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• PeopleSoft HCM @ OHUG 11: Enter the Matrix

  - by Jay Zuckert

  The PeopleSoft HCM team is back from a very busy and exciting OHUG conference in Orlando. The packed, standing-room only PeopleSoft HCM Roadmap keynote was the highlight of the conference for many attendees and the reviews are in : PeopleSoft rocked the house ! Great demonstration of products in the keynote. Best keynote in a long time, and fun. Engaging and entertaining, great demonstration of capabilities. Message received loud and clear, PeopleSoft applications are here to stay.  PeopleSoft has a real vision moving forward. Real-time polls using mobile texting were cutting edge.                          Tracy Martin (as Trinity) and other members of the PeopleSoft HCM team presented a ‘must-see’ Matrix-themed session while dressed as movie characters. The keynote highlighted planned HCM capabilities for Matrix administration and future organization visualization enhancements. The team also previewed the planned Manager Dashboard and Talent Summary.                           Following the keynote, some of the cast posed for photo opportunities at the OHUG booth in the exhibition hall. As you can imagine, they received some interesting looks walking by the other vendor booths. The PeopleSoft HCM team also presented numerous other OHUG sessions covering PeopleSoft Talent Management, Compensation, HR HelpDesk, Payroll, Global HCM Practices, Time & Labor, Absence Management, and Benefits. All of those presentations are available from the OHUG site at www.ohug.org. When not in one of the well-attended PeopleSoft HCM sessions, conference attendees filled the Oracle booth in the exhibition hall to see live product demonstrations. True to their PeopleSoft roots, some of the PeopleSoft HCM team played as hard as they worked in Orlando and enjoyed the OHUG Appreciation event along with customers at the Hard Rock. We are already busy planning for Oracle OpenWorld 2011 and prepping sessions our PeopleSoft HCM customers are sure to like. We hope to see you there in San Francisco from Oct. 2-6. To learn more about OpenWorld or to register, click here.

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• SQL SERVER – Introduction to CUME_DIST – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012

  - by pinaldave

  This blog post is written in response to the T-SQL Tuesday post of Prox ‘n’ Funx. This is a very interesting subject. By the way Brad Schulz is my favorite guy when it is about blogging. I respect him as well learn a lot from him. Everybody is writing something new his subject, I decided to start SQL Server 2012 analytic functions series. SQL Server 2012 introduces new analytical function CUME_DIST(). This function provides cumulative distribution value. It will be very difficult to explain this in words so I will attempt small example to explain you this function. Instead of creating new table, I will be using AdventureWorks sample database as most of the developer uses that for experiment. Let us fun following query. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT SalesOrderID, OrderQty, CUME_DIST() OVER(ORDER BY SalesOrderID) AS CDist FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY CDist DESC GO Above query will give us following result. Now let us understand what is the formula behind CUME_DIST and why the values in SalesOrderID = 43670 are 1. Let us take more example and be clear about why the values in SalesOrderID = 43667 are 0.5. Now let us enhence the same example and use PARTITION BY into the OVER clause and see the results. Run following query in SQL Server 2012. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT SalesOrderID, OrderQty, ProductID, CUME_DIST() OVER(PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY ProductID ) AS CDist FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID DESC, CDist DESC GO Now let us see the result of this query. We are have changed the ORDER BY clause as well partitioning by SalesOrderID. You can see that CUME_DIST() function provides us different results. Additionally now we see value 1 multiple times. As we are using partitioning for each group of SalesOrderID we get the CUME_DIST() value. CUME_DIST() was long awaited Analytical function and I am glad to see it in SQL Server 2012. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Function, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• View and Flip Between Firefox Tabs in 3D

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you tired of the default tab switching style in Firefox? Then get ready to enjoy a more visually pleasing 3D experience with the FoxTab extension. Using FoxTab As soon as you have the extension installed, you will see a new toolbar button available beside the address bar. Before going further you may want to look through the viewing styles available in the lower right corner. Note: You can choose to have the FoxTab button appear in the status bar if preferred or use the keyboard (i.e. F12) by itself to launch FoxTab. The grid view with an angled 3D setting. The page flow view with a more frontal look. If the default background color is not to your liking then you can easily change to a new color or insert a background image. After choosing a new background color, making a few adjustments in the options, and opening more tabs things look very nice using the grid viewing style. Followed by the carousel viewing style. And finally the wall viewing style. You can also set up a top sites page using your favorite viewing style. To add a page to the top sites group right click within the webpage and select Add To Top Sites. Just like that your new selection is added in. Keep in mind that we were not able to move/switch positions in the grid during our tests. Options The extension has plenty of options and settings to help you customize FoxTab to your liking. Conclusion FoxTab adds visually pleasing 3D tab switching to Firefox for anyone who loves eye candy and a touch of fun while browsing. Links Download the FoxTab extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Visit the FoxTab Homepage Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips You Really Want to Completely Disable Tabs in Firefox?Quick Hits: 11 Firefox Tab How-TosQuick Tip: Save Windows and Tabs When Restarting FirefoxMake Firefox Use Multiple Rows of TabsQuick Tip: Use Tab Characters in Textarea Boxes in Firefox 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor tinysong gives a shortened URL for you to post on Twitter (or anywhere)

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• Create Your CRM Style

  - by Ruth

  Company branding can create a sense of spirit, belonging, familiarity, and fun. CRM On Demand has long offered company branding options, but now, with Release 17, those options have become quicker, easier, and more flexible. Themes (also known as Skins) allow you to customize the appearance of the CRM On Demand application for your entire company, or for individual roles. Users may also select the theme that works best for them. You can create a new theme in 5 minutes or less, but if you're anything like me, you may enjoy tinkering with it for a while longer. Before you begin tinkering, I recommend spending a few moments coming up with a design plan. If you have specific colors or logos you want for your theme, gather those first...that will move the process along much faster. If you want to match the color of an existing Web site or application, you can use tools, like Pixie, to match the HEX/HTML color values. Logos must be in a JPEG, JPG, PNG, or GIF file format. Header logos must be approximately 70 pixels high by 1680 pixels wide. Footer logos must be no more than 200 pixels wide. And, of course, you must have permission to use the images that you upload for your theme. Creating the theme itself is the simple part. Here are a few simple steps. Note: You must have the Manage Themes privilege to create custom themes. Click the Admin global link. Navigate to Application Customization Themes. Click New. Note: You may also choose to copy and edit and existing theme. Enter information for the following fields: Theme Name - Enter a name for your new theme. Show Default Help Link - Online help holds valuable information for all users, so I recommend selecting this check box. Show Default Training and Support Link - The Training and Support Center holds valuable information for all users, so I recommend selecting this check box. Description - Enter a description for your new theme. Click Save. Once you click Save, the Theme Detail page opens. From there, you can design your theme. The preview shows the Home, Detail, and List pages, with the new theme applied. For more detailed information about themes, click the Help link from any page in CRM On Demand Release 17, then search or browse to find the Creating New Themes page (Administering CRM On Demand Application Customization Creating New Themes). Click the Show Me link on that Help page to access the Creating Custom Themes quick guide. This quick guide shows how each of the page elements are defined.

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• Auto Mocking using JustMock

  - by mehfuzh

  Auto mocking containers are designed to reduce the friction of keeping unit test beds in sync with the code being tested as systems are updated and evolve over time. This is one sentence how you define auto mocking. Of course this is a more or less formal. In a more informal way auto mocking containers are nothing but a tool to keep your tests synced so that you don’t have to go back and change tests every time you add a new dependency to your SUT or System Under Test. In Q3 2012 JustMock is shipped with built in auto mocking container. This will help developers to have all the existing fun they are having with JustMock plus they can now mock object with dependencies in a more elegant way and without needing to do the homework of managing the graph. If you are not familiar with auto mocking then I won't go ahead and educate you rather ask you to do so from contents that is already made available out there from community as this is way beyond the scope of this post. Moving forward, getting started with Justmock auto mocking is pretty simple. First, I have to reference Telerik.JustMock.Container.DLL from the installation folder along with Telerik.JustMock.DLL (of course) that it uses internally and next I will write my tests with mocking container. It's that simple! In this post first I will mock the target with dependencies using current method and going forward do the same with auto mocking container. In short the sample is all about a report builder that will go through all the existing reports, send email and log any exception in that process. This is somewhat my  report builder class looks like: Reporter class depends on the following interfaces: IReporBuilder: used to  create and get the available reports IReportSender: used to send the reports ILogger: used to log any exception. Now, if I just write the test without using an auto mocking container it might end up something like this: Now, it looks fine. However, the only issue is that I am creating the mock of each dependency that is sort of a grunt work and if you have ever changing list of dependencies then it becomes really hard to keep the tests in sync. The typical example is your ASP.NET MVC controller where the number of service dependencies grows along with the project. The same test if written with auto mocking container would look like: Here few things to observe: I didn't created mock for each dependencies There is no extra step creating the Reporter class and sending in the dependencies Since ILogger is not required for the purpose of this test therefore I can be completely ignorant of it. How cool is that ? Auto mocking in JustMock is just released and we also want to extend it even further using profiler that will let me resolve not just interfaces but concrete classes as well. But that of course starts the debate of code smell vs. working with legacy code. Feel free to send in your expert opinion in that regard using one of telerik’s official channels. Hope that helps

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• JavaScript Sucks.

  - by Matt Watson

  JavaScript Sucks. Yes, I said it. Microsoft's announcement of TypeScript got me thinking today. Is this a step in the right direction? It sounds like it fixes a lot of problems with JavaScript development. But is it really just duct tape and super glue for a programming model that needs to be replaced?I have had a love hate relationship with JavaScript, like most developers who would prefer avoiding client side code. I started doing web development over 10 years ago and I have done some pretty cool stuff with JavaScript. It has came a long ways and is the universal standard these days for client side scripting in the web browser. Over the years the browsers have become much faster at processing JavaScript. Now people are even trying to use it on the server side via node.js. OK, so why do I think JavaScript sucks?Well first off, as an enterprise web application developer, I don't like any scripting or dynamic languages. I like code that compiles for lots of obvious reasons. It is messy to code with and lacks all kinds of modern programming features. We spend a lot of time trying to hack it to do things it was never really designed for.Ever try to use different jQuery based plugins that require conflicting jQuery versions? Yeah, that sucks.How about trying to figure out how to make 20 javascript include files load quicker as one request? Yeah that sucks too.Performance? Let me just point to the old Facebook mobile app made with JS & HTML5. It sucked. Enough said.How about unit testing JavaScript? I've never tried it, but it sure sounds like fun.My biggest problem with JavaScript is code security. If I make some awesome product, there is no way to protect my code. How can we expect game makers to write apps in 100% JavaScript and HTML5 if they can't protect their intellectual property?There are compiling tools like Closure, unit test frameworks, minify, coffee script, TypeScript and a bunch of other tools. But to me, they all try to make up for the weaknesses and problems with JavaScript. JavaScript is a mess and we spend a lot of time trying to work around all of it's problems. It is possible to program in Silverlight, Java or Flash and run that in the browser instead of JavaScript, but they all have their own problems and lack universal mobile support. I believe Microsoft's new TypeScript is a step forward for JavaScript, but I think we need to start planning to go a whole different direction. We need a new universal client side programming model, because JavaScript sucks.

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• Why You Should Attend MySQL Connect, and Register Now

  - by Bertrand Matthelié

  MySQL Connect is taking place on September 29 and 30 in San Francisco. The early bird discount enabling you to save US$ 500 is only running for a few more days, until July 13. Are you still wondering if you should sign up? Here are 10 reasons why you definitely should: Learn from other companies how they tackled similar challenges to the ones you’re facing. Find out what they learned along the way, and how you can save time, money and a lot of troubles by avoiding repeating the same mistakes and applying the best practices they’ve developed. You’ll get the chance to hear from organizations including PayPal, Verizon, Twitter, Facebook, Ticketmaster, Ning, Mozilla, CERN, Yahoo! and more! Don’t miss this unique opportunity to meet the engineers developing and supporting the MySQL products in a single location. You’ll be able to ask them all your questions, which can represent a huge time and money saver. Acquire detailed knowledge about InnoDB, the MySQL Optimizer, High Availability strategies, improving performance and scalability, enhancing security and numerous other topics. You’ll hear it straight "from the horse’s mouth" as well as from other MySQL experts in the ecosystem. Get a better understanding about Oracle’s MySQL strategy and about the MySQL roadmap, so you can better plan where to use the MySQL database and MySQL Cluster for your next web, cloud-based and other applications. Get hands-on experience about improving performance with the MySQL Performance Schema, about using MySQL Utilities, MySQL Cluster and a lot more with eight different Hands-On Labs. Express your ideas, engage into discussions and help influence the MySQL roadmap during Birds-of-a-feather sessions about replication, backup, query optimizations and other topics. Meet partners and learn about third party tools that could be useful in your architecture. Immerse yourself into the MySQL universe and hang out with MySQL experts for two days. The discussions as well as the relationships you will create can be priceless and help you execute on your next projects in a much better and faster way. Register Now to save US$500 by taking advantage of the Early bird discount running until July 13. We’ll have parallel tracks so you should consider sending a few team members to make the most of the event. Are you attending or planning to attend Oracle OpenWorld or JavaOne? You can add MySQL Connect to your registration for only US$100! Finally, it’s always a lot of fun to attend a MySQL conference. The passion and the energy are contagious…and you’ll likely get plenty of new ideas. You will find all information about the program in the MySQL Connect Content Catalog. We look forward to seeing you there! You can also read interviews with Tomas Ulin and Ronald Bradford about MySQL Connect. Sponsorship and exhibit opportunities are still available for the conference. You will find more information here.

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• Speed Up the Help Dialog in Windows and Office

  - by Matthew Guay

  When you click help, you don’t want to wait for your computer to bring it to you.  Here’s how you can speed up the help dialog in Windows and Office. If you have a slow internet connection, chances are you’ve been frustrated by the Help dialog in Windows and Office trying to download fresh content every time you open them. This can be great if the updated help files contain better content, but sometimes you just want to find what you were looking for without waiting.  Here’s how you can turn off the automatic online help. Use Local Help in Windows Windows 7 and Vista’s help dialog usually tries to load the latest content from the net, but this can take a long time on slow connections. If you’re seeing the above screen a lot, you may want to switch to offline help.  Click the “Online Help” button at the bottom, and select “Get offline Help”. Now your computer will just load the pre-installed help files.  And don’t worry; if there’s a major update to your help files, Windows will download and install it through Windows Update.   Stupid Geek Tip: An easy way to open Windows Help is to click on your desktop or Start Menu and press F1 on your keyboard. Use Local Help in Office This same trick works in Office 2007 and 2010.  We’ve actually had more problems with Office’s help being tardy. Solve this the same way as with Windows help.  Click on the “Connected to Office.com” or “Connected to Office Online” button, depending on your version of Office, and select “Show content only from this computer”. This will automatically change the settings for Help in all of your Office applications. While this may not be a major trick, it can be helpful especially if you have a slow internet connection and want to get things done quickly.  Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to See the About Dialog and Version Information in Office 2007Speed Up SATA Hard Drives in Windows VistaMake Mouse Navigation Faster in WindowsSpeed up Your Windows Vista Computer with ReadyBoostSet the Speed Dial as the Opera Startup Page 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 FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos

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• Is the science of Computer Science dead?

  - by Veaviticus

  Question : Is the science and art of CS dead? By that I mean, the real requirements to think, plan and efficiently solve problems seems to be falling away from CS these days. The field seems to be lowering the entry-barrier so more people can 'program' without having to learn how to truly program. Background : I'm a recent graduate with a BS in Computer Science. I'm working a starting position at a decent sized company in the IT department. I mostly do .NET and other Microsoft technologies at my job, but before this I've done Java stuff through internships and the like. I personally am a C++ programmer for my own for-fun projects. In Depth : Through the work I've been doing, it seems to me that the intense disciplines of a real science don't exist in CS anymore. In the past, programmers had to solve problems efficiently in order for systems to be robust and quick. But now, with the prevailing technologies like .NET, Java and scripting languages, it seems like efficiency and robustness have been traded for ease of development. Most of the colleagues that I work with don't even have degrees in Computer Science. Most graduated with Electrical Engineering degrees, a few with Software Engineering, even some who came from tech schools without a 4 year program. Yet they get by just fine without having the technical background of CS, without having studied theories and algorithms, without having any regard for making an elegant solution (they just go for the easiest, cheapest solution). The company pushes us to use Microsoft technologies, which take all the real thought out of the matter and replace it with libraries and tools that can auto-build your project for you half the time. I'm not trying to hate on the languages, I understand that they serve a purpose and do it well, but when your employees don't know how a hash-table works, and use the wrong sorting methods, or run SQL commands that are horribly inefficient (but get the job done in an acceptable time), it feels like more effort is being put into developing technologies that coddle new 'programmers' rather than actually teaching people how to do things right. I am interested in making efficient and, in my opinion, beautiful programs. If there is a better way to do it, I'd rather go back and refactor it than let it slide. But in the corporate world, they push me to complete tasks quickly rather than elegantly. And that really bugs me. Is this what I'm going to be looking forward to the rest of my life? Are there still positions out there for people who love the science and art of CS rather than just the paycheck? And on the same note, here's a good read if you haven't seen it before The Perils Of Java Schools

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• Play Thousands of Online Radio Stations with Shoutcast in VLC

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you looking for more variety from your radio stations? Today we’ll take a look at how to easily stream thousands of radio stations to your desktop with VLC media player. Getting Started Select Media from the menu, go to Services Discovery, and click Shoutcast radio listings.   Next, select View from the menu and click Playlist.   Or, click on the Show Playlist button In the Playlist window, click on Shoutcast radio listings in the left pane. You should then see a very long list of Titles displayed on the right. Scroll though the list to find a music genre or topic that interests you. Double-click to expand the list of station options. Select one of the channel listings from the list and double click to begin playing.   Looking for a specific station? Type a search term into the search filter box to see if it is available.   That’s it. Sit back and enjoy listening to your favorite Internet radio programming. If you are a music or talk radio fan, you aren’t likely to run out of listening options in VLC. Want to find some more uses for VLC? Check out our articles on how to copy a DVD, convert video files to MP3, and how to set a video as your desktop wallpaper. Download VLC Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Listen to Over 100,000 Radio Stations in Windows Media CenterListen to Local FM Radio in Windows 7 Media CenterListen and Record Over 12,000 Online Radio Stations with RadioSureGeek Reviews: Play And Record Internet Radio With Screamer RadioWeekend Fun: Watch Television on Your PC with AnyTV 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7 Map the Stars with Stellarium Use ILovePDF To Split and Merge PDF Files TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool

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• Language Club

  - by Ben Griswold

  We started a language club at work this week.  Thus far, we have a collective interest in a number of languages: Python, Ruby, F#, Erlang, Objective-C, Scala, Clojure, Haskell and Go. There are more but these 9 received the most votes. During the first few meetings we are going to determine which language we should tackle first. To help make our selection, each member will provide a quick overview of their favored language by answering the following set of questions: Why are you interested in learning “your” language(s). (There’s lots of work, I’m an MS shill, It’s hip and  fun, etc) What type of language is it?  (OO, dynamic, functional, procedural, declarative, etc) What types of problems is your language best suited to solve?  (Algorithms over big data, rapid application development, modeling, merely academic, etc) Can you provide examples of where/how it is being used?  If it isn’t being used, why not?  (Erlang was invented at Ericsson to provide an extremely fault tolerant, concurrent system.) Quick history – Who created/sponsored the language?  When was it created?  Is it currently active? Does the language have hardware support (an attempt was made at one point to create processor instruction sets specific to Prolog), or can it run as an interpreted language inside another language (like Ruby in the JVM)? Are there facilities for programs written in this language to communicate with other languages?  How does this affect its utility? Does the language have a IDE tool support?  (Think Eclipse or Visual Studio) How well is the language supported in terms of books, community and documentation? What’s the number one things which differentiates the language from others?  (i.e. Why is it cool?) How is the language applicability to us as consultants?  What would the impact be of using the language in terms of cost, maintainability, personnel costs, etc.? What’s the number one things which differentiates the language from others?  (i.e. Why is it cool?) This should provide an decent introduction into nearly a dozen languages and give us enough context to decide which single language deserves our undivided attention for the weeks to come.  Stay tuned for the winner…

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• How to Add Control Panel to “My Computer” in Windows 7 or Vista

  - by The Geek

  Back in the Windows XP days, you could easily add Control Panel to My Computer with a simple checkbox in the folder view settings. Windows 7 and Vista don’t make this quite as easy, but there’s still a way to get it back. To make this tweak, we’ll be doing a quick registry hack, but there’s a downloadable version provided as well. Manual Registry Tweak to Add Control Panel Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace Now that you’re there, you’ll need to right-click and create a new key… If you want to add the regular Control Panel view, with the categories, you’ll need to use one GUID as the name of the key. If you want the icon view instead, you can use the other key. Here they are: Category View:  {26EE0668-A00A-44D7-9371-BEB064C98683} Icon View: {21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} Once you’re done, it should look like this: Now over in the Computer view, just hit the F5 key to refresh the panel, and you should see the new icon pop up in the list: Now when you click on the icon you’ll be taken to Control Panel. If you didn’t know how to change the view before, you can use the drop-down box on the right-hand side to switch between Category and icon view. Downloadable Registry Hack Rather than deal with manual registry editing, you can simply download the file, extract it, and then either double-click on the AddCategoryControlPanel.reg to add the Category view icon, or AddIconControlPanel.reg to add the other icon. There’s an uninstall script provided for each. Download ControlPanelMyComputer Registry Hack from howtogeek.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable User Account Control (UAC) the Easy Way on Win 7 or VistaHow To Figure Out Your PC’s Host Name From the Command PromptRestore Missing Desktop Icons in Windows 7 or VistaNew Vista Syntax for Opening Control Panel Items from the Command-lineAdd Registry Editor to Control Panel 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 Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause

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• Silverlight Cream for December 26, 2010 -- #1015

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this all-submittal Issue: Michael Washington(-2-), Ian T. Lackey(-2-, -3-), Sandrino Di Mattia, Colin Eberhardt(-2-), and Antoni Dol. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "A Style for the Silverlight CoverFlow Control Slider" Antoni Dol WP7: "Getting the right behaviors in your Phone 7 App – Part 1 Phone Home" (and the other two parts) Ian T. Lackey Silverlight/WPF: "A Simplified Grid Markup for Silverlight and WPF" Colin Eberhardt Shoutouts: Dennis Doomen has updated his Coding Guidelines and provided a new WhitePaper, A4 cheat sheet, and VS2010 rule sets: December Update of the Coding Guidelines for C# 3.0 and C# 4.0 From SilverlightCream.com: Windows Phone 7: Saving Data when Keyboard is visible MIchael Washington takes a possible desktop approach to a data-saving issue on WP7... good solution, and one of the commenters brought up another. Windows Phone 7 View Model (MVVM) ApplicationBar Since I'm catching up, there's another post by Michael Washington... this one is looking at the WP7 ApplicationBar, and issues if you're trying to stay MVVM-proper. Michael gets around that by creating the AppBar with a behavior, and shares with all of us! Getting the right behaviors in your Phone 7 App – Part 1 Phone Home Ian T. Lackey has begun a series where he's packaging common tasks into reusable behaviors. First up is a phone dialer launching action that can be dropped on any control in your app. Getting the right behaviors in your Phone 7 App – Part 2 Binding & Browsing In his next post, Ian T. Lackey digs into the WebBrowserTask and provides a behavior allowing you to launch a browser session straight to an URL from any WP7 control. Getting the right behaviors in your Phone 7 App – Part 3 Email ‘em In his last post (all in one day), Ian T. Lackey looks at EmailComposeTask, ending up with a behavior to pre-populate EmailAddress and Subject. Cracking a Microsoft contest or why Silverlight-WCF security is important Sandrino Di Mattia was working on an app while also having a page up for a MSDN/TechNet game, and noticed some interesting WCF traffic that he was easily able to get access to. A Simplified Grid Markup for Silverlight and WPF Colin Eberhardt built us all an attached property for the Grid control that bails us out from the ugly layout we always have to put into position... oh, also for WPF! #uksnow #silverlight The Movie! – Happy Christmas Colin Eberhardt also took some time to have fun with his Twitter/BingMaps mashup for the UKSnow hashtag... you can now playback the snowfall reports, and mouse-over the snowflakes to see the original tweet... very cool stuff, Colin! A Style for the Silverlight CoverFlow Control Slider Antoni Dol got tired of the Silverlight Slider in the CoverFlow control and crafted a very nice-looking style for the Slider ... check it out and grab the source. 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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• Recap: Oracle at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit

  - by kimberly.billings

  Getting to Vegas was no fun. As anyone who lives in the Bay Area knows, the SF airport shuts down one runway when it rains, causing major havoc. So rain, rain, rain on Sunday meant delay, delay, delay at the airport. Needless to say, my 6:30 pm flight didn't land in Vegas until 3:00 am! But the travel pains were worth it. There was a lot to be learned at the Gartner BI Summit this year, and the uptick in attendance was reflected in strong booth traffic and engaging conversations in the Oracle booth. Oracle customer, Dawn Conant, Director, Business Intelligence at Beckman Coulter, generated a lot of interest in her presentation about migrating from Business Objects to Oracle Business Intelligence, Enterprise Edition with Oracle Database 11g. Dawn's story was a very relatable one, as many of the attendees had plans for similar projects. One of the most interesting Gartner-led sessions compared BI/DW megavendors, IBM, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft. According to Gartner analyst Rita Sallam, these megavendors control about two-thirds of the BI market. Sallem attributes this in part to the fact that organizations are expanding their definitions of BI to also include analytics and performance management. In doing so, they require greater integration of BI applications with a broader set of applications and middleware. In a related session, a panel of Gartner analysts compared the Magic Quadrants for BI Platforms; CPM; Data Quality; Data Integration Tools; and Data Warehouses. Oracle is a leader in all of the Magic Quadrants in which it participates and has the most complete stack including hardware and software, according to Donald Feinberg. Feinberg also commented that in situations with VLDW and solid mixed workloads, Oracle Exadata is making a big difference! var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-13185312-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}

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• Silverlight Cream for April 22, 2010 -- #844

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Miroslav Miroslavov, David Anson, Mike Snow, Jason Alderman, Denis Gladkikh, John Papa, Adam Kinney, and CrocusGirl. Shoutout: Mike Snow is moving his blog to Silverlight Tips of The Day... his first is a repeat of number 110 of the last list, but you'll want to bookmark the page. Falling in the 'too cool not to mention' category... Pete Brown posted another MIX10 interview: New Channel 9 Video: Josh Blake on NaturalShow Multi-touch in WPF Adam Kinney announced that the Upgrade to Expression Studio v4 for free – now in writing! From SilverlightCream.com: Visuals staring at the mouse cursor Miroslav Miroslavov at SilverlightShow has a first part post up on the design of the CompleteIT site... going through the 'follow the mouse' effect that is so cool on the main page... with source. Today's DataVisualizationDemos release includes new demos showing off stacked series behavior Falling squarly into the category of "when does he sleep"... David Anson has another Visualization post up today... adding a stacked series and Text-to-Chat sample. Silverlight: Unable to start Debugging. The Silverlight managed debugging package isn’t installed. Mike Snow has a tip up about what to do if you get an "Unable to start debugging" box when you crank up VS ... not a great solution, but it's a solution. Introducing Pillbox for Windows Phone The folks at Veracity definitely have way too much fun with technology :) ... check out the WP7 app that Jason Alderman blogged about... he has a link out to another page with screenshots... oh, AND the code... Export data to Excel from Silverlight/WPF DataGrid Denis Gladkikh demonstrates using COM Interop to export to Excel from both WPF and Silverlight. He discusses isses he had and has all the source for both platforms available. Silverlight TV 21: Silverlight 4 - A Customer's Perspective John Papa has Silverlight TV number 21 up and he's chatting with Franck Jeannin of Ormetis, Ward Bell of IdeaBlade, and Dave Wolf of Cynergy Systems, all presenters in the Keynote at DevConnections. Avatar Mosaic -Experimenting with the Artefact Animator Adam Kinney spent enough time with Artefact Animator to put up a lengthy post about it including his project. Artefact Animator itself is available on CodePlex, and Adam has the link... this looks like good stuff. Windows Phone 7 Design Notes – Part2: Metro + Adrian Frutiger CrocusGirl continues her WP7 Metro discussion with a great long post on background she's researched and some of her own work with typography... a great read. 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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• Easy Scaling in XAML (WPF)

  - by Robert May

  Ran into a problem that needed solving that was kind of fun.  I’m not a XAML guru, and I’m sure there are better solutions, but I thought I’d share mine. The problem was this:  Our designer had, appropriately, designed the system for a 1920 x 1080 screen resolution.  This is for a full screen, touch screen device (think Kiosk), which has that resolution, but we also wanted to demo the device on a tablet (currently using the AWESOME Samsung tablet given out at Microsoft Build).  When you’d run it on that tablet, things were ugly because it was at a lower resolution than the target device. Enter scaling.  I did some research and found out that I probably just need to monkey with the LayoutTransform of some grid somewhere.  This project is using MVVM and has a navigation container that we built that lives on a single root view.  User controls are then loaded into that view as navigation occurs. In the parent grid of the root view, I added the following XAML: <Grid.LayoutTransform> <ScaleTransform ScaleX="{Binding ScaleWidth}" ScaleY="{Binding ScaleHeight}" /> </Grid.LayoutTransform> And then in the root View Model, I added the following code: /// <summary> /// The required design width /// </summary> private const double RequiredWidth = 1920; /// <summary> /// The required design height /// </summary> private const double RequiredHeight = 1080; /// <summary>Gets the ActualHeight</summary> public double ActualHeight { get { return this.View.ActualHeight; } } /// <summary>Gets the ActualWidth</summary> public double ActualWidth { get { return this.View.ActualWidth; } } /// <summary> /// Gets the scale for the height. /// </summary> public double ScaleHeight { get { return this.ActualHeight / RequiredHeight; } } /// <summary> /// Gets the scale for the width. /// </summary> public double ScaleWidth { get { return this.ActualWidth / RequiredWidth; } } Note that View.ActualWidth and View.ActualHeight are just pointing directly at FrameworkElement.ActualWidth and FrameworkElement.ActualHeight. That’s it.  Just calculate the ratio and bind the scale transform to it. Hopefully you’ll find this useful. Technorati Tags: WPF,XAML

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• So long Oracle ...

  - by arungupta

  ... and thanks for all the fish! This Friday (October 18, 2013) is my last day at Oracle. After Publishing almost 1400 blog entries with 5500+ comments on them Working in the Java EE team since inception Visiting 35+ countries and several cities around the world Speaking at all major Java conferences and lots of Java User Groups 15-year alumni of JavaOne as staff Meeting and working with best of the best in the Java community Most importantly having lots of fun Its time for me to move on! No new blog entries will be posted on this blog. Feel free to subscribe to The Aquarium for latest updates on Java EE and GlassFish. I'll continue to publish all the excellent content that you've been used to at blog.arungupta.me now onwards. Read my new blog to learn about my new adventures! Here are some of the conference badges collected over the past years ... And the cities visited ... View Cities Visited by "Miles To Go..." in a larger map The comments on this blog are disabled as I'll not be able to respond to them. Feel free to leave comments on the new blog and I'd love to follow up with you there. Thank you very much for all the support that has been shown on this blog. I'd like to conclude with a Hindi song that I've been humming for the past few days now ... Abhi alvida mat kaho doston ... Na jaane kahan phir mulaqaat ho ... Kyonki ... Beete huye lamhon ki kasak saath to hogi ... Khawabon mein hi ho chahe mulaqaat to hogi ... For my non-Hindi readers, here is my paraphrased meaning ... Don't say goodbye yet my friends ... We'll likely meet somewhere else ... Because ... We'll always have the memories of the wonderful time spent together ... May be in dreams but we will meet again ... With that, over and out, and see you at blog.arungupta.me!

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• Favorite moments of JavaOne

  - by Tori Wieldt

  There are so many events and sessions to attend at JavaOne, it's unfair to ask people to choose just one thing they liked, but here are some favorite moments: I loved meeting many open source contributors and friends I have not met in person before and seeing that projects like e.g. Hudson are alive and kicking and have a great future ahead of them. -Manfred Moser My "The Problem with Women" session. It had LOADS of interactivity from the audience, who really helped to make that session.  I came out if it with a real sense of optimism - we love our jobs, we love what we do, and we should be proud of telling everyone about it to attract different talent into the industry. (Read her blog JavaOne: The Problem With Women - A Technical Approach for details.) -Trish Gee My kudos to Oracle for making the presentation materials quickly available to the public. Some of them were already available during JavaOne. Lots of slide decks are already there, and in some cases you may even find the video recordings too. Go to http://www.oracle.com/javaone and select JavaOne Technical Sessions.  -Yakov Fain I loved that not only was James Gosling present at the Community Keynote (which felt more like the keynotes of old times [big space, big screens, fun and tech]) but he was also found wandering the halls of the Hilton the day prior. Bring back James! Add back the toys section in the Community Keynote. Let the t-shirt tossing begin anew. These are "small" things that really fire up the community. -Andres Almiray Seeing James Gosling at JavaOne was a real shot in the arm for Java.  He needs to be there every year. -Frank Greco +42 on having James and the T-shirt tossing. -Stephan Janssen The session "Integrate Java with Robots, Home Automation, Musical Instruments, and Kinect." Fabiane Nardon explained connecting Jenkins to jHome to a truck horn placed in their sysadmin's bedroom. She dubbed it "extreme feedback."  -Tori Wieldt The User Group Forum [on Sunday] was a success! Congratulations Bruno Souza and John Yeary and everybody that were involved. I believe it really helps to increase community participation! There were lots of interesting talks, and great discussion with JUG leaders and members. Thank you Oracle for supporting that! -Yara Senger What was your favorite moment? Please comment! 

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• National Give Camp Weekend - January 14-16, 2011

  - by MOSSLover

  What is a Give Camp?  I get asked this question constantly in the SharePoint Community.  About 3 years ago there was an event called "We Are Microsoft" in Dallas, TX.  A lady named, Toi Wright, gathered up a bunch of charities and gathered up a bunch of IT Professionals in the community.  They met for an entire weekend devising better ways to help these charities with 3 days projects.  None of these charities had in house IT staff or they were lacking.  The time these projects would save would help out other people in the long run.  The first give camp was really popular that a couple guys from Kansas City decided to come up with a give camp in the Kansas City regiona.  The event was called Coders 4 Charity.  I read Jeff Julian's post on the "We Are Microsoft" event that it inspired me to get involved.  i showed up to this event and we were split into teams.  On that team I met a couple really awsome guys: Blake Theiss, Lee Brandt, Tim Wright, and Joe Loux.  We created a SharePoint site for a boyscout troup.  It was my first exposure to Silverlight 1.1.  I had so much fun that I attended the event the next year and the St. Louis Coders 4 Charity.  Last year in 2010 when I moved i searched high and low.  Sure enough they had an event in Philadelphia.  I helped out with two SharePoint Projects for a team of firefighters and another charity.  This year there are a series of give camps around the U.S.  They have consolidated most of the give camps.  The first ever New York City Give Camp is on National Give Camp Day.  If you guys are interested I see there is a give camp in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Northwest Arkansas, Seattle, Atlanta, Houston, and more...Here is a link to the site I would definitely encourage you to get involved: http://givecamp.org/national-givecamp/.  Also, if you feel like it's only developer focused that's entirely wrong.  They need DBAs, Project Leads, Architects, and many other roles fulfilled aside from development.  It is a great experience to meet good people and help out a charity doing what we all love to do.  I strongle encourage getting involved in a give camp.  if you are coming to the NYC Give Camp I would love to meet you.  i will be there on Saturday somewhere in the morning until around dinner time.

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• How to Format a USB Drive in Ubuntu Using GParted

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  If a USB hard drive or flash drive is not properly formatted, then it will not show up in the Ubuntu Places menu, making it hard to interact with. We’ll show you how to format a USB drive using the tool GParted. Note: Formatting a USB drive will destroy any data currently stored on it. If you think that your USB drive is already properly formatted, but Ubuntu just isn’t picking it up, try unplugging it and plugging it back in to a different USB slot, or restarting your machine with the device plugged in on start-up. Open a terminal by clicking on Applications in the top-left of the screen, then Accessories > Terminal. GParted should be installed by default, but we’ll make sure it’s installed by entering the following command in the terminal: sudo apt-get install gparted To open GParted, enter the following command in the terminal: sudo gparted Find your USB drive in the drop-down box at the top right of the GParted window. The drive should be unallocated – if it has a valid partition on it, then you may be looking at the wrong drive. Note: Make sure you’re on the correct drive, as making changes on the wrong hard drive with GParted can delete all data on a hard drive! Assuming you’re on the right drive, right-click on the unallocated grey block and click New. In the window that pops up, change the File System to fat32 for USB Flash Drives, NTFS for USB Hard Drives that will be used in Windows, or ext3/ext4 for USB Hard Drives that will be used exclusively in Linux. Add a label if you’d like, and then click Add. Click the green checkmark and then the Apply button to apply the changes. GParted will now format your drive. If you’re formatting a large USB Hard Drive, this can take some time. Once the process is done, you can close GParted, and the drive will now show up in the Places menu. Clicking on the drive will mount it and open it in a File Browser window. It will also add a shortcut to the drive on the Desktop by default. Your USB drive is now ready to store your files! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using GParted to Resize Your Windows Vista PartitionInstall an RPM Package on Ubuntu LinuxCreate a Persistent Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash DriveShare Ubuntu Home Directories using SambaCreate a Samba User on Ubuntu 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 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott

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• Find a Faster DNS Server with Namebench

  - by Mysticgeek

  One way to speed up your Internet browsing experience is using a faster DNS server. Today we take a look at Namebench, which will compare your current DNS server against others out there, and help you find a faster one. Namebench Download the file and run the executable (link below). Namebench starts up and will include the current DNS server you have configured on your system. In this example we’re behind a router and using the DNS server from the ISP. Include the global DNS providers and the best available regional DNS server, then start the Benchmark. The test starts to run and you’ll see the queries it’s running through. The benchmark takes about 5-10 minutes to complete. After it’s complete you’ll get a report of the results. Based on its findings, it will show you what DNS server is fastest for your system. It also displays different types of graphs so you can get a better feel for the different results. You can export the results to a .csv file as well so you can present the results in Excel. Conclusion This is a free project that is in continuing development, so results might not be perfect, and there may be more features added in the future. If you’re looking for a method to help find a faster DNS server for your system, Namebench is a cool free utility to help you out. If you’re looking for a public DNS server that is customizable and includes filters, you might want to check out our article on helping to protect your kids from questionable content using OpenDNS. You can also check out how to speed up your web browsing with Google Public DNS. Links Download NameBench for Windows, Mac, and Linux from Google Code Learn More About the Project on the Namebench Wiki Page Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Open a Second Console Session on Ubuntu ServerShare Ubuntu Home Directories using SambaSetup OpenSSH Server on Ubuntu LinuxDisable the Annoying “This device can perform faster” Balloon Message in Windows 7Search For Rows With Special Characters in SQL Server 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 How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app

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• Convert Chrome Bookmark Toolbar Folders to Icons

  - by Asian Angel

  So you have your regular bookmarks reduced to icons but what about the folders? With our little hack and a few minutes of your time you can turn those folders into icons too. Condensing the Folders Reducing bookmark folders to icons is a little more tricky than regular bookmarks but not hard to do. Right click on the folder and select “Rename…”. The folder’s name should already be highlighted/selected as shown here. Delete the text…notice that the “OK Button” has become unusable for the moment. Now what you will need to do is: Hold down the “Alt Key” Type in “0160” (without the quotes) using the numbers keypad on the right side of your keyboard Release the “Alt Key” after you have finished typing in the number above Once you have released the “Alt Key” you will notice two things…the “cursor” has moved further into the text area and you can now click on the “OK Button” again. There is our folder after editing. And it works just as well as before but without taking up so much room. Here is how our “iconized” folder looks next to our bookmarks. Perfect! What if you want to reduce multiple folders to icons? Perform the same exact steps shown above for each folder and pack your “Bookmarks Toolbar” full of folder goodness! As seen here the folders will have a little more space between them in comparison with singular bookmarks due to the “blank name” for each folder. For those who may be curious this is what your bookmarks will look like in the “Bookmark Manager Page”. Note: If you export your bookmarks all bookmarks contained in multiple blank name folders will be combined into a single folder. Conclusion With just a little bit of work you can pack a lot of goodness into your “Bookmarks Toolbar”. No more wasted space… Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Condense the Bookmarks in the Firefox Bookmarks ToolbarAccess Your Bookmarks with a Toolbar Button in Google ChromeAdd the Bookmarks Menu to Your Bookmarks Toolbar with Bookmarks UI ConsolidatorAdd a Vertical Bookmarks Toolbar to FirefoxReduce Your Bookmarks Toolbar to a Toolbar Button 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 OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error

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• Getting developers and support to work together

  - by Matt Watson

  Agile development has ushered in the norm of rapid iterations and change within products. One of the biggest challenges for agile development is educating the rest of the company. At my last company our biggest challenge was trying to continually train 100 employees in our customer support and training departments. It's easy to write release notes and email them to everyone. But for complex software products, release notes are not usually enough detail. You really have to educate your employees on the WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHY, WHEN of every item. If you don't do this, you end up with customer service people who know less about your product than your users do. Ever call a company and feel like you know more about their product than their customer service people do? Yeah. I'm talking about that problem.WHO does the change effect?WHAT was the actual change?WHERE do I find the change in the product?WHY was the change made? (It's hard to support something if you don't know why it was done.)WHEN will the change be released?One thing I want to stress is the importance of the WHY something was done. For customer support people to be really good at their job, they need to understand the product and how people use it. Knowing how to enable a feature is one thing. Knowing why someone would want to enable it, is a whole different thing and the difference in good customer service. Another challenge is getting support people to better test and document potential bugs before escalating them to development. Trying to fix bugs without examples is always fun... NOT. They might as well say "The sky is falling, please fix it!"We need to over train the support staff about product changes and continually stress how they document and test potential product bugs. You also have to train the sales staff and the marketing team. Then there is updating sales materials, your website, product documentation and other items there are always out of date. Every product release causes this vicious circle of trying to educate the rest of the company about the changes.Do we need to record a simple video explaining the changes and email it to everyone? Maybe we should  use a simple online training type app to help with this problem. Ultimately the struggle is taking the time to do the training, but it is time well spent. It may save you a lot of time answering questions and fixing bugs later. How do we efficiently transfer key product knowledge from developers and product owners to the rest of the company? How have you solved these issues at your company?

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• SQL Server MVP Deep Dives 2. The Awesome Returns.

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  Two years ago 59 SQL Server MVP's came together and helped make one of the best book on SQL Server out there. Each chapter was written by an MVP about a part of SQL Server they loved working with. This resulted in superb quality content and excellent ratings from the readers. To top it off all earnings went to a good cause, the War Child International organization. That book was SQL Server MVP Deep Dives. This year 63 SQL Server MVPs, me included, decided it was time do repeat the success of the first book. Let me introduce you the: SQL Server MVP Deep Dives 2 The topics in 60 chapters are grouped in 5 groups: Architecture, Database Administration, Database Development, Performance Tuning and Optimization, Business Intelligence. They represent over 1000 years of daily experience in various areas of SQL Server. I have contributed chapter 28 in Database Development group titled Getting asynchronous with Service Broker. In it I show you the Service Broker template you can use for secure communication between two or more SQL server instances for whatever purpose you may have. If you haven't heard of Service Broker it's a part of the database engine that enables you to do completely async operations in the database itself or between databases and instances. The official release of the book will be next week at PASS where there will be 2 slots where most of the authors will be there signing the books you bring. This is also a great opportunity to meet everyone and ask about any problems you may have. So definitely come say hi. Again we decided on a charity that will be supported by this book. It's called Operation Smile. They provide free surgeries to repair cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities for children around the globe. You can also help them by donating. You can preorder it on at Manning Publications website or on Amazon. By having it you not only get to learn a lot, improve your skills and have fun but you also help a child have a normal life. If that's not a good cause then I don't know what it is.

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• TechEd 2010 Day Three: The Database Designer (Isn't)

  - by BuckWoody

  Yesterday at TechEd 2010 here in New Orleans I worked the front-booth, answering general SQL Server questions for the masses. I was actually a little surprised to find most of the questions I got were from folks that wanted to know more about Stream Insight and Master Data Services. In past conferences I've been asked a lot of "free consulting" questions, about problems folks have had from older products. I don't mind that a bit - in fact, I'm always happy to help in any way I can. But this time people are really interested in the new features in the product, and I like that they are thinking ahead, not just having to solve problems in production. My presentation was on "Database Design in an Hour". We had the usual fun, and SideShow Bob made an appearance - I kid you not. The guy in the back of the room looked just like Sideshow Bob, so I quickly held a "bes thair" contest, and he won. Duing the presentation, I explain the tools you can use to design databases. I also explain that the "Database Designer" tool in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) isn't truly a desinger - it uses non-standard notation, doesn't have a meta-data dictionary, and worst of all, it works at the physical level. In other words, whatever you do in SSMS will automatically change the field/table/relationship structures in the database. We fixed this in SSMS 2008 and higher by adding an option to block that, but the tool is not a good design function nonetheless. To be fair, no one I know of at Microsoft recommends that it is - but I was shocked to hear so many developers in the room defending it as a good tool. I think the main issue for someone who doesn't have to work with Relational Systems a great deal is that it can be difficult to figure out Foreign Keys. The syntax makes them look "backwards", so it's just easier to grab a field and place it on the table you want to point to. There are options. You can download a couple of free tools (CA has a community edition of ER-WIN, Quest has one, and Embarcadero also has one) and if you design more than one or two databases a year, it may be worth buying a true design tool. For years I used Visio, but we changed it so that it doesn't forward-engineer (create the DDL) any more, so it isn't a true design tool either. So investigate those free and not-so-free tools. You'll find they help you in your job - but stay away from the Database Designer in SSMS. Or I'll send Sideshow Bob over there to straighten you out. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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