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• Airline mess - what a journey

  - by Mike Dietrich

  What a day, what a journey ... Flew this noon from Munich to Zuerich for catch my ongoing flight to San Francisco with Swiss. And that day did start very well as Lufthansa messed up the connection flight by 42 minutes for a 35 minute flight. And as I was obviously the only passenger connection to San Francisco nobody picked me up at the airplane to bring me directly to my connection as Swiss did for the 8 passengers connection to Miami. So I missed my flight. What a start - and many thanks to Lufthansa. I was not the only one missing a connection as Lufthansa/Swiss had canceled the flight before due to "technical problems". In Zuerich Swiss did rebook me via Frankfurt with Lufthansa to board a United Airlines flight to San Francisco. "Ouch" I thought. I had my share of experience with United already as they've messed up my luggage on the way to San Francisco some years ago and it took them five (!!!) days to fly my bag over and deliver it. But actually it was the only option today. So I said "Yes". A big mistake as I've learned later on. The Frankfurt flight was delayed as well "due to a late incoming aircraft". But there was plenty of time. And I went to the Swiss counter at the gate and let them check if my baggage is on that flight to Frankfurt. They've said "Yes". Boarding the plane with a delay of 45 minutes (the typical Lufthansa delay these days) I spotted my Rimowa trolley right next to the plane on the airfield. So I was sure that it will be send to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt I went to the United counter once it did open - had to go through the passport check they do for US flights as well - and they've said "Yes, your luggage is with us". Well ... Arriving in San Francisco with just a bit of a some minutes delay and a very fast immigration procedure I saw the first bags with Priority tags getting pushed to the baggage claim - but mine was not there. I did wait ... and wait ... and wait. Well, thanks United, you did it again!!! I flew twice in the past years United Airlines - and in both cases they've messed up my luggage on the way to San Francisco. How lovely is that ... Now the real fun started again as the lady at the "Lost and Found" counter for luggage spotted my luggage in her system in Zuerich - and told me it's supposed to be sent with LH1191 to Frankfurt on Sept 27. But this was yesterday in Europe - it's already Sept 28 - and I saw my luggage in front of the airplane. So I'd suppose it's in Frankfurt already. But what could she do? Nothing but doing the awful paperwork. And "No Mr Dietrich, we don't call international numbers". Thank you, United. Next time I'll try to get a contract for a US land line in advance. They can't even tell you which plane will bring your luggage. It may be tomorrow with UA flight arriving around 4pm in SFO. I'm looking forward to some hours in the wonderful United Airlines call center waiting line. Last time I did spend 60-90 minutes every day until I got my luggage. If it takes again that long then OOW will be over by then. I love airline travel - and especially with United Airlines. And by the way ... they gave us these nice fancy packages during the flight:  That looks good - what's in that box??? Yes, really ... a bag of potato chips. Pure fat - very healthy.  I doubt that I'll ever fly United Airlines again!!!

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• Thinking differently about BI delivery

  - by jamiet

  My day job involves implementing Business Intelligence (BI) solutions which, as I have said before, is simply about giving people the information they need to do their jobs. I’m always interested in learning about new ways of achieving that aim and that is my motivation for writing blog entries that are not concerned with SQL or SQL Server per se. Implementing BI systems usually involves hacking together a bunch third party products with some in-house “glue” and delivering information using some shiny, expensive web-based front-end tool; the list of vendors that supply such tools is big and ever-growing. No doubt these tools have their place and of late I have started to wonder whether they can be supplemented with different ways of delivering information. The problem I have with these separate web-based tools is exactly that – they are separate web-based tools. What’s the problem with that you might ask? I’ll explain! They force the information worker to go somewhere unfamiliar in order to get the information they need to do their jobs. Would it not be better if we could deliver information into the tools that those information workers are already using and not force them to go somewhere else? I look at the rise of blogging over recent years and I realise that what made them popular is that people can subscribe to RSS feeds and have information pushed to them in their tool of choice rather than them having to go and find the information for themselves in a tool that has been foisted upon them. Would it not be a good idea to adopt the principle of subscription for the benefit of delivering BI information as well? I think it would and in the rest of this blog entry I’ll outline such a scenario where the power of subscription could be used to enhance the delivery of information to information workers. Typical questions that information workers ask might be: What are my year-on-year sales figures? What was my footfall yesterday? How many widgets have I sold so far today? Each of those questions includes a time element and that shouldn’t surprise us, any BI system that I have worked on includes the dimension of time. Now, what do people use to view and organise their time-oriented information? Its not a trick question, they use a calendar and in the enterprise space more often than not that calendar is managed using Outlook. Given then that information workers are already looking at their calendar in Outlook anyway would it not make sense then to deliver information into that same calendar? Of course it would. Calendars are a great way of visualising information such as sales figures. Observe: Just in this single screenshot I have managed to convey a multitude of information. The information worker can see, at a glance, information about hourly/daily/weekly/monthly sales and, moreover, he/she is viewing that information right inside the tool that they use every day. There is no effort on the part of him/her, the information just appears hour after hour, day after day. Taking the idea further, each one of those calendar items could be a mini-dashboard in its own right. Double-clicking on an item could show a plethora of other information about that time slot such as breaking the sales down per region or year-over-year comparisons. Perhaps the title could employ a sparkline? Loads of possibilities. The point is that calendars are a completely natural way to visualise information; we should make more use of them! The real beauty of delivering information using calendars for us BI developers is that it should be so easy. In the case of Outlook we don’t need to write complicated VBA code that can go and manipulate a person’s calendar, simply publishing data in a format that Outlook can understand is sufficient and happily such formats already exist; iCalendar is the accepted format and the even more flexible xCalendar is hopefully on its way as well.   I’d like to make one last point and this one is with my SQL Server hat on. Reporting Services 2008 R2 introduced the ability to publish data as subscribable Atom feeds so it seems logical that it could also be a vehicle for delivering calendar feeds too. If you think this would be a good idea go and vote for it at Publish data as iCalendar feeds and please please please add some comments (especially if you vote it down). Work smarter, not harder! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• reading the file name from user input in MIPS assembly

  - by Hassan Al-Jeshi

  I'm writing a MIPS assembly code that will ask the user for the file name and it will produce some statistics about the content of the file. However, when I hard code the file name into a variable from the beginning it works just fine, but when I ask the user to input the file name it does not work. after some debugging, I have discovered that the program adds 0x00 char and 0x0a char (check asciitable.com) at the end of user input in the memory and that's why it does not open the file based on the user input. anyone has any idea about how to get rid of those extra chars, or how to open the file after getting its name from the user?? here is my complete code (it is working fine except for the file name from user thing, and anybody is free to use it for any purpose he/she wants to): .data fin: .ascii "" # filename for input msg0: .asciiz "aaaa" msg1: .asciiz "Please enter the input file name:" msg2: .asciiz "Number of Uppercase Char: " msg3: .asciiz "Number of Lowercase Char: " msg4: .asciiz "Number of Decimal Char: " msg5: .asciiz "Number of Words: " nline: .asciiz "\n" buffer: .asciiz "" .text #----------------------- li $v0, 4 la $a0, msg1 syscall li $v0, 8 la $a0, fin li $a1, 21 syscall jal fileRead #read from file move $s1, $v0 #$t0 = total number of bytes li $t0, 0 # Loop counter li $t1, 0 # Uppercase counter li $t2, 0 # Lowercase counter li $t3, 0 # Decimal counter li $t4, 0 # Words counter loop: bge $t0, $s1, end #if end of file reached OR if there is an error in the file lb $t5, buffer($t0) #load next byte from file jal checkUpper #check for upper case jal checkLower #check for lower case jal checkDecimal #check for decimal jal checkWord #check for words addi $t0, $t0, 1 #increment loop counter j loop end: jal output jal fileClose li $v0, 10 syscall fileRead: # Open file for reading li $v0, 13 # system call for open file la $a0, fin # input file name li $a1, 0 # flag for reading li $a2, 0 # mode is ignored syscall # open a file move $s0, $v0 # save the file descriptor # reading from file just opened li $v0, 14 # system call for reading from file move $a0, $s0 # file descriptor la $a1, buffer # address of buffer from which to read li $a2, 100000 # hardcoded buffer length syscall # read from file jr $ra output: li $v0, 4 la $a0, msg2 syscall li $v0, 1 move $a0, $t1 syscall li $v0, 4 la $a0, nline syscall li $v0, 4 la $a0, msg3 syscall li $v0, 1 move $a0, $t2 syscall li $v0, 4 la $a0, nline syscall li $v0, 4 la $a0, msg4 syscall li $v0, 1 move $a0, $t3 syscall li $v0, 4 la $a0, nline syscall li $v0, 4 la $a0, msg5 syscall addi $t4, $t4, 1 li $v0, 1 move $a0, $t4 syscall jr $ra checkUpper: blt $t5, 0x41, L1 #branch if less than 'A' bgt $t5, 0x5a, L1 #branch if greater than 'Z' addi $t1, $t1, 1 #increment Uppercase counter L1: jr $ra checkLower: blt $t5, 0x61, L2 #branch if less than 'a' bgt $t5, 0x7a, L2 #branch if greater than 'z' addi $t2, $t2, 1 #increment Lowercase counter L2: jr $ra checkDecimal: blt $t5, 0x30, L3 #branch if less than '0' bgt $t5, 0x39, L3 #branch if greater than '9' addi $t3, $t3, 1 #increment Decimal counter L3: jr $ra checkWord: bne $t5, 0x20, L4 #branch if 'space' addi $t4, $t4, 1 #increment words counter L4: jr $ra fileClose: # Close the file li $v0, 16 # system call for close file move $a0, $s0 # file descriptor to close syscall # close file jr $ra Note: I'm using MARS Simulator, if that makes any different

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• drawing thick, textured lines in OpenGL

  - by NateS

  I need to draw thick textured line segments in OpenGL. Actually I need curves made out of short line segments. Here is what I have: In the upper left is an example of two connected line segments. The second image shows once the lines are given width, they overlap. If I apply a texture that uses translucency, the overlap looks terrible. The third image shows that both lines are shortened by half the amount necessary to make the thick line corners just touch. This way I can fill the space between the lines with a triangle. On the right you can see this works well (ignore the horizontal line when the crappy texture repeats). But it doesn't always work well. In the bottom left the curve is made of many short line segments. Note the incorrect texture application. My program is written in Java, making use of the LWJGL OpenGL binding (and minor use of Slick, a 2D helper framework). I've made a zip file that contains an executable JAR so you can easily see the problem. It also has the Java code (there is only one source file) and an Eclipse project, so you can instantly run it through Eclipse and hack at it if you like. Here she is: http://n4te.com/temp/lines.zip To run, execute "java -jar lines.jar". You may need "-Djava.library.path=." before -jar if you are not on Windows. Press space to toggle texture/wireframe. The wireframe only shows the line segments, the triangle between them isn't drawn. I don't need to draw arbitrary lines, just bezier curves similar to what you see in the program. Sorry the code is a bit messy, once I have a solution I will refactor. I have investigated using GLUtessellator. It greatly simplified construction of the line, but I found that applying the texture was perfect. It worked most of the time (top image below), but long vertical curves would have severe texture distortion (bottom image below): This turned out to be much easier to code, but in the end worse than my approach. I believe what I'm trying to do is called "line tessellation" or "stroke tessellation". I assume this has been solved already? Is there standard code I can leverage? Otherwise, how can I fix my code so that the texture does not freak out on short, vertical curves?

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• Microsoft ODBC driver for Oracle Syntax error or access violation (-2147217900)

  - by Jan

  I have a large VB program that connects to Oracle database. strCn = "Driver={Microsoft ODBC for Oracle};" & _ "SERVER=PSPROD;" Set Cn = New ADODB.Connection Cn.ConnectionString = strCn Cn.CursorLocation = adUseNone Cn.Open There are many users of my program so I have a table that contains each user's login name and their access rights to the various tables. I create a recordset of all users when the program is started and then select USERNAME and GRANTED_ROLE from the record set where USERNAME and PASSWORD are found. I use a "Set role 'GRANTED_ROLE' identified by 'password'" statment and Cn.Execute statement to set up the user's access rights. This is all done in a Module. On a form, I want to call a Stored Procedure that will SELECT, INSERT and UPDATE information into another schema's tables. I am able to call and run the stored procedure when I create a new connection to the database with this code: Dim cmd5040 As ADODB.Command Dim conn5040 As ADODB.Connection Dim param5040 As ADODB.Parameter Set conn5040 = New ADODB.Connection conn5040 = "Driver={Microsoft ODBC for Oracle};" & _ "SERVER=PSPROD; UID=XXXXXXX; PWD=XXXXXXXX" conn5040.Open Set cmd5040 = New ADODB.Command With cmd5040 .ActiveConnection = conn5040 .CommandType = adCmdStoredProc .CommandText = "S4115040_IMPORT_NEWBIDITEMSPES.S4115040_CheckTime" .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter(, adInteger, adParamInputOutput, 5) .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter(, adVarChar, adParamInputOutput, 400) End With cmd5040(0) = 0 cmd5040(1) = "" cmd5040.CommandTimeout = 300 cmd5040.Execute conn5040.Close However, I get the error message "-2147217900 [Microsoft][ODCB driver for Oracle]Syntax error or access violation" when I attempt to use the same connection ('Cn') when the program first started. My code is: Dim cmd5040 As ADODB.Command Dim param5040 As ADODB.Parameter Set cmd5040 = New ADODB.Command With cmd5040 .ActiveConnection = Cn .CommandType = adCmdStoredProc .CommandText = "S4115040_IMPORT_NEWBIDITEMSPES.S4115040_CheckTime" .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter(, adInteger, adParamInputOutput, 5) .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter(, adVarChar, adParamInputOutput, 400) End With cmd5040(0) = 0 cmd5040(1) = "" cmd5040.Execute I have worked with my DBA. She has given me direct grants and direct execute privliges and I am still get the error message. What am I doing wrong? Should I be able to use the original connection to run a stored procedure? Or must I create a second connection?

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• Why is code quality not popular?

  - by Peter Kofler

  I like my code being in order, i.e. properly formatted, readable, designed, tested, checked for bugs, etc. In fact I am fanatic about it. (Maybe even more than fanatic...) But in my experience actions helping code quality are hardly implemented. (By code quality I mean the quality of the code you produce day to day. The whole topic of software quality with development processes and such is much broader and not the scope of this question.) Code quality does not seem popular. Some examples from my experience include Probably every Java developer knows JUnit, almost all languages implement xUnit frameworks, but in all companies I know, only very few proper unit tests existed (if at all). I know that it's not always possible to write unit tests due to technical limitations or pressing deadlines, but in the cases I saw, unit testing would have been an option. If a developer wanted to write some tests for his/her new code, he/she could do so. My conclusion is that developers do not want to write tests. Static code analysis is often played around in small projects, but not really used to enforce coding conventions or find possible errors in enterprise projects. Usually even compiler warnings like potential null pointer access are ignored. Conference speakers and magazines would talk a lot about EJB3.1, OSGI, Cloud and other new technologies, but hardly about new testing technologies or tools, new static code analysis approaches (e.g. SAT solving), development processes helping to maintain higher quality, how some nasty beast of legacy code was brought under test, ... (I did not attend many conferences and it propably looks different for conferences on agile topics, as unit testing and CI and such has a higer value there.) So why is code quality so unpopular/considered boring? EDIT: Thank your for your answers. Most of them concern unit testing (and has been discussed in a related question). But there are lots of other things that can be used to keep code quality high (see related question). Even if you are not able to use unit tests, you could use a daily build, add some static code analysis to your IDE or development process, try pair programming or enforce reviews of critical code.

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• Firebug not breaking on errors

  - by stormdrain

  Hi. I reinstalled Firefox today, because... whatever. I reinstalled firebug, therefully, and now when I try to use it, it's all different. I believe it is the same version I had before. In fact, I even went digging through my trash and replaced the new firebug with the one I removed with the old Firefox. They ended up being the same version (1.5.3). My issue is, when I have an error in my script somewhere, it used to be that if on the script pane of firebug, the script would break on the error, and the script page would go to the offending line, highlighted, and all was right with the world. Now, it logs the error in the console, and that's it. I've spent the better part of the last hour trying to convince myself this isn't worth an ulcer; I am losing the battle, though. I've searched Google, put ads on Craigslist, even thought about becoming a cop. There were some examples on the Firebug dox, but none of them helped. A bunch of old references to a mysterious (break on all errors) option; an option which I think I might have set by accident--there is a little red circle-slash on my pause button (that's what she said), but there the script continues, all on its own. There was a guide somewhere on the firebug pages that spoke of setting the breakpoint next to the error in the console. I, however, don't have this option for some reason. The line of code is there in the console, but no breakpoint button next to it. This, however, would not be ideal even if it worked. I liked it when I could have the script page open, and if there were errors it would jump to that line. I could try to fix it, and re-load the page. If that line was fixed, GREAT, on to the next error on the page -- which would be highlighted and ready. I would like to offer a solicitation of help. Help.

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• How can I use this animation code?

  - by O.C.

  I'm a newbie and I need some help. I want to display a popup image over a given UIView, but I would like it to behave like the UIAlertView or like the Facebook Connect for iPhone modal popup window, in that it has a bouncy, rubbber-band-like animation to it. I found some code on the net from someone who was trying to do something similar. He/she put this together, but there was no demo or instructions. Being that I am so new, I don't have any idea as to how to incorporate this into my code. This is the routine where I need the bouncy image to appear: - (void) showProductDetail { . . . //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // THIS IS A STRAIGHT SCALE ANIMATION RIGHT NOW. I WANT TO REPLACE THIS // WITH A BOUNCY RUBBER-BAND ANIMATION _productDetail.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(0.1,0.1); [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:0.5]; _productDetail.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(1,1); [UIView commitAnimations]; } . . . } This is the code I found: float pulsesteps[3] = { 0.2, 1/15., 1/7.5 }; - (void) pulse { self.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(0.6, 0.6); [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:nil]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:pulsesteps[0]]; [UIView setAnimationDelegate:self]; [UIView setAnimationDidStopSelector:@selector(pulseGrowAnimationDidStop:finished:context:)]; self.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(1.1, 1.1); [UIView commitAnimations]; } - (void)pulseGrowAnimationDidStop:(NSString *)animationID finished:(NSNumber *)finished context:(void *)context { [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:pulsesteps[1]]; [UIView setAnimationDelegate:self]; [UIView setAnimationDidStopSelector:@selector(pulseShrinkAnimationDidStop:finished:context:)]; self.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(0.9, 0.9); [UIView commitAnimations]; } - (void)pulseShrinkAnimationDidStop:(NSString *)animationID finished:(NSNumber *)finished context:(void *)context { [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:pulsesteps[2]]; self.transform = CGAffineTransformIdentity; [UIView commitAnimations]; } Thanks in advance for any help that you can give me.

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• Determine the 'Overtype' mode using Javascript

  - by Snorkpete

  We are creating a web app to replace an old-school green-screen application. In the green-screen app, as the user presses the Insert key to switch between overtype and insert modes, the cursor changes to indicate which input mode the user is currently in. In IE (which is the official browser of the company), overtype mode also works, but there's no visual indication as to whether overtype mode is on or not, until the user starts typing and possibly over-writes existing information unexpectedly. I'd like to put some sort of visual indicator on the screen if in overtype mode. How can you determine if the browser is in 'overtype mode' from Javascript? Is there some property or function i can query to determine if the browser is in overtype mode? Even an IE-specific solution would be helpful, since our corporate policy dictates the browser to use as IE7 (pure torture, btw). (I do know that one solution is to do check for key presses of the Insert key. However, it's a solution that I'd prefer to avoid since that method seems a bit flaky & error-prone because I can't guarantee what mode the user would be in BEFORE he/she hits my page. ) The reasoning behind this question: The functionality of this portion of the green-screen app is such that the user can select from a list of 'preformatted bodies of text'. crude eg. The excess for this policy is: $xxxxxx and max limit is:$xxxxxx Date of policy is: xx/xx/xxxx and expires : xx/xx/xxxx Some other irrelevant text After selecting this 'preformatted text', the user would then use overtype to replace the x's with actual values, without disturbing the alignment of the rest of the text. (To be clear, they can still edit any part of the 'preformatted text' if they so wished. It's just that usually, they just wish to replace specific portions of the text. Keeping the alignment is important since these sections of text can end up on printed documents.) Of course, the same effect can be achieved by just selecting the x's to replace first, but it would be helpful (with respect to easing the transition to the web app) to allow old methods of doing things to continue to work, while still allowing 'web methods' to be used by the more tech-savvy users. Essentially, we're trying to make the initial transition from the green-screen app to the web app be as seemless as possible to minimise the resistance from the long-time green-screeners.

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• How to remove lowercase sentence fragments from text?

  - by Aaron

  Hello: I'm tyring to remove lowercase sentence fragments from standard text files using regular expresions or a simple Perl oneliner. These are commonly referred to as speech or attribution tags, for example - he said, she said, etc. This example shows before and after using manual deletion: Original: "Ah, that's perfectly true!" exclaimed Alyosha. "Oh, do leave off playing the fool! Some idiot comes in, and you put us to shame!" cried the girl by the window, suddenly turning to her father with a disdainful and contemptuous air. "Wait a little, Varvara!" cried her father, speaking peremptorily but looking at them quite approvingly. "That's her character," he said, addressing Alyosha again. "Where have you been?" he asked him. "I think," he said, "I've forgotten something... my handkerchief, I think.... Well, even if I've not forgotten anything, let me stay a little." He sat down. Father stood over him. "You sit down, too," said he. All lower case sentence fragments manually removed: "Ah, that's perfectly true!" "Oh, do leave off playing the fool! Some idiot comes in, and you put us to shame!" "Wait a little, Varvara!" "That's her character," "Where have you been?" "I think," "I've forgotten something... my handkerchief, I think.... Well, even if I've not forgotten anything, let me stay a little." He sat down. Father stood over him. "You sit down, too," I've changed straight quotes " to balanced and tried: ” (...)+[.] Of course, this removes some fragments but deletes some text in balanced quotes and text starting with uppercase letters. [^A-Z] didn't work in the above expression. I realize that it may be impossible to achieve 100% accuracy but any useful expression, perl, or python script would be deeply appreciated. Cheers, Aaron

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• Alternatives to requiring users to register for an account?

  - by jamieb

  I'm working on a side project to build a new web app idea of mine. For the sake of discussion, let's say this app displays a random photograph of a famous work of art. On a scale of 1 to 5, users are asked to rate how well they like each piece of art, and then are shown the next photo. Eventually, the app is able to get an sense of the person's style and is able to recommend artwork that he/she may find pleasing. The whole concept is similar to Netflix. I understand how to do all the preference matching logic (although not as sophisticated as Netflix). But I'd like to find a way to do this without requiring that users create an account first. This is a novelty website that a typical user might use only a handful of times. Requiring registration is overkill and will likely drastically reduce it's utility. I'd like to allow people to begin rating artwork within five seconds of their initial pageview, yet maintain the integrity of the voting (since recommendations are predicated on how other people have rated the various pieces of artwork). Can it be done? Some ideas: OpenID. The perfect solution except for the fact that it's not wildly used and my target audience isn't the most technically adept demographic. Text message. User inputs phone number and is texted a four digit code to key into the web app. Quick, easy, and great way to limit abuse. However, privacy concerns abound... people are probably even less likely to give me their phone number than their email address. Facebook login. I personally don't have a Facebook account due to privacy concerns. And I'd really hate to support such a proprietary platform. Hash code/Bookmark. Vistor's initial pageview generates a 5 or 6 digit alphanumeric code that is embedded in each subsequent URL. They can bookmark any page to save their state. Good: Very simple system that doesn't require any user action. Bad: Very easy to stuff the ballot box, might be difficult to account for users sharing the link containing their ID code via email or social networking sites.

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• How can I use this downloaded Class(es) on my Prototype Routine?

  - by O.C.

  I'm a newbie and I'm in need of some help. I'm working on a prototype for an app, but I'm learning at the same time. I want to display a popup image over a given UIView, but I would like it to behave like the UIAlertView or like the Facebook Connect for iPhone modal popup window, in that it has a bouncy, rubbber-band-like animation to it. I was able to find the following class(es) on the net, from someone who was trying to do something similar. He/she put this together, but there was no Demo, no instructions nor a way to contact them. Being that I am so new, I don't have any idea as to how to incorporate this into my code. This is the routine where I need the bouncy image to appear... //======================================================== // // productDetail // - (void) showProductDetail { _productDetailIndex++; if (_productDetailIndex > 7) { return; } else if (_productDetailIndex == 1) { NSString* filename = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"images/ICS_CatalogApp_0%d_ProductDetailPopup.png", _productDetailIndex]; [_productDetail setImageWithName:filename]; _productDetail.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(0.1,0.1); [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:0.5]; // other animations goes here _productDetail.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(1,1); // other animations goes here [UIView commitAnimations]; } NSString* filename = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"images/ICS_CatalogApp_0%d_ProductDetailPopup.png", _productDetailIndex]; [_productDetail setImageWithName:filename]; _productDetail.x = (self.width - _productDetail.width); _productDetail.y = (self.height - _productDetail.height); } and here is the code I found... float pulsesteps[3] = { 0.2, 1/15., 1/7.5 }; - (void) pulse { self.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(0.6, 0.6); [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:nil]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:pulsesteps[0]]; [UIView setAnimationDelegate:self]; [UIView setAnimationDidStopSelector:@selector(pulseGrowAnimationDidStop:finished:context:)]; self.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(1.1, 1.1); [UIView commitAnimations]; } - (void)pulseGrowAnimationDidStop:(NSString *)animationID finished:(NSNumber *)finished context:(void *)context { [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:pulsesteps[1]]; [UIView setAnimationDelegate:self]; [UIView setAnimationDidStopSelector:@selector(pulseShrinkAnimationDidStop:finished:context:)]; self.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(0.9, 0.9); [UIView commitAnimations]; } - (void)pulseShrinkAnimationDidStop:(NSString *)animationID finished:(NSNumber *)finished context:(void *)context { [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:pulsesteps[2]]; self.transform = CGAffineTransformIdentity; [UIView commitAnimations]; } My routine is based on the Prototyping class given by Apple during WWDC 09. It may not be "correct" but it works as is. I just would like to add the animation to this image/screen to really make the concept clear.

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• SharedObject (Flex 3.2) behaving unexpectedly when query string present in URL

  - by rhtx

  Summary: The behavior detailed below seems to indicate that if your app at www.someplace.com sets/retrieves data via a SharedObject, there is some sort of .sol collision if the user hits your app at someplace.com, and then later at someplace.com?name=value. Can anyone confirm or refute this? I'm working on a Flex web app that presents the user with a login page. When the user has logged in, he/she is presented with a 'room' which is associated with a 'group'. We store the last-visited room/group combination in a SharedObject - so when a given user logs in, they are taken into the most recent room in which they were active. That works fine, but we also have an auto-login system which involves the user clicking on a link to the app url with a query string attached. There are two types of these links. 1) the query string includes username, groupId, and roomId 2) the query string includes only the username Because we are working fast and have only a few developers, the auto-login system is built on the last-vist system. During the auto-login process, the url is inspected and if groupId and roomId values are found in the query string, the SharedObject is opened and the last-visit group/room id values are overwritten by the param values. That works fine, also, when the app is hit with a query string of the second type (no groupId and roomId params), the app goes to the SharedObject to get the stored room and group id values, as it normally would. And here's the problem: The values it comes back with are whatever the last room/group param values were, not whatever the last last-visit room/group values are. And if the given user has never hit the app with query string that included group and room id values, the app gets null values from the SharedObject. It took some digging around, but what it looks like is happening is that a second set of data is being stored/expected in the SharedObject if a query string is present in the URL. Looking at the .sol file in a text editor I see more untranslated code, and additional group and room values, once I've hit the app with URLs that contain query strings. I'm not finding anything on the web about this, but that may just be due to a lack of necessary search skills. Has anyone else run into anything similar? Or do you know how to address this? I've tried setting Security.exactSettings to false, already - was really hoping that was going to work.

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• downloaded zip file returns zero has 0 bytes as size

  - by Yaw Reuben

  I have written a Java web application that allows a user to download files from a server. These files are quite large and so are zipped together before download. It works like this: 1. The user gets a list of files that match his/her criteria 2. If the user likes a file and wants to download he/she selects it by checking a checkbox 3. The user then clicks "download" 4. The files are then zipped and stored on a server 5. The user this then presented with a page which contains a link to the downloadable zip file 6. However on downloading the zip file the file that is downloaded is 0 bytes in size I have checked the remote server and the zip file is being created properly, all that is left is to serve the file the user somehow, can you see where I might be going wrong, or suggest a better way to serve the zip file. The code that creates the link is: <% String zipFileURL = (String) request.getAttribute("zipFileURL"); %> <p><a href="<% out.print(zipFileURL); %> ">Zip File Link</a></p> The code that creates the zipFileURL variable is: public static String zipFiles(ArrayList<String> fileList, String contextRootPath) { //time-stamping Date date = new Date(); Timestamp timeStamp = new Timestamp(date.getTime()); Iterator fileListIterator = fileList.iterator(); String zipFileURL = ""; try { String ZIP_LOC = contextRootPath + "WEB-INF" + SEP + "TempZipFiles" + SEP; BufferedInputStream origin = null; zipFileURL = ZIP_LOC + "FITS." + timeStamp.toString().replaceAll(":", ".").replaceAll(" ", ".") + ".zip"; FileOutputStream dest = new FileOutputStream(ZIP_LOC + "FITS." + timeStamp.toString().replaceAll(":", ".").replaceAll(" ", ".") + ".zip"); ZipOutputStream out = new ZipOutputStream(new BufferedOutputStream( dest)); // out.setMethod(ZipOutputStream.DEFLATED); byte data[] = new byte[BUFFER]; while(fileListIterator.hasNext()) { String fileName = (String) fileListIterator.next(); System.out.println("Adding: " + fileName); FileInputStream fi = new FileInputStream(fileName); origin = new BufferedInputStream(fi, BUFFER); ZipEntry entry = new ZipEntry(fileName); out.putNextEntry(entry); int count; while ((count = origin.read(data, 0, BUFFER)) != -1) { out.write(data, 0, count); } origin.close(); } out.close(); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return zipFileURL; }

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• Move options between multiple dropdown lists

  - by Martha

  We currently have a form with the standard multi-select functionality of "here are the available options, here are the selected options, here are some buttons to move stuff back and forth." However, the client now wants the ability to not just select certain items, but to also categorize them. For example, given a list of books, they want to not just select the ones they own, but also the ones they've read, the ones they would like to read, and the ones they've heard about. (All examples fictional.) Thankfully, a selected item can only be in one category at a time. I can find many examples of moving items between listboxes, but not a single one for moving items between multiple listboxes. To add to the complication, the form needs to have two sets of list+categories, e.g. a list of movies that need to be categorized in addition to the aforementioned books. An additional problem is that sorting between lists is all well and good in the javascript-enabled world, but I can't really think of a good fallback interface for, say, mobile browsers. Maybe a pseudo-listbox with radio buttons next to each item? The master list of items will in general be very long - over 100 items, certainly, possibly many more. Any given category will most likely contain one or two selected items, but the possibility exists for a category to have dozens of selected items, or zero selected items. As far as OS and stuff, the site is in classic asp (quit snickering!), the server-side code is VBScript, and so far we've avoided the various Javascript libraries by the simple expedient of almost never using client-side scripting. This one form for this one client is currently the big exception. Give 'em an inch and they want a mile... Oh, and I have to add: I suck at Javascript, or really at any C-descendant language. Curly braces give me hives. I'd really, really like something I can just copy & paste into my page, maybe tweak some variable names, and never look at it again. A girl can dream, can't she? :)

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• Invalid cast exception

  - by user127147

  I have a simple application to store address details and edit them. I have been away from VB for a few years now and need to refreash my knowledge while working to a tight deadline. I have a general Sub responsible for displaying a form where user can add contact details (by pressing button add) and edit them (by pressing button edit). This sub is stored in a class Contact. The way it is supposed to work is that there is a list with all the contacts and when new contact is added a new entry is displayed. If user wants to edit given entry he or she selects it and presses edit button Public Sub Display() Dim C As New Contact C.Cont = InputBox("Enter a title for this contact.") C.Fname = frmAddCont.txtFName.Text C.Surname = frmAddCont.txtSName.Text C.Address = frmAddCont.txtAddress.Text frmStart.lstContact.Items.Add(C.Cont.ToString) End Sub I call it from the form responsible for adding new contacts by Dim C As New Contact C.Display() and it works just fine. However when I try to do something similar using the edit button I get errors - "Unable to cast object of type 'System.String' to type 'AddressBook.Contact'." Dim C As Contact If lstContact.SelectedItem IsNot Nothing Then C = lstContact.SelectedItem() C.Display() End If I think it may be something simple however I wasn't able to fix it and given short time I have I decided to ask for help here. I have updated my class with advice from other members and here is the final version (there are some problems however). When I click on the edit button it displays only the input box for the title of the contact and actually adds another entry in the list with previous data for first name, second name etc. Public Class Contact Public Contact As String Public Fname As String Public Surname As String Public Address As String Private myCont As String Public Property Cont() Get Return myCont End Get Set(ByVal value) myCont = Value End Set End Property Public Overrides Function ToString() As String Return Me.Cont End Function Sub NewContact() FName = frmAddCont.txtFName.ToString frmStart.lstContact.Items.Add(FName) frmAddCont.Hide() End Sub Public Sub Display() Dim C As New Contact C.Cont = InputBox("Enter a title for this contact.") C.Fname = frmAddCont.txtFName.Text C.Surname = frmAddCont.txtSName.Text C.Address = frmAddCont.txtAddress.Text 'frmStart.lstContact.Items.Add(C.Cont.ToString) frmStart.lstContact.Items.Add(C) End Sub End Class

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• Move options between multiple lists

  - by Martha

  We currently have a form with the standard multi-select functionality of "here are the available options, here are the selected options, here are some buttons to move stuff back and forth." However, the client now wants the ability to not just select certain items, but to also categorize them. For example, given a list of books, they want to not just select the ones they own, but also the ones they've read, the ones they would like to read, and the ones they've heard about. (All examples fictional.) Thankfully, a selected item can only be in one category at a time. I can find many examples of moving items between listboxes, but not a single one for moving items between multiple listboxes. To add to the complication, the form needs to have two sets of list+categories, e.g. a list of movies that need to be categorized in addition to the aforementioned books. EDIT: Having now actually sat down to try to code the non-javascripty bits, I need to revise my question, because I realized that multiple select lists won't really work from the "how do I inform the server about all this lovely new information" standpoint. So the html code is now a pseudo-listbox, i.e. an unordered list (ul) displayed in a box with a scrollbar, and each list item (<li>) has a set of five radio buttons (unselected/own/read/like/heard). My task is still roughly the same: how to take this one list and make it easy to categorize the items, in such a way that the user can tell at a glance what is in what category. (The pseudo-listbox has some of the same disadvantages as a multi-select listbox, namely it's hard to tell what's selected if the list is long enough to scroll.) The dream solution would be a drag-and-drop type thing, but at this point even buttons would be OK. Another modification (a good one) is that the client has revised the lists, so the longest is now "only" 62 items long (instead of the many hundreds they had before). The categories will still mostly contain zero, one, or two selected items, possibly a couple more if the user was overzealous. As far as OS and stuff, the site is in classic asp (quit snickering!), the server-side code is VBScript, and so far we've avoided the various Javascript libraries by the simple expedient of almost never using client-side scripting. This one form for this one client is currently the big exception. Give 'em an inch and they want a mile... Oh, and I have to add: I suck at Javascript, or really at any C-descendant language. Curly braces give me hives. I'd really, really like something I can just copy & paste into my page, maybe tweak some variable names, and never look at it again. A girl can dream, can't she? :) [existing code deleted because it's largely irrelevant.]

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• I could use some help with my SQL command

  - by SuperSpy

  I've got a database table called 'mesg' with the following structure: receiver_id | sender_id | message | timestamp | read Example: 2 *(«me)* | 6 *(«nice girl)* | 'I like you, more than ghoti' | yearsago | 1 *(«seen it)* 2 *(«me)* | 6 *(«nice girl)* | 'I like you, more than fish' | now | 1 *(«seen it)* 6 *(«nice girl)* | 2 *(«me)* | 'Hey, wanna go fish?' | yearsago+1sec | 0 *(«she hasn't seen it)* It's quite a tricky thing that I want to achieve. I want to get: the most recent message(=ORDER BY time DESC) + 'contact name' + time for each 'conversation'. Contact name = uname WHERE uid = 'contact ID' (the username is in another table) Contact ID = if(sessionID*(«me)*=sender_id){receiver_id}else{sender_id} Conversation is me = receiver OR me = sender For example: From: **Bas Kreuntjes** *(« The message from bas is the most recent)* Hey $py, How are you doing... From: **Sophie Naarden** *(« Second recent)* Well hello, would you like to buy my spam? ... *(«I'll work on that later >p)* To: **Melanie van Deijk** *(« My message to Melanie is 3th)* And? Did you kiss him? ... That is a rough output. QUESTION: Could someone please help me setup a good SQL command. This will be the while loup <?php $sql = "????"; $result = mysql_query($sql); while($fetch = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){ ?> <div class="message-block"> <h1><?php echo($fetch['uname']); ?></h1> <p><?php echo($fetch['message']); ?></p> <p><?php echo($fetch['time']); ?></p> </div> <?php } ?> I hope my explanation is good enough, if not, please tell me. Please don't mind my English, and the Dutch names (I am Dutch myself) Feel free to correct my English UPDATE1: Best I've got until now: But I do not want more than one conversation to show up... u=user table m=message table SELECT u.uname, m.message, m.receiver_uid, m.sender_uid, m.time FROM m, u WHERE (m.receiver_uid = '$myID' AND u.uid = m.sender_uid) OR (m.sender_uid = '$myID' AND u.uid = m.receiver_uid) ORDER BY time DESC;

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• DataGridView live display of datatable using virtual mode

  - by Chris

  I have a DataGridView that will display records (log entries) from a database. The amount of records that can exist at a time is very large. I would like to use the virtual mode feature of the DataGridView to display a page of data, and to minimize the amount of data that has to be transferred across a network at a given time. Polling for data is out of the question. There will be several clients running at a time, all of which are on the same network and viewing the records. If they all poll for data, the network will run very slowly. The data is read-only to the user; they won't be able to edit any of it, just view it. I need to know when updates occur in the database, and I need to update the screen with those updates accordingly using virtual mode. If a page of data a user is viewing contains data that has change, he/she will see those updates on that page. If updates were made to data in the database, but not in the data the user is viewing, then not much really changes on the user screen (Maybe just the scroll bar if records were added or removed). My current approach is using SQL server change tracking with the sync framework. Each client has a local SQL Server CE instance and database file that is kept in sync with the main database server. I use the information from the synchronization event to see if any changes were made to the main database and were sync'ed to the client. I need to use the DataGridView virtual mode here because I can't have thousands of records loaded into the DataGridView at once, otherwise memory usage goes through the roof. The main challenge right now is knowing how to use virtual mode to provide a seamless experience to the user by allowing them to scroll up and down through the records, and also have records update on the fly without interfering with the user inappropriately. Has anybody dealt with this issue before, and if so, where I can see how they did it? I've gone through some of the MSDN documentation and examples on virtual mode. So far, I haven't found documentation and/or examples on their site that explains how to do what I am trying to accomplish.

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• SharePoint - Summing Calculated Columns By Groups (DVWP)

  - by Mark Rackley

  I had a problem… okay.. okay.. so I have many problems… but let’s focus on one in particular or this blog post would never end… okay? Thank you…. So, I had an electronic timesheet where users entered hours for each day of the week. It also had a “Week Total” column which was a calculated column of the sum. The calculated column looked like this: Pretty easy.. nothing spectacular. So, what’s the problem? WELL……………….. There is a row in the timesheet for each task a person worked on in a given week. So, if you worked on 4 tasks, you would have 4 rows of data, and 4 week totals for that week: This is all fine and dandy, but I want to know what the total was for the entire week. Yes.. I realize the answer is 24 from my example… I mean, I know how to add! I just want SharePoint to display it for me for the executives (we all know, they have math problems).  You may be thinking, hey genius (in a sarcastic tone of course), why don’t you just go to the view and total on the “Week Total” field. What a brilliant idea! Why didn’t I think of that… let’s go to the view and do just that…. Ohhhhhh… you can’t total on a Calculated Column.. it’s not even an option…  Yeah… I had the same moment. So, what do you do? Well… what do you think I did? 1) Googled “SharePoint total calculated column” 2) Said it couldn’t be done 3) Took a nap 4) Asked the question on twitter? The correct answer of course is number 4… followed by number 3… although I may have told my boss number 2 so that I look more brilliant than I am? It’s safe to say I did NOT try to find the solution on my own doing step 1… that would be just WAY to easy… So, anyway, I posted the question on Twitter and it turns out several people had suggestions from using jQuery to using DVWPs. I tend to be a big fan of the DVWP except for the disgusting process of deploying them to another farm.. ugh… just shoot me…. so, that is the solution I went with. Laura Rogers (@WonderLaura) has a super duper easy to follow video on the subject over at EndUserSharePoint.com: SharePoint: Displaying Calculated Column SUMS in a View (Screencast) Laura’s video was very easy to follow and was ALMOST exactly what I needed. She does a great job walking you through every step of summing up a calculated field which was PART of my problem. The other part was my list is grouped by date! So, I wanted to see for a given week, the summed “Week Total” of hours. Laura got me on the right track with her video and I dug a little deeper into the DVWP to accomplish my task. So, here are the steps you follow: 1. Click on the "chevron” (I didn’t know it was actually called that until I heard Laura say it).. I always call it the “little-button-in-the-top-right-corner-with-the-greater-than-sign”.. but “chevron” is much shorter. So, click on the chevron, click on “Sort and Group”. The Add the field you want to group by, in my example it is the “Monday Date” of the timesheet entry. Make sure to check the check boxes for “Show Group Header” AND “Show Group Footer”. Click “OK”. The view now shows the count of each grouped set of data: Interesting, this looks very similar to Laura’s video… right? So, let’s take a look at the code for the Count: Count : <xsl:value-of select="count($nodeset)" /> Wow, also very similar… except in Laura’s video it looks like: Count : <xsl:value-of select="count($Rows)" /> So.. the only difference is that instead of $Rows we have $nodeset. It turns out the $nodeset will go through each Row in the group just like $Rows goes through each row in the entire view. So, using the exact same logic as in Laura’s blog except replacing $Rows with $nodeset we get the functionality of being able to sum up the values for a group. So, I want to replace “Count: #” with the total hours, this is done using the following changes to the above code: Week Total : <xsl:value-of select="sum($nodeset/@Monday)+sum($nodeset/@Tuesday) +sum($nodeset/@Wednesday)+sum($nodeset/@Thursday)+sum($nodeset/@Friday) +sum($nodeset/@Saturday)+sum($nodeset/@Sunday)" /> Our final output has the summed hours for each group! So… long story short… follow Laura’s blog, then group your list, then replace “$Rows” with “$nodeset”. One caveat, this will not work if you group by a person field. For some reason the person field does not go through each row in the group. I haven’t dug into this much yet. Maybe if I find some time… whatever that is… Anyway, Laura did all the work, I just took it one small step forward… as always, feel free to leave any additional insights you may have. We’re all learning here!

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• Conversation as User Assistance

  - by ultan o'broin

  Applications User Experience members (Erika Web, Laurie Pattison, and I) attended the User Assistance Europe Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. We were impressed with the thought leadership and practical application of ideas in Anne Gentle's keynote address "Social Web Strategies for Documentation". After the conference, we spoke with Anne to explore the ideas further. Anne Gentle (left) with Applications User Experience Senior Director Laurie Pattison In Anne's book called Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, she explains how user assistance is undergoing a seismic shift. The direction is away from the old print manuals and online help concept towards a web-based, user community-driven solution using social media tools. User experience professionals now have a vast range of such tools to start and nurture this "conversation": blogs, wikis, forums, social networking sites, microblogging systems, image and video sharing sites, virtual worlds, podcasts, instant messaging, mashups, and so on. That user communities are a rich source of user assistance is not a surprise, but the extent of available assistance is. For example, we know from the Consortium for Service Innovation that there has been an 'explosion' of user-generated content on the web. User-initiated community conversations provide as much as 30 times the number of official help desk solutions for consortium members! The growing reliance on user community solutions is clearly a user experience issue. Anne says that user assistance as conversation "means getting closer to users and helping them perform well. User-centered design has been touted as one of the most important ideas developed in the last 20 years of workplace writing. Now writers can take the idea of user-centered design a step further by starting conversations with users and enabling user assistance in interactions." Some of Anne's favorite examples of this paradigm shift from the world of traditional documentation to community conversation include: Writer Bob Bringhurst's blog about Adobe InDesign and InCopy products and Adobe's community help The Microsoft Development Network Community Center ·The former Sun (now Oracle) OpenDS wiki, NetBeans Ruby and other community approaches to engage diverse audiences using screencasts, wikis, and blogs. Cisco's customer support wiki, EMC's community, as well as Symantec and Intuit's approaches The efforts of Ubuntu, Mozilla, and the FLOSS community generally Adobe Writer Bob Bringhurst's Blog Oracle is not without a user community conversation too. Besides the community discussions and blogs around documentation offerings, we have the My Oracle Support Community forums, Oracle Technology Network (OTN) communities, wiki, blogs, and so on. We have the great work done by our user groups and customer councils. Employees like David Haimes reach out, and enthusiastic non-employee gurus like Chet Justice (OracleNerd), Floyd Teter and Eddie Awad provide great "how-to" information too. But what does this paradigm shift mean for existing technical writers as users turn away from the traditional printable PDF manual deliverables? We asked Anne after the conference. The writer role becomes one of conversation initiator or enabler. The role evolves, along with the process, as the users define their concept of user assistance and terms of engagement with the product instead of having it pre-determined. It is largely a case now of "inventing the job while you're doing it, instead of being hired for it" Anne said. There is less emphasis on formal titles. Anne mentions that her own title "Content Stacker" at OpenStack; others use titles such as "Content Curator" or "Community Lead". However, the role remains one essentially about communications, "but of a new type--interacting with users, moderating, curating content, instead of sitting down to write a manual from start to finish." Clearly then, this role is open to more than professional technical writers. Product managers who write blogs, developers who moderate forums, support professionals who update wikis, rock star programmers with a penchant for YouTube are ideal. Anyone with the product knowledge, empathy for the user, and flair for relationships on the social web can join in. Some even perform these roles already but do not realize it. Anne feels the technical communicator space will move from hiring new community conversation professionals (who are already active in the space through blogging, tweets, wikis, and so on) to retraining some existing writers over time. Our own research reveals that the established proponents of community user assistance even set employee performance objectives for internal content curators about the amount of community content delivered by people outside the organization! To take advantage of the conversations on the web as user assistance, enterprises must first establish where on the spectrum their community lies. "What is the line between community willingness to contribute and the enterprise objectives?" Anne asked. "The relationship with users must be managed and also measured." Anne believes that the process can start with a "just do it" approach. Begin by reaching out to existing user groups, individual bloggers and tweeters, forum posters, early adopter program participants, conference attendees, customer advisory board members, and so on. Use analytical tools to measure the level of conversation about your products and services to show a return on investment (ROI), winning management support. Anne emphasized that success with the community model is dependent on lowering the technical and motivational barriers so that users can readily contribute to the conversation. Simple tools must be provided, and guidelines, if any, must be straightforward but not mandatory. The conversational approach is one where traditional style and branding guides do not necessarily apply. Tools and infrastructure help users to create content easily, to search and find the information online, read it, rate it, translate it, and participate further in the content's evolution. Recognizing contributors by using ratings on forums, giving out Twitter kudos, conference invitations, visits to headquarters, free products, preview releases, and so on, also encourages the adoption of the conversation model. The move to conversation as user assistance is not free, but there is a business ROI. The conversational model means that customer service is enhanced, as user experience moves from a functional to a valued, emotional level. Studies show a positive correlation between loyalty and financial performance (Consortium for Service Innovation, 2010), and as customer experience and loyalty become key differentiators, user experience professionals cannot explore the model's possibilities. The digital universe (measured at 1.2 million petabytes in 2010) is doubling every 12 to 18 months, and 70 percent of that universe consists of user-generated content (IDC, 2010). Conversation as user assistance cannot be ignored but must be embraced. It is a time to manage for abundance, not scarcity. Besides, the conversation approach certainly sounds more interesting, rewarding, and fun than the traditional model! I would like to thank Anne for her time and thoughts, and recommend that all user assistance professionals read her book. You can follow Anne on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/annegentle. Oracle's Acrolinx IQ deployment was used to author this article.

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• SQLAuthority News – Pluralsight Course Review – Practices for Software Startups – Part 1 of 2

  - by pinaldave

  This is first part of the two part series of Practices for Software Startup Pluralsight Course. The course is written by Stephen Forte (Blog | Twitter). Stephen Forte is the Chief Strategy Officer of the venture backed company, Telerik, a leading vendor of developer and team productivity tools. Stephen is also a Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Professional, PMP, and also speaks regularly at industry conferences around the world. He has written several books on application and database development.  Stephen is also a board member of the Scrum Alliance. Startups – Everybodies Dream Start-up companies are an important topic right now – everyone wants to start their own business.  It is also important to remember that all companies were a start up at one point – from your corner store to the giants like Microsoft and Apple.  Research proves that not every start-up succeeds, in fact, most will fail before their first year.  There are many reasons for this, and this could be due to the fact that there are many stages to a start-up company, and stumbling at any of these stages can lead to failure.  It is important to understand what makes a start-up company succeed at all its hurdles to become successful.  It is even important to define success.  For most start-ups this would mean becoming their own independently functioning company or to be bought out for a hefty profit by a larger company.  The idea of making a hefty profit by living your dream is extremely important, and you can even think of start-ups as the new craze.  That’s why studying them is so important – they are very popular, but things have changed a lot since their inception. Starting the Startups Beginning a start-up company used to be difficult, but now facilities and information is widely available, and it is much easier.  But that means it is much easier to fail, also.  Previously to start your own company, everything was planned and organized, resources were ensured and backed up before beginning; even the idea of starting your own business was a big thing.  Now anybody can do it, and the steps are simple and outlines everywhere – you can get online software and easily outsource , cloud source, or crowdsource a lot of your material.  But without the type of planning previously required, things can often go badly. New Products – New Ideas – New World There are so many fantastic new products, but they don’t reach success all the time.  I find start-up companies very interesting, and whenever I meet someone who is interested in the subject or already starting their own company, I always ask what they are doing, their plans, goals, market, etc.  I am sorry to say that in most cases, they cannot answer my questions.  It is true that many fantastic ideas fail because of bad decisions.  These bad decisions were not made intentionally, but people were simply unaware of what they should be doing.  This will always lead to failure.  But I am happy to say that all these issues can be gone because Pluralsight is now offering a course all about start-ups by Stephen Forte.  Stephen is a start up leader.  He has successfully started many companies and most are still going strong, or have gone on to even bigger and better things. Beginning Course on Startup I have always thought start-ups are a fascinating subject, and decided to take his course, but it is three hours long.  This would be hard to fit into my busy work day all at once, so I decided to do half of his course before my daughter wakes up, and the other half after she goes to sleep.  The course is divided into six modules, so this would be easy to do.  I began the first chapter early in the morning, at 5 am.  Stephen jumped right into the middle of the subject in the very first module – designing your business plan.  The first question you will have to answer to yourself, to others, and to investors is: What is your product and when will we be able to see it?  So a very important concept is a “minimal viable product.”  This means setting goals for yourself and your product.  We all have large dreams, but your minimal viable product doesn’t have to be your final vision at the very first.  For example: Apple is a giant company, but it is still evolving.  Steve Jobs didn’t envision the iPhone 6 at the very beginning.  He had to start at the first iPhone and do his market research, and the idea evolved into the technology you see now.  So for yourself, you should decide a beginning and stop point.  Do your market research.  Determine who you want to reach, what audience you want for your product.  You can have a great idea that simply will not work in the market, do need, bottlenecks, lack of resources, or competition.  There is a lot of research that needs to be done before you even write a business plan, and Stephen covers it in the very first chapter. The Team – Unique Key to Success After jumping right into the subject in the very first module, I wondered what Stephen could have in store for me for the rest of the course.  Chapter number two is building a team.  Having a team is important regardless of what your startup is.  You can be a true visionary with endless ideas and energy, but one person can still not do everything.  It is important to decide from the very beginning if you will have cofounders, team leaders, and how many employees you’ll need.  Even more important, you’ll need to decide what kind of team you want – what personalities, skills, and type of energy you want each of your employees to bring.  Do you want to have an A+ team with a B- idea, or do you have a B- idea that needs an A+ team to sell it?  Stephen asks all the hard questions!  I was especially impressed by his insight on developing.  You have to decide if you need developers, how many, and what their skills should be. I found this insight extremely useful for everyday usage, not just for start-up companies.  I would apply this kind of information in management at any position.  An amazing team will build an amazing product – and that doesn’t matter if you’re a start-up company or a small team working for a much larger business. Customer Development – The Ultimate Obective Chapter three was about customer development. According to Stephen, there are four different steps to develop a customer base.  The first question to ask yourself is if you are envisioning a large customer base buying a few products each, or a small, dedicated base that buys a lot of your product – quantity vs. Quality.  He also discusses how to earn, retain, and get more customers.  He also says that each customer should be placed in a different role – some will be like investors, who regularly spend with you and invest their money in your business.  It is then your job to take that investment and turn it into a better product in the future.  You need to deal with their money properly – think of it is as theirs as investors, not yours as profit.  At the end of this module I felt that only Stephen could provide this kind of insight, and then he listed all the resources he took his information from.  I have never seen a group of people so passionate about their customers. It was indeed a long day for me. In tomorrow’s part 2 we will discuss rest of the three module and also will see a quick video of the Practices for Software Startup Pluralsight Course. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• ASP.NET and WIF: Showing custom profile username as User.Identity.Name

  - by DigiMortal

  I am building ASP.NET MVC application that uses external services to authenticate users. For ASP.NET users are fully authenticated when they are redirected back from external service. In system they are logically authenticated when they have created user profiles. In this posting I will show you how to force ASP.NET MVC controller actions to demand existence of custom user profiles. Using external authentication sources with AppFabric Suppose you want to be user-friendly and you don’t force users to keep in mind another username/password when they visit your site. You can accept logins from different popular sites like Windows Live, Facebook, Yahoo, Google and many more. If user has account in some of these services then he or she can use his or her account to log in to your site. If you have community site then you usually have support for user profiles too. Some of these providers give you some information about users and other don’t. So only thing in common you get from all those providers is some unique ID that identifies user in service uniquely. Image above shows you how new user joins your site. Existing users who already have profile are directed to users homepage after they are authenticated. You can read more about how to solve semi-authorized users problem from my blog posting ASP.NET MVC: Using ProfileRequiredAttribute to restrict access to pages. The other problem is related to usernames that we don’t get from all identity providers. Why is IIdentity.Name sometimes empty? The problem is described more specifically in my blog posting Identifying AppFabric Access Control Service users uniquely. Shortly the problem is that not all providers have claim called http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/name. The following diagram illustrates what happens when user got token from AppFabric ACS and was redirected to your site. Now, when user was authenticated using Windows Live ID then we don’t have name claim in token and that’s why User.Identity.Name is empty. Okay, we can force nameidentifier to be used as name (we can do it in web.config file) but we have user profiles and we want username from profile to be shown when username is asked. Modifying name claim Now let’s force IClaimsIdentity to use username from our user profiles. You can read more about my profiles topic from my blog posting ASP.NET MVC: Using ProfileRequiredAttribute to restrict access to pages and you can find some useful extension methods for claims identity from my blog posting Identifying AppFabric Access Control Service users uniquely. Here is what we do to set User.Identity.Name: we will check if user has profile, if user has profile we will check if User.Identity.Name matches the name given by profile, if names does not match then probably identity provider returned some name for user, we will remove name claim and recreate it with correct username, we will add new name claim to claims collection. All this stuff happens in Application_AuthorizeRequest event of our web application. The code is here. protected void Application_AuthorizeRequest() {     if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(User.Identity.Name))     {         var identity = User.Identity;         var profile = identity.GetProfile();         if (profile != null)         {             if (profile.UserName != identity.Name)             {                 identity.RemoveName();                   var claim = new Claim("http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/name", profile.UserName);                 var claimsIdentity = (IClaimsIdentity)identity;                 claimsIdentity.Claims.Add(claim);             }         }     } } RemoveName extension method is simple – it looks for name claims of IClaimsIdentity claims collection and removes them. public static void RemoveName(this IIdentity identity) {     if (identity == null)         return;       var claimsIndentity = identity as ClaimsIdentity;     if (claimsIndentity == null)         return;       for (var i = claimsIndentity.Claims.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--)     {         var claim = claimsIndentity.Claims[i];         if (claim.ClaimType == "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/name")             claimsIndentity.Claims.RemoveAt(i);     } } And we are done. Now User.Identity.Name returns the username from user profile and you can use it to show username of current user everywhere in your site. Conclusion Mixing AppFabric Access Control Service and Windows Identity Foundation with custom authorization logic is not impossible but a little bit tricky. This posting finishes my little series about AppFabric ACS and WIF for this time and hopefully you found some useful tricks, tips, hacks and code pieces you can use in your own applications.

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• Hey, Google: It’s Time to Add Multi-Window Multitasking To Android

  - by Chris Hoffman

  In 2012, Google’s Dianne Hackborn threatened to revoke CyanogenMod’s access to the Android Market if they moved forward with adding “Cornerstone” multitasking to their custom ROM. Samsung has since created their own multi-window multitasking feature. Dianne Hackborn said this “is something that needs to be done at the mainline platform level” so apps wouldn’t break. She was right — Android needs this as a standard feature and it’s time for Google to provide it. Doesn’t Android Have Multitasking? Android originally stood out from Apple’s iOS with its powerful multitasking. Applications can continue running in the background while you’re using another application. This makes Android powerful — you can even have BitTorrent clients downloading files in the background while using another app. Android still kept the design of a single app on screen at a time. This made a lot of sense when Android only ran on smartphones with small screens. Today, Android runs on everything from smaller smartphones all the way up to huge “phablets” like the Galaxy Note. Android has gone beyond phones and runs on 12-inch tablets, convertibles with keyboard docks, laptops, and even Android desktops. Android isn’t just a phone operating system. Samsung’s Multi-Window Isn’t Good Enough Samsung has tried to add value to Android by adding a multi-window feature. When you’re using a high-end phone like the Galaxy Note or Galaxy S, or a Galaxy tablet, you have the ability to run certain apps side-by-side with each other. There are big problems here. This only works on Samsung devices, and only on specific Samsung devices. To add support for this feature in a way that doesn’t break other apps, Samsung’s multi-window feature also only works with specific apps. You can’t just run any app in multi-window view, only the apps on the Multi Window bar Samsung provides. This prevents third-party apps from breaking, which is what Google was worried about with CyanogenMod’s Cornerstone feature. A feature that only works with a handful of apps on specific devices from a single manufacturer isn’t good enough. This feature needs to work on every Android device — or at least ones with suitably large screens and powerful enough internals. It needs to be an Android platform feature so application developers can ensure their apps will work properly with it on every device. Android developers shouldn’t have to add support for each manufacturer’s own multi-window feature if other manufacturers decide to copy Samsung. Floating Apps Are a Dirty Hack Floating apps also enable real multitasking. Remember that Android allows apps to run in the background while you’re using an app in the foreground. These apps can present interfaces that appear floating above the current app — think of it like using “always on top” to make a window always appear over every other app on a desktop operating system. You can install floating apps to browse the web, take notes, chat, and watch videos while using any app. Only apps specifically designed to run as floating apps will work, so you have to seek them out. Floating apps are also awkward to use because they float over the app you’re using, blocking parts of its interface. Microsoft added floating-window support to Skype for Android. You can have a video conversation and the other person’s face will always appear on your screen, even when you leave the Skype app. Microsoft is using more of Android’s multi-window multitasking power than Google is. Custom ROMs and Root-Only Tweaks Aren’t Acceptable Some custom ROMs are adding this feature to Android. Google threatened to revoke CyanogenMod’s access to the Android Market (now known as Google Play) if they added this feature because it could potentially break third-party apps. Today, other custom ROMs are working on split-screen multitasking. Samsung added their own version to their own devices. You can also get this feature by using a root-only Xposed Framework tweak known as XMultiWindow. If you have root access, you can get multi-window multitasking or any app on your device. This shouldn’t require rooting your device or installing a custom ROM. These third-party solutions often have awkward interfaces and bugs. We need an integrated, supported solution that works the same on every device. Why Multi-Window is Important Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 stands out among tablet operating systems for its powerful multitasking support, allowing you to view several apps side-by-side at the same time. Apple is also reported to be working on adding side-by-side apps to the iPad with iOS 8. On every competitor’s operating system, you’ll be able to view a web page while you write an email, watch a video while you browse the web, or chat with someone while you do anything else. But Android’s still remained frozen in time. Despite all Android’s underlying power — and despite the way Android allows apps to adapt to different screen sizes — Google is resisting adding this feature. Large-screen Android tablets like the Nexus 10 (remember that tablet Google hasn’t updated in over 18 months?) need this feature. So do huge phones, convertibles, laptops, and Android desktops. If tablets are the future of personal computing, we should be able to do more than one thing at a time on our tablets’ big screens. Microsoft, Samsung, and even Apple are realizing this — now it’s Google’s turn. Image Credit: Sergey Galyonkin on Flickr, Karlis Dambrans on Flickr

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• I Hereby Resolve… (T-SQL Tuesday #14)

  - by smisner

  It’s time for another T-SQL Tuesday, hosted this month by Jen McCown (blog|twitter), on the topic of resolutions. Specifically, “what techie resolutions have you been pondering, and why?” I like that word – pondering – because I ponder a lot. And while there are many things that I do already because of my job, there are many more things that I ponder about doing…if only I had the time. Then I ponder about making time, but then it’s back to work! In 2010, I was moderately more successful in making time for things that I ponder about than I had been in years past, and I hope to continue that trend in 2011. If Jen hadn’t settled on this topic, I could keep my ponderings to myself and no one would ever know the outcome, but she’s egged me on (and everyone else that chooses to participate)! So here goes… For me, having resolve to do something means that I wouldn’t be doing that something as part of my ordinary routine. It takes extra effort to make time for it. It’s not something that I do once and check off a list, but something that I need to commit to over a period of time. So with that in mind, I hereby resolve… To Learn Something New… One of the things I love about my job is that I get to do a lot of things outside of my ordinary routine. It’s a veritable smorgasbord of opportunity! So what more could I possibly add to that list of things to do? Well, the more I learn, the more I realize I have so much more to learn. It would be much easier to remain in ignorant bliss, but I was born to learn. Constantly. (And apparently to teach, too– my father will tell you that as a small child, I had the neighborhood kids gathered together to play school – in the summer. I’m sure they loved that – but they did it!) These are some of things that I want to dedicate some time to learning this year: Spatial data. I have a good understanding of how maps in Reporting Services works, and I can cobble together a simple T-SQL spatial query, but I know I’m only scratching the surface here. Rob Farley (blog|twitter) posted interesting examples of combining maps and PivotViewer, and I think there’s so many more creative possibilities. I’ve always felt that pictures (including charts and maps) really help people get their minds wrapped around data better, and because a lot of data has a geographic aspect to it, I believe developing some expertise here will be beneficial to my work. PivotViewer. Not only is PivotViewer combined with maps a useful way to visualize data, but it’s an interesting way to work with data. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out this interactive demonstration using Netflx OData feed. According to Rob Farley, learning how to work with PivotViewer isn’t trivial. Just the type of challenge I like! Security. You’ve heard of the accidental DBA? Well, I am the accidental security person – is there a word for that role? My eyes used to glaze over when having to study about security, or  when reading anything about it. Then I had a problem long ago that no one could figure out – not even the vendor’s tech support – until I rolled up my sleeves and painstakingly worked through the myriad of potential problems to resolve a very thorny security issue. I learned a lot in the process, and have been able to share what I’ve learned with a lot of people. But I’m not convinced their eyes weren’t glazing over, too. I don’t take it personally – it’s just a very dry topic! So in addition to deepening my understanding about security, I want to find a way to make the subject as it relates to SQL Server and business intelligence more accessible and less boring. Well, there’s actually a lot more that I could put on this list, and a lot more things I have plans to do this coming year, but I run the risk of overcommitting myself. And then I wouldn’t have time… To Have Fun! My name is Stacia and I’m a workaholic. When I love what I do, it’s difficult to separate out the work time from the fun time. But there are some things that I’ve been meaning to do that aren’t related to business intelligence for which I really need to develop some resolve. And they are techie resolutions, too, in a roundabout sort of way! Photography. When my husband and I went on an extended camping trip in 2009 to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, I had a nice little digital camera that took decent pictures. But then I saw the gorgeous cameras that other tourists were toting around and decided I needed one too. So I bought a Nikon D90 and have started to learn to use it, but I’m definitely still in the beginning stages. I traveled so much in 2010 and worked on two book projects that I didn’t have a lot of free time to devote to it. I was very inspired by Kimberly Tripp’s (blog|twitter) and Paul Randal’s (blog|twitter) photo-adventure in Alaska, though, and plan to spend some dedicated time with my camera this year. (And hopefully before I move to Alaska – nothing set in stone yet, but we hope to move to a remote location – with Internet access – later this year!) Astronomy. I have this cool telescope, but it suffers the same fate as my camera. I have been gone too much and busy with other things that I haven’t had time to work with it. I’ll figure out how it works, and then so much time passes by that I forget how to use it. I have this crazy idea that I can actually put the camera and the telescope together for astrophotography, but I think I need to start simple by learning how to use each component individually. As long as I’m living in Las Vegas, I know I’ll have clear skies for nighttime viewing, but when we move to Alaska, we’ll be living in a rain forest. I have no idea what my opportunities will be like there – except I know that when the sky is clear, it will be far more amazing than anything I can see in Vegas – even out in the desert - because I’ll be so far away from city light pollution. I’ve been contemplating putting together a blog on these topics as I learn. As many of my fellow bloggers in the SQL Server community know, sometimes the best way to learn something is to sit down and write about it. I’m just stumped by coming up with a clever name for the new blog, which I was thinking about inaugurating with my move to Alaska. Except that I don’t know when that will be exactly, so we’ll just have to wait and see which comes first!

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