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• Use your iPhone or iPod Touch as a Boxee Remote

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you a Boxee user looking for a remote control solution? Well, you might not need to look any further than your pocket. The free Boxee Remote App turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a a simple and easy-to-use Boxee remote. The Boxee Remote App works over WiFi, so there is no need for to buy or install additional hardware on your PC. Plus, you don’t even need to be within the line of sight for it to work. Using the Boxee Remote App Download the free Boxee Remote App from the App Store and install it on your iPhone or iPod Touch. See download link below. Next, make sure you have Boxee running on your PC. Select the Boxee icon to open the App.   The first time you log in you’ll be greeted by an introduction screen that will explain the two modes. Click Continue. When opened in “Button” mode, you’ll be presented with 4 directional buttons, an “OK” button, and a back arrow button that works like the Esc key does in Boxee. Button mode performs just as a normal remote. Touching the directional buttons moves your on screen selection right, left, up, and down. Tap the OK button to open or select an item. To enter “Gesture” mode, tap the Gesture button along the top of the Screen. Gesture mode works similar to a touch pad or trackball on a laptop. You drag the Boxee icon with your thumb or finger across the screen to move around within Boxee. The icon will turn red while being dragged or touched. Simply tap the icon to select.   The Settings button allows you to manually add or delete a host computer, or adjust the sensitivity of the controls.     If you need to enter text, such as enter logon credentials for an App, the on screen keyboard will pop up. While watching a video you’ll have on-screen Stop and Pause buttons along with a volume slider.   The Boxee Remote App is simple and easy to use. As long as you can connect via WiFi, you can use it to control any instance of Boxee running on any computer on your network. Download the Boxee Remote App Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Why Wait? Amazing New Add-on Turns Your iPhone into an iPad! [Comic]Getting Started with BoxeeIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Watch Netflix Instant Movies in BoxeeWin a Free iPod Touch in the How-To Geek Facebook Giveaway! TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 Cool Looking Screensavers for Windows SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) If it were only this easy Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook

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• Why I Love the Social Management Platform I Use

  - by Mike Stiles

  Not long ago, I asked the product heads for the various components of the Oracle Social Cloud’s SRM to say what they thought was coolest about their component. And while they did a fine job, it was recently pointed out to me that no one around here uses the platform in a real-world setting more than I do, as I not only blog and podcast my brains out, I also run Oracle Social’s own social properties. Of course I’m pro-Oracle Social’s product. Duh. But if you can get around immediately writing this off as a puff piece, there are real reasons beyond my employment that the Oracle SRM works for me as a community manager. If it didn’t, I could have simply written about something else, like how people love smartphones or something genius like that. Post Grid I like seeing what I want to see. I’m difficult that way. Post grid lets me see all posts for all channels, with custom columns showing me how posts are doing. I can filter the grid by social channel, published, scheduled, draft, suggested, etc. Then there’s a pullout side panel that shows me post details, including engagement analytics. From the pullout, I can preview the post, do a quick edit, a full edit, or (my favorite) copy a post so I can edit it and schedule it for other times so I don’t have to repeat from scratch. I’m not lazy, just time conscious. The Post Creation Environment Given our post volume, I need this to be as easy as it can be. I can highlight which streams I want the post to go out on, edit for the individual streams, maintain a media library that’s easy to upload to and attach from, tag posts, insert links that auto-shorten to an orac.le shortlink, schedule with a nice calendar visual, geo-target, drop photos inline into Twitter, and review each post. Watching My Channels The Engage component of the Oracle SRM brings in and drops into a grid the activity that’s happening on all my channels. I keep this open round-the-clock. Again, I get to see only what I want; social network, stream, unread messages, engagement by how I labeled them, and date range. I can bring up a post with a click, reply, label it, retweet it, assign it, delete it, archive it, etc. So don’t bother trying to be a troll on my channels. Analytics Social publishing and engaging 24/7 would be pretty unrewarding if I couldn’t see how our audience was responding. Frankly, I get more analytics than I know what to do with (I’m a content creator, not a data analyst). But I do know what numbers I care about, and they’re available by channel, date range, and campaigns. I’m seeing fan count, sources and demographics. I’m seeing engagement, what kinds of posts are getting engagement, and top engagers. I’m seeing my reach, both organic and paid. I’m seeing how individual posts performed in terms of engagement and virality, and posting time/date insight. Have I covered all the value propositions? I’ve covered pathetically few of them. It would be impossible in blog length to give shout-outs to the vast number of features and functionalities. From organizing teams and managing permissions with Workflow to the powerful ability to monitor topics (and your competition) across the web in Listen, it’s a major, and increasingly necessary, weapon in your social marketing arsenal. The life of a Community Manager is not for everybody. So if the Oracle SRM can actually make a Community Manager’s life easier, what’s not to love? I invite you to take a look at and participate in our Oracle Social Cloud social channels! Facebook Twitter YouTube Google Plus LinkedIn Daily Podcast on iHeartRadio @mikestiles @oraclesocial Photo: freeimages.com

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• The inevitable Hello World post!

  - by brendonpage

  Greetings to anyone reading this! This is my first of hopefully many posts. I would like to use this post to introduce myself and to let you know what to expect from this blog in future. Okay so a bit about myself. In case you missed the name of this blog, my name is Brendon Page! I am a Software Developer from South Africa and work for a small company who’s main focus is producing software for the kitchen cupboard industry, although from time to time we do produce custom solutions for other industries. I work in a small team of 3, including myself, and am fortunate enough to work from home! I have been involved in IT since 1996, which is when I got my first PC, and started working as a junior programmer in 2003. Outside of work I enjoy playing squash, PC Games and of course LANing with my friends. If I get any free time between all of that I will usually dedicate some of it to a personal project, these are mainly prototypes for an idea I have had or for something that could be useful at work. I was in 2 minds on whether to include a photo of myself. The reason for this was because while I was looking for a suitable photo to use, it dawned on me how much time I dedicate to pulling funny faces in photos! I also realized how little I shave, which I blame completely on working form home. So after much debate here I am, funny face, beard and all!   Now that you know a bit about me lets move onto what expect from this blog. I work predominantly with Microsoft technologies so most if not all of my posts will be related to something Microsoft. Since most of my job entails Software Development you can expect a lot of posts which will deal with the .NET Framework. I am currently working on a large Silverlight project, so my first few posts will be targeted at in that direction. I will be striving to make the content of my posts as useful as possible from both an explanation and code perspective, I aim to include a working solution for every post, which I will put up on my skydrive for download. Here is what I have planned for my next few posts: Where did my session variables go?  Here I will take you through the lessons I learnt the hard way about the ASP.NET session. I am not going to go into to much depth in this post, as there is already a lot of information available on it. I mainly want to cover it in an effort to keep the scope creep of my posts to a minimum, some the solutions I upload will use it and I would like to have a post that I can reference to explain why I am doing something a certain way. Uploading files through SIlverlight Again there is a lot of existing information on this topic, so I wont be going into to much depth, but I will be using the solution from this as a base for my next post. Generating and Displaying DeepZoom images dynamically in Silverlight Well the title pretty much speaks for it’s self on this one. As I mentioned I will be building off the solution that I create in my ‘Uploading files through Silverlight’ post. Securing DeepZoom images using a custom implementation of the MultiScaleTileSource In this post I will look at the privacy issue surrounding the default usage of DeepZoom images in Silverlight and how to overcome it. This makes the use of DeepZoom in privacy conscious applications more viable. Thanks to anyone who actually read this post! I look forward to producing more which will hopefully be helpful to you.

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• The Power to Control Power

  - by speakjava

  I'm currently working on a number of projects using embedded Java on the Raspberry Pi and Beagle Board.  These are nice and small, so don't take up much room on my desk as you can see in this picture. As you can also see I have power and network connections emerging from under my desk.  One of the (admittedly very minor) drawbacks of these systems is that they have no on/off switch.  Instead you insert or remove the power connector (USB for the RasPi, a barrel connector for the Beagle).  For the Beagle Board this can potentially be an issue; with the micro-SD card located right next to the connector it has been known for people to eject the card when trying to power off the board, which can be quite serious for the hardware. The alternative is obviously to leave the boards plugged in and then disconnect the power from the outlet.  Simple enough, but a picture of underneath my desk shows that this is not the ideal situation either. This made me think that it would be great if I could have some way of controlling a mains voltage outlet using a remote switch or, even better, from software via a USB connector.  A search revealed not much that fit my requirements, and anything that was close seemed very expensive.  Obviously the only way to solve this was to build my own.Here's my solution.  I decided my system would support both control mechanisms (remote physical switch and USB computer control) and be modular in its design for optimum flexibility.  I did a bit of searching and found a company in Hong Kong that were offering solid state relays for 99p plus shipping (£2.99, but still made the total price very reasonable).  These would handle up to 380V AC on the output side so more than capable of coping with the UK 240V supply.  The other great thing was that being solid state, the input would work with a range of 3-32V and required a very low current of 7.5mA at 12V.  For the USB control an Arduino board seemed the obvious low-cost and simple choice.  Given the current requirments of the relay, the Arduino would not require the additional power supply and could be powered just from the USB.Having secured the relays I popped down to Homebase for a couple of 13A sockets, RS for a box and an Arduino and Maplin for a toggle switch.  The circuit is pretty straightforward, as shown in the diagram (only one output is shown to make it as simple as possible).  Originally I used a 2 pole toggle switch to select the remote switch or USB control by switching the negative connections of the low voltage side.  Unfortunately, the resistance between the digital pins of the Arduino board was not high enough, so when using one of the remote switches it would turn on both of the outlets.  I changed to a 4 pole switch and isolated both positive and negative connections. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you want to follow my design, please be aware that it requires working with mains voltages.  If you are at all concerned with your ability to do this please consult a qualified electrician to help you.It was a tight fit, especially getting the Arduino in, but in the end it all worked.  The completed box is shown in the photos. The remote switch was pretty simple just requiring the squeezing of two rocker switches and a 9V battery into the small RS supplied box.  I repurposed a standard stereo cable with phono plugs to connect the switch box to the mains outlets.  I chopped off one set of plugs and wired it to the rocker switches.  The photo shows the RasPi and the Beagle board now controllable from the switch box on the desk. I've tested the Arduino side of things and this works fine.  Next I need to write some software to provide an interface for control of the outlets.  I'm thinking a JavaFX GUI would be in keeping with the total overkill style of this project.

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• Let Me Show You Something: Instagram, Vine and Snapchat for Brands

  - by Mike Stiles

  While brands are well aware of how much more impactful images are than text-only posts on social channels, today you’re additionally being presented with platform after additional platform for hosting, doctoring and sharing photos and videos.  Can you play in every sandbox? And if you do, can you be brilliant on all of them? As has usually been the case, so far brands are sticking their toes into new platforms while not actually committing to them, or strategizing for them, or resourcing them. TrackMaven found of the 123 F500 companies using Instagram, only 22% of them are active on it. Likewise, research from Simply Measured found brands are indeed jumping in, with the number establishing a presence on Instagram up 55% over the past year. Users want them there…brand engagement has exploded 350%, and over 1/3 of the top brands have at least 10,000 followers. BUT…the top 10 brands are generating 33% of all posts, reaping 83% of all engagement. Things are also growing on Twitter’s Vine, the 6-second looping video app that hit 40 million users in August. The 7th Chamber says 5 tweets a second contain a Vine link. Other studies say branded Vines are 4 times more likely to be shared and seen than rank-and-file branded videos. Why? Users know that even if a video is pure junk, they won’t get robbed of too much of their valuable time. Vine is always upgrading so you can make sure your videos are worth viewers’ time. You can now edit videos, and save & work on several projects concurrently. What you can’t do is upload a finely crafted video into Vine, but you can do that with Instagram. The key to success? Same as with all other content; make it of value. Deliver a laugh or a lesson or both. How-to, behind the scenes peeks, contests, demos, all make sense in the short video format. Or follow Nash Grier’s example, which is to just have fun with and connect to your viewers, earning their trust that your next Vine will be as good as the last. Nash is only 15, has over 1.4 million followers, and adds about 100,000 a week. He broke out when one of his videos was re-Vined by some other kid with 300,000 followers. Make good stuff, get it in front of influencers, and your brand Vines could break out as well. Then there’s Snapchat, the “this photo will self destruct” platform. How can that be of use to brands besides offering coupons that really expire? The jury is out. But with an audience of over 100 million and a valuation of $800 million, media-with-a-time-limit is compelling. Now there’s “Snapchat Stories” that can last 24 hours and be shared to the public at large. You might be able to capitalize on how much more focus gets put on content when there’s a time limit on its availability. The underlying truth to all of this is, these are all tools. Very cool, feature rich tools, but tools. You can give the exact same art kit to 5 different people and you’d get back 5 very different works, ranging from worthless garbage to masterpiece. Brands are being called upon to be still and moving image artists. That’s what your customers are used to seeing, from a variety of sources. Commit to communicating with them accordingly. @mikestiles Photo: stock.xchng

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• Sitting Pretty

  - by Phil Factor

  Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk IT Pro newsletter'DBAs and SysAdmins generally prefer an expression of calmness under adversity. It is a subtle trick, and requires practice in front of a mirror to get it just right. Too much adversity and they think you're not coping; too much calmness and they think you're under-employed' I dislike the term 'avatar', when used to describe a portrait photograph. An avatar, in the sense of a picture, is merely the depiction of one's role-play alter-ego, often a ridiculous bronze-age deity. However, professional image is important. The choice and creation of online photos has an effect on the way your message is received and it is important to get that right. It is fine to use that photo of you after ten lagers on holiday in an Ibiza nightclub, but what works on Facebook looks hilarious on LinkedIn. My splendid photograph that I use online was done by a professional photographer at great expense and I've never had the slightest twinge of regret when I remember how much I paid for it. It is me, but a more pensive and dignified edition, oozing trust and wisdom. One gasps at the magical skill that a professional photographer can conjure up, without digital manipulation, to make the best of a derisory noggin (ed: slang for a head). Even if he had offered to depict me as a semi-naked, muscle-bound, sword-wielding hero, I'd have demurred. No, any professional person needs a carefully cultivated image that looks right. I'd never thought of using that profile shot, though I couldn't help noticing the photographer flinch slightly when he first caught sight of my face. There is a problem with using an avatar. The use of a single image doesn't express the appropriate emotion. At the moment, it is weird to see someone with a laughing portrait writing something solemn. A neutral cast to the face, somewhat like a passport photo, is probably the best compromise. Actually, the same is true of a working life in IT. One of the first skills I learned was not to laugh at managers, but, instead, to develop a facial expression that promoted a sense of keenness, energy and respect. Every profession has its own preferred facial cast. A neighbour of mine has the natural gift of a face that displays barely repressed grief. Though he is characteristically cheerful, he earns a remarkable income as a pallbearer. DBAs and SysAdmins generally prefer an expression of calmness under adversity. It is a subtle trick, and requires practice in front of a mirror to get it just right. Too much adversity and they think you're not coping; too much calmness and they think you're under-employed. With an appropriate avatar, you could do away with a lot of the need for 'smilies' to give clues as to the meaning of what you've written on forums and blogs. If you had a set of avatars, showing the full gamut of human emotions expressible in writing: Rage, fear, reproach, joy, ebullience, apprehension, exasperation, dissembly, irony, pathos, euphoria, remorse and so on. It would be quite a drop-down list on forums, but given the vast prairies of space on the average hard drive, who cares? It would cut down on the number of spats in Forums just as long as one picks the right avatar. As an unreconstructed geek, I find it hard to admit to the value of image in the workplace, but it is true. Just as we use professionals to tidy up and order our CVs and job applications, we should employ experts to enhance our professional image. After all you don't perform surgery or dentistry on yourself do you?

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• My shiny new gadget

  - by TechTwaddle

  About 3 months ago when I had tweeted (or twit?) that the HD7 could be my next phone I wasn’t a 100 percent sure, and when the HTC Mozart came out it was switch at first sight. I wanted to buy the Mozart mainly for three reasons; its unibody construction, smaller screen and the SLCD display. But now, holding a HD7 in my hand, I reminisce and think about how fate had its own plan. Too dramatic for a piece of gadget? Well, sort of, but seriously, this has been most exciting. So in short, I bought myself a HTC HD7 and am really loving it so far. Here are some pics (taken from my HD2 which now lies in a corner, crying),     Most of my day was spent setting up the device. Email accounts, Facebook, Marketplace etc. Since marketplace isn’t officially launched in India yet, my primary live id did not work. Whenever I tried launching marketplace it would say ‘marketplace is not currently supported in your country’. Searching the forums I found an easy work around. Just create a dummy live id with the country set to UK or US and log in to the device using this id. I was worried if the contacts and feeds from my primary live account would not be updated but that was not a problem. Adding another live account into the device does import your contacts, calendar and feeds from it. And that’s it, marketplace now works perfectly. I installed a few trial and free applications; haven’t checked if I can purchase apps though, will check that later and update this post. There is one issue I am still facing with the device, I can’t access the internet over GPRS. Windows Phone 7 only gives you the option to add an ‘APN’ and nothing else. Checking the connection settings on my HD2, I found out that there is also a proxy server I need to add to access GPRS, but so far I haven’t found a way to do that on WP7. Ideally HTC should have taken care of this, detect the operator and apply that operators settings on the device, but looks like that’s not happening. I also tried the ‘Connection Settings’ application that HTC bundled with the device, but it did nothing magical. If you’re reading this and know how to fix this problem please leave a comment. The next thing I did is install apps, a lot of apps. Read Engadget’s guide to essential apps for WP7. The apps and games I installed so far include Beezz (twitter app with push notifications), twitter (the official twitter app), Facebook, Youtube, NFS Undercover, Rocket Riot, Krashlander, Unite and the list goes on. All the apps run super smooth. The display looks fine indoors but I know it’s going to suck in bright sunlight. Anyhow, I am really impressed with what I’ve seen so far. I leave you with a few more photos. Have a great year ahead. Ciao!

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• What is a good design pattern / lib for iOS 5 to synchronize with a web service?

  - by Junto

  We are developing an iOS application that needs to synchronize with a remote server using web services. The existing web services have an "operations" style rather than REST (implemented in WCF but exposing JSON HTTP endpoints). We are unsure of how to structure the web services to best fit with iOS and would love some advice. We are also interested in how to manage the synchronization process within iOS. Without going into detailed specifics, the application allows the user to estimate repair costs at a remote site. These costs are broken down by room and item. If the user has an internet connection this data can be sent back to the server. Multiple photographs can be taken of each item, but they will be held in a separate queue, which sends when the connection is optimal (ideally wifi). Our backend application controls the unique ids for each room and item. Thus, each time we send these costs to the server, the server echoes the central database ids back, thus, that they can be synchronized in the mobile app. I have simplified this a little, since the operations contract is actually much larger, but I just want to illustrate the basic requirements without complicating matters. Firstly, the web service architecture: We currently have two operations: GetCosts and UpdateCosts. My assumption is that if we used a strict REST architecture we would need to break our single web service operations into multiple smaller services. This would make the services much more chatty and we would also have to guarantee a delivery order from the app. For example, we need to make sure that containing rooms are added before the item. Although this seems much more RESTful, our perception is that these extra calls are expensive connections (security checks, database calls, etc). Does the type of web api (operation over service focus) determine chunky vs chatty? Since this is mobile (3G), are we better handling lots of smaller messages, or a few large ones? Secondly, the iOS side. What is the current advice on how to manage data synchronization within the iOS (5) app itself. We need multiple queues and we need to guarantee delivery order in each queue (and technically, ordering between queues). The server needs to control unique ids and other properties and echo them back to the application. The application then needs to update an internal database and when re-updating, make sure the correct ids are available in the update message (essentially multiple inserts and updates in one call). Our backend has a ton of business logic operating on these cost estimates. We don't want any of this in the app itself. Currently the iOS app sends the cost data, and then the server echoes that data back with populated ids (and other data). The existing cost data is deleted and the echoed response data is added to the client database on the device. This is causing us problems, because any photos might not have been sent, but the original entity tree has been removed and replaced. Obviously updating the costs tree rather than replacing it would remove this problem, but I'm not sure if there are any nice xcode libraries out there to do such things. I welcome any advice you might have.

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• Extreme Makeover, Phone Edition: Comcasts xfinity

  Mobile Makeover For many companies the first foray into Windows Phone 7 (WP7) may be in porting their existing mobile apps. It is tempting to simply transfer existing functionality, avoiding the additional design costs. Readdressing business needs and taking advantage of the WP7 platform can reduce cost and is essential to a successful re-launch. To better understand the advantage of new development lets examine a conceptual upgrade of Comcasts existing mobile app. Before Comcast has a great mobile app that provides several key features. The ability to browse the lineup using a guide, a client for Comcast email accounts, On Demand gallery, and much more. We will leverage these and build on them using some of the incredible WP7 features.   After With the proliferation of DVRs (Digital Video Recorders) and a variety of media devices (TV, PC, Mobile) content providers are challenged to find creative ways to build their brands. Every client touch point must provide both value added services as well as opportunities for marketing and up-sale; WP7 makes it easy to focus on those opportunities. The new app is an excellent vehicle for presenting Comcasts newly rebranded TV, Voice, and Internet services. These services now fly under the banner of xfinity and have been expanded to provide the best experience for Comcast customers. The Windows Phone 7 app will increase the surface area of this service revolution.   The home menu is simplified and highlights Comcasts Triple Play: Voice, TV, and Internet. The inbox has been replaced with a messages view, and message management is handled by a WP7 hub. The hub presents emails, tweets, and IMs from Comcast and other viewers the user follows on Twitter.  The popular view orders shows based on the users viewing history and current cable package. The first show Glee is both popular and participating in a conceptual co-marketing effort, so it receives prime positioning. The second spot goes to a hit show on a premium channel, in this example HBOs The Pacific, encouraging viewers to upgrade for this premium content. The remaining spots are ordered based on viewing history and popularity. Tapping the play button moves the user to the theatre where they can watch previews or full episodes streaming from Fancast. Tapping an extra presents the user with show details as well as interactive content that may be included as part of co-marketing efforts. Co-Marketing with Dynamic Content The success of Comcasts services are tied to the success of the networks and shows it purveys, making co-marketing efforts essential. In this concept FOX is co-marketing its popular show Glee. A customized panorama is updated with the latest gleeks tweets, streaming HD episodes, and extras featuring photos and video of the cast. If WP7 apps can be dynamically extended with web hosted .xap files, including sandboxed partner experiences would enable interactive features such as the Gleek Peek, in which a viewer can select a character from a panorama to view the actors profile. This dynamic inline experience has a tailored appeal to aspiring creatives and is technically possible with Windows Phone 7.   Summary The conceptual Comcast mobile app for Windows Phone 7 highlights just a few of the incredible experiences and business opportunities that can be unlocked with this latest mobile solution. It is critical that organizations recognize and take full advantage of these new capabilities. Simply porting existing mobile applications does not leverage these powerful tools; re-examining existing applications and upgrading them to Windows Phone 7 will prove essential to the continued growth and success of your brand.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Ask the Readers: How Many Monitors Do You Use with Your Computer?

  - by Asian Angel

  Most people have a single monitor for their computers, many have two, and some individuals enjoy “3 monitor plus” goodness. This week we would like to know how many monitors you use with your computer. Photo by DamnedNice. A good majority of people have a single monitor that they use with their computers and that single monitor serves their needs very well. It could be that these individuals do not engage in a heavy amount of work or play on their computers…they just need to do the basics like checking e-mail, using I.M., working with photos, etc. Another possibility is the use of virtual desktop software such as Dexpot, Yodm 3D, or Sysinternals Desktops on Windows systems. Linux systems such as Ubuntu already have that wonderful multi-desktop functionality built in. The wonderful part about virtual desktops is that a single monitor can feel equivalent to a small army of monitors. The ability to separate your open windows into “categories” and spread them out across multiple desktops is definitely nice. With each passing year dual monitor setups are becoming more common. Having twice the screen real-estate visible at the same time can be extremely convenient when you are multi-tasking. Perhaps you like to monitor your system’s stats and an e-mail account on the second monitor while working with software on the first. It certainly beats having windows popping up and down on your screen constantly while keeping on top of everything! Next we have the people who have three or more monitors in use with their computers. This may be a result of the type of work they do, an experiment to see if multiple monitors are right for them, or the cool, geeky factor that comes with having all those monitors. Needless to say these individuals can induce a good amount of envy and/or inspiration in the rest of us when we see their awesome setups. Are you perfectly content with a single monitor? Do you have two or more monitors that you use? If you have two or more monitors are they actually that useful to you? Perhaps you are getting ready even now to add additional monitors to your system. Whatever your situation may be at the moment, let us know your thoughts (and possible multi-monitor plans) in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? Hidden Tracks Your Stolen Mac; Free Until End of January Why the Other Checkout Line Always Moves Faster World of Warcraft Theme for Windows 7 Ubuntu Font Family Now Available for Download Oh No! WikiLeaks Published Santa Claus’s Naughty List [Video] Remember the Milk Now Supports HTTPS Encryption for the Entire Session

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• Is Your Company Social on the Inside?

  - by Mike Stiles

  As we talk about the extension of social from an outbound-facing marketing tool to a platform that will reach across the entire enterprise, servicing multiple functions of that enterprise, it might be time to take a look at how social can be effectively employed for internal communications. Remember the printed company newsletter? Yeah, nobody reads it. Remember the emailed company newsletter? Yeah, nobody reads it. Why not? Shouldn’t your employees care about the company more than anything else in life and be voraciously hungry for any information related to it? The more realistic prospect is that a company’s employees don’t behave much differently at work where information is concerned than they do in their personal lives. They “tune in” to information that’s immediately relevant to them, that peaks their interest, and/or that’s presented in a visually engaging way. That currently makes an internal social platform the most ideal way to communicate within the organization. It not only facilitates more immediate, more targeted (and thus more relevant) messaging from the company out to employees, it sets a stage for employees to communicate with each other and efficiently get answers to questions from peers. It’s a collaboration tool on steroids. If you build such an internal social portal and you do it right, will employees use it? Considering social media has officially been declared more addictive than cigarettes, booze and sex…probably. But what does it mean to do an internal social platform “right”? The bar has been set pretty high. Your employees are used to Twitter and Facebook, and would roll their eyes at anything less simple or harder to navigate than those. All the Facebook best practices would apply to your internal social as well, including the importance of managing posting frequency, using photos and video, moderation & response, etc. And don’t worry, you won’t be the first to jump in. WPP's global digital agency Possible has its own social network called Colab. Nestle has “The Nest.” Red Robin’s got one. I myself got an in-depth look at McGraw-Hill’s internal social platform at Blogwell NYC. Some of these companies are building their own platforms, others are buying them off the shelf or customizing readymade solutions. But you won’t be the last either. Prescient Digital Media and the IABC learned 39% of companies don’t offer employees any social tools. Not a social network, not discussion forums, not even IM. And a great many continue to ban the use of Facebook and Twitter on the premises. That’s pretty astonishing since social has become as essential a modern day communications tool as the telephone. But such holdouts will pay a big price for being mired in fear while competitors exploit social connections unchallenged. Fish where the fish are. If social has become the way people communicate and take in information, let that be the way communication is trafficked in the organization.

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• File path for J2ME FileConnection?

  - by Kilnr

  Hi, I'm writing a MIDlet which needs to write file. I'm using FileConnection from JSR-75 to accomplish this. The intention is to have this MIDlet runnning on as much devices as possible (all MIDP 2.0 devices with JSR-75 support, ideally). On several emulators and an HTC Touch Pro2, I can perfectly use the following code to get the root of the filesystem: Enumeration drives = FileSystemRegistry.listRoots(); String root = (String) drives.nextElement(); String path = "file:///" + root; However, on a Nokia S60 5th edition emulator, trying to open a FileConnection to this path throws a java.lang.SecurityException. Apparently S60 devices do not allow connections to the root of the filesystem. I realise I can use something like System.getProperty("fileconn.dir.photos"), but that isn't supported on all devices either. So, my actual question: what is the best approach to get a path to create a FileConnection with, that allows for maximum portability? Thanks. Edit: I suppose I could iterate over all the roots in the Enumeration, and check for a writable one, but that's hardly optimal for two reasons. First, there aren't necessarily any writable roots. Second, this could be the phone memory or a memory card, so the storage method wouldn't be consistent across devices, which is rather ugly.

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• What is wrong with Paperclip+ImageMagick on Heroku?

  - by Yuri

  UPD class User < ActiveRecord::Base Paperclip.options[:swallow_stderr] = false has_attached_file :photo, :styles => { :square => "100%", :large => "100%" }, :convert_options => { :square => "-auto-orient -geometry 70X70#", :large => "-auto-orient -geometry X300" }, :storage => :s3, :s3_credentials => "#{RAILS_ROOT}/config/s3.yml", :path => ":attachment/:id/:style.:extension", :bucket => 'mybucket' validates_attachment_size :photo, :less_than => 5.megabyte end Works great on local machine, but gives me an error on Heroku: There was an error processing the thumbnail for stream.20143 The thing is I want to auto-orient photos before resizing, so they resized properly. The only working variant now(thanks to jonnii) is resizing without auto-orient: ... as_attached_file :photo, :styles => { :square => "70X70#", :large => "X300" }, :storage => :s3, :s3_credentials => "#{RAILS_ROOT}/config/s3.yml", :path => ":attachment/:id/:style.:extension", :bucket => 'mybucket' ... How to pass additional convert options to paperclip on Heroku?

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• Mysql Algorithm for Determining Closest Colour Match

  - by buggedcom

  I'm attempting to create a true mosaic application. At the moment I have one mosaic image, ie the one the mosaic is based on and about 4000 images from my iPhoto library that act as the image library. I have already done my research and analysed the mosaic image. I've converted it into 64x64 slices each of 8 pixels. I've calculated the average colour for each slice and assertain the r, g, b and brightness (Luminance (perceived option 1) = (0.299*R + 0.587*G + 0.114*B)) value. I have done the same for each of the image library photos. The mosaic slices table looks like so. slice_id, slice_image_id, slice_slice_id, slice_image_column, slice_image_row, slice_colour_hex, slice_rgb_red, slice_rgb_blue, slice_rgb_green, slice_rgb_brightness The image library table looks like so. upload_id, upload_file, upload_colour_hex, upload_rgb_red, upload_rgb_green, upload_rgb_blue, upload_rgb_brightness So basically I'm reading the image slices from the slices table into PHP and then pulling out the appropriate images from the library table based on the colour hexs. My trouble is that I've been on this too long and probably had too many energy drinks so am not concentrating properly, I can't figure out the way to pick out the nearest colour neighbor if the appropriate hex code doesn't exist. Any ideas on the perfect query? NB: I know pulling out the slices one by one is not ideal however the mosaic is only rebuilt periodically so a sudden burst in the mysql load doesn't really bother me, however if there us a way to pull the images out all at once that would also be a massive bonus.

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• [jQuery] preload image and show a spinner while loading

  - by robertdd

  Hy, i use uploadify to upload some images, after i display all the images thumbs in a list, when i click on a image thumb a bigger image it's open in a div with this function $(".thumbs li a").click(function(){ var largePath = $(this).attr("href"); $('.thumbs li').removeClass('thumbac'); $(this).parent().addClass('thumbac'); $("#largeImg").attr({ src: largePath }); return false; }); here is my list of photos: <div class="upimage"> <ul id="upimagesQueue" class="thumbs"> <li id="liupimages"> <a href="uploads/0001.jpg"><img src="uploads/0001.jpg" alt="0001.jpg" id=""></a> </li> <li id="liupimages"> <a href="uploads/0002.jpg"><img src="uploads/0002.jpg" alt="0002.jpg" id=""></a> </li> <li id="liupimages"> <a href="uploads/0003.jpg"><img src="uploads/0003.jpg" alt="0003.jpg" id=""></a> </li> <script> $(".thumbs li a").click(function(){ var largePath = $(this).attr("href"); $('.thumbs li').removeClass('thumbac'); $(this).parent().addClass('thumbac'); $("#largeImg").attr({ src: largePath }); return false; }); </script> </ul> </div> this is the div where the images appear <div class="largeImg" > <img id="largeImg" src="" /> </div> how i can preload the image before it display?

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• Android: Creating a Scrollable Layout

  - by MD

  I'm trying to create a "scrollable" layout in Android. Even using developers.android.com, though, I feel a little bit lost at the moment. I'm somewhat new to Java, but not so much that I feel I should be having these issues--being new to Android is the bigger problem right now. The layout I'm trying to create should scroll in a sort of a "grid". I THINK what I'm looking for is the Gallery view, but I'm really lost as to how to implement it at the moment. I want it to "snap" to center the frame, like in the actual Gallery application. Essentially, if I had a photo gallery of 9 pictures, the idea is to scroll between them up/down AND side to side, in a 3x3 manner. Doesn't need to dynamically adjust, or anything like that, I just want a grid I can scroll through. I'm also not asking for anyone to give me explicit code for it--I'm trying to learn, more than anything. But pointing me in the right direction for helpful layout programming resources would be greatly appreciated, and confirming if it's a Gallery view I'm looking for would also be really helpful. EDIT: To clarify, the goal is to have ONE item on screen at a time. If you scroll between one item and the next, the previous one leaves the screen, and the new one snaps into place. So if it were a photo gallery, each spot on the grid would take up the entire screen size, approximately, and would be flung out of the viewable area when you slide across to the next photo, in either direction. (Photos are just an example for illustration purposes)

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• SimplePie not parsing flickr feed

  - by mn

  I am trying to use SimplePie to pull a group pool flickr feed: $feed = new SimplePie(); $feed->set_feed_url('http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=25938750@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200'); $feed->init(); $feed->handle_content_type(); Then I use typical SimplePie php calls to loop through the feed items. However, nothing is returned. The HTML is there, but the feed elements aren't inserted. When I try to use a flickr feed of tags, like: $feed->set_feed_url('http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=architecture,building&lang=en-us&format=rss_200'); I get back a list of photos from the public photo feed, but the tags aren't taken into account. Any ideas? The only thing I can think of is I need an API key, but there is nothing on the flickr website that indicates a key is needed for feed calls. Plus, I can open both types of feeds in my browser and get the feed I am looking for.

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• How to pass additional convert options to paperclip on Heroku?

  - by Yuri

  UPD class User < ActiveRecord::Base Paperclip.options[:swallow_stderr] = false has_attached_file :photo, :styles => { :square => "100%", :large => "100%" }, :convert_options => { :square => "-auto-orient -geometry 70X70#", :large => "-auto-orient -geometry X300" }, :storage => :s3, :s3_credentials => "#{RAILS_ROOT}/config/s3.yml", :path => ":attachment/:id/:style.:extension", :bucket => 'mybucket' validates_attachment_size :photo, :less_than => 5.megabyte end Works great on local machine, but gives me an error on Heroku: There was an error processing the thumbnail for stream.20143 The thing is I want to auto-orient photos before resizing, so they resized properly. The only working variant now(thanks to jonnii) is resizing without auto-orient: ... as_attached_file :photo, :styles => { :square => "70X70#", :large => "X300" }, :storage => :s3, :s3_credentials => "#{RAILS_ROOT}/config/s3.yml", :path => ":attachment/:id/:style.:extension", :bucket => 'mybucket' ... How to pass additional convert options to paperclip on Heroku?

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• get property from XML using PHP

  - by Adnan

  Hello, I am using PHP's SimpleXML to get some values out of the following XML; - <entry> <id>http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/email_address%40gmail.com/base/0</id> <updated>2010-01-14T22:06:26.565Z</updated> <category scheme="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind" term="http://schemas.google.com/contact/2008#contact" /> <title type="text">Customer Name</title> <link rel="http://schemas.google.com/contacts/2008/rel#edit-photo" type="image/*" href="http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/photos/media/email_address%40gmail.com/0/34h5jh34j5kj3444" /> <link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/email_address%40gmail.com/full/0" /> <link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/email_address%40gmail.com/full/0/5555" /> <gd:email rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#other" address="[email protected]" primary="true" /> </entry> I can get the title with: $xml = new SimpleXMLElement($response_h1); foreach ($xml->entry as $entry) { echo $entry->title, '<br />'; } But how to get the address="[email protected]" property?

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• Pagination in Joomla!

  Hi every one. I'm a bit new to Joomla! and I'm building my new web site using Joomla! 1.5.8 with a template bought from RocketTheme. The long article in question is a gallery of photos, and I wanted to create a horizontal pagination nav-bar in the footer of the gallery, I just clicked pagebreak where I wanted to paginate in my article in the WYSIWYG editor and thought that it's actually all I have to do. What I got was ugly; a vertically directed navigation bar placed in the top right side of my gallery with the links to each part of the article, the all without the minimum styling. And as I see it's a table! Why not outputting a list instead of a table! (Well this is not actually my concern right now). I can understand CSS and html, but I'm not really a PHP guy, so I don't understand how to use pagination.php or pagenavigation.php! Do I have to customize one of them to have my nav-bar? What I have to do to get that horizontal nav-bar? Really thanks in advance. Wassim

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• Anyone got a nifty credit expiry algorithm?

  - by garethkeenan

  Our website uses a credit system to allow users to purchase inexpensive digital goods (eg. photos). We use credits, rather than asking the user to pay for items individually, because the items are cheap and we are trying to keep our credit-card/PayPal overhead low. Because we aren't a bank, we have to expire credits after a certain amount of time. We expire deposit credits after a year, but other types of credits (bonuses, prizes, refunds) may have a different shelf-life. When a buyer buys an item, we spend the credit that is going to expire first. Our current system keeps track of every deposit by storing the original value and the remainder to be spent. We keep a list of all purchases as well, of course. I am currently moving to a system which is much more like a traditional double-entry accounting system. A deposit will create a ledger item, increasing the user's 'spending' account balance. Every purchase will also create a ledger item, decreasing the user's 'spending' account balance. The new system has running balances, while the old system does not, which greatly improves our ability to find problems and do reconciliations. We do not want to use the old system of keeping a 'remainder' value attached to each deposit record because it is inefficient to replay a user's activities to calculate what the remainder of each deposit is over time (for the user's statement). So, after all of this verbose introduction, my question is "Does anyone else out there have a similar system of expiring credits?" If you could describe how you calculate expired credits it would be a great help. If all expired credits had the exact same shelf life, we would be able to calculate the expired amount using: Total Deposits - Total Spending - Deposits Not Due To Expire = Amount to Expire However, because deposits can have different shelf lives, this formula does not work because more than one deposit can be partially spent at any given time.

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• In a digital photo, how can I detect if a mountain is obscured by clouds?

  - by Gavin Brock

  The problem I have a collection of digital photos of a mountain in Japan. However the mountain is often obscured by clouds or fog. What techniques can I use to detect that the mountain is visible in the image? I am currently using Perl with the Imager module, but open to alternatives. All the images are taken from the exact same position - these are some samples. My naïve solution I started by taking several horizontal pixel samples of the mountain cone and comparing the brightness values to other samples from the sky. This worked well for differentiating good image 1 and bad image 2. However in the autumn it snowed and the mountain became brighter than the sky, like image 3, and my simple brightness test started to fail. Image 4 is an example of an edge case. I would classify this as a good image since some of the mountain is clearly visible. UPDATE 1 Thank you for the suggestions - I am happy you all vastly over-estimated my competence. Based on the answers, I have started trying the ImageMagick edge-detect transform, which gives me a much simpler image to analyze. convert sample.jpg -edge 1 edge.jpg I assume I should use some kind of masking to get rid of the trees and most of the clouds. Once I have the masked image, what is the best way to compare the similarity to a 'good' image? I guess the "compare" command suited for this job? How do I get a numeric 'similarity' value from this?

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• Magento - Integrating Wordpress into Magento for the homepage

  - by Nick

  I currently have a Magento store where I'm using a CMS page as the homepage. I want to integrate my wordpress blog (hosted on the same server) into this CMS page. It would show the latest blog post and preferably have the comment function available on the front page. The first thing I considered was using the Wordpress Loop on the Magento CMS page, but it doesn't seem like it allows PHP. One other thought I had was to create the homepage using modules or blocks. To be honest, I've never created a module or block so I'm not all that familiar with what is involved. The CMS page that I had created is simply an image slider/carousel (nivo-slider) and some photos with links. None of the content actually needs to be done with CMS, it just needs to be presented within my Magento theme/framework. All homepage updates will be handled by myself, so I can bypass the CMS system all together and just update modules if it turns out that the modules solution will allow me to have both the Wordpress blog and nivo-slider on the same page. Any thoughts?

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• Javascript won't execute in iPhone Safari

  - by Stuart Meyer

  I'm running into this issue only because I recently purchased an iPhone. The javascript for a picture carousel on my website (http://www.stuartmeyerphotography.com) won't execute in Safari for iPhone. I thought it worked on Mac Safari last I checked with a friend who had a Mac (a year ago), but now I need to go back and check that too to make sure it works on the Mac. "View source" on my website would show the entire html page, but I've pulled the code from the body section to show here: carousel({id:'Photos', border:'', size_mode:'image', width:120, height:120, sides:8, steps:75, speed:4, direction:'left', images:['mainthumbs/babiesthumb.jpg','mainthumbs/engagementsthumb.jpg','mainthumbs/dancethumb1.jpg','mainthumbs/artistthumb.jpg','mainthumbs/portraitsthumb1.jpg','mainthumbs/seniorsthumb1.jpg','mainthumbs/wedthumb1.jpg'], links:['babies/babies.html','engagements/engagemainshow/engagementpictures.html','dance/dancepictures.html','artists/artists.html','portraits/portraits.html','seniors/highschoolseniors.html','weddings/weddings.html'], lnk_base:'', lnk_targets:['_iframe1', '_iframe1', '_iframe1', '_iframe1', '_iframe1', '_iframe1', '_iframe1' ], lnk_attr:['width=200,height=300,top=200,menubar=yes', 'width=300,height=200,left=400,scrollbars=yes', 'width=150,height=250,left=200,top=100', ''], titles:['Babies', 'Engagements', 'Dance', 'Artists', 'Portraits', 'HS Seniors', 'Weddings'], image_border_width:1, image_border_color:'#E3F0A1' });   </div> Any thoughts? -Stuart

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• How do you concat multiple rows into one column in SQL Server?

  - by Jason

  I've searched high and low for the answer to this, but I can't figure it out. I'm relatively new to SQL Server and don't quite have the syntax down yet. I have this datastructure (simplified): Table "Users" | Table "Tags": UserID UserName | TagID UserID PhotoID 1 Bob | 1 1 1 2 Bill | 2 2 1 3 Jane | 3 3 1 4 Sam | 4 2 2 ----------------------------------------------------- Table "Photos": | Table "Albums": PhotoID UserID AlbumID | AlbumID UserID 1 1 1 | 1 1 2 1 1 | 2 3 3 1 1 | 3 2 4 3 2 | 5 3 2 | I'm looking for a way to get the all the photo info (easy) plus all the tags for that photo concatenated like CONCAT(username, ', ') AS Tags of course with the last comma removed. I'm having a bear of a time trying to do this. I've tried the method in this article but I get an error when I try to run the query saying that I can't use DECLARE statements... do you guys have any idea how this can be done? I'm using VS08 and whatever DB is installed in it (I normally use MySQL so I don't know what flavor of DB this really is... it's an .mdf file?)

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