: Project discovery,documentation,business analysis,architecture

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• Microsoft BUILD 2013&ndash;Day 1 Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/microsoft-build-2013ndashday-1-summary.aspx I’m happy to be at BUILD this week, mainly because my flights finally got me here late on Tuesday.  My biggest complaints so far are the flights and the hotel.  It seems that almost every flight into San Francisco were delayed multiple hours.  The Sequester so lovingly forced on America by congress means that the airport was short controllers.   That, along with poor weather and airport construction meant most people were 2-3 hours late arriving.  Add on top of that the fact that the hotel that I picked durring registration is absolutely horrid.  It looks like something out of a ghost hunters show and smells like it too.  I think if Microsoft is going to select a hotel they need to make sure that it is adequate. Rant over! So what happened the first day?  Steve Balmer started off the keynote along with Julie Larson-Green and a cast of others.  We finally found out that there were around six thousand people attending BUILD and that the focus this year would be Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Azure.  For the rest of the keynote I am going to have a separate post. You can’t have a Microsoft conference without some fun.  This year they have a hunt for pins that represent different gestures in Windows 8.  I got all of mine.  Now they just need to pull my name. The sessions I attended were really good. They covered live tiles, what’s new in XAML and building Windows Phone UIs presented by Kraig Brockschmidt, Tim Heuer and Shawn Oster respectively.  These will also be covered in separate posts. The exhibit area was interesting, but somewhat disappointing.  TechEd 2012 I think was better organized and better staffed by the vendors.  It also seemed that the Microsoft teams’ booths were also in need of some organization and staffing. Overall it was a really fun day capped off by all six thousand attendees standing in like to get their Acer 8” tables and Surface Pros.  What a day!  Stay tuned for follow up posts. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Windows 8.1,Winodws Phone,XAML,Keynote

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• May 2010 Chicago Architects Group Wrap Up

  - by Tim Murphy

  Scott Seely did a wonderful job this evening of explaining how cloud services fit into our application architectures and specifically how Azure is organized.  He covered everything from Table Storage to code name Dallas (OData).  The discussion continued well beyond the end of the meeting which was attended by members of all sectors of IT and multiple platforms. Be sure to join us in the upcoming months as we cover the following topics: June – Document Generation Architecture July – Architecting a BI Installation August - MVVM – the What, Why and When Stay tuned. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Architects Group,Azure,Cloud Computing,Dallas,Scott Seely,MVVM,Business Intelligence

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• October 2012 Chicago IT Architects Registration Open

  - by Tim Murphy

  This month Tom Benton will be presenting The Platform and Architecture of Windows Store apps in Windows 8.  This is a subject that was requested by attendees over the last few months.  Tom has been presenting this topic in Redmond recently and this should be a great discussion. As usual we are interested in hearing what topics that community would like to see presented.  Leave any ideas in the comments of this post.  If you have a topic you are interested in presenting please contact me through this blog. Please come and join us this month and join in the discussion. Register here. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,CITAG,Windows 8,Tom Benton

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• Enterprise Trade Compliance: Changing Trade Operations around the World

  - by John Murphy

  We live in a world of incredible bounty and speed where any product can be delivered anywhere on earth. However, our world is also filled with challenges for business – where volatility, uncertainty, risk, and chaos are our daily companions. To prosper amid the realities of this new world, organizations cannot rely on old strategies; they need new business models. Key trends within the global economy are mandating that companies fully integrate global trade management best practices within broader supply chain management strategies, rather than simply leaving it as a discrete event at the end of the order or procurement cycle. To explain, many companies face a complicated and changing compliance environment. This is directly linked to the speed and configuration of the supply chain, particularly with the explosion of new markets, shorter service cycles and ship times, accelerating rates of globalization and outsourcing, and increasing product complexity and regulation. Read More...

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• 2010 Chicago Code Coming In May

  - by Tim Murphy

  The Lake Count .NET User Group is putting on it’s second Chicago Code Camp on May 1st.  I would encourage everyone to come out and participate in the Chicago area .NET community.  You can register here.  Better yet come of with a presentation of your own.  I have submitted an abstract for a presentation on Office Open XML. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Code Camp,presentations,Office Open XML,LCNUG

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• Styling Windows Phone Silverlight Applications

  - by Tim Murphy

  If you have not developed with styles in Silverlight/XAML then it can be challenging and resources can be sparse depending on how deep you get.  One thing that you need to understand is what level you can apply styles and how much they can cascade.  What I am finding is that this doesn’t go to the level that we are used to in HTML and CSS. While styles can be defined at a page level if you want to share styles throughout your application they should be defined in the App.xaml file.  This is of course analogous to placing a style in your HTML file versus an external CSS file.  This is the type of style I will concentrate on in this post. The first thing to look it how styles associate to elements.  TargetType defines the object type that your style will apply to.  In the example below the style is targeting the TextBlock object type. <Style x:Key="TextBlockSmallGray" TargetType="TextBlock"> Next we use a Setter which allows you to apply values for specific attributes of the target object type.  The setters can be a simple value or complex.  The first example here is simply applying a color to the background property of the target. <Setter Property="Background" Value="White"/> The second setter example here is for the same property, but we are applying a the definition of a LinearGradientBrush. <Setter Property="Background"> <Setter.Value> <LinearGradientBrush> <GradientStop Offset="0" Color="Black"/> <GradientStop Offset="1" Color="White"/> </LinearGradientBrush> </Setter.Value> </Setter> The last thing I want to cover here is that you can leverage the system styles and then override or extend them.  The BasedOn attribute of the Style tag allows this sort of inheritance.  In the example below I am going to start with the PhoneTextTitleStyle and then override properties as needed. <Style x:Key="TextBlockTitle" BasedOn="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle1Style}" TargetType="TextBlock"> So now that we have our styles defined applying it is fairly straight forward.  Add the style name as a static resource to the style property of the element in your page and off you go. <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Style="{StaticResource PageGridStyle}"> So this is one step in creating consistency in your application’s look.  In future posts I will dig a little deeper. del.icio.us Tags: windows phone 7,mobile development,windows phone 7 development,.NET,software development,design,UX

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• November 2012 Chicago IT Architects Group Meeting Recap

  - by Tim Murphy

  So the year is coming to an end.  A hearty few came out two days before Thanksgiving to discuss adopting agile in the enterprise.  While Norm Murrin claimed to be nervous about talking in front of a group your wouldn’t have known by his presentation.  He really made a topic that has always been hard to relate very personal.  This lead to some great discussion.  I came out of looking for ways to investigate agile further.  His presentation can be found here. This was our last meeting for the year.  We are looking forward to next year and are starting to line up some speakers and topics.  At this point we have an Azure presentation coming in February and are ironing out talks for January and March.  If your would like to join us and have topics you would like to see presented contact me through this blog.  Either leave a comment here or use the contact page.  I would love to hear from you. Have a great holiday season and we will see you next year. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,CITAG,Agile,Norman Murrin

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• SPTI problem with Mode Select

  - by Bob Murphy

  I'm running into a problem in which an attempt to do a "Mode Select" SCSI command using SPTI is returning an error status of 0x02 ("Check Condition"), and hope someone here might have some tips or suggestions. The code in question is intended to work with at a custom SCSI device. I wrote the original support for it using ASPI under WinXP, and am converting it to work with SPTI under 64-bit Windows 7. Here's the problematic code - and what's happening is, sptwb.spt.ScsiStatus is 2, which is a "Check Condition" error. Unfortunately, the device in question doesn't return useful information when you do a "Request Sense" after this problem occurs, so that's no help. void MSSModeSelect(const ModeSelectRequestPacket& inRequest, StatusResponsePacket& outResponse) { IPC_LOG("MSSModeSelect(): PathID=%d, TargetID=%d, LUN=%d", inRequest.m_Device.m_PathId, inRequest.m_Device.m_TargetId, inRequest.m_Device.m_Lun); int adapterIndex = inRequest.m_Device.m_PathId; HANDLE adapterHandle = prvOpenScsiAdapter(inRequest.m_Device.m_PathId); if (adapterHandle == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) { outResponse.m_Status = eScsiAdapterErr; return; } SCSI_PASS_THROUGH_WITH_BUFFERS sptwb; memset(&sptwb, 0, sizeof(sptwb)); #define MODESELECT_BUF_SIZE 32 sptwb.spt.Length = sizeof(SCSI_PASS_THROUGH); sptwb.spt.PathId = inRequest.m_Device.m_PathId; sptwb.spt.TargetId = inRequest.m_Device.m_TargetId; sptwb.spt.Lun = inRequest.m_Device.m_Lun; sptwb.spt.CdbLength = CDB6GENERIC_LENGTH; sptwb.spt.SenseInfoLength = 0; sptwb.spt.DataIn = SCSI_IOCTL_DATA_IN; sptwb.spt.DataTransferLength = MODESELECT_BUF_SIZE; sptwb.spt.TimeOutValue = 2; sptwb.spt.DataBufferOffset = offsetof(SCSI_PASS_THROUGH_WITH_BUFFERS,ucDataBuf); sptwb.spt.Cdb[0] = SCSIOP_MODE_SELECT; sptwb.spt.Cdb[4] = MODESELECT_BUF_SIZE; DWORD length = offsetof(SCSI_PASS_THROUGH_WITH_BUFFERS,ucDataBuf) + sptwb.spt.DataTransferLength; memset(sptwb.ucDataBuf, 0, sizeof(sptwb.ucDataBuf)); sptwb.ucDataBuf[2] = 0x10; sptwb.ucDataBuf[16] = (BYTE)0x01; ULONG bytesReturned = 0; BOOL okay = DeviceIoControl(adapterHandle, IOCTL_SCSI_PASS_THROUGH, &sptwb, sizeof(SCSI_PASS_THROUGH), &sptwb, length, &bytesReturned, FALSE); DWORD gle = GetLastError(); IPC_LOG(" DeviceIoControl() %s", okay ? "worked" : "failed"); if (okay) { outResponse.m_Status = (sptwb.spt.ScsiStatus == 0) ? eOk : ePrinterStatusErr; } else { outResponse.m_Status = eScsiPermissionsErr; } CloseHandle(adapterHandle); } A few more remarks, for what it's worth: This is derived from some old ASPI code that does the "Mode Select" flawlessly. This routine opens \\.\SCSI<whatever> at the beginning, via prvOpenScsiAdapter(), and closes the handle at the end. All the other routines for dealing with the device do the same thing, including the routine to do "Reserve Unit". Is this a good idea under SPTI, or should the call to "Reserve Unit" leave the handle open, so this routine and others in the sequence can use the same handle? This uses the IOCTL_SCSI_PASS_THROUGH. Should "Mode Select" use IOCTL_SCSI_PASS_THROUGH_DIRECT instead? Thanks in advance - any help will be greatly appreciated.

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• TAKE Solutions Implements Oracle Mobile Supply Chain Applications for Leading Housewares Manufacturer

  - by John Murphy

  TAKE Solutions Ltd. [BSE: 532890 | NSE: TAKE], a leader in the Supply Chain Management and Life Sciences domains, today announced the successful implementation of Oracle Mobile Supply Chain Applications (MSCA®) for a leading manufacturer of household goods. Leveraging TAKE’s more than 15 years of expertise with the Oracle® E-business Suite products, the customer has achieved real-time inventory visibility into manufacturing, put-away and customer shipments. TAKE also implemented location control and cycle counting to provide additional visibility and inventory accuracy. http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2012/06/05/take-solutions-implements-oracle-mobile-supply-chain-applications-leading-housewares-manu

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• Oracle Transportation User Conference Agenda Released

  - by John Murphy

  The Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) User Conference agenda is now available.   The event brings together users, implementers and prospective customers of OTM.   The event is held annually in Philadelphia with this year's event taking place August 12 - 15.   Follow one of the links to see the complete agenda and to register to attend.  http://otmconference.com/agenda.aspx

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• Windows Phone 8 Announcement

  - by Tim Murphy

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

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• Creating Corporate Windows Phone Applications

  - by Tim Murphy

  Most developers write Windows Phone applications for their own gratification and their own wallets.  While most of the time I would put myself in the same camp, I am also a consultant.  This means that I have corporate clients who want corporate solutions.  I recently got a request for a system rebuild that includes a Windows Phone component.  This brought up the questions of what are the important aspects to consider when building for this situation. Let’s break it down in to the points that are important to a company using a mobile application.  The company want to make sure that their proprietary software is safe from use by unauthorized users.  They also want to make sure that the data is secure on the device. The first point is a challenge.  There is no such thing as true private distribution in the Windows Phone ecosystem at this time.  What is available is the ability to specify you application for targeted distribution.  Even with targeted distribution you can’t ensure that only individuals within your organization will be able to load you application.  Because of this I am taking two additional steps.  The first is to register the phone’s DeviceUniqueId within your system.  Add a system sign-in and that should cover access to your application. The second half of the problem is securing the data on the phone.  This is where the ProtectedData API within the System.Security.Cryptography namespace comes in.  It allows you to encrypt your data before pushing it to isolated storage on the device. With the announcement of Windows Phone 8 coming this fall, many of these points will have different solutions.  Private signing and distribution of applications will be available.  We will also have native access to BitLocker.  When you combine these capabilities enterprise application development for Windows Phone will be much simpler.  Until then work with the above suggestions to develop your enterprise solutions. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 7,Windows Phone,Corporate Deployment,Software Design,Mango,Targeted Applications,ProtectedData API,Windows Phone 8

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• March 2011 Chicago Information Technology Architects Group Meeting

  - by Tim Murphy

  How did we get to March already?  My how time flies when you are having fun.  We had a spirited discussion on Enterprise Architecture at the February meeting.  Well lets keep the fun rolling.  The hottest technology right now is anything to do with mobile computing.  We had an arm wrestling match to decide who was going to present on Mobile Architecture.  Come see the winner (actually the guy who had time to put the presentation together) on March 15th at the Chicago Information Technology Architects meeting.  You can register at the link below. Register If have a topic you would be interested in presenting at a future event please contact me through this blog. del.icio.us Tags: CITAG,Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,mobile architecture

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• TechEd 2012: Windows Phone Exam Cram

  - by Tim Murphy

  Usually speakers take offence if you wear headphones in their talk.  For the exam cram session it was a requirement.  This was because it was a cubical walled room with an open top next to a study hall. While no-one was going to come out of this session ready to take a test, I am glad that I took the time to attend it.  There was a fair amount of material that you should know already if you have ever taken a certification test before.  This was packed around a mix of key concepts and some tidbits that marked where some of the pitfalls are for this particular test.  The biggest warning was that the test is based on Windows Phone 7.0 and not Mango meaning that you have to be careful that you don’t answer a question in the wrong context. I would suggest if you have a chance to take attend a free session grab it.  It is a good break from the other hard core talks and will get your mind into a mode for getting your next certification.  Good luck. del.icio.us Tags: TechEd,TechEd 2012,Windows Phone,Exam Cram,Certification

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• Microsoft Changes Developer Account Registration Requirements

  - by Tim Murphy

  Over the last couple of weeks I have noticed that Microsoft seems to have changed the requirements for Corporate accounts.  These requirements were not in effect when I originally setup the account for the company that I work for.  We also recently had our corporate account canceled without explanation and are in the process of working to get it reinstated.  This all seems to revolve around rules to increase confidence that in the producers of content.  They are now having Symantec validate a company based on legal documents. In the past there have been problems with getting credit cards accepted.  We have had to setup new Live IDs to satisfy whatever glitch the system had or unexplainable requirement.  I am hoping that in the time that has elapsed these problems have been resolved. In truth I can’t say that these new requirements weren’t always in place, but it is getting frustrating to help clients setup accounts.  I am encourage that they have taken steps to safeguard the consumer from Joe-fly-by-night, but they also need to make sure that the process doesn’t become so complex that it drives away companies from participating in the store.  We will have to keep an eye on this as things evolve. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone Development,Windows 8 Development,Windows Phone,Windows 8,Registration,Corporate Accounts

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• Register For The Sept 2012 Chicago IT Architects Group

  - by Tim Murphy

  We are getting rolling again.  This month I will be discussing Building Smart Phone Applications For The Enterprise.  This is an area that I have been working with in my normal day-to-day work and think that more of us will be running across in the near future.  Be sure to register and join us. Register here del.icio.us Tags: Mobile Development,Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,CITAG,Windows Phone,iPhone,Android

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• Windows 8 App Wish List

  - by Tim Murphy

  As I have been using Windows 8 more some of them apps that come with the system have been missing some features that I would like to see.  So Microsoft, here is my wish list for some new features. Skydrive Copy files from one folder to another in Skydrive Get public and read only URLs of a file   OneNote MX Print a page   Mail Accept/Reject appointments Sort inbox Search inbox (use the search charm) Print email   Store Keyword search (use the search charm)   del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8

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• Equation / formula to determine an objects position on an ellipitcal path

  - by David Murphy

  I'm making a space game, as such I need objects to follow an elliptical path (orbit). I've worked out how to calculate all the important aspects of my orbits, the only remaining thing is how to have an object follow it. My Orbit class contains the major, minor (and by extension semi-major,semi-minor) lengths. The focii radius, area and circumference even. What is the equation to determine an objects x/y position (only need 2D) on an ellipse with a certain speed after a period of time. Basically, every frame I want to update the position based on the amount of elapsed time. I would like to have the speed along the path speed up and slow down according to the distance from the object it's orbiting, but not sure how to factor this in to the above given that at any point in time the speed has changed from it's previous speed. EDIT I can't answer my own question. But I found the question and answer is already on stackexchange: Kepler orbit : get position on the orbit over time

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• Interesting Blog Stats&ndash;What Sells

  - by Tim Murphy

  Just out of curiosity I decided to find out what the most frequently post were on my blog.  I knew what number one would be just from checking daily stats from time to time.  The main theme that I found in the data is that either pain or humor can really bring people to find your posts.  My most viewed post is on turning off Toshiba Flashcards at over 54K views (I think Toshiba should take notice of this massive fail).  The second highest is on Interesting Blog titles.  This was nothing more than a post that I had put up on a whim of humorous blog titles I had run across.  This post earned over 26K views.  Going down from there the theme stays the same either people looking for something humorous or people with a problem that you have an answer for are the posts that are most likely to get attention.  Remember that blogging can be a great service to your readers.  Keep it interesting and they will come. del.icio.us Tags: Blogging,Blog Topics,Blog Stats

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• The idea of functionN in Scala / Functionaljava

  - by Luke Murphy

  From brain driven development It turns out, that every Function you’ll ever define in Scala, will become an instance of an Implementation which will feature a certain Function Trait. There is a whole bunch of that Function Traits, ranging from Function1 up to Function22. Since Functions are Objects in Scala and Scala is a statically typed language, it has to provide an appropriate type for every Function which comes with a different number of arguments. If you define a Function with two arguments, the compiler picks Function2 as the underlying type. Also, from Michael Froh's blog You need to make FunctionN classes for each number of parameters that you want? Yes, but you define the classes once and then you use them forever, or ideally they're already defined in a library (e.g. Functional Java defines classes F, F2, ..., F8, and the Scala standard library defines classes Function1, ..., Function22) So we have a list of function traits (Scala), and a list of interfaces (Functional-java) to enable us to have first class funtions. I am trying to understand exactly why this is the case. I know, in Java for example, when I write a method say, public int add(int a, int b){ return a + b; } That I cannot go ahead and write add(3,4,5); ( error would be something like : method add cannot be applied to give types ) We simply have to define an interface/trait for functions with different parameters, because of static typing?

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• BUILD 2013 &ndash; Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/28/build-2013-ndash-summary.aspx BUILD was a wonderful experience.  It was great to see old friends, make new friends, learn about the latest Microsoft technology and party with a bunch of geeks.  It didn't hurt getting some awesome swag. While I Know that some people were disappointed that Microsoft didn't Say more about the XBox One, I was pleased with the information we got for developing Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone applications. Add to that the ability to pick the brains of MVPs and product team members was really worth the price of admission. It is going to take a while to digest all of the material and weeks to go through all the videos. In the end there is a lot of information that is going to improve my projects.  I look forward to what Microsoft has coming next seeing every one at the next BUILD. Technorati Tags: BUILD 2013,window's 8.1,Windows Phone,XBox One

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