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• BUILD 2013 Sessions&ndash;Building Great Windows Phone UI in XAML

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/build-2013-sessionsndashbuilding-great-windows-phone-ui-in-xaml.aspx Even the simplest of smart phone apps can be a challenge to give a compelling UI regardless of the platform.  Windows Phone and XAML are no exception.  That is what got my interest in this session by Shawn Oster.  He took a checklist type approach to the subject is good considering that is about the only way that many us get things done. Shawn started out giving us a set of bad design/good design examples.  They very effectively showed how good design gives a sense of professionalism to your app that could determine if your wonderful idea actually makes money is DOA. I won’t go over all his points since you will be able to get the session online, but a few of his checklist points included design from the beginning instead of as an afterthought, not being afraid to leave white space and making sure your application elegantly supports both landscape and portrait modes.  The many gems make this a must watch for any developers who struggle with visual design. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Windows Phone,XAML,Design

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• Preparing For TechEd

  - by Tim Murphy

  This being my first time going to TechEd and I want to make sure that I get the most out of it.  The first goal is to make sure that I get to the sessions that cover as many topics as possible.  This is important for me as a Solution Architect consultant specializing in Microsoft technologies.  To this end I have spent some time going through the sessions on the myTechEd site. The other reason for the trip is to connect with the Microsoft development community.  This includes both members of my local Midwest community and the global communities that I have only had online connections with.  Sharing the experience and getting a chance to exchange ideas with new and old friends is a great part of any convention. In any case, the time is getting close and I am looking forward to the trip. del.icio.us Tags: TechEd 2012,TechEd,community

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• TechEd 2012: Fast SQL Server

  - by Tim Murphy

  While I spend a certain amount of my time creating databases (coding around SQL Server and setup a server when I have to) it isn’t my bread and butter.  Since I have run into a number of time that SQL Server needed to be tuned I figured I would step out of my comfort zone and see what I can learn. Brent Ozar packed a mountain of information into his session on making SQL Server faster.  I’m not sure how he found time to hit all of his points since he was allowing the audience abuse him on Twitter instead of asking questions, but he managed it.  I also questioned his sanity since he appeared to be using a fruit laptop. He had my attention though when he stated that he had given up on telling people to not use “select *”. He posited that it could be fixed with hardware by caching the data in memory.  He continued by cautioning that having too many indexes could defeat this approach.  His logic was sound if not always practical, but it was a good place to start when determining the trade-offs you need to balance.  He was moving pretty fast, but I believe he was prescribing this solution predominately for OLTP database prior to moving on to data warehouse solutions. Much of the advice he gave for data warehouses is contained in the Microsoft Fast Track guidance so I won’t rehash it here.  To summarize the solution seems to be the proper balance memory, disk access speed and the speed of the pipes that get the data from storage to the CPU.  It appears to be sound guidance and the session gave enough information that going forward we should be able to find the details needed easily.  Just what the doctor ordered. del.icio.us Tags: SQL Server,TechEd,TechEd 2012,Database,Performance Tuning

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• Windows 8/Surface Lunch Event Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  Today was a big day for Microsoft with two separate launch event.  The first for Windows 8 and all of it’s hardware partners.  The second was specifically to introduce the Microsoft Windows 8 Surface tablet.  Below are some of the take-aways I got from the webcasts. Windows 8 Launch The three general area that Microsoft focused on were the release of the OS itself, the public unveiling of the Windows Store and the new devices available from its hardware partners. The release of the OS focused on the fact that it will be available at mid-night tonight for both new PCs and for upgrades.  I can’t say that this interested me that much since it was already known to most people.  I think what they did show well was how easy the OS really is to use. The Windows Store is also not a new feature to those of us who have been running the pre-release versions of Windows 8 or have owned Windows Phone 7 for the past 2 years.  What was interesting is that the Windows Store launches with more apps available than any other platforms store at their respective launch.  I think this says a lot about how Microsoft focuses on the ability of developers to create software and make it available.  The of course were sure to emphasize that the Windows Store has better monetary terms for developers than its competitors. The also showed off the fact that XBox Music streaming is available for to all Windows 8 user for free.  Couple this with the Bing suite of apps that give you news, weather, sports and finance right out of the box and I think most people will find the environment a joy to use. I think the hardware demo, while quick and furious, really show where Windows shine: CHOICE!  They made a statement that over 1000 devices have been certified for Windows 8.  They showed tablets, laptops, desktops, all-in-ones and convertibles.  Since these devices have industry standard connectors they give a much wider variety of accessories and devices that you can use with them. Steve Balmer then came on stage and tried to see how many times he could use the “magical”.  He focused on how the Windows 8 OS is designed to integrate with SkyDrive, Skype and Outlook.com.  He also enforced that they think Windows 8 is the best choice for the Enterprise when it comes to protecting data and integrating across devices including Windows Phone 8. With that we were left to wait for the second event of the day. Surface Launch The second event of the day started with kids with magnets.  Ok, they were adults, but who doesn’t like playing with magnets.  Steven Sinofsky detached and reattached the Surface keyboard repeatedly, clearly enjoying himself.  It turns out that there are 4 magnets in the cover, 2 for alignment and 2 as connectors. They then went to giving us the details on the display.  The 10.6” display is optically bonded to the case and is optimized to reduce glare.  I think this came through very well in the demonstrations. The properties of the case were also a great selling point.  The VaporMg allowed them to drop the device on stage, on purpose, and continue working.  Of course they had to bring out the skate boards made from Surface devices. “It just has to feel right” was the reason they gave for many of their design decisions from the weight and size of the device to the way the kickstand and camera work together.  While this gave you the feeling that the whole process was trial and error you could tell that a lot of science went into the specs.  This included making sure that the magnets were strong enough to hold the cover on and still have a 3 year old remove the cover without effort. I am glad that they also decided the a USB port would be part of the spec since it give so many options.  They made the point that this allows Surface to leverage over 420 million existing devices.  That works for me. The last feature that I really thought was important was the microSD port.  Begin stuck with the onboard memory has been an aggravation of mine with many of the devices in the market today. I think they did job of really getting the audience to understand why you want this platform and this particular device.  Using personal examples like creating a video of a birthday party and being in it or the fact that the device was being used to live blog the event and control the lights and presentation.  They showed very well that it was not only fun but very capable of getting real work done.  Handing out tablets to the crowd didn’t hurt either.  In the end I really wanted a Surface even though I really have no need for one on a daily basis.  Great job Microsoft! del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,Win8,Windows 8 Luanch

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• What is "egoless programming"?

  - by Bob Murphy

  I first heard this term about fifteen years ago. My understanding is similar to that described in the Wikipedia article and a TechRepublic article: you work with your colleagues in a "friendly, collegiate way in which personal feelings are put aside". It includes things like doing peer reviews with mutual respect and a desire to learn, and not feeling like you "own" code, so if somebody has a suggestion or says there's a bug or needs to change it, you don't get defensive about it. I've also thought it was largely about having an attitude that makes for good relations with other programmers with the goal of improving the code. So I haven't seen it as being incompatible with taking pride in the quality of your work or feeling regret if something you did caused your customer a problem. However, an answer to a recent question makes me think some other programmers have different understandings about "egoless programming". So what is the correct definition? And what are its implications?

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• Is The Ease Of Windows Phone Development Ruining Its Image

  - by Tim Murphy

  I was reading an article on Mashable recently by a long time iPhone user who is living solely on a Lumia 920 at the moment and giving her assessment.  One thing that struck a nerve with me was her describing the Windows Phone ecosystem as immature.  She wasn’t saying this because of the number of apps or the big names like most people do.  She means the quality of the apps in the store. This hit a nerve with me.  I find it hard to believe that the majority of app on iOS are of any higher quality than any other platform.  I believe in any ecosystem you are going to find some high end, high quality apps, but the majority by default will be from people who are trying to solve a problem but do not have the resources to have top graphics and full blown testing.  There will also be a large number that are just there trying to trick you into giving up some cash. Does any of the mean that we shouldn’t take notice of this complaint?  Of course not!  We should always strive to publish the best quality apps possible.  Don’t do things like leaving default app icons and backgrounds.  Put a little effort into your design.  You should also spend as much time as possible ensuring against crashes and giving the user the best experience possible.  Think through your apps organization and navigation.  Go the extra step of putting it into beta and letting select people use it and give you feedback before going to full release. Remember, if we want people to appreciate the Windows Phone platform we have to make sure we give them apps that they are going to enjoy using. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,iPhone,iOS,Nokia,Lumia 920,Mashable

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• Can I develop a game using C++ and deploy to XBOX 360?

  - by Murphy

  I'm a C# developer and an enthusiast of XNA, but I'm really disappointed with the game engines available for XNA. I was using Torque X, which is really good, but GarageGames no longer supports Torque X for XNA 4.1. I searched for other engines, but only the sunburn was worth it and would have to pay - I already spent money with Torque. Based on this, I'm thinking about starting to develop in C++. Can I develop with some C++ engines and deploy to XBox 360?

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• Local LINQtoSQL Database For Your Windows Phone 7 Application

  - by Tim Murphy

  There aren’t many applications that are of value without having some for of data store.  In Windows Phone development we have a few options.  You can store text directly to isolated storage.  You can also use a number of third party libraries to create or mimic databases in isolated storage.  With Mango we gained the ability to have a native .NET database approach which uses LINQ to SQL.  In this article I will try to bring together the components needed to implement this last type of data store and fill in some of the blanks that I think other articles have left out. Defining A Database The first things you are going to need to do is define classes that represent your tables and a data context class that is used as the overall database definition.  The table class consists of column definitions as you would expect.  They can have relationships and constraints as with any relational DBMS.  Below is an example of a table definition. First you will need to add some assembly references to the code file. using System.ComponentModel;using System.Data.Linq;using System.Data.Linq.Mapping; You can then add the table class and its associated columns.  It needs to implement INotifyPropertyChanged and INotifyPropertyChanging.  Each level of the class needs to be decorated with the attribute appropriate for that part of the definition.  Where the class represents the table the properties represent the columns.  In this example you will see that the column is marked as a primary key and not nullable with a an auto generated value. You will also notice that the in the column property’s set method It uses the NotifyPropertyChanging and NotifyPropertyChanged methods in order to make sure that the proper events are fired. [Table]public class MyTable: INotifyPropertyChanged, INotifyPropertyChanging{ public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; private void NotifyPropertyChanged(string propertyName) { if(PropertyChanged != null) { PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName)); } } public event PropertyChangingEventHandler PropertyChanging; private void NotifyPropertyChanging(string propertyName) { if(PropertyChanging != null) { PropertyChanging(this, new PropertyChangingEventArgs(propertyName)); } } private int _TableKey; [Column(IsPrimaryKey = true, IsDbGenerated = true, DbType = "INT NOT NULL Identity", CanBeNull = false, AutoSync = AutoSync.OnInsert)] public int TableKey { get { return _TableKey; } set { NotifyPropertyChanging("TableKey"); _TableKey = value; NotifyPropertyChanged("TableKey"); } } The last part of the database definition that needs to be created is the data context.  This is a simple class that takes an isolated storage location connection string its constructor and then instantiates tables as public properties. public class MyDataContext: DataContext{ public MyDataContext(string connectionString): base(connectionString) { MyRecords = this.GetTable<MyTable>(); } public Table<MyTable> MyRecords;} Creating A New Database Instance Now that we have a database definition it is time to create an instance of the data context within our Windows Phone app.  When your app fires up it should check if the database already exists and create an instance if it does not.  I would suggest that this be part of the constructor of your ViewModel. db = new MyDataContext(connectionString);if(!db.DatabaseExists()){ db.CreateDatabase();} The next thing you have to know is how the connection string for isolated storage should be constructed.  The main sticking point I have found is that the database cannot be created unless the file mode is read/write.  You may have different connection strings but the initial one needs to be similar to the following. string connString = "Data Source = 'isostore:/MyApp.sdf'; File Mode = read write"; Using you database Now that you have done all the up front work it is time to put the database to use.  To make your life a little easier and keep proper separation between your view and your viewmodel you should add a couple of methods to the viewmodel.  These will do the CRUD work of your application.  What you will notice is that the SubmitChanges method is the secret sauce in all of the methods that change data. private myDataContext myDb;private ObservableCollection<MyTable> _viewRecords;public ObservableCollection<MyTable> ViewRecords{ get { return _viewRecords; } set { _viewRecords = value; NotifyPropertyChanged("ViewRecords"); }}public void LoadMedstarDbData(){ var tempItems = from MyTable myRecord in myDb.LocalScans select myRecord; ViewRecords = new ObservableCollection<MyTable>(tempItems);}public void SaveChangesToDb(){ myDb.SubmitChanges();}public void AddMyTableItem(MyTable newScan){ myDb.LocalScans.InsertOnSubmit(newScan); myDb.SubmitChanges();}public void DeleteMyTableItem(MyTable newScan){ myDb.LocalScans.DeleteOnSubmit(newScan); myDb.SubmitChanges();} Updating existing database What happens when you need to change the structure of your database?  Unfortunately you have to add code to your application that checks the version of the database which over time will create some pollution in your codes base.  On the other hand it does give you control of the update.  In this example you will see the DatabaseSchemaUpdater in action.  Assuming we added a “Notes” field to the MyTable structure, the following code will check if the database is the latest version and add the field if it isn’t. if(!myDb.DatabaseExists()){ myDb.CreateDatabase();}else{ DatabaseSchemaUpdater dbUdater = myDb.CreateDatabaseSchemaUpdater(); if(dbUdater.DatabaseSchemaVersion < 2) { dbUdater.AddColumn<MyTable>("Notes"); dbUdater.DatabaseSchemaVersion = 2; dbUdater.Execute(); }} Summary This approach does take a fairly large amount of work, but I think the end product is robust and very native for .NET developers.  It turns out to be worth the investment. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,Windows Phone 7,LINQ to SQL,LINQ,Database,Isolated Storage

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• November 2012 Chicago IT Architects Group Meeting Announcement

  - by Tim Murphy

  The year is quickly coming to an end.  This is the most exciting part of the year with technology manufacturers in overdrive trying to release as many products for Christmas as possible.  Our group is trying to do our part to bring order to the madness with one last presentation for the year.  Norman Murrin will be speaking on November 20th on Adopting Agile Processes in the Enterprise.  Be sure to join us by registering at the link below. Register del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,CITAG,Agile,Architecture

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• Review: Logitech t620 Touch Mouse and Windows 8

  - by Tim Murphy

  It isn’t very often that I worry much about hardware, but since I heard some others talking about “touch” mice for their Windows 8 machines I figured I would try one out and see what the experience was.  The only Windows 8 compatible touch mouse that they had in the store was the Logitech t630 Touch Mouse.  At $69 it isn’t exactly a cheap purchase. So how does it work with Windows 8.  First it works well as a normal mouse with touch scroll capabilities.  Scrolling works both horizontally and vertically.  Then you get into to the Win8 features, all of which are associated with the back 2/3 of the mouse.  If you double-touch-tap (not depressing the internal button) it acts as a Windows home screen button.  The next feature is switching applications.  This is accomplished by dragging a finger from the left edge of the mouse in.  Bringing up the Windows 8 open apps list is the same movement as on the table where you drag in from the left and then move back to the right.  The last gesture available is to bring up the charms.  This is performed by dragging in from the right side of the mouse. There is a certain amount of configurability.  You can switch dominant hand configuration as well as turn on and off gestures as shown in the screenshot below. It is nice that they kept the gestures similar to the table gestures.  Hopefully future updates to the drivers will bring other gestures, but this is definitely a good start.  It would be interesting to also compare this to the Microsoft Touch Mouse and see if there are additional gestures such as app close and for the app bar. del.icio.us Tags: Logitech,Windows 8,Win8,t620,Logitech t620 Touch Mouse,Gesture

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• Using foldr to append two lists together (Haskell)

  - by Luke Murphy

  I have been given the following question as part of a college assignment. Due to the module being very short, we are using only a subset of Haskell, without any of the syntactic sugar or idiomatic shortcuts....I must write: append xs ys : The list formed by joining the lists xs and ys, in that order append (5:8:3:[]) (4:7:[]) => 5:8:3:4:7:[] I understand the concept of how foldr works, but I am only starting off in Functional programming. I managed to write the following working solution (hidden for the benefit of others in my class...) : However, I just can't for the life of me, explain what the hell is going on!? I wrote it by just fiddling around in the interpreter, for example, the following line : foldr (\x -> \y -> x:y) [] (2:3:4:[]) which returned [2:3:4] , which led me to try, foldr (\x -> \y -> x:y) (2:3:4:[]) (5:6:7:[]) which returned [5,6,7,2,3,4] so I worked it out from there. I came to the correct solution through guess work and a bit of luck... I am working from the following definition of foldr: foldr = \f -> \s -> \xs -> if null xs then s else f (head xs) (foldr f s (tail xs) ) Can someone baby step me through my correct solution? I can't seem to get it....I already have scoured the web, and also read a bunch of SE threads, such as How foldr works

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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 3: Key Concerns

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is part 3 in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Keys Concerns Of Smartphones In The Enterprise These are the factors that you need to be aware of and address in order to build successful enterprise smartphone applications.  Most of them have nothing to do with the application itself as you will see here. Managing Devices Managing devices is a factor that is going to effect how much your company will have to spend outside of developing the applications.  How will you track the devices within the corporation?  How often will you have to replace phones and as a consequence have to upgrade your applications to support new phones?  The devices can represent a significant investment of capital.  If these questions are not addressed you will find a number of hidden costs throughout the life of your solution. Purchase or BYOD We have seen the trend of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) lately within the enterprise.  How many meetings have you been in where someone is on their personal iPad, iPhone, Android phone or Windows Phone?  The issue is if you can afford to support everyone's choice in device? That is a lot to take on even if you only support the current release of each platform. Do you go with the most popular device or do you pick a platform that best matches your current ecosystem and distribute company owned devices?  There is no easy answer here, but you should be able give some dollar value to both hardware and development costs related to platform coverage. Asset Tracking/Insurance Smartphones are devices that are easier to lose or have stolen than laptops and desktops. Not only do you have your normal asset management concerns but also assignment of financial responsibility. You also will need to insure them against damage and theft and add legal documents that spell out the responsibilities of the employees that use these devices. Personal vs. Corporate Data What happens when you terminate an employee?  How do you recover the device?  What happens when they have put personal data on the device?  These are all situation that can cause possible loss of corporate intellectual property or legal repercussions of reclaiming a device with personal data on it.  Policies need to be put in place that protect the company from being exposed to type of loss.  This can mean significant legal and procedural cost that you need to consider. Coming Up In the last installment of this series I will cover application development considerations. del.icio.us Tags: Smartphones,Enterprise Smartphone Apps,Architecture

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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 1: Why Build Smart Phone Apps

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is part 1 in a series of post based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Intro Most of us already carry smartphones. We play games on them. We keep up with what is going on with our friends and our favorite teams. We take pictures of our kids at their events. But the question is if that is all they are good for. Many companies have aspects of their business that lend themselves to being performed by mobile devices. Some of them lean toward larger device such as tablets, but many can be executed on smartphones. This and the following articles will discuss some of the possible applications of smartphone technology for businesses, the platforms that are available and the considerations you need to make when building them. I'll take a look at some specific scenarios and wrap up with a couple of capabilities that are just emerging that can be used in the future. Why Build Enterprise Smartphone Applications So what are some of the ways that you can leverage smartphone technology to gain efficiency in your business or a clients business. There are a few major areas that I have seen mobile platforms being an advantage to. Your mobile sales force is a key candidate for leveraging smartphone apps.  They can visit clients in their retail location and place orders on site. It is a more personal approach which can gain you customer loyalty.  A sales person may also gather information about the way a client does business or who their target market is. This allows them you to focus marketing information or build customized support for your customer. You may also have need to track physical inventory in a store. This is something that has historically been done with laser scanners, but with the camera capabilities in today's phones and tablets it is possible to use more general multi-purpose devices.  This can save costs on both hardware and telecommunication contracts. Delivery verification is another area that historically has been the domain of specialized devices but can now be accomplished with smartphones.  This also reduces costs because it is also used for communicating with the driver and other operations.  Add to that the navigation capability of smartphones and you can see how the return on investment increases. Executives are always on the go. They spend most of their time in meetings and yet they need access to decision making information at their finger tips. With a smartphone app they can get alerts when major sales are closed or critical accounting process are completed that may need their attention. They can also answer questions by instantly pulling up BI reports. I have often heard operations support people say that they need things like VPN and RDP from their phones. If they can also have notifications of outages or critical support requests they can be react to situations without needing to be tied to their desks. These are all valid reasons to need smartphone applications.  In the next installment I will discuss platforms and features. del.icio.us Tags: Smartphones,Enterprise Smartphone Apps,Architecture

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• Sept. Chicago IT Architects Group Recap

  - by Tim Murphy

  Thank you to everyone who came out for last night’s presentation.  Hopefully we will have a little better turnout next month when we are back on our regular night.  I will post out the topic and the registration as soon as we get confirmation. For those interested in last night’s presentation you can find the slides here.  I am also planning on making a white paper post here with the full presentation content. See you next month. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,Smartphones,Enterprise,Development

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• Getting Requirements Right

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/10/28/getting-requirements-right.aspxI had a meeting with a stakeholder who stated “I bet you wish I wasn’t in these meetings”.  She said this because she kept changing what we thought the end product should look like.  My reply was that it would be much worse if she came in at the end of the project and told us we had just built the wrong solution. You have to take the time to get the requirements right.  Be honest with all involved parties as to the amount of time it is taking to refine the requirements.  The only thing worse than wrong requirements is a surprise in budget overages.  If you give open visibility to your progress then management has the ability to shift priorities if needed. In order to capture the best requirements use different approaches to help your stakeholders to articulate their needs.  Use mock ups and matrix spread sheets to allow them to visualize and confirm that everyone has the same understanding.  The goals isn’t to record every last detail, but to have the major landmarks identified so there are fewer surprises along the way. Help the team members to understand that you all have the same goal.  You want to create the best possible solution for the given business problem.  If you do this everyone involved will do there best to outline a picture of what is to be built and you will be able to design an appropriate solution to fill those needs more easily. Technorati Tags: requirements gathering,PSC Group,PSC

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• My Favorite Free Windows Phone Twitter App

  - by Tim Murphy

  Windows Phone 7 has been out for about two years now.  In that time I have switched back and forth with different free Twitter apps.  Mostly the has been because someone has mentioned one or another that they like.  I figured I would give a quick run down of what I felt were the pros and cons of each.  These are only the ones that I have used and your mileage may vary.  So here we go. WP7 Built-In Twitter Functionality While it is great that Microsoft put this functionality in, it is extremely limited in usefulness.  Some apps leverage it to allow you to share pictures or information they contain.  In all though, I don’t use it unless it is the quickest way to get something out. Official Twitter App The official Twitter app isn’t a very big step up from the phone functionality.  It gives you a better timeline view and better attachment handling, but it makes you bounce to a browser page to see images that are linked to a tweet. TweetCaster This was my main Twitter app for quite a while.  It is the only one with InstaPaper integration so that you can save you a tweet and review it later.  My main problem is that it crashes too much when it can’t find a connection.  It also only previews yfrog and twitpic images and only once you go to the detail of a tweet.  Other than that it is a solid Twitter client. moTweets This is my current favorite. It has nice image display in your timeline which I have not seen on any of the other apps.  There are two modes that you can use with this app.  The first is standard to most Twitter apps that allows you to navigate to a tweet and do the usual operations.  The second is what they call Quick Buttons.  In this case you do not see the content of the tweet but go straight to the let’s get something done stage.  It is an interesting take.  I do miss the Instapaper integration and it has a tendency to show a blank timeline list once in a while after you view detail entry.  If you scroll the list it restore your timeline, but you lose you place and are put to the first entry. Seesmic I am not very fond of this app.  The first thing is that it makes you pick a “Space” when you enter the app.  This is really “which account do you want to see”.  On top of that it does not show who retweeted an entry in your timeline and then only tells you how many people RT the post when you look at the detail.  There is a Speak feature that will read you a single tweet, but you have to navigate to the tweet and then to a menu to make it work.  We will have to see if this gets better with the features in Windows Phone 8.  Other than that it is another basic feature app.  Summary In the end I am sticking with moTweets.  I would appreciate it if they added the Instapaper capability and fixed the one bug.  If they did that I would be really happy with the product. del.icio.us Tags: Twitter,Windows Phone 7,WP7,TweetCaster,moTweets,Seesmic

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• Dynamic Grouping and Columns

  - by Tim Dexter

  Some good collaboration between myself and Kan Nishida (Oracle BIP Consulting) over at bipconsulting on a question that came in yesterday to an internal mailing list. Is there a way to allow columns to be place into a template dynamically? This would be similar to the Answers Column selector. A customer has said Crystal can do this and I am trying to see how BI Pub can do the same. Example: Report has Regions as a dimension in a table, they want the user to select a parameter that will insert either Units or Dollars without having to create multiple templates. Now whether Crystal can actually do it or not is another question, can Publisher? Yes we can! Kan took the first stab. His approach, was to allow to swap out columns in a table in the report. Some quick steps: 1. Create a parameter from BIP server UI 2. Declare the parameter in RTF template You can check this post to see how you can declare the parameter from the server. http://bipconsulting.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to-pass-user-input-values-to-report.html 3. Use the parameter value to condition if a particular column needs to be displayed or not. You can use <?if@column:.....?> syntax for Column level IF condition. The if@column is covered in user documentation. This would allow a developer to create a report with the parameter or multiple parameters to allow the user to pick a column to be included in the report. I took a slightly different tack, with the mention of the column selector in the Answers report I took that to mean that the user wanted to select more of a dimensional column and then have the report recalculate all its totals and subtotals based on that selected column. This is a little bit more involved and involves some smart XSL and XPATH expressions, but still very doable. The user can select a column as a parameter, that is passed to the template rather than the query. The parameter value that is actually passed is the element name that you want to regroup the data by. Inside the template we then reference that parameter value in our for-each-group loop. That's where we need the trixy XSL/XPATH code to get the regrouping to happen. At this juncture, I need to hat tip to Klaus, for his article on dynamic sorting that he wrote back in 2006. I basically took his sorting code and applied it to the for-each loop. You can follow both of Kan's first two steps above i.e. Create a parameter from BIP server UI - this just needs to be based on a 'list' type list of value with name/value pairs e.g. Department/DEPARTMENT_NAME, Job/JOB_TITLE, etc. The user picks the 'friendly' value and the server passes the element name to the template. Declare the parameter in RTF template - been here before lots of times right? <?param@begin:group1;'"DEPARTMENT_NAME"'?> I have used a default value so that I can test the funtionality inside the template builder (notice the single and double quotes.) Next step is to use the template builder to build a re-grouped report layout. It does not matter if its hard coded right now; we will add in the dynamic piece next. Once you have a functioning template that is re-grouping correctly. Open up the for-each-group field and modify it to use the parameter: <?for-each-group:ROW;./*[name(.) = $group1]?> 'group1' is my grouping parameter, declared above. We need the XPATH expression to find the column in the XML structure we want to group that matches the one passed by the parameter. Its essentially looking through the data tree for a match. We can show the actual grouping value in the report output with a similar XPATH expression <?./*[name(.) = $group1]?> In my example, I took things a little further so that I could have a dynamic label for the parameter value. For instance if I am using MANAGER as the parameter I want to show: Manager: Tim Dexter My XML elements are readable e.g. DEPARTMENT_NAME. Its a simple case of replacing the underscore with a space and then 'initcapping' the result: <?xdoxslt:init_cap(translate($group1,'_',' '))?> With this in place, the user can now select a grouping column in the BIP report viewer and the layout will re-group the data and any calculations based on that column. I built a group above report but you could equally build the group left version to truly mimic the Answers column selector. If you are interested you can get an example report, sample data and layout template here. Of course, you can combine Klaus' dynamic sorting, Kan's conditional column approach and this dynamic grouping to build a real kick ass report for users that will keep them happy for hours..

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• Silverlight Cream for December 13, 2010 -- #1010

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Rénald Nollet, Benjamin Gavin, Dennis Doomen, Tim Greenfield, Mike Taulty, Jeff Blankenburg, Michael Crump, Laurent Duveau, Dragos Manolescu, KeyboardP, Yochay Kiriaty. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight RIA Services and Basic, Anonymous Authentication" Benjamin Gavin WP7: "lving Circular Navigation in Windows Phone Silverlight Applications" Yochay Kiriaty SQL Azure: "SQL Azure Database Manager – Part 1 : How to connect to your SQL Azure DB" Rénald Nollet Shoutouts: Yochay Kiriaty has a post up on the Windows Phone Devloper Blog about open source (MSPL) projects helping WP7 devs: Windows Phone Recipes – Helping the Community Jesse Liberty's latest Yet Another Podcast is up and thie time it's Joe Stagner: Yet Another Podcast #18 – Joe Stagner Josh Schwartzberg sent me this link to what is apparently his yearly web-only rock Christmas album: MetalXmas... done in Silverlight and RIA Services From SilverlightCream.com: SQL Azure Database Manager – Part 1 : How to connect to your SQL Azure DB Rénald Nollet posted Part 1 of a series on a SQL Azure database manager all in Silverlight... has a live demo running, some description, and is making us wait for the next part! Silverlight RIA Services and Basic, Anonymous Authentication Benjamin Gavin has a quick post up resolving a basic RIA Services problem that I bet a lot of folks are looking for the answer on... like 500 series errors... cool little find he ferreted out... A night of Silverlight, WPF, unit testing and Caliburn Micro Dennis Doomen in concert with his employer gave a couple talks at the local DotNED user group, and covered literally a cornucopia of topics... slides, and example code for both talks... lotsa material here... Tim Greenfield on PuzzleTouch WP7 Application Tim Greenfield is the latest WP7 app developer to be interviewed by the SilverlightShow crew... lots of interesting comments and insight from Tim. Rebuilding the PDC 2010 Silverlight Application (Part 4) Mike Taulty has part 4 of his PDC 2010 Silverlight app construction project up and is taking the app into Blend, and the considerations that brought to the table. What I Learned In WP7 – Issue #2 Jeff Blankenburg continues his "What I Learned" series with this discussion about fonts, the Non-Linear Navigation service I mention below, and possible WP7 jobs. Part 3 of 4 : Tips/Tricks for Silverlight Developers Michael Crump has Part 3 of his Tips/Tricks up today. Lots of goodies this time: underlining in a TextBlock, getting browser info, startup params, VisualTreeHelper, and child windows. My Windows Phone 7 presentation in Montreal Laurent Duveau gave a WP7 presentation in Montreal as part of the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Developer's Briefing, and has posted his materials and slide deck WP7 Code: Mocking Event Streams with IEnumerable Dragos Manolescu has a very cool post up on using IEnumerable to Mock event streams by leveraging the IObservable/IEnumerable duality, and uses the 2D bubble app that you can run and test in the emulator without needing an accelerometer Transparent Wallpapers – Video Tutorial KeyboardP has had so many queries about his Transparent wallpaper for WP7 that he produced a video tutorial for it... Solving Circular Navigation in Windows Phone Silverlight Applications Yochay Kiriaty discusses the first recipe they are releasing ... see the shoutout above, a Nonlinear Navigation Service ... to help with apps that have loops in navigation. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• How can I use scp without providing a password

  - by Tim

  I have asked a question before in here. My question was that I tried to give my password to scp via piping echo mypassword | scp [email protected]:project/* ~/project/ However it still asks me to manually input the password. How should I specify mypassword to scp in commands? I still don't understand one of the replies. what is a input stream by TTY, for example? What are the common ways for a input stream? How to know what type of input stream a stdin input to a command is? For example that of ssh/scp.

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• Http 400 'Bad Request' and win32status 1450 when larger messages are sended to a WCF service

  - by Tim Mahy

  Hi all, we sometimes receive Http 400 bad request resultcodes when posting a large file (10mb) to a WCF service hosted in IIS 6. We can reproduce this using SOAP UI and it seems that it is unpredictable when this happens. In our WCF log the call is not received, so we believe that the request does not reach the ASP.NET nor WCF runtime. This happens on multiple websites on the same machine each having their own application pool. All IIS settings are default, only in ASP.NET and WCF we allow bigger readerQuota's etc.... The win32status that is logged in the IIS log is 1450 which we think means "error no system resources". So now the question: a) how can we solve this b) (when a is not applicable :) ) which performance counters or logs are usefull to learn more about this problem? greetings, Tim

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• Good/Better config for MySQL on an EC2 Large Instance

  - by Tim Reynolds

  I have an EC2 Large instance dedicated to MySQL. It will be serving a Joomla/Magento combo so it has a blend of InnoDB and MyISAM tables. I have only worked with MyISAM in the past and am therefore unfamiliar with the settings InnoDB uses. Experiments so far have been less than fruitful, as I keep causing the InnoDB engine to be disabled. My instance is running Ubuntu 10.04 64 bit server edition and has ~7.5G of ram. MySQL is currently using ~0.6% of that, with somewhat poor performance. I would like to configure it to use as much of the system RAM as is reasonable. Testing some settings I learned that the InnoDB logs can't collectively be larger than 4G. Would anyone be able to provide some base InnoDB and MyISAM settings to get my started. Thank you Tim

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• Http 400 'Bad Request' and win32status 1450 when larger messages are sended to a WCF service

  - by Tim Mahy

  we sometimes receive Http 400 bad request resultcodes when posting a large file (10mb) to a WCF service hosted in IIS 6. We can reproduce this using SOAP UI and it seems that it is unpredictable when this happens. In our WCF log the call is not received, so we believe that the request does not reach the ASP.NET nor WCF runtime. This happens on multiple websites on the same machine each having their own application pool. All IIS settings are default, only in ASP.NET and WCF we allow bigger readerQuota's etc.... The win32status that is logged in the IIS log is 1450 which we think means "error no system resources". So now the question: a) how can we solve this b) (when a is not applicable :) ) which performance counters or logs are usefull to learn more about this problem? greetings, Tim

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• Can't change Hyper Terminal Hardware Settings

  - by Tim

  Anyone here any good with Hyperterminal? Am having a nightmare trying to use it at work to update our telephone extensions. The company who supply our PABX box have told me that XP does strange things to Hyperterminal and that I should use Win2k. Which I did with the same result. I have narrowed the problem dowwn to the Hardware Settings for the connection in Hyper Terminal. No matter what I set (and I need 7E1) it defaults back to 8N1. Has anyone seen this behaviour before and know of a simple way around it? (Apart from buying a more expensive commercial version of Hyper Terminal, as suggested by our support people). Edit: I should point out I have to connect via a phone line so a direct serial connection is not an option. Cheers Tim

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• CRL checking problem windows 2003

  - by Tim Mahy

  Hi all, we have CRL that is valid for 24 hours and has a next update in 12 hours. The CRL is valid from 12:12 AM to 12:12 AM and from 12:12 PM to 12:12 PM. In the logs of the CRL hosting webserver we see that one of our servers not always fetches the CRL at night, in most cases the server that missed the CRL IIS servers 403.16 on 12:13 PM. Is our following theory good: when a windows server misses fetching the CRL on it's nextUpdate but the current CRL is still valid, the fetching is not retried? This leads to a situation that when the CRL expires there is no overlap and gives a little time of 403.16 situations in IIS since the CRL is not thrusted and so all certificates are marked als unsafe? greetings, Tim

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• Godaddy vs. Route53 for DNS

  - by tim peterson

  I have my website set up as an EC2 instance and my DNS is currently Godaddy. I'm considering switching to Amazon AWS Route53 for DNS. The one thing I noticed however is that Route53 charges monthly fees but I never get any bills from Godaddy. Obviously, nobody likes getting charged for something they can get for free. If Godaddy is cheaper, can anyone confirm that the page load speed of an EC2 instance is actually better via Route53 vs. Godaddy? If it is not faster or cheaper, can someone point out other reasons it might make sense to do this switch? thanks, tim

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