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• Friday Fun: Play Your Favorite 8-Bit NES Games Online

  - by Mysticgeek

  We finally made it to another Friday and once again we bring you some NES fun to waste the rest of the day before the weekend. Today we take a look at a site that contains a lot of classic NES games you can play online. vNES VirtualNES.com contains hundreds of vintage NES games you can play online. If you’re old enough to remember, when the NES came out, it breathed life back into home console gaming. Here we will take a look at a few of the games they offer that will certainly bring back memories. Super Mario Bros 3 which is a personal favorite from the 8-bit era.   Play Super Mario Bros 3 Excite Bike was one of the coolest dirt bike racing games at the time as it even allowed you to create your own tracks.   Play ExciteBike Of course The Legend of Zelda was one of the first fantasy games many an hour have been spent on. Play The Legend of Zelda We’d be remiss if we didn’t bring up Pac-man since the game recently celebrated it’s 30th anniversary. Play Pac-Man If you don’t like the default keyboard controls you can change them on the Options page. Join their forum and more…this site will definitely bring you back to the good old 8-bit NES days.   The site contains hundreds of different games for you to get on your old school NES fix. If you’re sick of waiting for the whistle to blow, this site will bring you back to the good old days when you had nothing to do but mash buttons all day. Play NES Games at virtualnes.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Go Retro with PacmanFriday Fun: Five More Time Wasting Online GamesFriday Fun: Online Flash Games to Usher in the WeekendFriday Fun: Online Sports Flash Games 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Awesome World Cup Soccer Calendar Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version

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• Databases and Beer

  - by Johnm

  It is a bit of a no-brainer: Include the word "beer" in a subject line of an e-mail or blog post title and you can be certain that it will be read. While there are times this practice might be a ploy to increase readership, it is not the case for this blog post. There is inspiration that can be drawn from other industries to which we, as database professionals, can apply in our industry. In this post I will highlight one of my favorite participants of the brewing industry. The Boston Beer Company started in the 1970s in Boston, Massachusetts. Others may be more familiar with this company through their Samuel Adams Boston Lager and other various seasonal beers. I am continually inspired by their commitment to mastery of the brewing process to which they evangelize frequently in their commercials. They also are continually in pursuit of pushing the boundaries of beer as we know it while working within traditional constraints. A recent example of this is their collaboration with Weihenstephan Brewery of Munich, Germany to produce the soon to be released Infinium beer. This beer, while brewed as an ale, is touted as something closer to something like Champaign - all while complying with the Reinheitsgebot. The Reinheitsgebot is also known as the "German Beer Purity Law" which was originated in 1516. This law states that beer is to consist of water, barley, hops and yeast. That's it. Quite a limiting constraint indeed. and yet, The Boston Beer Company pushed forward. Much like the process of brewing, the discipline of database design and architecture is one that is continually in process and driven by the pursuit of mastery. While we do not have purity laws to constrain us, we have many other types: best practices, company policies, government regulations, security and budgets. Through our fellow comrades, we discuss the challenges and constraints in which we operate. We boil down the principles and theories that define our profession. We reassemble these into something that is complementary to the business needs that we must fulfill. As a result, it is not uncommon to see something amazingly innovative in a small business who is pushing the boundaries of their database well beyond its intended state. It is equally common to see innovation in the use of features available in the more advanced features of databases that are found in large businesses. The tag line for The Boston Beer Company is: "Take Pride In Your Beer.", I would like to offer an alternative and say "Take Pride In Your Database." So, As you pour your next Boston Lager into a frosted glass, consider those who spend their lives mastering the craft of brewing and strive to interject their spirit into everything that you do as a database professional. Cheers!

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• Random thoughts on Monday

  - by user10760339

  I know that it has been a long time since my last post, just though that I would update you my latest thoughts of Governance. I just recently completed an executive round table series on EA and Cloud in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. The response was phenomenal. The key point of the session was that Enterprise is the key enabler of innovation - All companies want to drive to be market leaders, EA can lay the foundation for the path to deliver that at innovation. When it comes to innovation, I see two distinct types: (a) Passive innovation is where a company creates innovation thought increments improvement over time. A great example is when airlines went from paper tickets to electronic ticket. Next logical progression is to do the same with boarding passes. There are a lot of examples to choose from, thought the thing to keep in mind, is that passive innovation will only keep you in the lead, it won’t allow you to create new markets or jump from #3 to #1 in one go. For that we need another type of innovation. (b) Disruptive innovation is where you create market where none existed before. Thought very difficult to do and requires significant investment in research, product and software development and not least of all, visionary thinking and timing, if done correctly, can turn the world on it’s ear. A great example is Apple iTunes. Some might say that this is incremental innovation, but only in one aspect, the downloading of music. Other then that, it’s all disruptive innovation. Being able to buy a single song rather then the album fundamentally changed the way we get out music. Behind all of these types of innovation is Enterprise Architecture. EA creates the infrastructure foundation, then delivery systems and the end-user experience to deliver this innovation. At Oracle, we are driving that EA innovation with our private cloud offerings from “bolt-to-glass” as I like to say. For more on what Oracle has to offer in EA and cloud, have a look at Cloud Computing | Oracle and Enterprise Architecture - OracleI am working on new material that I will be posting in a couple of weeks, so check back regularly for new updates or feel free to subscript for updates.

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• How is programming affected by spatial aptitude?

  - by natli

  The longer I work on a project, the less clear it becomes. It's like I cannot seperate various classes/objects anymore in my head. Everything starts mixing up, and it's extremely hard to take it all apart again. I start putting functions in classes where they really don't belong, and make silly mistakes such as writing code that I later find was 100% obsolete; things are no longer clearly mappable in my head. It isn't until I take a step back for several hours (or days somtimes!) that I can actually see what's going on again, and be productive. I usually try to fight through this, I am so passionate about coding that I wouldn't for the life of me know what else I could be doing. This is when stuff can get really weird, I get so up in my head that I sort of lose touch with reality (to some extent) in that various actions, such as pouring a glass of water, no longer happen on a concious level. It happens on auto pilot, during which pretty much all of my concious concentration (is that even a thing?) is devoted to borderline pointless problem solving (trying to seperate elements of code). It feels like a losing battle. So I took an IQ test a while ago (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale I believe it was) and it turned out my Spatial Aptitude was quite low. I still got a decent score, just above average, so I won't have to poke things with a stick for a living, but I am a little worried that this is such a handicap when writing/engineering computer programs that I won't ever be able to do it seriously or professionally. I am very much interested in what other people think of this.. could a low spatial aptitude be the cause of the above described problems? Maybe I should be looking more along the lines of ADD or something similar, because I did get diagnosed with ADD at the age of 17 (5 years ago) but the medicine I received didn't seem to affect me that much so I never took it all that serious. Sorry if I got a little off topic there, I know this is not a mental help board, the question should be clear; How is programming affected by spatial aptitude? As far as I know people are born with low/med/high spatial aptitude, so I think it's interesting to find out if the more fortunate are better programmers by birth right.

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• PeopleSoft New Design Solves Navigation Problem

  - by Applications User Experience

  Anna Budovsky, User Experience Principal Designer, Applications User Experience In PeopleSoft we strive to improve User Experience on all levels. Simplifying navigation and streamlining access to the most important pages is always an important goal. No one likes to waste time waiting for pages to load and watching a spinning glass going on and on. Those performance-affecting server trips, page-load waits and just-too-many clicks were complained about for a long time. Something had to be done. A few new designs came in PeopleSoft 9.2 helping users to access their everyday work areas easier and faster. For example, Dashboard and Work Center aggregate most accessed information sections on a single page; Related Information allows users to complete transaction-related-research without interrupting a transaction and Secure Search gets users to a specific page directly. Today we’ll talk about the Actions menu. Most PeopleSoft pages are shared between individual products and product lines. It means changing the content on a single page involves Oracle development and quality assurance time for making and testing the changes. In order to streamline the navigation and cut down on accessing PeopleSoft pages one-page-at-a-time, we introduced a new menu design. The new menu allows accessing shared pages without the Oracle development team making any local changes, and it works as an additional one-click-path to specific high-traffic actionable pages. Let’s look at how many steps it took to Change Salary for an employee in HCM 9.1 before: Figure 1. BEFORE: The 6 steps a user would take to Change Salary in PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 In PeopleSoft 9.1 it took 5 steps + page loading time + additional verification time for making sure a correct employee is selected from the table. In PeopleSoft 9.2 it only takes 2 steps. To complete Ad Hoc Change Salary action, the user can start from the HCM Manager's Dashboard, click the Action menu within a table, choose a menu option, and access a correct employee’s details page to take an action. Figure 2. AFTER: The 2 steps a user would take to Change Salary in PeopleSoft HCM 9.2 The new menu is placed on a row level which ensures the user accesses the correct employee’s details page. The Actions menu separates menu options into hierarchical sections which help to scan and access the correct option quickly. The new menu’s small size and its structure enabled users to access high-traffic pages from any page and from any part of the page. No more spinning hourglass, no more multiple pages upload. The flexible design fits anywhere on a page and provides a fast and reliable path to the correct destination within the product. Now users can: Access any target page no matter how far it is buried from the starting point; Reduce navigation and page-load time; Improve productivity and reduce errors. The new menu design is available and widely used in all PeopleSoft 9.2 product lines.

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• Help building maya render node spec

  - by Ak

  Hi there, I'm looking to build 4x Maya render slaves/nodes for a friend of mine when his project gets green lit. The project involves MentalRay and lots of glass. I'm unsure if the new i7's 9xx or 8xx with hyper threading will do any better than a core 2 quad of the same (or close enough) speed. Does hyper threading make a difference to Maya or is it more performance per core based? I'm sure he's prefer I'd build another render node than pay for a bleeding edge CPU that only adds fractionly more GHz. -- The rest of the spec so far: 4Gb - 8Gb ram 64 bit OS: Probably Windows 7 (I know Linux is free, but want to build something my friend can support himself as easily as he supports his own workstation) 1TB HDD to hold textures, Maya files and renders which will be copied to central storage later Mobo with on-board video, gigabit NIC 500 - 650 watt PSU Desktop case something like a: Cooler Master ATCS 840 The machines will sold afterwards if necessary. -- If anyone has had experience in Maya and has done any tests with the new CPUs vs. the older ones I'd really appreciate your input.

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• Setting up Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server as a mail exchange server

  - by Syedur

  I am a Unix/Linux/Windows Server noob. So, keep that in mind before you throw your stones at my glass house. :P I have a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine that's acting as domain controller, Server A. It's also running a DNS server. I have a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5.3, Server B that is intended for mail server. In order for the mail delivery to happen, I understand that I have to set an MX record on Server A and point it to Server B. Well, I did. I manually added a host name on Server A and pointed to Server B's IP address. Then I added an MX record and pointed it to the host name. That didn't do the trick. After taking the above steps, I used the "dig" command on Server B to lookup the MX record coming back from Server A and it wasn't what I was expecting. What am I doing wrong here? I have noticed that... my Windows machines that are joined to the domain (Server A) are listed under the host names. The machines that are not joined to the domain are not list. This is fine, I am not worried about this. What does concern me, do I have to join the Server B to domain in order for Server A to recognize as a valid host and forward the MX properly? If so, some simple steps on how to join Server B to the domain would also help.

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• .lnk doesn't open, no errors

  - by MushinNoShin

  I have a shortcut (.LNK) on my desktop to a MS Access database out on a network drive. When I double click that shortcut I get an hour glass for about 10 seconds and then nothing. No errors, no access opening, nothing happens. It appears as if there's not even an MSAccess process running in the background. The file successfully opens from: The Open dialog in Access The commandline "C:\path\to\MSACCESS.EXE C:\path\to\shortcut.lnk" The commandline "C:\path\to\MSACCESS.EXE C:\path\to\whatTheShortcutPointsTo.mdb" The file silently fails to open from: Double clicking the shortcut.lnk Double clicking the mdb file that shortcut.lnk targets At first I thought it had to do with how the link handler operated but the fact that it does the same exact thing when I try to open the mdb directly in explorer makes me think it's an issue with explorer. I've tried restoring, deleting, and recreating the association with the extension. I've tried running MSACCESS.EXE /regserver. I've run out of things to throw at it. In case this is specific to MS Access 2007; I'm trying to use 2007 :)

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• Same script, different behavior [migrated]

  - by Antoine_935

  I just stumbled upon an interesting bug... Still trying to figure out what is exactly happening. Maybe you can help. First, the context. I'm currently building yet another man to html converter (for some reasons I won't motivate here, but I need it). So, have a look at the screenshot below (see the link), more precisely at the outlined spots. See? On the upper shell, I have &lt ; and &gt ;, that is, escaped html. While on the shell below I have < and directly. But as you can see (or do I seriously need looking glass ?), the command man 2 semget | webmanneris the same on both sides, as is the which webmanner. The two are executed roughly at the same moment, with no modification made to the script between. [Oops, cannot post pictures just yet... Here comes the link] http://aspyct.org/media/webmanner-bug.png But the shell below is older (open about 1 hour ago). Newer shells all print out &lt ;. So my first guess was that it somehow had a cached reference to the old inode of the file, or old blocks or whatever. So I modified parts of the script, at the start and then at the end, to print different messages. And, surprise, the message shown up on both terminals. But still, same difference between &lt ; and <. I'm confused... How to explain that behavior? I'm working on a OSX 10.8 (Mountain Lion) EDIT: OK, there is one big difference: the shell below uses ruby 1.9.3, while above is 1.8.7. Is there any known difference in string handling between the two versions ?

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• Bookmarking n Joomla

  - by Aruna

  Hi, i am using the Plugin Content Bookmarker downloaded from http://dev.aarthikaindia.com/downloads/category/3-plugins.html for my site. Some of the Articles are able to Bookmark like if i click on the Bookmark (twitter) , it directly bookmarks in Twitter with Some description of the Article where some of the Articles are not bookmarked instead it just links to http://www.twitter.com.. Code : <?php // no direct access defined( '_JEXEC' ) or die( 'Restricted access' ); $mainframe->registerEvent( 'onAfterDisplayContent', 'plgContentBookmarker' ); function plgContentBookmarker( &$row, &$params, $page=0 ) { $plugin = & JPluginHelper::getPlugin('content', 'bookmarker'); // Load plugin params info $pluginParams = new JParameter($plugin->params); $id = $row-id; $desc_tags = addslashes(str_replace("\n","", $row->title )); $desc_tags = trim($desc_tags); $desc_tags_space= str_replace(',', ' ', @$desc_tags_space); $desc_tags_semi = str_replace(',', ';', @$desc_tags_semi); $desc_tags_space = str_replace(' ', ' ', @$desc_tags_space); $description1 = strip_tags( $row->introtext ); $description2 = str_replace("'", '', strip_tags($description1)); $description = str_replace('"', '', strip_tags($description2)); $markme_title = $desc_tags; $markme_ddesc = substr($description,0,400).'...'; $baseurl = JURI::base(); $title = $pluginParams->def('title', 'Book Mark this Article'); $facebook = $pluginParams->def('facebook', '1'); $twitter = $pluginParams->def('twitter', '1'); $html.= '<div onmouseover="javascript:if(document.getElementById(\'divShowAddBookmarker'.$id.'\').style.display ==\'none\'){document.getElementById(\'divShowAddBookmarker'.$id.'\').style.display =\'block\';}" onmouseout="javascript:if(document.getElementById(\'divShowAddBookmarker'.$id.'\').style.display ==\'block\'){document.getElementById(\'divShowAddBookmarker'.$id.'\').style.display =\'none\';}" id="divShowAddBookmarker'.$id.'" style="display:none;position:absolute; background-color:#F4F4F4;width:240px;padding:3px;border:2px solid #999999;z-index:999"> <div style="padding:2px;">'; if( $facebook == 1 ) { $html.= '<div style="width:115px;float:left"> <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://www.facebook.com/" onclick="window.open(\'http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=\'+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+\'&amp;t='.$markme_title.'&amp;d='.$markme_ddesc.'\');return false;"> <img style="vertical-align:bottom;padding:1px;" src="'.$baseurl."plugins/content/smart_bookmarker/facebook.gif".'" title="Facebook" name="facebook" border="0" id="facebook" alt="" /> '.JText::_( 'Facebook' ).' </a> </div>'; } if( $twitter == 1 ) { $html.= '<div style="width:115px;float:left"> <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://www.twitter.com/" onclick="window.open(\'http://twitter.com/home/?status=\'+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+\'-'.$markme_ddesc.'\');return false;"> <img style="vertical-align:bottom;padding:1px;" src="'.$baseurl."plugins/content/smart_bookmarker/twitter.gif".'" title="twitter" name="twitter" border="0" id="twitter" alt="" /> '.JText::_( 'Twitter' ).' </a> </div>'; } $html.= '<div style="clear:both"></div> </div> </div>'; return $html; } ? In the CODE $markme_ddesc is used to give the status message which is the actual portion of the content which is tweeted .. I had a doubt whether this $markme_ddesc is used to make the issue.. Is it so.. Please suggest me..

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• Pigs in Socks?

  - by MightyZot

  My wonderful wife Annie surprised me with a cruise to Cozumel for my fortieth birthday. I love to travel. Every trip is ripe with adventure, crazy things to see and experience. For example, on the way to Mobile Alabama to catch our boat, some dude hauling a mobile home lost a window and we drove through a cloud of busting glass going 80 miles per hour! The night before the cruise, we stayed in the Malaga Inn and I crawled UNDER the hotel to look at an old civil war bunker. WOAH! Then, on the way to and from Cozumel, the boat plowed through two beautiful and slightly violent storms. But, the adventures you have while travelling often pale in comparison to the cult of personalities you meet along the way.  :) We met many cool people during our travels and we made some new friends. Todd and Andrea are in the publishing business (www.myneworleans.com) and teaching, respectively. Erika is a teacher too and Matt has a pig on his foot. This story is about the pig. Without that pig on Matt’s foot, we probably would have hit a buoy and drowned. Alright, so…this pig on Matt’s foot…this is no henna tatt, this is a man’s tattoo. Apparently, getting tattoos on your feet is very painful because there is very little muscle and fat and lots of nifty nerves to tell you that you might be doing something stupid. Pig and rooster tattoos carry special meaning for sailors of old. According to some sources, having a tattoo of a pig or rooster on one foot or the other will keep you from drowning. There are many great musings as to why a pig and a rooster might save your life. The most plausible in my opinion is that pigs and roosters were common livestock tagging along with the crew. Since they were shipped in wooden crates, pigs and roosters were often counted amongst the survivors when ships succumbed to Davy Jones’ Locker. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time researching the pig and the rooster, so consider these musings as you would a grain of salt. And, I was not able to find a lot of what you might consider credible history regarding the tradition. What I did find was a comfort, or solace, in the maritime tradition. Seems like raw traditions like the pig and the rooster are in danger of getting lost in a sea of non-permanence. I mean, what traditions are us old programmers and techies leaving behind for future generations? Makes me wonder what Ward Christensen has tattooed on his left foot.  I guess my choice would have to be a Commodore 64.   (I met Ward, by the way, in an elevator after he received his Dvorak awards in 1992. He was a very non-assuming individual sporting business casual and was very much a “sailor” of an old-school programmer. I can’t remember his exact words, but I think they were essentially that he felt it odd that he was getting an award for just doing his work. I’m sure that Ward doesn’t know this…he couldn’t have set a more positive example for a young 22 year old programmer. Thanks Ward!)

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• [MISC GEEKERY] Support for Some Versions of Windows is Ending

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you sticking with your older version of Windows instead of upgrading to Windows 7?  There’s no problem with that, but here’s a quick reminder to make sure you’re running the latest service pack to stay protected. Microsoft offers security updates and more throughout the lifetime of a version of Windows, and periodically they roll all the latest updates and improvements together into a service pack.  After a while, only computers running the latest service pack will still get updates to keep them safe. Recently, Microsoft has been warning that support is ending for Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and the release version of Windows Vista.  When support ends, you will not receive any new security updates for Windows.  You can continue to use your computer the same as before, but it may not be as secure and if new security issues are discovered they will not be updated. However, it’s easy to stay supported: simply install XP Service Pack 3 or Vista Service Pack 2, depending on your computer.  Here’s how to do that: Windows XP To install Windows XP Service Pack 3, you can either check Windows Update for updates, or simply download it from Microsoft at this link: Download XP Service Pack 3 Run the download (or if you’re updating from Windows Update the installer will automatically launch), and proceed just as you normally would when installing a program.  Your computer will have to reboot during the install, so make sure you’ve saved all your work and closed other programs before installing.   To check what service pack your computer is running, click Start, then right-click on the My Computer button and choose Properties. This will show you what version and service pack of Windows you are running, and in this screenshot we see this computer has be updated to Service Pack 3. Please Note:  The version of XP shipped with Windows XP Mode in Windows 7 comes preconfigured with Service Pack 3, and does not need updated.  Additionally, if your computer is running the 64 bit version of Windows XP, then Service Pack 2 is the latest service pack for your computer, and it is still supported. Windows Vista If your computer is running Windows Vista, you can install Service Pack 2 to stay up to date and supported.  Simply check Windows Update for Service Pack 2 if you haven’t installed it yet, or download the installer for your computer from the link below: 32 bit: Vista Service Pack 2 32-bit 64 bit: Vista Service Pack 2 64-bit Run the installer, and simply set it up as a normal program installation.  Do note that your computer will reboot during the installation, so make sure to save your work and close other programs before installing. To see what service pack your computer is running, click the Start orb, then right-click on the Computer button and select Properties. This will show what service pack and edition of Windows Vista your computer is running right at the top of the page. Conclusion Microsoft makes it easy to keep using your computer safely and securely even if you choose to keep using your older version of Windows.  By installing the latest service pack, you will make sure that your computer will be supported for years to come.  Windows 7 users, you don’t need to worry; no service has been released for it yet.  Stay tuned, and we’ll let you know when any new service packs are available. www.microsoft.com/EOS – End of Support Information from Microsoft Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Remove Optional and Probably Unnecessary Windows Vista ComponentsRequesting Hotfixes from Microsoft the Easy WayUnderstanding Windows Vista Aero Glass RequirementsAdd Network Support to Windows Live MovieMakerCustomize the Manufacturer Support Info in Windows 7 or Vista 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7?

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• Backup and Transfer Foobar2000 to a New Computer

  - by Mysticgeek

  If you are a fan of Foobar2000 you undoubtedly have tweaked it to the point where you don’t want to set it all up again on a new machine. Here we look at how to transfer Foobar2000 settings to a new Windows 7 machine. Note: For this article we are transferring Foobar2000 settings from on Windows 7 machine to another over a network running Windows Home Server.  Foobar2000 Foobar2000 is an awesome music player which is highly customizable and we’ve previously covered. Here we take a look at how it’s set up on the current machine. It’s a nothing flashy, but is set up for our needs and includes a lot of components and playlists.   Backup Files Rather than wasting time setting everything up again on a new machine, we can backup the important files and replace them on the new machine. First type or copy the following into the Explorer address bar. %appdata%\foobar2000 Now copy all of the files in the folder and store them on a network drive or some type removable media or device. New Machine Now you can install the latest version of Foobar2000 on your new machine. You can go with a Standard install as we will be replacing our backed up configuration files anyway. When it launches, it will be set with all the defaults…and we want what we had back. Browse to the following on the new machine… %appdata%\foobar2000 Delete all of the files in this directory… Then replace them with the ones we backed up from the other machine. You’ll also want to navigate to C:\Program Files\Foobar2000 and replace the existing Components folder with the backed up one. When you get the screen telling you there is already files of the same name, select Move and Replace, and check the box Do this for the next 6 conflicts. Now we’re back in business! Everything is exactly as it was on the old machine. In this example, we were moving the Foobar2000 files from a computer on the same home network. All the music is coming from a directory on our Windows Home Server so they hadn’t changed. If you’re moving these files to a computer on another machine… say your work computer, you’ll need to adjust where the music folders point to. Windows XP If you’re setting up Foobar2000 on an XP machine, you can enter the following into the Run line. %appdata%\foobar2000 Then copy your backed up files into the Foobar2000 folder, and remember to swap out the Components folder in C:\Program Files\Foobar2000. Confirm to replace the files and folders by clicking Yes to All… Conclusion This method worked perfectly for us on our home network setup. There might be some other things that will need a bit of tweaking, but overall the process is quick and easy. There is a lot of cool things you can do with Foobar2000 like rip an audio CD to FlAC. If you’re a fan of Foobar2000 or considering switching to it, we will be covering more awesome features in future articles. Download Foobar2000 – Windows Only Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Backup or Transfer Microsoft Office 2007 Quick Parts Between ComputersBackup and Restore Internet Explorer’s Trusted Sites ListSecond Copy 7 [Review]Backup and Restore Firefox Profiles EasilyFoobar2000 is a Fully Customizable Music Player 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 Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7

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• iPad Impressions

  - by Aaron Lazenby

  So, I spent some quality time with my new iPad on Saturday. Here are things I like/don't like: -- Don't like that it has to sync with iTunes before you use it: I was traveling and left my laptop at home thinking I'd use this iPad thing instead. But the first thing it asked me to do is connect it to a laptop. Ugh. Had to borrow my mother-in-law's MacBook Pro just to get the iPad rolling. -- Like that magazines and newspapers are forever changed: And I think for the better...it's why I bought this thing in the first place. I spent significant time with The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and Popular Science on the iPad. Sliding stories around, jumping from section to section, enlarging images = all excellent experiences. Actually prefer iPad magazine to print, which will require a major shift in editorial strategy, summed up by Popular Science's Mark Jannot in his editor's note "What defines a magazine? Curated expertise--not paper." -- Don't like the screwy human factors: I actually enjoy the virtual keyboard (although I think I'm in the minority), but you have to hunch over to look down at what you're typing. Bad technology ergonomics have already jacked my body in various ways. The iPad just introduced a new one.-- Like the multitouch: In fact, it's awesome. Hands down. Probably will have the most lasting impact on the personal computing industry as a whole.   -- Don't like that it's heavy: If you plan to read in bed, you'd better double up on the creatine and curls. Holding this thing up on your own gets pretty uncomfortable. -- Like the Netfilx app: I wanted to watch "The Big Lebowski," so I did. That is all. -- Don't like that people feel 3G is necessary: For $30 a month? Please. I'm already accustomed to limiting my laptop internet use to readily available free wi-fi. Why do I expect anything different with the iPad? Most anyplace I have time to sit and read/use a computer (cafe, airport, you house, library, etc.) has free wi-fi. I can live without web surfing in your car. That's what the iPhone is for. -- Don't like that not everyone was ready in day one: I'm looking at you Facebook. No iPad app for launch? Lame. iPhone apps scaled-up to work on the iPad look grainy and cheap. Not a quality befitting this beautiful $700 piece of glass.Verdict: I'm bringing it to COLLABORATE 08 and seeing if I can go the whole week using only the iPad. If I can trade this thing for my laptop, I know it's a winner. For now, I'm enjoying Popular Science.

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• Silverlight Cream for June 08, 2010 -- #877

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Miroslav Miroslavov, Chris Klug, Beau, Christian Schormann(-2-), Dan Wahlin, Pete Brown, Michael S. Scherotter, Philipp Sumi, Andy Wigley, and Phil Middlemiss. Shoutouts: Mark Tucker set about learning Caliburn, and in the process is writing a Caliburn Book: Chapters 1-3 Jesse Liberty has a great link-laden post up about why we should all be learning/using Blend: Why Developers Should, Must, Do Care About The New Expression Blend be sure to read what he says about WP7 development, however! Charlie Kindel announced an Install problem with the Developer Tools CTP Refresh and the WP7 tools... check this out if you're having problems. John Papa has a good post up on the happenings yesterday: Expression Studio 4 Launch of Blend, SketchFlow, Encoder and More! Erik Mork & Company's latest "This Week in Silverlight" is titled First Drop: Prism v4 – First Drop is Available From SilverlightCream.com: Animated navigation between Pages Miroslav Miroslavov has Part 8 of his "Silverlight in Action" series up, detailing cool things from the CompleteIT site... this one is on Animated navigation between pages. Subtitling videos Chris Klug got a gig adding subtitles to videos for Microsoft (sweet) ... and no, not *that* kind of subtitles... read how he approached the final solution. Silverlight Watermark TextBox I'm not sure we can have too many Watermark TextBoxes, and neither does Beau , who sent me a link to this one... give it a dance and decide. Blend 4: Collaborative SketchFlow Feedback with SharePoint With the new Blend release, Christian Schormann has a post up describing the lashup to Sharepoint for sharing Sketchflow and getting feedback. New Utility, Links, and Tutorials for Path-Based Layout Christian Schormann also has a collection of resources for Path-Based Layouts, including a utility "that lets you apply a whole bunch of position-specific effects without having to write any code"... lots of links to resources here. Tales from the Trenches – Building a Real-World Silverlight Line of Business Application Dan Wahlin draws on his recent experience and lays out some of the fun and pitfalls of building LOB apps in Silverlight... WCF, MVVM, slides, and code included WPF (and Silverlight): Choose your Fonts and Text Rendering Options Wisely Pete Brown has a great post up on using fonts wisely across multiple platforms... lots of info and good discussion in the comments as well. Ball Watch USA Remember the awesome watch Michael S. Scherotter did in Silverlight 1 and then converted to Updated Ball Trainmaster Cannonball Watch to Silverlight 2? Well... there's now a contest underfoot and 8 videos to help you get started... all good stuff, and good luck! ... Michael has a post up about the contest: Enter to Win a Ball Watch by Creating One in Silverlight Announcing Sketchables – Rapid Mockup Creation with SketchFlow By way of Jesse Libertyhttp://jesseliberty.com/2010/06/08/why-developers-should-must-do-care-about-the-new-expression-blend/, this is a cool production by Philipp Sumi about a simple mockup framework he's created. Perst - a database for Windows Phone 7 Silverlight I think one of my first comments to Michael Washington back at the MVP Summit 2010 was that we'd need a database engine, and too cool, but we've got one, Andy Wigley discusses Perst in this post... to save you some time, here's the Perst site A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part 7 Phil Middlemiss has part 7 of his great theme-building series up... this time he's giving the accordian control a once-over. 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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• Boost Netbook Speed with an SD Card & ReadyBoost

  - by Matthew Guay

  Looking for a way to increase the performance of your netbook?  Here’s how you can use a standard SD memory card or a USB flash drive to boost performance with ReadyBoost. Most netbooks ship with 1Gb of Ram, and many older netbooks shipped with even less.  Even if you want to add more ram, often they can only be upgraded to a max of 2GB.  With ReadyBoost in Windows 7, it’s easy to boost your system’s performance with flash memory.  If your netbook has an SD card slot, you can insert a memory card into it and just leave it there to always boost your netbook’s memory; otherwise, you can use a standard USB flash drive the same way. Also, you can use ReadyBoost on any desktop or laptop; ones with limited memory will see the most performance increase from using it. Please Note:  ReadyBoost requires at least 256Mb of free space on your flash drive, and also requires minimum read/write speeds.  Most modern memory cards or flash drives meet these requirements, but be aware that an old card may not work with it. Using ReadyBoost Insert an SD card into your card reader, or connect a USB flash drive to a USB port on your computer.  Windows will automatically see if your flash memory is ReadyBoost capable, and if so, you can directly choose to speed up your computer with ReadyBoost. The ReadyBoost settings dialog will open when you select this.  Choose “Use this device” and choose how much space you want ReadyBoost to use. Click Ok, and Windows will setup ReadyBoost and start using it to speed up your computer.  It will automatically use ReadyBoost whenever the card is connected to the computer. When you view your SD card or flash drive in Explorer, you will notice a ReadyBoost file the size you chose before.  This will be deleted when you eject your card or flash drive. If you need to remove your drive to use elsewhere, simply eject as normal. Windows will inform you that the drive is currently being used.  Make sure you have closed any programs or files you had open from the drive, and then press Continue to stop ReadyBoost and eject your drive. If you remove the drive without ejecting it, the ReadyBoost file may still remain on the drive.  You can delete this to save space on the drive, and the cache will be recreated when you use ReadyBoost next time. Conclusion Although ReadyBoost may not make your netbook feel like a Core i7 laptop with 6GB of RAM, it will still help performance and make multitasking even easier.  Also, if you have, say, a memory stick and a flash drive, you can use both of them with ReadyBoost for the maximum benefit.  We have even noticed better battery life when multitasking with ReadyBoost, as it lets you use your hard drive less.  SD cards and thumb drives are relatively cheap today, and many of us have several already, so this is a great way to improve netbook performance cheaply. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Speed up Your Windows Vista Computer with ReadyBoostSet the Speed Dial as the Opera Startup PageAsk the Readers: What are Your Computer’s Hardware Specs?Understanding Windows Vista Aero Glass RequirementsReplace Google Chrome’s New Tab Page with Speed Dial 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 Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems

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• Clone a Hard Drive Using an Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  Whether you’re setting up multiple computers or doing a full backup, cloning hard drives is a common maintenance task. Don’t bother burning a new boot CD or paying for new software – you can do it easily with your Ubuntu Live CD. Not only can you do this with your Ubuntu Live CD, you can do it right out of the box – no additional software needed! The program we’ll use is called dd, and it’s included with pretty much all Linux distributions. dd is a utility used to do low-level copying – rather than working with files, it works directly on the raw data on a storage device. Note: dd gets a bad rap, because like many other Linux utilities, if misused it can be very destructive. If you’re not sure what you’re doing, you can easily wipe out an entire hard drive, in an unrecoverable way. Of course, the flip side of that is that dd is extremely powerful, and can do very complex tasks with little user effort. If you’re careful, and follow these instructions closely, you can clone your hard drive with one command. We’re going to take a small hard drive that we’ve been using and copy it to a new hard drive, which hasn’t been formatted yet. To make sure that we’re working with the right drives, we’ll open up a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and enter in the following command sudo fdisk –l We have two small drives, /dev/sda, which has two partitions, and /dev/sdc, which is completely unformatted. We want to copy the data from /dev/sda to /dev/sdc. Note: while you can copy a smaller drive to a larger one, you can’t copy a larger drive to a smaller one with the method described below. Now the fun part: using dd. The invocation we’ll use is: sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdc In this case, we’re telling dd that the input file (“if”) is /dev/sda, and the output file (“of”) is /dev/sdc. If your drives are quite large, this can take some time, but in our case it took just less than a minute. If we do sudo fdisk –l again, we can see that, despite not formatting /dev/sdc at all, it now has the same partitions as /dev/sda.  Additionally, if we mount all of the partitions, we can see that all of the data on /dev/sdc is now the same as on /dev/sda. Note: you may have to restart your computer to be able to mount the newly cloned drive. And that’s it…If you exercise caution and make sure that you’re using the right drives as the input file and output file, dd isn’t anything to be scared of. Unlike other utilities, dd copies absolutely everything from one drive to another – that means that you can even recover files deleted from the original drive in the clone! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDHow to Browse Without a Trace with an Ubuntu Live CDRecover Deleted Files on an NTFS Hard Drive from a Ubuntu Live CDCreate a Bootable Ubuntu 9.10 USB Flash DriveWipe, Delete, and Securely Destroy Your Hard Drive’s Data the Easy Way 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 Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7

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• Oracle WebCenter: Extending Oracle Applications & Oracle Fusion Applications

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} -- Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}We’ve talked in previous weeks about the key goals of the new release of WebCenter are providing a Modern User Experience, unparalleled Application Integration, converging all the best of the existing portal platforms into WebCenter and delivering a Common User Experience Architecture.  We’ve provided an overview of Oracle WebCenter and discussed some of the other key goals in previous weeks, and this week, we’ll focus on how the new release of Oracle WebCenter extends Oracle Applications and Fusion Applications.When we talk about the new release of Oracle WebCenter, we really emphasize to customers that they can leverage their existing investments and benefit from WebCenter’s Complete, Open and Integrated platform. To summarize what we mean here, Oracle WebCenter is:COMPLETEComprehensive platform for Portals/Websites, Composite Applications with integrated Social/Collaboration services and Content Management infrastructureOPENStandards support improves reuse of existing resources and extends the value of existing systemsINTEGRATEDImplicit integration with Oracle Applications, Oracle Fusion Applications & other enterprise applicationsWith all the existing enterprise applications in Oracle’s application portfolio, in the new release of WebCenter we’ve got a set of pre-built catalogs that customers can use directly to get at all the portlet resources certified and available from Oracle.  It provides customers with a ready-to-use view of their application resources.  And since WebCenter provides seamless support for building these portlets/components in a professional IDE like JDeveloper or from within a Browser, developers and business analysts can quickly assemble the information they require for their existing application investment.  In addition, we’ve taken all the user flows and patterns that we’ve learned in building Fusion Applications and focused on making it dramatically easier to use tools to create reusable application UI components. In this way, one team in the organization using an application can share their components with other teams.  And more importantly, the new team can make changes to the component without breaking the original component.  When tied to enterprise applications, this capability is extremely powerful.  This is what Oracle means when they talk about Enterprise Mashups.  And finally, we’ve provided an innovative way to go well beyond traditional “on the glass” integration by enabling business transactions for the existing applications direct integration using activity streams. This delivers aggregated and “on time” delivery of information to the business users based on what‘s happening in the enterprise that is relevant to their particular job function.  Most importantly, it ties into the personalization interactions discussed earlier so that it can help target information to you directly based on past interactions.  Application integration is key to making businesses function more efficiently with these new Enterprise 2.0 technologies.Keep checking back this week as we share more information on how WebCenter is the most complete, open and integrated modern user experience platform and show key ways WebCenter can extend Oracle Applications & Oracle Fusion Applications.

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• Silverlight Cream for May 11, 2010 -- #859

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this All Submittal Issue: Colin Eberhardt, Ken Johnson, Alan Beasley, Pencho Popadiyn, Phil Middlemiss, Khawar(-2-), Levente Mihály, Alex van Beek, Bart Czernicki, Michael Washington, and Mark Monster. Shoutout: Not Silverlight necessarily, but definitely VS2010, read what Brett Balmer has to say In Defense of Portrait Mode From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight MultiBinding solution for Silverlight 4 Colin Eberhardt updated his Silverlight Multibinding solution to Silverlight 4. Great article with explanatory graphics, and links to the code... congrats on the use in the FaceBook Client too! Spirograph Shapes: WPF Bezier shapes from math formulae Wow... I haven't seen this much math since my Master's Thesis! ... Check out all the shapes Ken Johnson has built... don't let the math scare you... just use it :) Busy Dizzy Bee-sley Spirographic Animation in Expression Blend and Silverlight This is just fun... I saw Michael Washington playing with this yesterday at the Arizona Day of .NET but didn't have a chance to ask what it was.. Alan Beasley had a good time building this, and is sharing a very detailed tutorial with us. ModalDialogs, IEditableObject and MVVM in Silverlight 4 Pencho Popadiyn said the 'M' word over at SilverlightShow... actually the 'MVVM' word :) ... he's discussing Modal dialogs with no code in the View ... check out how he did it. A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part 6 Phil Middlemiss is up to episode 6 in his Theme-building tutorial... this time out, he's giving the TabControl and TabItem new clothes ... specifically discussing what to change and what to allow to inherit ... good stuff! Silverlight 4 Fonts gotcha Check out Khawar's ATM Machine demo -- there's a link on the page for this post... he had an issue with fonts, ratted it out, and explains it for all of us... thanks Khawar Demystifying Silverlight Obfuscation Khawar also has a good post up on Obfuscating your Silverlight... definitely showing that it's not all that difficult to do. geoGallery, a WinPhone7 sample OK this is interesting... using the geoLocation feature of WP7, Levente Mihály hits Google Picasa to find pictures... good write-up and all the code. Silverlight 4: Digitally signing a XAP with Visual Studio 2010 Alex van Beek has a nice tutorial on Signing your XAP file using Visual Studio 2010... of course you may want to visit Tim Heuer's blog (search at SC) to find the two good deals on certificates that are still in play. Creating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Expression Blend 4 for Business Intelligence applications In an interesting post, Bart Czernicki describes using the shape assets in Blend 4 to produce a KPI display in Silverlight or WPF. A discussion of the shape's evolution for KPI is included as well as some alternate shape uses. A DotNetNuke Silverlight 4 Drag and Drop File Manager Michael Washington has blogged about his Drag and Drop File Manager using the View Model Style pattern. This is covered in two CodeProject articles listed in the post. The design work was done by Alan Beasely and links to his work is there as well as covered in other SC posts. How to select a ListItem on Hover Mark Monster had a Use Case for Selecting a ListBox entry by hovering ... but he did it with a Behavior and for a ListBox and PathListBox and it works with DataBinding... 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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• Access Music from Amie Street in Boxee

  - by Mysticgeek

  One of our favorite sites for discovering new music is Amie Street. Today we take a look at the Amie Street app for Boxee that allows you to access your favorite tunes from the Boxee interface. Amie Street is a cool site that allows you to discover a lot of cool music from independent artists. What makes Amie Street unique is that most of the music starts out free, then the price goes up incrementally as its popularity grows. The Amie Street App for Boxee let’s you access music and playlists you’ve created on the site, with more features are on the way. For this example we’re using the mouse and keyboard, but of course you can also get to each section using your remote if you have one. Or you can turn your iPod touch into a Boxee remote too. Amie Street in Boxee To access the Amie Street app, launch Boxee and click on Apps from the main menu. Under the Search Sidebar type in Amie Street and select it from the results field.   Then you can add it to the My Apps section…and double-click on the icon. Click on Start to begin using it. You’ll be be presented with a Welcome screen where you can sign into your account. If you don’t have an account yet, there is also an option to go to the Amie Street site and create one. Enter in your account credentials… Now you’ll be able to access your Library, Playlists, Search for new tunes, and check out your Recommended bands and artists. Hover the pointer over an album to get a bit more info about it such as the music genre. You’ll be able to play the songs from the playlists you created on the Amie Street site. You can browse through the history of the music you’ve played as well. Not all the features of this app seem to work as you’d expect them to, and some of the features are not yet available like the Browse feature.   Conclusion At the time of this writing we weren’t able to purchase music or get additional information about the artists. As development continues on Boxee and this app, you can expect more of a full user experience and the ability to purchase music. Even though some of the features are a bit buggy or not available, if you’re a Boxee user and a fan of Amie Street, this is cool app to add to your collection. Download Boxee for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu Learn more about Amie Street on Boxee Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Amie Street Downloader Makes Purchasing Music EasierFind Free or Cheap Indie Music at Amie StreetIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Using Pandora in BoxeeGetting Started with Boxee 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Watch World Cup Online On These Sites Speed Up Windows With ReadyBoost Awesome World Cup Soccer Calendar Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like)

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• Orchestrating the Virtual Enterprise, Part I

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by Jon Chorley, Oracle's Chief Sustainability Officer & Vice President, SCM Product Strategy During the American Industrial Revolution, the Ford Motor Company did it all. It turned raw materials into a showroom full of Model Ts. It owned a steel mill, a glass factory, and an automobile assembly line. The company was both self-sufficient and innovative and went on to become one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. Nowadays, it's unusual for any business to follow this vertical integration model because its much harder to be best in class across such a wide a range of capabilities and services. Instead, businesses focus on their core competencies and outsource other business functions to specialized suppliers. They exchange vertical integration for collaboration. When done well, all parties benefit from this arrangement and the collaboration leads to the creation of an agile, lean and successful "virtual enterprise." Case in point: For Sun hardware, Oracle outsources most of its manufacturing and all of its logistics to third parties. These are vital activities, but ones where Oracle doesn't have a core competency, so we shift them to business partners who do. Within our enterprise, we always retain the core functions of product development, support, and most of the sales function, because that's what constitutes our core value to our customers. This is a perfect example of a virtual enterprise.  What are the implications of this? It means that we must exchange direct internal control for indirect external collaboration. This fundamentally changes the relative importance of different business processes, the boundaries of security and information sharing, and the relationship of the supply chain systems to the ERP. The challenge is that the systems required to support this virtual paradigm are still mired in "island enterprise" thinking. But help is at hand. Developments such as the Web, social networks, collaboration, and rules-based orchestration offer great potential to fundamentally re-architect supply chain systems to better support the virtual enterprise.  Supply Chain Management Systems in a Virtual Enterprise Historically enterprise software was constructed to automate the ERP - and then the supply chain systems extended the ERP. They were joined at the hip. In virtual enterprises, the supply chain system needs to be ERP agnostic, sitting above each of the ERPs that are distributed across the virtual enterprise - most of which are operating in other businesses. This is vital so that the supply chain system can manage the flow of material and the related information through the multiple enterprises. It has to have strong collaboration tools. It needs to be highly flexible. Users need to be able to see information that's coming from multiple sources and be able to react and respond to events across those sources.  Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO) is a perfect example of a supply chain system designed to operate in this virtual way. DOO embraces the idea that a company's fulfillment challenge is a distributed, multi-enterprise problem. It enables users to manage the process and the trading partners in a uniform way and deliver a consistent user experience while operating over a heterogeneous, virtual enterprise. This is a fundamental shift at the core of managing supply chains. It forces virtual enterprises to think architecturally about how best to construct their supply chain systems. In my next post, I will share examples of companies that have made that shift and talk more about the distributed orchestration process.

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• It’s official – Red Gate is a great place to work!

  - by red@work

  At a glittering award ceremony last week, we found out that we’re officially the 14th best small company to work for in the whole of the UK! This is no mean feat, considering that about 1,000 companies enter the Sunday Times Top 100 best companies awards each year. Most of these are in the small companies category too. It's the fourth year in a row for us to be in the Top 100 list and we're tickled pink because the results are based on employee opinion. We’re particularly proud to be the best small company in Cambridge (in the whole of East Anglia, in fact) and the best small software development company in the entire UK. So how does it all work? Well, 90% of us took the time to answer over 70 questions on categories such as management, benefits, wellbeing, leadership, giving something back and what we think of Red Gate as a whole. It makes you think about every part of day to day working life and how you feel about it. Do you slightly or strongly agree or disagree that your manager motivates your to do your best every day, or that you have confidence in Red Gate's leaders, or that you’re not spending too much time working? It's great to see that we had one of the best scores in the country for the question "Do you think your company takes advantage of you?" We got particularly high scores for management, wellbeing and for giving something back too. A few of us got dressed up and headed to London for the awards; very excited about where we’d place but slightly nervous about having to get up on stage. There was a last minute hic up with a bow tie but the Managing Editor of the Sunday Times kindly stepped in to offer his assistance just before we had our official photo taken. We were nominated for two Special Recognition Awards. Despite not bringing them home this year, we're very proud to be nominated as there are only three nominations in each category. First we were up for the Training and Development award. Best Companies loved that we get together at lunchtimes to teach each other photography, cookery and French, as well as our book clubs and techie talks. And of course they liked our opportunities to go on training courses and to jet off to international conferences. Our other nomination was for the Wellbeing award. Best Companies loved our free food (and let’s face it, so do we). Porridge or bacon sandwiches for breakfast, a three course hot dinner, and free fruit and cereals all day long. If all that has an affect on the waistline then there are plenty of sporty activities for us all to get involved in, such as yoga, running or squash. Or if that’s not your thing then a relaxing massage helps us all to unwind every few months or so. The awards were hosted by news presenter Kate Silverton. She gave us a special mention during the ceremony for having great customer engagement as well as employee engagement, after we told her about Rodney Landrum (a Friend of Red Gate) tattooing our logo on his arm. We showed off our customised dinner jacket (thanks to Dom from Usability) with a flashing Red Gate logo on the back and she seemed suitability impressed. Back in the office the next day, we popped open the champagne and raised a glass to our success. Neil, our joint CEO, talked about how pleased he was with the award because it's based on the opinions of the people that count – us. You can read more about the Sunday Times awards here. By the way, we're still growing and are still hiring. If you’d like to keep up with our latest vacancies then why not follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/redgatecareers. Right now we're busy hiring in development, test, sales, product management, web development, and project management. Here's a link to our current job opportunities page – we'd love to hear from great people who are looking for a great place to work! After all, we're only great because of the people who work here. Post by: Alice Chapman

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• Hell and Diplomacy: Notes on Software Integration

  - by ericajanine

  Well, I'm getting cabin fever and short-timer's ADD all at the same time. I haven't been anywhere outside of my greater city area in FOREVER and I'm only days away from my vacation. I have brainlock because the last few days have been non-stop diffusing amazingly hostile conversations. I think I'll write about that. So then, I "do" software. At the end of the day, software is pretty straightforward. Software is that thing we love and try to make do things not currently in play, in existence. If a process around getting software to do something is broken (like most actually are), then we should acknowledge it and move on. We are professional. We are helpful beyond the normal call of duty. We live and breathe making the lives better for those apps being active in the world. But above all--the shocker: We are SERVICE. In a service frame of mind, all perspectives shift to what is best overall for system stabilization vs. what must be in production to meet business objectives. It doesn't matter how much you like or dislike the creator of said software. It doesn't matter what time you went to bed last night or if your mate appreciates your Death March attitude. Getting a product in and when is an age-old dilemma in a software environment where more than, say, 3 people are involved. We know this. Taking a servant's perspective eliminates the drama surrounding what a group of half-baked developers forgot to tell each other in the 11th hour about their trampling changes before check-in. We, my counterparts in society, get paid to deal with that drama. I get paid to diffuse that drama and make everything integrate as smoothly as possible. At the end of the day, attacking someone over a minor detail not only makes things worse, it's against the whole point of our real existence. Being in support or software integration means you are to keep your eyes on the end game. That end game? It's making a solution work for all stakeholders, not just you or your immediate superior. Development and technology groups exist because business groups need them to exist and solve their issues. The end game? Doing what is best for those business groups ultimately. Period. Note: That does not mean you let your business users solely dictate when and if something gets changed in an environment you ultimately own. That's just crazy. Software and its environments are legitimately owned by those who manage it directly, no matter how important a business group believes it is to the existence of mankind. So, you both negotiate the terms of changing that environment and only do so upon that negotiation. Diplomacy is in order. So, to finish my thoughts: If you have no ability to keep your mouth shut in a situation where a business or development group truly need your help to make something work even beyond a deadline, find another profession. Beating up someone verbally because they screw up means a service attitude is not at the forefront of your motivation for doing what is ultimately their work and their product. Software, especially integration, requires a strong will and a soft touch to keep it on track. Not a hammer covered in broken glass.

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• Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 Announcement

  - by Tim Murphy

  Today Nokia and Microsoft had an event to officially introduce the Lumia 920.  Below is a rundown of some of the things I found interesting. As a person who likes photography there was a lot to drool over.  The main feature that caught my attention was PureView with its optical stabilization.  This alone should improve the majority of you pictures.  Add to that the SmartShoot Object remover that uses multiple images to remove unwanted people or objects that move through your picture and you never have to accept reality again. For the most part the lenses concept introduced in Windows Phone 8 just makes the usability of leveraging camera better.  Of course that is Microsoft’s selling point.  One lens that caught my attention was the Bing lens.  I have to say it is about time that we can take pictures and use them to search for answers using Bing. There were a couple of features shown that involved augmented reality.  One was similar to the yapf application that is already in the market which overlays restaurants and other destination over live camera views.  The other was using the navigation directions with a live view. Then you get down to some of the physical features of the Lumia 920.  The one that got the most stage time is that it has a great 2000mah battery which can be charged wirelessly.  They also pointed out the improved glare reduction of the 4.5 in. curved glass screen.  This hardware improvement is improved further with software that detects glare conditions and adjusts the display attributes to enhance viewing ease. Adding to the wireless cool factor of the Lumia 920 is the general NFC capabilities.  This was demonstrated with NFC docking stations as well as JBL speakers and headphones. There was one more hardware feature that I applauded.  The super sensitive touch screen did away with one of my pet peeves with capacitive touch screens.  You will never have to remove you gloves to operate your phone again.  The mittens that they did the demo with looked more like boxing gloves. I was disappointed with Joe Belfiore said that they were only going to show a couple of new features of the Windows Phone 8 and would hear more at future events.  One of the things he did show is the ability to customize which buttons you preferred as defaults in IE10.  For example you could have the folders button where the refresh button normally is.  He also showed that at long last you can natively take screenshots on your phone.  Hopefully he will be back quickly to give us the rest of the features. The most disappointing part of the event was that we never found out when they would be released or how much they would cost.  Let’s hope this comes soon.  Even with these couple of items still left on my wish list I can’t wait to get my hands on a Lumia 920.  del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,Windows Phone 8,Nokia,Lumia,Lumia 920,Microsoft

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• Webcast On-Demand: Building Java EE Apps That Scale

  - by jeckels

  With some awesome work by one of our architects, Randy Stafford, we recently completed a webcast on scaling Java EE apps efficiently. Did you miss it? No problem. We have a replay available on-demand for you. Just hit the '+' sign drop-down for access.Topics include: Domain object caching Service response caching Session state caching JSR-107 HotCache and more! Further, we had several interesting questions asked by our audience, and we thought we'd share a sampling of those here for you - just in case you had the same queries yourself. Enjoy! What is the largest Coherence deployment out there? We have seen deployments with over 500 JVMs in the Coherence cluster, and deployments with over 1000 JVMs using the Coherence jar file, in one system. On the management side there is an ecosystem of monitoring tools from Oracle and third parties with dashboards graphing values from Coherence's JMX instrumentation. For lifecycle management we have seen a lot of custom scripting over the years, but we've also integrated closely with WebLogic to leverage its management ecosystem for deploying Coherence-based applications and managing process life cycles. That integration introduces a new Java EE archive type, the Grid Archive or GAR, which embeds in an EAR and can be seen by a WAR in WebLogic. That integration also doesn't require any extra WebLogic licensing if Coherence is licensed. How is Coherence different from a NoSQL Database like MongoDB? Coherence can be considered a NoSQL technology. It pre-dates the NoSQL movement, having been first released in 2001 whereas the term "NoSQL" was coined in 2009. Coherence has a key-value data model primarily but can also be used for document data models. Coherence manages data in memory currently, though disk persistence is in a future release currently in beta testing. Where the data is managed yields a few differences from the most well-known NoSQL products: access latency is faster with Coherence, though well-known NoSQL databases can manage more data. Coherence also has features that well-known NoSQL database lack, such as grid computing, eventing, and data source integration. Finally Coherence has had 15 years of maturation and hardening from usage in mission-critical systems across a variety of industries, particularly financial services. Can I use Coherence for local caching? Yes, you get additional features beyond just a java.util.Map: you get expiration capabilities, size-limitation capabilities, eventing capabilites, etc. Are there APIs available for GoldenGate HotCache? It's mostly a black box. You configure it, and it just puts objects into your caches. However you can treat it as a glass box, and use Coherence event interceptors to enhance its behavior - and there are use cases for that. Are Coherence caches updated transactionally? Coherence provides several mechanisms for concurrency control. If a project insists on full-blown JTA / XA distributed transactions, Coherence caches can participate as resources. But nobody does that because it's a performance and scalability anti-pattern. At finer granularity, Coherence guarantees strict ordering of all operations (reads and writes) against a single cache key if the operations are done using Coherence's "EntryProcessor" feature. And Coherence has a unique feature called "partition-level transactions" which guarantees atomic writes of multiple cache entries (even in different caches) without requiring JTA / XA distributed transaction semantics.

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