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  • Friday Fun: Factory Balls – Christmas Edition

    - by Asian Angel
    Your weekend is almost here, but until the work day is over we have another fun holiday game for you. This week your job is to correctly decorate/paint the ornaments that go on the Christmas tree. Simple you say? Maybe, but maybe not! Factory Balls – Christmas Edition The object of the game is to correctly decorate/paint each Christmas ornament exactly as shown in the “sample image” provided for each level. What starts off as simple will quickly have you working to figure out the correct combination or sequence to complete each ornament. Are you ready? The first level serves as a tutorial to help you become comfortable with how to decorate/paint the ornaments. To move an ornament to a paint bucket or cover part of it with one of the helper items simply drag the ornament towards that area. The ornament will automatically move back to its’ starting position when the action is complete. First, a nice coat of red paint followed by covering the middle area with a horizontal belt. Once the belt is on move the ornament to the bucket of yellow paint. Next, you will need to remove the belt, so move the ornament back to the belt’s original position. One ornament finished! As soon as you complete decorating/painting an ornament, you move on to the next level and will be shown the next “sample Image” in the upper right corner. Starting with a coat of orange paint sounds good… Pop the little serrated edge cap on top… Add some blue paint… Almost have it… Place the large serrated edge cap on top… Another dip in the orange paint… And the second ornament is finished. Level three looks a little bit tougher…just work out your pattern of helper items & colors and you will definitely get it! Have fun decorating/painting those ornaments! Note: Starting with level four you will need to start using a combination of two helper items combined at times to properly complete the ornaments. Play Factory Balls – Christmas Edition Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Exploring the Jungle Ruins Wallpaper Protect Your Privacy When Browsing with Chrome and Iron Browser Free Shipping Day is Friday, December 17, 2010 – National Free Shipping Day Find an Applicable Quote for Any Programming Situation Winter Theme for Windows 7 from Microsoft Score Free In-Flight Wi-Fi Courtesy of Google Chrome

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  • Michael Stephenson joins CloudCasts

    - by Alan Smith
    Mike Stephenson has recorded a couple of webcasts focusing on build and test in BizTalk Server 2009. These are part of the “BizTalk Light & Easy” series of webcasts created by some of the BizTalk Server MVPs. Testing BizTalk Applications Implementing an Automated Build Process with BizTalk Server 2009

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  • Silverlight Cream for December 18, 2010 - 2 -- #1013

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Michael Washington, Pete Brown, Robby Ingebretsen, Bill Reiss, Jordan Knight, Mike Taulty, Justin Angel, Jeff Blankenburg. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Creating the Silverlight View Model (MVVM) Control: Calendar Icon" Michael Washington WP7: "United Nations News for Windows Phone 7" Justin Angel Silverlight, WP7/WPF: "CameraPanel: A Parallax Panel for Silverlight, WP7 or WPF" Robby Ingebretsen Shoutouts: Michael Scherotter produced a Silverlight Webcam photo app that he's providing as a free install: A Free Webcam Photo Application in Silverlight From SilverlightCream.com: Creating the Silverlight View Model (MVVM) Control: Calendar Icon Michael Washington has a stunning Calendar Control/Icon up on his blog... walking through how he built it and how you can easily use it in your Silverlight or WP7 app. Strategies for Improving INotifyPropertyChanged in WPF and Silverlight Pete Brown takes a look at INPC and some of the ways this is dealt with to avoid some of the tedius code-reuse errors we all make. CameraPanel: A Parallax Panel for Silverlight, WP7 or WPF Robby Ingebretsen gives up the code for that cool panel he's got on his homepage where the small panels move about seemingly in space. Writing a Windows Phone 7 game? Have a fallback plan Bill Reiss, who has a great WP7 game up - Popper 2 - has a very well-thought-out post up about WP7 'indie' games and the future thereof... great comments from reader/authors as well Automatic template selection – marrying a view to a view model Jordan Knight has the 2nd post of his series on MVVM up... he's talking about it in context of their XamlingCore, but concepts are all good. Rebuilding the PDC 2010 Silverlight Application (Part 5) Mike Taulty's next episode in describing the development of the PDC10 app he wrote is up ... again lots of Blend goodness in this one where he's adding buttons to let the user (us) download whatever is available for the chosen session. United Nations News for Windows Phone 7 In a munificent gesture, Justin Angel not only made his United Nation News app free on the marketplace, but he's posted the source to CodePlex! Justin had sent me a XAP a couple weeks ago, but for some reason, I can no longer sideload so wasn't able to try it until now... too cool, Justin! What I Learned In WP7 – Issue #6 Jeff Blankenburg has his latest "What I learned in WP7" tip up ... and this is one about the marketplace written by someone that's been there and back a few times... 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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  • Debian Squeeze Pre-review

    <b>Christofoo Review: </b>"Right now, Lenny (5.0) is the stable release, and Squeeze (6.0) is in testing. Sometime "soon" Squeeze will get frozen, which means the regular flow of package migration will stop, and from then on it will only get bug and security fixes through a method of back-porting."

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  • First impressions of Scala

    - by Scott Weinstein
    I have an idea that it may be possible to predict build success/failure based on commit data. Why Scala? It’s a JVM language, has lots of powerful type features, and it has a linear algebra library which I’ll need later. Project definition and build Neither maven or the scala build tool (sbt) are completely satisfactory. This maven **archetype** (what .Net folks would call a VS project template) mvn archetype:generate `-DarchetypeGroupId=org.scala-tools.archetypes `-DarchetypeArtifactId=scala-archetype-simple `-DremoteRepositories=http://scala-tools.org/repo-releases `-DgroupId=org.SW -DartifactId=BuildBreakPredictor gets you started right away with “hello world” code, unit tests demonstrating a number of different testing approaches, and even a ready made `.gitignore` file - nice! But the Scala version is behind at v2.8, and more seriously, compiling and testing was painfully slow. So much that a rapid edit – test – edit cycle was not practical. So Lab49 colleague Steve Levine tells me that I can either adjust my pom to use fsc – the fast scala compiler, or use sbt. Sbt has some nice features It’s fast – it uses fsc by default It has a continuous mode, so  `> ~test` will compile and run your unit test each time you save a file It’s can consume (and produce) Maven 2 dependencies the build definition file can be much shorter than the equivalent pom (about 1/5 the size, as repos and dependencies can be declared on a single line) And some real limitations Limited support for 3rd party integration – for instance out of the box, TeamCity doesn’t speak sbt, nor does IntelliJ IDEA Steeper learning curve for build steps outside the default Side note: If a language has a fast compiler, why keep the slow compiler around? Even worse, why make it the default? I choose sbt, for the faster development speed it offers. Syntax Scala APIs really like to use punctuation – sometimes this works well, as in the following map1 |+| map2 The `|+|` defines a merge operator which does addition on the `values` of the maps. It’s less useful here: http(baseUrl / url >- parseJson[BuildStatus] sure you can probably guess what `>-` does from the context, but how about `>~` or `>+`? Language features I’m still learning, so not much to say just yet. However case classes are quite usefull, implicits scare me, and type constructors have lots of power. Community A number of projects, such as https://github.com/scalala and https://github.com/scalaz/scalaz are split between github and google code – github for the src, and google code for the docs. Not sure I understand the motivation here.

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  • New Visual Studio 2012 Project Templates for DotNetNuke

    - by Chris Hammond
    Earlier this month Microsoft put the bits up for Visual Studio 2012 RTM out on MSDN Subscriber downloads, and during the first two weeks of September they will officially be releasing Visual Studio 2012. I started working with VS2012 late in the release candidate cycle, doing some DNN module development using my templates at http://christoctemplate.codeplex.com . These templates work fine in Visual Studio 2012 from my testing, but they still face the same problem that they had in Visual Studio 2008...(read more)

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  • Friday Fun: Snail Bob 2

    - by Asian Angel
    Everyone’s favorite day of the week is here once again and that means it is time for some fun! In this week’s game your job is to help Snail Bob travel safely through a dangerous forest and reach his Grandpa’s house in one piece.What is a Histogram, and How Can I Use it to Improve My Photos?How To Easily Access Your Home Network From Anywhere With DDNSHow To Recover After Your Email Password Is Compromised

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  • PowerShell PowerPack Download

    - by BuckWoody
    I read Jeffery Hicks’ article in this month’s Redmond Magazine on a new add-in for Windows PowerShell 2.0. It’s called the PowerShell Pack and it has a some great new features that I plan to put into place on my production systems as soon as I finished learning and testing them. You can download the pack here if you have PowerShell 2.0. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and I’ll blog about what I’m learning here in the near future, but you should check it out. The only issue I have with it right now is that you have to load a module and then use get-help to find out what it does, because I haven’t found a lot of other documentation so far. The most interesting modules for me are the ones that can run a command elevated (in PSUserTools), the task scheduling commands (in TaskScheduler) and the file system checks and tools (in FileSystem). There’s also a way to create simple Graphical User Interface panels (in ). I plan to string all these together to install a management set of tools on my SQL Server Express Instances, giving the user “task buttons” to backup or restore a database, add or delete users and so on. Yes, I’ll be careful, and yes, I’ll make sure the user is allowed to do that. For now, I’m testing the download, but I thought I would share what I’m up to. If you have PowerShell 2.0 and you download the pack, let me know how you use it. Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. Yes, there are always multiple ways to do things, and this script may not work in every situation, for everything. It’s just a script, people. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Brighton Rocks: UA Europe 2011

    - by ultan o'broin
    User Assistance Europe 2011 was held in Brighton, UK. Having seen Quadrophenia a dozen times, I just had to go along (OK, I wanted to talk about messages in enterprise applications). Sadly, it rained a lot, though that was still eminently more tolerable than being stuck home in Dublin during Bloomsday. So, here are my somewhat selective highlights and observations from the conference, massively skewed towards my own interests, as usual. Enjoyed Leah Guren's (Cow TC) great start ‘keynote’ on the Cultural Dimensions of Software Help Usage. Starting out by revisiting Hofstede's and Hall's work on culture (how many times I have done this for Multilingual magazine?) and then Neilsen’s findings on age as an indicator of performance, Leah showed how it is the expertise of the user that user assistance (UA) needs to be designed for (especially for high-end users), with some considerations made for age, while the gender and culture of users are not major factors. Help also needs to be contextual and concise, embedded close to the action. That users are saying things like “If I want help on Office, I go to Google ” isn't all that profound at this stage, but it is always worth reiterating how search can be optimized to return better results for users. Interestingly, regardless of user education level, the issue of information quality--hinging on the lynchpin of terminology reflecting that of the user--is critical. Major takeaway for me there. Matthew Ellison’s sessions on embedded help and demos were also impressive. Embedded help that is concise and contextual is definitely a powerful UX enabler, and I’m pleased to say that in Oracle Fusion Applications we have embraced the concept fully. Matthew also mentioned in his session about successful software demos that the principle of modality with demos is a must. Look no further than Oracle User Productivity Kit demos See It!, Try It!, Know It, and Do It! modes, for example. I also found some key takeaways in the presentation by Marie-Louise Flacke on notes and warnings. Here, legal considerations seemed to take precedence over providing any real information to users. I was delighted when Marie-Louise called out the Oracle JDeveloper documentation as an exemplar of how to use notes and instructions instead of trying to scare the bejaysus out of people and not providing them with any real information they’d find useful instead. My own session on designing messages for enterprise applications was well attended. Knowing your user profiles (remember user expertise is the king maker for UA so write for each audience involved), how users really work, the required application business and UI rules, what your application technology supports, and how messages integrate with the enterprise help desk and support policies and you will go much further than relying solely on the guideline of "writing messages in plain language". And, remember the value in warnings and confirmation messages too, and how you can use them smartly. I hope y’all got something from my presentation and from my answers to questions afterwards. Ellis Pratt stole the show with his presentation on applying game theory to software UA, using plenty of colorful, relevant examples (check out the Atlassian and DropBox approaches, for example), and striking just the right balance between theory and practice. Completely agree that the approach to take here is not to make UA itself a game, but to invoke UA as part of a bigger game dynamic (time-to-task completion, personal and communal goals, personal achievement and status, and so on). Sure there are gotchas and limitations to gamification, and we need to do more research. However, we'll hear a lot more about this subject in coming years, particularly in the enterprise space. I hope. I also heard good things about the different sessions about DITA usage (including one by Sonja Fuga that clearly opens the door for major innovation in the community content space using WordPress), the progressive disclosure of information (Cerys Willoughby), an overview of controlled language (or "information quality", as I like to position it) solutions and rationale by Dave Gash, and others. I also spent time chatting with Mike Hamilton of MadCap Software, who showed me a cool demo of their Flare product, and the Lingo translation solution. I liked the idea of their licensing model for workers-on-the-go; that’s smart UX-awareness in itself. Also chatted with Julian Murfitt of Mekon about uptake of DITA in the enterprise space. In all, it's worth attending UA Europe. I was surprised, however, not to see conference topics about mobile UA, community conversation and content, and search in its own right. These are unstoppable forces now, and the latter is pretty central to providing assistance now to all but the most irredentist of hard-copy fetishists or advanced technical or functional users working away on the back end of applications and systems. Only saw one iPad too (says the guy who carries three laptops). Tweeting during the conference was pretty much nonexistent during the event, so no community energy there. Perhaps all this can be addressed next year. I would love to see the next UA Europe event come to Dublin (despite Bloomsday, it's not a bad place place, really) now that hotels are so cheap and all. So, what is my overall impression of the state of user assistance in Europe? Clearly, there are still many people in the industry who feel there is something broken with the traditional forms of user assistance (particularly printed doc) and something needs to be done about it. I would suggest they move on and try and embrace change, instead. Many others see new possibilities, offered by UX and technology, as well as the reality of online user behavior in an increasingly connected world and that is encouraging. Such thought leaders need to be listened to. As Ellis Pratt says in his great book, Trends in Technical Communication - Rethinking Help: “To stay relevant means taking a new perspective on the role (of technical writer), and delivering “products” over and above the traditional manual and online Help file... there are a number of new trends in this field - some complementary, some conflicting. Whatever trends emerge as the norm, it’s likely the status quo will change.” It already has, IMO. I hear similar debates in the professional translation world about the onset of translation crowd sourcing (the Facebook model) and machine translation (trust me, that battle is over). Neither of these initiatives has put anyone out of a job and probably won't, though the nature of the work might change. If anything, such innovations have increased the overall need for professional translators as user expectations rise, new audiences emerge, and organizations need to collate and curate user-generated content, combining it with their own. Perhaps user assistance professionals can learn from other professions and grow accordingly.

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  • Google CDN - using http vs https

    - by HorusKol
    All the examples of accessing google's CDN use https:// in the URL (including on Google itself) - but this has caused a problem when testing in Safari (certificate problem and also different domain). <script type="text/javascript" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"></script> I have switched to calling it over http instead, but just wondering if this is a mistake or security issue?

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  • Silverlight Cream for May 05, 2010 -- #856

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Jeremy Alles(-2-), Kunal Chowdhury, anand iyer, Yochay Kiriaty(-2-, -3-), Max Paulousky, David Kelley, smartyP, Tim Heuer, and Dan Wahlin. Shoutout: Tim Heuer provides links for all the Ways to give feedback on Silverlight From SilverlightCream.com: [WP7] Bug when using NavigationService in Windows Phone 7 Jeremy Alles has blogged about a bug he found using the Navigation service in WP7. He gives the steps to reproduce and a couple possible workarounds. [WP7] Using the camera in the emulator Jeremy Alles is also digging into the camera functionality in the emulator. He has code demonstrating launching a camera task, and a list of other tasks available. Silverlight Tutorials Chapter 3: Introduction to Panels Kunal Chowdhury has Chapter 3 of his Silverlight 4 Tutorial series up and he's talking about Panels this time out. Push Notifications in Windows Phone 7 developer tools CTP April Refresh anand iyer is discussing the Push Notifications, only from a code perspective. Good information and good additional links to follow. Windows Phone Application Life Cycle Yochay Kiriaty talks with Tudor Toma and Jaime Rodriguez about the WP7 application lifecycle on Channel 9. Understanding Microsoft Push Notifications for Windows Phones Yochay Kiriaty has a 2-part post up on WP7 Push Notifications. The first part is explaining what Push Notifications are and why we need them... as a developer and as an end user viewing Toast or Tile notifications. Understanding How Microsoft Push Notification Works – Part 2 In the 2nd part of his Push Notification series, Yochay Kiriaty discusses how the Push Notification works under the covers. To Remember: Deployment of Silverlight Applications With Wcf Ria Services Max Paulousky has a post up for reference on what to look into when you get "Load Operation Failed" in WCF RIA services. Launching a URL from an OOB Silverlight Application David Kelley has a quick post up on launching URLs from an OOB app. If you haven't tried it, you may be surprised as he was at first. Creating a Windows Phone 7 XNA Game in Landscape Orientation smartyP is looking at recreating a landscape WP7 game in XNA and is detailing some of the issues he's been dealing with, and is also sharing a project file. New Silverlight 4 Themes available–get the raw bits Tim Heuer provided 'raw' versions of 3 new themes. Read his post to see exactly what he means by 'raw' ... they're definitely good looking, and are going to get a lot of play. Handling WCF Service Paths in Silverlight 4 – Relative Path Support Dan Wahlin shares his technique for avoiding the pain involved with ServiceReferences.ClientConfig by using Silverlight 4 relative path support. 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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  • Best advice for setting up Ubuntu on my mother's computer

    - by idealmachine
    Intended use My mother had an old Compaq desktop computer running Windows 98, which she used for occasional Web browsing and playing cards. The name of her card game is Hoyle Card Games 3. Although I had to repair it several times over the last 10 years, it worked fine until it finally died at the end of last year. Hardware specifications A relative brought up a newer computer soon afterward: Operating system: Windows XP Asus K8N motherboard (with broken on-board sound; getting a sound card) Athlon 64? processor (don't remember the clock speed) 512 MB RAM Hope the graphics card works... Replacement sound card will be one of: Ensoniq ES1370 AudioPCI Diamond Monster Sound MX300 (Aureal chipset) Sound Blaster Audigy 2 SE Peripherals HP Scanjet 3400c scanner (USB connected) HP LaserJet multi-function printer (parallel port connected, and printing works with a PCL driver) Same serial mouse as old computer Question I had set up an SSH/VNC connection to allow for remotely working out problems. Or so I thought. A month later, the computer would not boot, rendering the SSH connection useless and an OS reinstall necessary. Unfortunately, I have neither the original Windows disc nor the product key. Unless I were to pay $200 for a full Windows 7 Home Premium license for my computer, I would not be able to re-install Windows XP on hers. I consider myself an advanced Linux user, having used Debian for years. So here are my questions. I have only one day to decide whether to use Ubuntu or buy Windows: A quick search leads me to believe all the hardware listed above is supposed to work with Linux, but am I mistaken? Would Ubuntu/Xubuntu suffice (specify which one if it matters), or would I be better off paying the $200 necessary for Windows XP? Is the card game likely to run on Wine? I believe the minimum system requirement is Windows 95. Failing Wine compatibility, will VirtualBox run fast enough on such a computer (Windows 98 as the guest OS)? Are there any free card games just as good? She plays mainly Bridge, Poker, and Solitaire. Is there any "Large Fonts" option for those with poor vision? The lack of it would be a big disadvantage. BONUS: Although I would probably replace the old mouse upon a move to Ubuntu, is it even possible to get a serial mouse working?

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  • Friday Fun: Snow Crusher

    - by Asian Angel
    It has probably been a long week whether you have already returned to work or are finishing up the last of your vacation time. If you are in need of some stress relief, then we have we the perfect game for you. This week you get to be totally fiendish and use a monster size snowball to destroy as many cars as possible at the local snow lodge. Snow Crusher The object of the game is simple…create as large of a monster snowball as you can and then send it down over the side of the mountain to destroy the cars at the snow lodge. You can choose from three different sizes of monster snowballs to create. We chose the “Snowflake Size” for our reign of destruction. Once you have chosen a monster snowball size, all that is left to do is select the control method that works best for you. As soon as you select the control method, your monster snowball creation will automatically begin. Keep in mind that the faster your snowball goes the harder it can become to steer if you make sudden movements… At the top you can watch your progress towards the drop-off point and the green boxes highlighted at the bottom indicate how large of an item (such as trees or boulders) your snowball can roll over and add to the total mass. Snowball speed is shown in the lower right corner. Time to roll! As soon as the first green box is lit up you can start adding small trees to your snowball’s mass. You will want to avoid larger items as you go because they will penalize your score, slow you down, and reduce the size of your snowball! Halfway to the drop-off point and our snowball is now able to grab up larger trees. If you have not hit any large items along the way, your snowball will definitely be moving along at a good rate by now. When you reach the end of the mass building area, your snowball will pop out into the open and get ready to drop off over the side of the mountain. Go snowball go! Yes! Thirteen cars crushed and ready for the scrap yard… If the “Snowflake Size” snowball can do this, just think what the “Avalanche Size” can do with three minutes of time to build up mass! Have fun with those monster snowballs! Play Snow Crusher Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Classic Super Mario Brothers Theme for Chrome and Iron Experimental Firefox Builds Put Tabs on the Title Bar (Available for Download) Android Trojan Found in the Wild Chaos, Panic, and Disorder Wallpaper Enjoy Christmas Beyond the Holiday with Christmas Eve Crisis Parrotfish Extends the Number of Services Accessible in Twitter Previews

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  • Angry Bird Makers: Developers Love iOS Over Android To Make Money

    - by Gopinath
    These days web is buzzing with Apple iOS vs Google Android debates. Recently Fortune predicted that Android is going to explode in 2011 and it will surpass Apple’s iOS market share. Yes Android is set to spread its wings across all the devices – smartphones, TVs, set top boxes, in car entertainment devices, what not. Think of any device that requires operating system, Android can be used. On the other than iOS is only available on very selective Apple devices – iPods, iPhones and iPads. When it comes to the count of devices running on a specific OS, Android will be far ahead of iOS but when you consider a quality of devices and providing an eco system for business to make money iOS seems to be the winner. That is what experts and analysts are saysing. Here is an excerpt from Peter Vesterbacka, maker of the popular Angry Birds game, interview to Tech N Marketing site.  He says Apple will be the number one platform for a long time from a developer perspective, they have gotten so many things right. And they know what they are doing and they call the shots. Android is growing, but it’s also growing complexity at the same time. Device fragmentation not the issue, but rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem. So many different shops, so many different models. The carriers messing with the experience again. Open but not really open, a very Google centric ecosystem. And paid content just doesn’t work on Android. Peter says developer prefer iOS over Android as it’s not very easy to make money on Android market. That’s why they released a free version of Angry Birds game with ads support for Android devices. Free is the way to go with Android. Nobody has been successful selling content on Android. We will offer a way to remove the ads by paying for the app, but we don’t expect that to be a huge revenue stream. You can read full interview here. cc image credit: flickr/johanl This article titled,Angry Bird Makers: Developers Love iOS Over Android To Make Money, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • My Thoughts On the Xbox 180

    - by Chris Gardner
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/06/21/my-thoughts-on-the-xbox-180.aspx Everyone seems to be putting their 0.00237 cents into the wishing well over Microsoft's recent decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. However, there have been a few issues that nobody has touched. As such, I have decided to dig 0.00237 cents out of my pocket. First, let me be clear about this point. I do not support the decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. I wanted that point to be expressed first and unambiguously. I will say it again. I do not support the decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. Now that I have that out of the way, let me go into my rationale. This decision removes most of the cool features that enticed me to pre-order the console. No, I didn't cancel my pre-order. There is still five months before the release of the console, and there is still a plethora of information that we, as consumers, do not have. With that, it should be noted that much of the talk in this post is speculation and rhetoric. I do not have any insider information that you do not possess. The persistent connection would have allowed the console to do many of the functions for which we have been begging. That demo where someone was playing Ryse, seamlessly accepted a multiplayer challenge in Killer Instinct, played the match (and a rematch,) and then jumped back into Ryse. That's gone, if you bought the game on disc. The new, DRM free system will require the disc in the system to play a game. That bullet point where one Xbox Live account could have up to 10 slave accounts so families could play together, no matter where they were located. That's gone as well. The promise of huge, expansive, dynamically changing worlds that was brought to us with the power of cloud computing. Well, "the people" didn't want there to be a forced, persistent connection. As such, developers can't rely on a connection and, as such, that feature is gone. This is akin to the removal of the hard drive on the Xbox 360. The list continues, but the enthusiast press has enumerated the list far better than I wish. All of this is because the Xbox team saw the HUGE success of Steam and decided to borrow a few ideas. Yes, Steam. The service that everyone hated for the first six months (for the same reasons the Xbox One is getting flack.) There was an initial growing pain. However, it is now lauded as the way games distribution should be handled. Unless you are Microsoft. I do find it curious that many of the features were originally announced for the PS4 during its unveiling. However, much of that was left strangely absent for Sony's E3 press conference. Instead, we received a single, static slide that basically said the exact opposite of Microsoft's plans. It is not farfetched to believe that slide came into existence during the approximately seven hours between the two media briefings. The thing that majorly annoys me over this whole kerfuffle is that the single thing that caused the call to arms is, really, not an issue. Microsoft never said they were going to block used sales. They said it was up to the publisher to make that decision. This would have allowed publishers to reclaim some of the costs of development in subsequent sales of the product. If you sell your game to GameStop for 7 USD, GameStop is going to sell it for 55 USD. That is 48 USD pure profit for them. Some publishers asked GameStop for a small cut. Was this a huge, money grubbing scheme? Well, yes, but the idea was that they have to handle server infrastructure for dormant accounts, etc. Of course, GameStop flatly refused, and the Online Pass was born. Fortunately, this trend didn’t last, and most publishers have stopped the practice. The ability to sell "licenses" has already begun to be challenged. Are you living in the EU? If so, companies must allow you to sell digital property. With this precedent in place, it's only a matter of time before other areas follow suit. If GameStop were smart, they should have immediately contacted every publisher out there to get the rights to become a clearing house for these licenses. Then, they keep their business model and could reduce their brick and mortar footprint. The digital landscape is changing. We need to not block this process. As Seth MacFarlane best said "Some issues are so important that you should drag people kicking and screaming." I believe this was said on an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher about the issue of Gay Marriages. Much like the original source, this is an issue that we need to drag people to the correct, progressive position. Microsoft, as a company, actually has the resources to weather the transition period. They have a great pool of first and second party developers that can leverage this new framework to prove the validity. Over time, the third party developers will get excited to use these tools. As an old C++ guy, I resisted C# for years. Now, I think it's one of the best languages I've ever used. I have a server room and a Co-Lo full of servers, so I originally didn't see the value in Azure. Now, I wish I could move every one of my projects into the cloud. I still LOVE getting physical packaging, which my music and games collection will proudly attest. However, I have started to see the value in pure digital, and have found ways to integrate this into the ways I consume those products. I can, honestly, understand how some parts of the population would be very apprehensive about this new landscape. There were valid arguments about people with no internet access. There are ways to combat these problems. These methods do not require us to throw the baby out with the bathwater. However, the number of people in the computer industry that I have seen cry foul is truly appalling. We are the forward looking people that help show how technology can improve people's lives. If we can't see the value of the brief pain involved with an exciting new ecosystem, than who will?

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  • Does Metasploit Have a Future?

    Recently acquired, the Metasploit project is a popular pen testing framework loved by white- and black-hats alike. Now that it has a corporate parent, does it have a future as a viable open source project?

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  • SQLAuthority News – SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Technical Guide – A Comprehensive Whitepaper – (454 pages – 9 MB)

    - by pinaldave
    Microsoft has just released SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Technical Guide. This guide is very comprehensive and covers the subject of upgrade in-depth. This is indeed a helpful detailed white paper. Even writing a summary of this white paper would take over 100 pages. This further proves that SQL Server 2012 is quite an important release from Microsoft. This white paper discusses how to upgrade from SQL Server 2008/R2 to SQL Server 2012. I love how it starts with the most interesting and basic discussion of upgrade strategies: 1) In-place upgrades, 2) Side by side upgrade, 3) One-server, and 4) Two-server. This whitepaper is not just pure theory but is also an excellent source for some tips and tricks. Here is an example of a good tip from the paper: “If you want to upgrade just one database from a legacy instance of SQL Server and not upgrade the other databases on the server, use the side-by-side upgrade method instead of the in-place method.” There are so many trivia, tips and tricks that make creating the list seems humanly impossible given a short period of time. My friend Vinod Kumar, an SQL Server expert, wrote a very interesting article on SQL Server 2012 Upgrade before. In that article, Vinod addressed the most interesting and practical questions related to upgrades. He started with the fundamentals of how to start backup before upgrade and ended with fail-safe strategies after the upgrade is over. He covered end-to-end concepts in his blog posts in simple words in extremely precise statements. A successful upgrade uses a cycle of: planning, document process, testing, refine process, testing, planning upgrade window, execution, verifying of upgrade and opening for business. If you are at Vinod’s blog post, I suggest you go all the way down and collect the gold mine of most important links. I have bookmarked the blog by blogging about it and I suggest that you bookmark it as well with the way you prefer. Vinod Kumar’s blog post on SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Technical Guide SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Technical Guide is a detailed resource that’s also available online for free. Each chapter was carefully crafted and explained in detail. Here is a quick list of the chapters included in the whitepaper. Before downloading the guide, beware of its size of 9 MB and 454 pages. Here’s the list of chapters: Chapter 1: Upgrade Planning and Deployment Chapter 2: Management Tools Chapter 3: Relational Databases Chapter 4: High Availability Chapter 5: Database Security Chapter 6: Full-Text Search Chapter 7: Service Broker Chapter 8: SQL Server Express Chapter 9: SQL Server Data Tools Chapter 10: Transact-SQL Queries Chapter 11: Spatial Data Chapter 12: XML and XQuery Chapter 13: CLR Chapter 14: SQL Server Management Objects Chapter 15: Business Intelligence Tools Chapter 16: Analysis Services Chapter 17: Integration Services Chapter 18: Reporting Services Chapter 19: Data Mining Chapter 20: Other Microsoft Applications and Platforms Appendix 1: Version and Edition Upgrade Paths Appendix 2: SQL Server 2012: Upgrade Planning Checklist Download SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Technical Guide [454 pages and 9 MB] Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Database, DBA, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Documentation, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL White Papers, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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  • Silverlight Cream for June 16, 2010 -- #884

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Zoltan Arvai, Emiel Jongerius, Charles Petzold, Adam Kinney, Deepesh Mohnani, Timmy Kokke, and Damon Payne. Shoutouts: Andy Beaulieu reported his Coding4Fun: Shuffleboard Game for WP7 has been posted -- Big ol' Tutorial and 6 videos of WP7 goodness Karl Shifflett announced Three New WPF and Silverlight Designer Videos Posted Charles Petzold has a cool Flip-Number Clock in Silverlight posted... cool demo, and the source. From SilverlightCream.com: Data Driven Applications with MVVM Part II: Messaging, Unit Testing, and Live Data Sources Zoltan Arvai has part 2 of his Data-Driven Apps with MVVM up, and this one is also including Messaging, Unit Testing, and Live WCF Data... good tutorial and all the code. Silverlight DataContext Changed Event and Trigger Emiel Jongerius takes a hard swing at the lack of DataContextChanged... his solution involves two attached properties instead of one... check it out and see what you think! Orientation Strategies for Windows Phone 7 Charles Petzold is discussing WP7 Orientation... showing the problems you can get involved in, and how to work through them... and you might be surprised at how he does it :) ... pretty cool as usual, Charles! Debugging the TranslateZoomRotate WPF Behavior in Blend Adam Kinney talks through a bug reported about the WPF TranslateZoomRotate Behavior. Again, it's WPF, but it's in Blend, and ya never know when the solution might apply. I want my app to look like the Zune client Deepesh Mohnani demonstrates using the Cosmopolitan theme to get his app to have the same look as the Zune client. MVVM Project and Item Templates Timmy Kokke is continuing with his cool SilverAmp media player, using it to expand upon the new Blend and Silverlight 4 features. This episode touches very lightly on cranking up a new MVVM project in Blend. Great Features for MVVM Friendly Objects Part 0: Favor Composition Over Inheritance Damon Payne has the first part up of a series he's working on with 'MVVM Friendly' features... he's building out a lot of the infrastructure in this post for the ones that follow... all good stuff. 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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  • Friday Fun: Shape Fold

    - by Asian Angel
    This week’s game comes with lots of puzzle solving, brain-teasing goodness to keep you busy. On each level you will need to rotate, twist, and/or move the hinged puzzle pieces into their proper shape. Do you have the patience and skill to solve all the puzzles or will you be forced to admit defeat? 7 Ways To Free Up Hard Disk Space On Windows HTG Explains: How System Restore Works in Windows HTG Explains: How Antivirus Software Works

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  • Best Practices To Build a Product Registration System?

    - by Volomike
    What are some practices I should use in a product registration system I'm building? I likely can't stop all malicious hacking, but I'd like to slow them down a great deal. (Note, I know only PHP.) I'm talking about things like encrypting traffic, testing the encryption from hacking like a man-in-the-middle attack, etc. The other concern I have is that this needs to work on most PHP5-based web hosting environments, which may not have mcrypt installed.

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  • The Niantic Project: Ingress by Felicia Hajra-Lee

    Despite the current fact that the augmented reality game for Android is still in beta phase, it is amazing to see that the world of literature is already taking momentum on this 'real-life' universe. After reading 'The Alignment: Ingress' by Thomas Greanias it took only a blink of the eye to go for 'The Niantic Project: Ingress' by Felicia Hajra-Lee, too. Here is the review I posted on Amazon.com: Ingress, a parallel universe to our reality, is here. There is no doubt about this anymore... The Niantic Project, originated at the CERN collider in Geneva, Switzerland, got into focus of global players. And the game is hard; fair-play is only for the fainted ones. Felicia understands to drag the audience directly into the action of the Niantic Project and its protagonists. The novella is heavily based on the investigations posted daily on the website of Ingress. She really understands how to interweave the various clues and creates an atmosphere where it sometimes feels challenging to differentiate between fiction and reality. It all starts with 'Epiphany Night' at the Niantic Labs, the high exposure of Exotic Matter (XM) and the escape of scientist Dr. Devra Bogdanovich and 'sentinel' Roland Jarvis. Of course, a new research, or should we name it technology, like the Niantic Project has to be protected and there are multiple parties on the hunt. Throughout the various chapters Felicia introduces new potential buyers from all over the globe, gives us detailed insights on the hunters and their brutal effectiveness to finish an assignment, and manages to keep the reader in high-pitched mode thanks to a couple of turn-arounds in the overall story. Personally, I have to say that I really enjoyed reading this title. Felicia's love to details is absolutely amazing, and sometimes I was really wondering whether she would be one of the assassins. But unfortunately I also have to say that I'm not a great fan of the structural organization of the (title-less) chapters. It is fascinating to follow the ventures of Devra, Farlowe and 855 but occasionally I had to go back to previous paragraphs in order to keep track of the individual plots. Overall a great title, captivating and rich in details but simply too short. Please Fecilia, gives us more to read. As an owner of an Android smartphone or tablet, you should get yourself into the world of Ingress. Check out the Play Store to install the app. Now. ;-)

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  • Silverlight Cream for April 11, 2010 -- #836

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Rénald Nollet, Roboblob, Laurent Bugnion, Timmy Kokke, Michael Sync(-2-), Victor Gaudioso, and Bill Reiss. Brought to you from a tiny table in my no-tell-motelTM in 'Vegas AKA "cheaper than anywhere else" and the WiFi is free and smokin'... From SilverlightCream.com: Sync your Silverlight out-of-browser application data without service but with Dropbox Rénald Nollet is in good company (Walt Ritscher) because he's demo'ing synching OOB apps with dropbox. Unit Testable WCF Web Services in MVVM and Silverlight 4 Roboblob is discussing calling WCF Web Services from a Silverlight MVVM app... something he's been avoiding up to now. Good long code and text-filled article, with the project to download. Using commands with ApplicationBarMenuItem and ApplicationBarButton in Windows Phone 7 I almost missed this post by Laurent Bugnion, on how to get around the problem of not being able to attach commands to the ApplicationBarMenuItem and ApplicationBarButton in WP7. He gets around it with (gasp) code behind :) Introducing jLight – Talking to the DOM using Silverlight and jQuery. Oh boy... if you haven't been using jQuery yet, this should get it going for you... Timmy Kokke has produced jLight which brings jQuery into Silverlight for ease of DOM interaction... and it's on CodePlex! Test-Driven Development in Windows Phone7 – Part 1: Unit Testing with Silverlight for Phone7 Michael Sync's starting a series on TDD with Silverlight on WP7. Great tutorial and all the code is available. Tip: “Object reference not set to an instance of an object” Error in Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Michael Sync also has a tip up for the resolution of an error we've all seen in all sorts of development, but now in WP7, and the workaround is deceptively simple. New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to Create Gradients Victor Gaudioso has a new video tutorial up for creating gradients in Expression Blend... don't fumble around in Blend... learn from the master! Space Rocks game step 8: Hyperspace Bill Reiss is up to episode 8 in his Silverlight game series now... this latest is on Hyperspace ... don'cha wish you could just do that? My trip to 'Vegas would have been a lot faster :) 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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