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  • Moving abroad - Relocation advice

    - by Tim Koekkoek
    Oracle offers graduates from different European countries the opportunity to start their career abroad. Some already have experience with living abroad as they have done an exchange semester or internship in another county, for others it is the first time they will move abroad. Rui started in October 2011 as a Business Development Consultant in Dublin and moved from Portugal to Dublin, Ireland to start his career. For those planning to leave their home country and who desire to work abroad, he will share some tips and tricks in this article. When you’re faced with an opportunity like this, there are lots of things that will come to your mind. Sometimes it can be either very exciting, or even stressful. 1. First of all, try to relax. If you are certain you are moving abroad, all you need to do is some research about the country where you’re going to live, get to know its culture (gastronomy, important dates and events, its economy and effective ways to keep you in touch with your family and friends – such as mobile companies and Internet services), and start to understand the best locations (with good access) you could/should live in are. Don’t forget that initially you can be limited by transport and therefore it is important to explore the ideal places for you. During this time, Oracle provides everything you’ll need (papers, documents, etc.) to cross borders. 2. When you arrive, you understand that you are in a new country, in a new place, where all things (or most) are unknown to you. Before you panic, try to see it as a new challenge where new opportunities will come. Sometimes, it’s not easy I know, but the very best a new place has to give to you, is the opportunity to understand a new culture, get to know other people, other ways of working, and grow both as a person and professionally. So, you have nothing to lose in this kind of experiment. 3. When you arrive at Oracle, there’s a fantastic team that will help you with settling in, HR, Payroll, Relocation, IT. In my case, Oracle helped me with the relocation, they supported me to arrange everything such as helping out with all the paperwork and finding a new apartment. As you can see they will do their best to help you to be successful! 4. Engage with your new co-workers. Going to a place where you don’t know anyone can be tough sometimes but see it as an opportunity to meet people from all over the world and share experiences. Embrace it. 5. Plan ahead, try to get the most information possible and use it. Oracle is a multinational enterprise that will allow you to get to know a new labour market and give you the flexibility you need to understand your view of employment and occupation, giving you the very best opportunities to join different teams and working areas, so that you can work where you fit best. Good luck! If you’re thinking about starting a career abroad, read the following article: http://www.overseasdigest.com/movingtips.htm it can be very useful to you. Interested in starting your career at Oracle like Rui has? Please have a look at https://campus.oracle.com for all of our latest vacancies.

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  • Handling SMS/email convergence: how does a good business app do it?

    - by Tim Cooper
    I'm writing a school administration software package, but it strikes me that many developers will face this same issue: when communicating with users, should you use email or SMS or both, and should you treat them as fundamentally equivalent channels such that any message can get sent using any media, (with long and short forms of the message template obviously) or should different business functions be specifically tailored to each of the 3? This question got kicked off "StackOverflow" for being overly general, so I'm hoping it's not too general for this site - the answers will no doubt be subjective but "you don't need to write a whole book to answer the question". I'm particularly interested in people who have direct experience of having written comparable business applications. Sub-questions: Do I treat SMS as "moderately secure" and email as less secure? (I'm thinking about booking tokens for parent/teacher nights, permission slips for excursions, absence explanation notes - so high security is not a requirement for us, although medium security is) Is it annoying for users to receive the same message on multiple channels? Should we have a unified framework that reports on delivery or lack thereof of emails and SMS's?

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  • Creating Corporate Windows Phone Applications

    - by Tim Murphy
    Most developers write Windows Phone applications for their own gratification and their own wallets.  While most of the time I would put myself in the same camp, I am also a consultant.  This means that I have corporate clients who want corporate solutions.  I recently got a request for a system rebuild that includes a Windows Phone component.  This brought up the questions of what are the important aspects to consider when building for this situation. Let’s break it down in to the points that are important to a company using a mobile application.  The company want to make sure that their proprietary software is safe from use by unauthorized users.  They also want to make sure that the data is secure on the device. The first point is a challenge.  There is no such thing as true private distribution in the Windows Phone ecosystem at this time.  What is available is the ability to specify you application for targeted distribution.  Even with targeted distribution you can’t ensure that only individuals within your organization will be able to load you application.  Because of this I am taking two additional steps.  The first is to register the phone’s DeviceUniqueId within your system.  Add a system sign-in and that should cover access to your application. The second half of the problem is securing the data on the phone.  This is where the ProtectedData API within the System.Security.Cryptography namespace comes in.  It allows you to encrypt your data before pushing it to isolated storage on the device. With the announcement of Windows Phone 8 coming this fall, many of these points will have different solutions.  Private signing and distribution of applications will be available.  We will also have native access to BitLocker.  When you combine these capabilities enterprise application development for Windows Phone will be much simpler.  Until then work with the above suggestions to develop your enterprise solutions. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 7,Windows Phone,Corporate Deployment,Software Design,Mango,Targeted Applications,ProtectedData API,Windows Phone 8

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  • Windows 8 App Wish List

    - by Tim Murphy
    As I have been using Windows 8 more some of them apps that come with the system have been missing some features that I would like to see.  So Microsoft, here is my wish list for some new features. Skydrive Copy files from one folder to another in Skydrive Get public and read only URLs of a file   OneNote MX Print a page   Mail Accept/Reject appointments Sort inbox Search inbox (use the search charm) Print email   Store Keyword search (use the search charm)   del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8

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  • Dealing with three Windows partitions in dual boot installation

    - by Tim
    For dual-boot installation of Ubuntu after Windows. Quoted from ubuntuguide If a Windows boot partition exists as a second NTFS partition, it should be left alone. If there is a Windows recovery partition also installed, it can also be left alone as long as there are only two NTFS partitions total on the hard drive (i.e. there is no NTFS boot partition as well). If there are a total of 3 NTFS partitions on the hard drive, then the third Windows NTFS partition (the recovery partition) should be removed after creating Recovery CDs from it (see here). In the last case where Windows has three partitions, I was wondering why it says the recovery partition shall be removed? Is it possible to keep the three and create another extended partition with several logical partitions for installing Ubuntu and dual-booting the two OSes? I plan to dual-boot install Ubuntu 10.04 with existing Windows 7. Following is the layout of the current partitions of my hard drive viewed from Windows 7: So must I remove the Lenovo_Recovery (Q:) partition for the same reason you give for the first question? Thanks and regards!

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  • How can I remove duplicate icons for "launched" java programs in the launcher?

    - by Tim
    When launching java programs (like IntelliJ IDEA and Crashplan) in Natty's Unity launcher, duplicate icons are shown (see image). For IntelliJ I created the .desktop file, for Crashplan the .desktop file is supplied with the application. Is there something that can be changed in the .desktop files (or somewhere else) that can prevent this from occurring? I couldn't find a bug report for unity itself but programs like Gnome-Do/Docky have bug reports and had to make internal changes to their applications to prevent this. In this image the 1st icon is the one created from the .desktop file and the second icon is after launching it. Second icon disappears when closing the application. Custom IntelliJ .desktop file #!/usr/bin/env xdg-open [Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Type=Application Terminal=false Icon[en_US]=/opt/idea/bin/idea128.png Name[en_US]=IntelliJ IDEA Exec=/opt/idea/bin/idea.sh Name=IntelliJ IDEA Icon=/opt/idea/bin/idea128.png StartupNotify=true Crashplan provide .desktop file [Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Encoding=UTF-8 Name=CrashPlan Categories=; Comment=CrashPlan Desktop UI Comment[en_CA]=CrashPlan Desktop UI Exec=/usr/local/crashplan/bin/CrashPlanDesktop Icon=/usr/local/crashplan/skin/icon_app_64x64.png Hidden=false Terminal=false Type=Application GenericName[en_CA]=

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  • Is there some application to download files from popular file hosting websites?

    - by Tim
    I was wondering if there are some applications for downloading files from some popular hosting websites, automating the procedure of waiting and fetching links and downloading files, once we give the applications the links? Examples of such websites are Rapidshare, Uploading, Megaupload, Filesonic, Fileserver, Hotfiles, Depositefiles, iFile. But the applications are not necessarily applicable to all of them. Thanks and regards! ADDED: I just tried slimrat. It failed to download files from rapidshare. Can it be because the website of rapidshare has changed recently and the parsing functionality for their website by slimrat is not up-to-date yet.

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  • C/C++ Best indentation length?

    - by Tim
    I was reading a Vim tutorial ( http://www.oualline.com/vim-cook.html#drawing ), and came across this: This is very useful if you use a 4 space indentation for your C or C++ programs. (Studies at Rice University have shown this to be the best indentation size.) Is there any truth in these studies? Note-- i didn't mean for a flame war in indentation -- just whether anyone else has come across tis study before? EDIT: @MaR I made a poll http://poll.fm/3d5kg

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  • Microsoft Changes Developer Account Registration Requirements

    - by Tim Murphy
    Over the last couple of weeks I have noticed that Microsoft seems to have changed the requirements for Corporate accounts.  These requirements were not in effect when I originally setup the account for the company that I work for.  We also recently had our corporate account canceled without explanation and are in the process of working to get it reinstated.  This all seems to revolve around rules to increase confidence that in the producers of content.  They are now having Symantec validate a company based on legal documents. In the past there have been problems with getting credit cards accepted.  We have had to setup new Live IDs to satisfy whatever glitch the system had or unexplainable requirement.  I am hoping that in the time that has elapsed these problems have been resolved. In truth I can’t say that these new requirements weren’t always in place, but it is getting frustrating to help clients setup accounts.  I am encourage that they have taken steps to safeguard the consumer from Joe-fly-by-night, but they also need to make sure that the process doesn’t become so complex that it drives away companies from participating in the store.  We will have to keep an eye on this as things evolve. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone Development,Windows 8 Development,Windows Phone,Windows 8,Registration,Corporate Accounts

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  • Who makes laptops for Ubuntu?

    - by Tim Lytle
    I'm looking for a laptop and would like to avoid the whole 'is this [specific configuration of hardware] compatible with Ubuntu?' process by finding a laptop manufactured with Ubuntu in mind. I know of system76, but are there any other manufacturers making laptops built to run a standard build of Ubuntu? I'm not counting Dell, as - from my experience - their 'Ubuntu' laptops/netbooks require their build, and because of that have their own set of compatibility issues. UPDATE: And as mentioned in the comments, Dell is no longer selling systems with Ubuntu to consumers.

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  • Register For The Sept 2012 Chicago IT Architects Group

    - by Tim Murphy
    We are getting rolling again.  This month I will be discussing Building Smart Phone Applications For The Enterprise.  This is an area that I have been working with in my normal day-to-day work and think that more of us will be running across in the near future.  Be sure to register and join us. Register here del.icio.us Tags: Mobile Development,Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,CITAG,Windows Phone,iPhone,Android

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  • Key Windows Phone Development Concepts

    - by Tim Murphy
    As I am doing more development in and out of the enterprise arena for Windows Phone I decide I would study for the 70-599 test.  I generally take certification tests as a way to force me to dig deeper into a technology.  Between the development and studying I decided it would be good to put a post together of key development features in Windows Phone 7 environment.  Contrary to popular belief the launch of Windows Phone 8 will not obsolete Windows Phone 7 development.  With the launch of 7.8 coming shortly and people who will remain on 7.X for the foreseeable future there are still consumers needing these apps so don’t throw out the baby with the bath water. PhoneApplicationService This is a class that every Windows Phone developer needs to become familiar with.  When it comes to application state this is your go to repository.  It also contains events that help with management of your application’s lifecycle.  You can access it like the following code sample. 1: PhoneApplicationService.Current.State["ValidUser"] = userResult; DeviceNetworkInformation This class allows you to determine the connectivity of the device and be notified when something changes with that connectivity.  If you are making web service calls you will want to check here before firing off. I have found that this class doesn’t actually work very well for determining if you have internet access.  You are better of using the following code where IsConnectedToInternet is an App level property. private void Application_Launching(object sender, LaunchingEventArgs e){ // Validate user access if (Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface.NetworkInterfaceType != Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterfaceType.None) { IsConnectedToInternet = true; } else { IsConnectedToInternet = false; } NetworkChange.NetworkAddressChanged += new NetworkAddressChangedEventHandler(NetworkChange_NetworkAddressChanged);}void NetworkChange_NetworkAddressChanged(object sender, EventArgs e){ IsConnectedToInternet = (Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface.NetworkInterfaceType != Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterfaceType.None);} Push Notification Push notification allows your application to receive notifications in a way that reduces the application’s power needs. This MSDN article is a good place to get the basics of push notification, but you can see the essential concept in the diagram below.  There are three types of push notification: toast, Tile and raw.  The first two work regardless of the state of the application where as raw messages are discarded if your application is not running.   Live Tiles Live tiles are one of the main differentiators of the Windows Phone platform.  They allow users to find information at a glance from their start screen without navigating into individual apps.  Knowing how to implement them can be a great boost to the attractiveness of your application. The simplest step-by-step explanation for creating live tiles is here. Local Database While your application really only has Isolated Storage as a data store there are some ways of giving you database functionality to develop against.  There are a number of open source ORM style solutions.  Probably the best and most native way I have found is to use LINQ to SQL.  It does take a significant amount of setup, but the ease of use once it is configured is worth the cost.  Rather than repeat the full concepts here I will point you to a post that I wrote previously. Tasks (Bing, Email) Leveraging built in features of the Windows Phone platform is an easy way to add functionality that would be expensive to develop on your own.  The classes that you need to make yourself familiar with are BingMapsDirectionsTask and EmailComposeTask.  This will allow your application to supply directions and give the user an email path to relay information to friends and associates. Event model Because of the ability for users to switch quickly to switch to other apps or the home screen is just one reason why knowing the Windows Phone event model is important.  You need to be able to save data so that if a user gets a phone call they can come back to exactly where they were in your application.  This means that you will need to handle such events as Launching, Activated, Deactivated and Closing at an application level.  You will probably also want to get familiar with the OnNavigatedTo and OnNavigatedFrom events at the page level.  These will give you an opportunity to save data as a user navigates through your app. Summary This is just a small portion of the concepts that you will use while building Windows Phone apps, but these are some of the most critical.  With the launch of Windows Phone 8 this list will probably expand.  Take the time to investigate these topics further and try them out in your apps. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 7,Windows Phone,WP7,Software Development,70-599

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  • Review: Windows 8 - Initial Experience

    - by Tim Murphy
    I originally started this post when I had the Windows 8 preview setup on VirtualBox image.  I have since put the RTM bits on a Dell E6530 that is my new work laptop.  It isn’t a table so I am not getting the touch experience, but as a developer this makes the most sense for the moment. This is the first Windows OS that I have had to spend much time exploring to even get started.  The first thing I ran into was when I clicked on the desktop icon I was lost.  Where is the Start menu? Where are my programs?  How do I get back to the Metro environment?  I finally tried hitting the Windows button and it popped back out to the Metro screen. Once I got past that I found that the look of the Metro interface is clean and well organized.  It should be familiar to anyone who is already using a Zune or Windows Phone 7.  In the Desktop, aside from the lack of the Start button to bring up programs the desktop is just like the Windows 7 environment we are all used to.  I do have to say though that I don’t like popping out to the Metro screen to find program.  I think installers for programs like ones that developers usually work in for a desktop mode will need to give an option for creating a desktop icon and pinning to the task bar of the desktop. One of the things I do really enjoy is having live tiles in the Metro environment.  It is a nice way of feeding my need for constant information.  The one drawback though is that the task bar at the bottom of my screen used to be where I got this information without leaving what I was working on.  It allowed me to see current temperatures and when there were messages waiting.  I have since found that these still work as expected in the Desktop and Toast message keep you up on what is going on in the Metro apps. Thankfully familiar functionality like Alt-Tab and Windows-Tab still work regardless of if apps are in the Metro or the Desktop environment.  Add to this the ability to find any application on the Metro screen by simply typing and things get very comfortable. I also started exploring some of the apps.  If you want see a ton of stats on your team at a glance check out the Sports app.  What games are coming up? Who are the leaders in a number of stats?  The Weather and Finance apps have good features as well and I am sure they will improve as users supply feedback. I have had to install Visual Studio 2010 side-by-side with VS2012 because the Windows Phone 7 SDK would only install on VS2010.  This isn’t a Windows 8 issue per se, but something that you need to be aware of if you are a developer moving to the new ecosystem. The overall experience is a joy despite a few hiccups.  For anyone moving to Windows 8 in on a non-touch laptop or desktop I do suggest this list of keyboard shortcuts.  Enjoy. del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,Win8,Metro,Review

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  • All hail the Excel Queen

    - by Tim Dexter
    An excellent question this past week from dear ol Blighty; actually from Brian at Nextgen Clearing Ltd in the big smoke (London). Brian was developing an excel template and wanted to be able to reference the data fields multiple times inside the Excel template. Damn good question and I of course has some wacky solutions, from macros and cell referencing in Excel to pre-processing the data with an XSL stylesheet to copy the data multiple times so it could be referenced multiple times. All completely outlandish, enter our Queen of Excel, Shirley from the development team. Shirley is singlehandedly responsible for the Excel templates, I put her through six months of hell a few years back, with a host of Excel template requirements. She was more than up to the challenge and has developed some great features. One of those, is the ability to use the hidden XDO_METADATA sheet to map the data to custom named fields so they can be used multiple times in the template. So simple and very neat! Excel template and regular Excel users will know that you can only use the naming function once ie the names have to be unique across the workbook so you can not reuse a cell/group name. To get around this you can just come up with as many cell names as you want and map them in the XDO_METADATA sheet to the data columns/fields in your XML data set:. For example: XDO_?DEPTNO_SUMMARY?  <?DEPTNO?> XDO_?DNAME_SUMMARY?  <?DNAME?> XDO_GROUP_?G_D_DETAIL? <xsl:for-each-group select=".//G_D" group-by="./DEPTNO"> XDO_?DEPTNO_DETAIL? <?DEPTNO?> As you can see DEPTNO has been referenced twice and mapped to different named values in the left hand column. These values can then be used to name individual cells in the Excel template. You'll also notice a mix of Publisher <? ...?> and native XSL commands. So the world is your oyster on the mapping and the complexity you might need for calculations or string manipulation. Shirley has kindly built out a sample Excel template, data and result here so you can see how it all hangs together. the XDO_METADATA sheet is hidden, just right click on the sheet names and use the Unhide command to show it.

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  • Are null references really a bad thing?

    - by Tim Goodman
    I've heard it said that the inclusion of null references in programming languages is the "billion dollar mistake". But why? Sure, they can cause NullReferenceExceptions, but so what? Any element of the language can be a source of errors if used improperly. And what's the alternative? I suppose instead of saying this: Customer c = Customer.GetByLastName("Goodman"); // returns null if not found if (c != null) { Console.WriteLine(c.FirstName + " " + c.LastName + " is awesome!"); } else { Console.WriteLine("There was no customer named Goodman. How lame!"); } You could say this: if (Customer.ExistsWithLastName("Goodman")) { Customer c = Customer.GetByLastName("Goodman") // throws error if not found Console.WriteLine(c.FirstName + " " + c.LastName + " is awesome!"); } else { Console.WriteLine("There was no customer named Goodman. How lame!"); } But how is that better? Either way, if you forget to check that the customer exists, you get an exception. I suppose that a CustomerNotFoundException is a bit easier to debug than a NullReferenceException by virtue of being more descriptive. Is that all there is to it?

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  • BUILD 2013 &ndash; Summary

    - by Tim Murphy
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/28/build-2013-ndash-summary.aspx BUILD was a wonderful experience.  It was great to see old friends, make new friends, learn about the latest Microsoft technology and party with a bunch of geeks.  It didn't hurt getting some awesome swag. While I Know that some people were disappointed that Microsoft didn't Say more about the XBox One, I was pleased with the information we got for developing Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone applications. Add to that the ability to pick the brains of MVPs and product team members was really worth the price of admission. It is going to take a while to digest all of the material and weeks to go through all the videos. In the end there is a lot of information that is going to improve my projects.  I look forward to what Microsoft has coming next seeing every one at the next BUILD. Technorati Tags: BUILD 2013,window's 8.1,Windows Phone,XBox One

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  • Interesting Blog Stats&ndash;What Sells

    - by Tim Murphy
    Just out of curiosity I decided to find out what the most frequently post were on my blog.  I knew what number one would be just from checking daily stats from time to time.  The main theme that I found in the data is that either pain or humor can really bring people to find your posts.  My most viewed post is on turning off Toshiba Flashcards at over 54K views (I think Toshiba should take notice of this massive fail).  The second highest is on Interesting Blog titles.  This was nothing more than a post that I had put up on a whim of humorous blog titles I had run across.  This post earned over 26K views.  Going down from there the theme stays the same either people looking for something humorous or people with a problem that you have an answer for are the posts that are most likely to get attention.  Remember that blogging can be a great service to your readers.  Keep it interesting and they will come. del.icio.us Tags: Blogging,Blog Topics,Blog Stats

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  • Browsing redirected and ad playing in background - Malware?

    - by Tim
    Recently i have noticed when browsing a web page will be redirected to something other than what i click on. For instance, when i tried going to www.askubuntu.com via a link on ubuntu.com it redirected me to some other site than this one. Also when on a page with no flash videos of any kind or pop up windows an ad will start playing. The only way to get it to stop is to wait for it to finish or close the browser and start over again. I have run Clam AV but it has not found anything.

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  • 2012&ndash;The End Of The World Review

    - by Tim Murphy
    The end of the world must be coming.  Not because the Mayan calendar says so, but because Microsoft is innovating more than Apple.  It has been a crazy year, with pundits declaring not that the end of the world is coming, but that the end of Microsoft is coming.  Let’s take a look at what 2012 has brought us. The beginning of year is a blur.  I managed to get to TechEd in June which was the first time that I got to take a deep dive into Windows 8 and many other things that had been announced in 2011.  The promise I saw in these products was really encouraging.  The thought of being able to run Windows 8 from a thumb drive or have Hyper-V native to the OS told me that at least for developers good things were coming. I finally got my feet wet with Windows 8 with the developer preview just prior to the RTM.  While the initial experience was a bit of a culture shock I quickly grew to love it.  The media still seems to hold little love for the “reimagined” platform, but I think that once people spend some time with it they will enjoy the experience and what the FUD mongers say will fade into the background.  With the launch of the OS we finally got a look at the Surface.  I think this is a bold entry into the tablet market.  While I wish it was a little more affordable I am already starting to see them in the wild being used by non-techies. I was waiting for Windows Phone 8 at least as much as Windows 8, probably more.  The new hardware, better marketing and new OS features I think are going to finally push us to the point of having a real presence in the smartphone market.  I am seeing a number of iPhone users picking up a Nokia Lumia 920 and getting rid of their brand new iPhone 5.  The only real debacle that I saw around the launch was when they held back the SDK from general developers. Shortly after the launch events came Build 2012.  I was extremely disappointed that I didn’t make it to this year’s Build.  Even if they weren’t handing out Surface and Lumia devices I think the atmosphere and content were something that really needed to be experience in person.  Hopefully there will be a Build next year and it’s schedule will be announced soon.  As you would expect Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development were the mainstay of the conference, but improvements in Azure also played a key role.  This movement of services to the cloud will continue and we need to understand where it best fits into the solutions we build. Lower on the radar this year were Office 2013, SQL Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012.  Their glory stolen by the consumer OS and hardware announcements, these new releases are no less important.  Companies will see significant improvements in performance and capabilities if they upgrade.  At TechEd they had shown some of the new features of Windows Server 2012 around hardware integration and Hyper-V performance which absolutely blew me away.  It is our job to bring these important improvements to our company’s attention so that they can be leveraged. Personally, the consulting business in 2012 was the busiest it has been in a long time.  More companies were ready to attack new projects after several years of putting them on the back burner.  I also worked to bring back momentum to the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Both the community and clients are excited about the new technologies that have come out in 2012 and now it is time to deliver. What does 2013 have in store.  I don’t see it be quite as exciting as 2012.  Microsoft will be releasing the Surface Pro in January and it seems that we will see more frequent OS update for Windows.  There are rumors that we may see a Surface phone in 2013.  It has also been announced that there will finally be a rework of the XBox next fall.  The new year will also be a time for us in the development community to take advantage of these new tools and devices.  After all, it is what we build on top of these platforms that will attract more consumers and corporations to using them. Just as I am 99.999% sure that the world is not going to end this year, I am also sure that Microsoft will move on and that most of this negative backlash from the media is actually fear and jealousy.  In the end I think we have a promising year ahead of us. del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft,Pundits,Mayans,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Surface

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  • Nokia Windows Phone 8 App Collection

    - by Tim Murphy
    I recently upgraded to a Nokia Lumia 920.  Along with it came the availability of a number of Nokia developed apps or apps that Nokia has made available from other developers.  Below is a summary of some of the ones that I have used to this point.  There are quite a few of them so I won’t be covering everything that is available. Nokia Maps I am quite pleased with the accuracy of Nokia Maps and not having to tap the screen for each turn any more.  The information on the screen is quite good as well.  The couple of improvements I would like to see are for the voice directions to include which street or exit you need to use and improve the search accuracy.  Bing maps had much better search results in my opinion. Nokia Drive This one really had me confused when I first setup the phone.  I was driving down the road and suddenly I am getting notification tones, but there were no visual notifications on the phone.  It seems that in their infinite wisdom Nokia thinks I don’t know when I am going over the speed limit and need to be told. ESPN I really liked my ESPN app on Windows Phone 7.5, but I am not getting the type of experience I was looking for out of this app.  While it allows me to pick my favorite teams, but there isn’t a pivot page or panorama page that shows a summary of my favorite teams.  I have also found that the live tile don’t update very often.  Over all I am rather disappointed compared app produced by ESPN. Smart Shoot I really need to get the kids to let me use this on.  I like the concept, but I need to spend more time with it.  The idea how running the camera through a continuous shooting mode and then picking the best is something that I have done with my DSLR and am glad to see it available here. Cinemagraph Here is a fun filter.  It doesn’t have the most accurate editing features, but it is fun to stop certain parts of a scene and let other parts move.  As a test I stopped the traffic on the highway and let the traffic on the frontage road flow.  It makes for a fun effect.  If nothing else it could be great for sending prank animations to your friends. YouSendIt I have only briefly touched this application.  What I don’t understand is why it is needed.  Most of the functionality seems to be similar to SkyDrive and it gives you less storage.  They only feature that seems to differentiate the app is the signature capability. Creative Studio This app has some nice quick edits, but it is not very comprehensive.  I am also not to thrilled with the user experience.  It puts you though an initial color cast series that I’m not sure why it is there.  Discovery of the remaining adjustments isn’t that great.  In the end I found myself wanting Thumbia back. Panorama This is one of the apps that I like.  I found it easy to use as it guides you with a target circle that you center for it to take the next pictures.  It also stitches the images with amazing speed.  The one thing I wish it had was the capability to turn the phone into portrait orientation and do a taller panorama.  Perhaps we will see this in the future. Nokia Music After getting over the missing album art I found that there were a number of missing features with this app as well.  I have a Zune HD and I am used to being able to go through my collection and adding songs, albums or artists to my now playing.  There also doesn’t seem to be a way to manage playlists that I have seen yet.  Other than that the UI is familiar and it give Nokia City Lens Augmented reality is a cool concept, but I still haven’t seen it implemented in a compelling fashion beyond a demo at TED a couple of years ago.  The app still leaves me wanting as well.  It does give an interesting toy.  It gives you the ability to look for general categories and see general direction and clusters of locations.  I think as this concept is better thought out it will become more compelling. Nokia Trailers I don’t know how often I will use this app, but I do like being able to see what movies are being promoted.  I can’t wait for The Hobbit to come out and the trailer was just what the doctor ordered.  I can see coming back to this app from time to time. PhotoBeamer PhotoBeamer is a strange beast that needs a better instruction manual.  It seems a lot like magic but very confusing.  I need some more testing, but I don’t think this is something that most people are going to understand quickly and may give up before getting it to work.  I may put an update here after playing with it further. Ringtone Maker The app was just published and it didn’t work very well for me. It couldn’t find 95% of the songs that Nokia Music was playing for me and crashed several times.  It also had songs named wrong that when I checked them in Nokia Music they were fine.  This app looks like it has a long way to go. Summary In all I think that Nokia is offering a well rounded set of initial applications that can get any new owner started.  There is definitely room for improvement in all of these apps.  The main need is usability upgrades.  I would guess that with feedback from users they will come up to acceptable levels.  Try them out and see if you agree. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,Nokia,Lumia,Nokia Apps,ESPN,PhotoBeamer,City Lens,YouSendIt,Drive,Maps

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  • If Variable = True show this, else show this [on hold]

    - by Tim Marshall
    If my variable of $userLoggedIn is true, the <?php if ($userLoggedIn == 'true') : ?> works perfect, however if the variable is false, the <?php if ($userLoggedIn == 'false') : ?> does not work at all. How do I resolve this problem? <?php $EditingWagesPage = false; $userLoggedIn = false; ?> <!DOCTYPE html> <!--[if IE 8]> <html lang="en" class="ie8 no-js"> <![endif]--> <!--[if IE 9]> <html lang="en" class="ie9 no-js"> <![endif]--> <!--[if !IE]><!--> <html lang="en" class="no-js"> <!--<![endif]--> <!-- BEGIN HEAD --> <?php if ($userLoggedIn == 'true') : ?> <head> ** HEADER STUFF ** </head> <body> ** BODY STUFF ** </body> <?php endif;?> <?php if ($userLoggedIn == 'false') : ?> <head> </head> <body> hiya </body> <?php endif;?> </html>

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  • TechEd 2012: Windows Phone Exam Cram

    - by Tim Murphy
    Usually speakers take offence if you wear headphones in their talk.  For the exam cram session it was a requirement.  This was because it was a cubical walled room with an open top next to a study hall. While no-one was going to come out of this session ready to take a test, I am glad that I took the time to attend it.  There was a fair amount of material that you should know already if you have ever taken a certification test before.  This was packed around a mix of key concepts and some tidbits that marked where some of the pitfalls are for this particular test.  The biggest warning was that the test is based on Windows Phone 7.0 and not Mango meaning that you have to be careful that you don’t answer a question in the wrong context. I would suggest if you have a chance to take attend a free session grab it.  It is a good break from the other hard core talks and will get your mind into a mode for getting your next certification.  Good luck. del.icio.us Tags: TechEd,TechEd 2012,Windows Phone,Exam Cram,Certification

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  • 12.04 Install on a HP dv9000 screen problem

    - by Tim Kounadis
    Installed 12.04 on a HP dv9000 laptop. First tried to install with a Windows partition; then tried to install and move files from windows but not have a dual boot; then tried to install and have 12.04 have the system all to itself. The install was done off a burned CD... All went well. On reboot - it takes a while to come up the user ID and password challenge. After providing input screen renders and then turns black... First time Ubuntu user/installer - not technical :-)... Thanks for any help... I'll keepon digging in parallel.

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  • Advanced Charts Part I

    - by Tim Dexter
    Yeeeep! Another series looms ... this one could stretch out a bit and more options become available. Ever needed to generate something similar to these? Beyond what BIP can provide today but there are a few options; one from Oracle and R, now out in the wild and another out there from JFreeChart, open source and therefore almost free. Of course Google is ever present and they have been extending their chart support. I blogged the How for Google charts a while back here. Different ways to integrate but they can all help to close the charting gap for you.

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  • How to shrink Windows partition with unmovable files in dual boot installation

    - by Tim
    To install Ubuntu alongside Windows 7, I have to shrink Windows 7 partition C:. But due to some unmovable files, I cannot shrink as much as I plan by using Windows own shrinking tool. I guess many of you who have both OSes on the same hard drive must have similar experience. How to solve this problem? Any reference that can help is also appreciated! Thanks and regards! UPDATE: I have identified what unmovable file currently stop further shrinking: \ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Projects\SystemIndex\Indexer\CiFiles\00010015.wid::$DATA If I understand correctly, the file belongs to Windows Search. Can I set up somewhere in Windows system settings to temperately eliminate the file and similar ones (because there are many similar files under the same directory which I guess will also stand in the way of shrinking and unmovable by defrag)?

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