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• Finding it Hard to Deliver Right Customer Experience: Think BPM!

  - by Ajay Khanna

  Our relationship with our customers is not a just a single interaction and we should not treat it like one. A customer’s relationship with a vendor is like a journey which starts way before customer makes a purchase and lasts long after that. The journey may start with customer researching a product that may lead to the eventual purchase and may continue with support or service needs for the product. A typical customer journey can be represented as shown below: As you may notice, customers tend to use multiple channels to interact with a company throughout their journey.  They also expect that they should get consistent experience, no matter what interaction channel they may choose. Customers do not like to repeat the information they have already provided and expect companies to remember their preferences, and offer them relevant products and services. If the company fails to meet this expectation, customers not only will abandon the purchase and go to the competitor but may also influence others’ purchase decision. Gone are the days when word of mouth was the only medium, and the customer could influence “Six” others. This is the age of social media and customer’s good or bad experience, especially bad get highly amplified and may influence hundreds of others. Challenges that face B2C companies today include: Delivering consistent experience: The reason that delivering consistent experience is challenging is due to fragmented data, disjointed systems and siloed multichannel interactions. Customers tend to get different service quality if they use web vs. phone vs. store. They get different responses from different service agents or get inconsistent answers if they call sales vs. service group in the company. Such inconsistent experiences result in lower customer satisfaction or NPS (net promoter score) numbers. Increasing Revenue: To stay competitive companies frequently introduce new products and services. Delay in launching such offerings has a significant impact on revenue realization. In addition to new product revenue, there are multiple opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell that impact bottom line. If companies are not able to identify such opportunities, bring a product to market quickly, or not offer the right product to the right customer at the right time, significant loss of revenue may occur. Ensuring Compliance: Companies must be compliant to ever changing regulations, these could be about Know Your Customer (KYC), Export/Import regulations, or taxation policies. In addition to government agencies, companies also need to comply with the SLA that they have committed to their customers. Lapse in meeting any of these requirements may lead to serious fines, penalties and loss in business. Companies have to make sure that they are in compliance will all such regulations and SLA commitments, at any given time. With the advent of social networks and mobile technology, companies not only need to focus on process efficiency but also on customer engagement. Improving engagement means delivering the customer experience as the customer is expecting and interacting with the customer at right time using right channel. Customers expect to be able to contact you via any channel of their choice (web, email, chat, mobile, social media), purchase via any viable channel (web, phone, store, mobile). Customers expect companies to understand their particular needs and remember their preferences on repeated visits. To deliver such an integrated, consistent, and contextual experience, power of BPM in must. Your company may be organized in departments like Marketing, Sales, Service. You may hold prospect data in SFA, order information in ERP, customer issues in CRM. However, the experience delivered to the customer must not be constrained by your system legacy. BPM helps in designing the right experience for the right customer and integrates all the underlining channels, systems, applications to make sure right information will be delivered to the right knowledge worker or to the customer every single time.     Orchestrating information across all systems (MDM, CRM, ERP), departments (commerce, merchandising, marketing service) and channels (Email, phone, web, social)  is the key, and that’s what BPM delivers. In addition to orchestrating systems and channels for consistency, BPM also provides an ability for analysis and decision management. By using data from historical transactions, social media and from other systems, users can determine the customer preferences, customer value, and churn propensity. This information, in the context, is then used while making a decision at a process step. Working with real-time decision management system can also suggest right up-sell or cross-sell offers, discounts or next-best-action steps for a particular customer. Timely action on customer issues or request is also a key tenet of a good customer experience. BPM’s complex event processing capabilities help companies to take proactive actions before issues get escalated. BPM system can be designed to listen to a certain event patters then deduce from those customer situations (credit card stolen, baggage lost, change of address) and do a triage before situation goes out of control. If such a situation arises you can send alerts to right people or immediately invoke corrective actions. Last but not least one of BPM’s key values is to drive continuous improvement. Learning about customers past experiences, interactions and social conversations, provide valuable insight. Such insight can be used to improve products, customer facing processes, and customer experience. You may take these insights as an input to design better more efficient and customer friendly sales, contact center or self-service processes. If customer experience is important for your business, make sure you have incorporated BPM as a part of your strategy to design, orchestrate and improve your customer facing processes.

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• How do you handle objects that need custom behavior, and need to exist as an entity in the database?

  - by Scott Whitlock

  For a simple example, assume your application sends out notifications to users when various events happen. So in the database I might have the following tables: TABLE Event EventId uniqueidentifier EventName varchar TABLE User UserId uniqueidentifier Name varchar TABLE EventSubscription EventUserId EventId UserId The events themselves are generated by the program. So there are hard-coded points in the application where an event instance is generated, and it needs to notify all the subscribed users. So, the application itself doesn't edit the Event table, except during initial installation, and during an update where a new Event might be created. At some point, when an event is generated, the application needs to lookup the Event and get a list of Users. What's the best way to link the event in the source code to the event in the database? Option 1: Store the EventName in the program as a fixed constant, and look it up by name. Option 2: Store the EventId in the program as a static Guid, and look it up by ID. Extra Credit In other similar circumstances I may want to include custom behavior with the event type. That is, I'll want subclasses of my Event entity class with different behaviors, and when I lookup an event, I want it to return an instance of my subclass. For instance: class Event { public Guid Id { get; } public Guid EventName { get; } public ReadOnlyCollection<EventSubscription> EventSubscriptions { get; } public void NotifySubscribers() { foreach(var eventSubscription in EventSubscriptions) { eventSubscription.Notify(); } this.OnSubscribersNotified(); } public virtual void OnSubscribersNotified() {} } class WakingEvent : Event { private readonly IWaker waker; public WakingEvent(IWaker waker) { if(waker == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("waker"); this.waker = waker; } public override void OnSubscribersNotified() { this.waker.Wake(); base.OnSubscribersNotified(); } } So, that means I need to map WakingEvent to whatever key I'm using to look it up in the database. Let's say that's the EventId. Where do I store this relationship? Does it go in the event repository class? Should the WakingEvent know declare its own ID in a static member or method? ...and then, is this all backwards? If all events have a subclass, then instead of retrieving events by ID, should I be asking my repository for the WakingEvent like this: public T GetEvent<T>() where T : Event { ... // what goes here? ... } I can't be the first one to tackle this. What's the best practice?

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• Why enumerator structs are a really bad idea (redux)

  - by Simon Cooper

  My previous blog post went into some detail as to why calling MoveNext on a BCL generic collection enumerator didn't quite do what you thought it would. This post covers the Reset method. To recap, here's the simple wrapper around a linked list enumerator struct from my previous post (minus the readonly on the enumerator variable): sealed class EnumeratorWrapper : IEnumerator<int> { private LinkedList<int>.Enumerator m_Enumerator; public EnumeratorWrapper(LinkedList<int> linkedList) { m_Enumerator = linkedList.GetEnumerator(); } public int Current { get { return m_Enumerator.Current; } } object System.Collections.IEnumerator.Current { get { return Current; } } public bool MoveNext() { return m_Enumerator.MoveNext(); } public void Reset() { ((System.Collections.IEnumerator)m_Enumerator).Reset(); } public void Dispose() { m_Enumerator.Dispose(); } } If you have a look at the Reset method, you'll notice I'm having to cast to IEnumerator to be able to call Reset on m_Enumerator. This is because the implementation of LinkedList<int>.Enumerator.Reset, and indeed of all the other Reset methods on the BCL generic collection enumerators, is an explicit interface implementation. However, IEnumerator is a reference type. LinkedList<int>.Enumerator is a value type. That means, in order to call the reset method at all, the enumerator has to be boxed. And the IL confirms this: .method public hidebysig newslot virtual final instance void Reset() cil managed { .maxstack 8 L_0000: nop L_0001: ldarg.0 L_0002: ldfld valuetype [System]System.Collections.Generic.LinkedList`1/Enumerator<int32> EnumeratorWrapper::m_Enumerator L_0007: box [System]System.Collections.Generic.LinkedList`1/Enumerator<int32> L_000c: callvirt instance void [mscorlib]System.Collections.IEnumerator::Reset() L_0011: nop L_0012: ret } On line 0007, we're doing a box operation, which copies the enumerator to a reference object on the heap, then on line 000c calling Reset on this boxed object. So m_Enumerator in the wrapper class is not modified by the call the Reset. And this is the only way to call the Reset method on this variable (without using reflection). Therefore, the only way that the collection enumerator struct can be used safely is to store them as a boxed IEnumerator<T>, and not use them as value types at all.

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• Java: How to manage UDP client-server state

  - by user92947

  I am trying to write a Java application that works similar to MapReduce. There is a server and several workers. Workers may come and go as they please and the membership to the group has a soft-state. To become a part of the group, the worker must send a UDP datagram to the server, but to continue to be part of the group, the worker must send the UDP datagram to the server every 5 minutes. In order to accommodate temporary errors, a worker is allowed to miss as many as two consecutive periodic UDP datagrams. So, the server must keep track of the current set of workers as well as the last time each worker had sent a UDP datagram. I've implemented a class called WorkerListener that implements Runnable and listens to UDP datagrams on a particular UDP port. Now, to keep track of active workers, this class may maintain a HashSet (or HashMap). When a datagram is received, the server may query the HashSet to check if it is a new member. If so, it can add the new worker to the group by adding an entry into the HashSet. If not, it must reset a "timer" for the worker, noting that it has just heard from the corresponding worker. I'm using the word timer in a generic sense. It doesn't have to be a clock of sorts. Perhaps this could also be implemented using int or long variables. Also, the server must run a thread that continuously monitors the timers for the workers to see that a client that times out on two consecutive datagram intervals, it is removed from the HashSet. I don't want to do this in the WorkerListener thread because it would be blocking on the UDP datagram receive() function. If I create a separate thread to monitor the worker HashSet, it would need to be a different class, perhaps WorkerRegistrar. I must share the HashSet with that thread. Mutual exclusion must also be implemented, then. My question is, what is the best way to do this? Pointers to some sample implementation would be great. I want to use the barebones JDK implementation, and not some fancy state maintenance API that takes care of everything, because I want this to be a useful demonstration for a class that I am teaching. Thanks

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• Problems building clamcour

  - by user10778

  Hello People, when i try to install clamcour from terminal, it gives me this error, somebody can help me? calmcourdir# ./configure checking for libraries containing socket functions... -lc checking for socket... yes checking for bind... yes checking for listen... yes checking for accept... yes checking for shutdown... yes checking for socklen_t... yes checking for struct sockaddr_un.sun_len... no System log functions checking syslog.h usability... yes checking syslog.h presence... yes checking for syslog.h... yes checking for openlog... yes checking for syslog... yes checking for closelog... yes Time functions checking whether time.h and sys/time.h may both be included... yes checking whether struct tm is in sys/time.h or time.h... time.h checking for localtime_r... yes checking for strftime... yes checking for unistd.h... (cached) yes checking limits.h usability... yes checking limits.h presence... yes checking for limits.h... yes checking for sysconf... yes BZip2 support checking bzlib.h usability... no checking bzlib.h presence... no checking for bzlib.h... no checking for BZ2_bzWriteOpen in -lbz2... no GZip support checking zlib.h usability... no checking zlib.h presence... no checking for zlib.h... no checking for gzopen in -lz... no LibClamAV support checking for /usr/bin/clamav-config... no checking for /usr/local/bin/courier-config... no checking for /usr/clamav/bin/clamav-config... no checking for /usr/local/clamav/bin/clamav-config... no ./configure: line 25234: : command not found configure: error: Cannot find clamav-config

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• Achieving decoupling in Model classes

  - by Guven

  I am trying to test-drive (or at least write unit tests) my Model classes but I noticed that my classes end up being too coupled. Since I can't break this coupling, writing unit tests is becoming harder and harder. To be more specific: Model Classes: These are the classes that hold the data in my application. They resemble pretty much the POJO (plain old Java objects), but they also have some methods. The application is not too big so I have around 15 model classes. Coupling: Just to give an example, think of a simple case of Order Header - Order Item. The header knows the item and the item knows the header (needs some information from the header for performing certain operations). Then, let's say there is the relationship between Order Item - Item Report. The item report needs the item as well. At this point, imagine writing tests for Item Report; you need have a Order Header to carry out the tests. This is a simple case with 3 classes; things get more complicated with more classes. I can come up with decoupled classes when I design algorithms, persistence layers, UI interactions, etc... but with model classes, I can't think of a way to separate them. They currently sit as one big chunk of classes that depend on each other. Here are some workarounds that I can think of: Data Generators: I have a package that generates sample data for my model classes. For example, the OrderHeaderGenerator class creates OrderHeaders with some basic data in it. I use the OrderHeaderGenerator from my ItemReport unit-tests so that I get an instance to OrderHeader class. The problem is these generators get complicated pretty fast and then I also need to test these generators; defeating the purpose a little bit. Interfaces instead of dependencies: I can come up with interfaces to get rid of the hard dependencies. For example, the OrderItem class would depend on the IOrderHeader interface. So, in my unit tests, I can easily mock the behaviour of an OrderHeader with a FakeOrderHeader class that implements the IOrderHeader interface. The problem with this approach is the complexity that the Model classes would end up having. Would you have other ideas on how to break this coupling in the model classes? Or, how to make it easier to unit-test the model classes?

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• Alternatives to multiple inheritance for my architecture (NPCs in a Realtime Strategy game)?

  - by Brettetete

  Coding isn't that hard actually. The hard part is to write code that makes sense, is readable and understandable. So I want to get a better developer and create some solid architecture. So I want to do create an architecture for NPCs in a video-game. It is a Realtime Strategy game like Starcraft, Age of Empires, Command & Conquers, etc etc.. So I'll have different kinds of NPCs. A NPC can have one to many abilities (methods) of these: Build(), Farm() and Attack(). Examples: Worker can Build() and Farm() Warrior can Attack() Citizen can Build(), Farm() and Attack() Fisherman can Farm() and Attack() I hope everything is clear so far. So now I do have my NPC Types and their abilities. But lets come to the technical / programmatical aspect. What would be a good programmatic architecture for my different kinds of NPCs? Okay I could have a base class. Actually I think this is a good way to stick with the DRY principle. So I can have methods like WalkTo(x,y) in my base class since every NPC will be able to move. But now lets come to the real problem. Where do I implement my abilities? (remember: Build(), Farm() and Attack()) Since the abilities will consists of the same logic it would be annoying / break DRY principle to implement them for each NPC (Worker,Warrior, ..). Okay I could implement the abilities within the base class. This would require some kind of logic that verifies if a NPC can use ability X. IsBuilder, CanBuild, .. I think it is clear what I want to express. But I don't feel very well with this idea. This sounds like a bloated base class with too much functionality. I do use C# as programming language. So multiple inheritance isn't an opinion here. Means: Having extra base classes like Fisherman : Farmer, Attacker won't work.

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• Oracle University Aggiornamento sull'enablement dei partner (Week 13)

  - by swalker

  Get ready for Fusion Applications Implementations Oracle University has scheduled the first Fusion Applications Implementation courses in Italy. If you can’t find an In Class event for the course you need, why don’t you try a Live Virtual Class? Check out the Location: Online. All courses can be booked via the websites. For more information, assistance in booking and scheduling requests contact your local Oracle University Service Desk. Rimanete in contatto con Oracle University: LinkedIn OracleMix Twitter Facebook Google+

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• What is a good resource for learning how the .Net Framework works? [on hold]

  - by Till Death Developer

  I've been developing web apps, for a while now so i know how to get the job done, what i don't know is how every thing really works, i know some but the rest i can't get a grasp on like how abstract works, what happens when i instantiate an object from a class that inherits from an abstract class?, where things get stored Heap vs Stack?, in other words the Interview questions that i suck at, so any advice would be great, books, videos, online courses, whatever you can provide would really help me.

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• WebLogic Server internal server error [migrated]

  - by Abhinav Pandey

  When I deployed a project in Apache Tomcat 6.0 it is working fine. When I deployed a same project in WebLogic Server 10.3 it's showing an error: Error 500--Internal Server Error javax.servlet.ServletException: [HTTP:101249][weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext@ae43b8 - appName: '_appsdir_ab_dir', name: 'ab', context-path: '/ab', spec-version: 'null']: Servlet class FirstServlet for servlet FirstServlet could not be loaded because the requested class was not found in the classpath . java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: FirstServlet : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0.

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• My schoolmates are playing too much and talk loudly, what should I do ? report them ? [closed]

  - by jokoon

  I'm a in a private game programming school class (there are also 3D/art classes in the school), and at least half or two third of the 12 people in my class play at various games (Age of Empires, web games, online card games, etc). They are talking quite loudly on top of that, and I'm getting hard times trying to concentrate: it feels like I'm in a cybercafe full of teenagers. I don't know if I have Hyperacusis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperacusis),

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• Handy Generic JQuery Functions

  - by Steve Wilkes

  I was a bit of a late-comer to the JQuery party, but now I've been using it for a while it's given me a host of options for adding extra flair to the client side of my applications. Here's a few generic JQuery functions I've written which can be used to add some neat little features to a page. Just call any of them from a document ready function. Apply JQuery Themeroller Styles to all Page Buttons   The JQuery Themeroller is a great tool for creating a theme for a site based on colours and styles for particular page elements. The JQuery.UI library then provides a set of functions which allow you to apply styles to page elements. This function applies a JQuery Themeroller style to all the buttons on a page - as well as any elements which have a button class applied to them - and then makes the mouse pointer turn into a cursor when you mouse over them: function addCursorPointerToButtons() {     $("button, input[type='submit'], input[type='button'], .button") .button().css("cursor", "pointer"); } Automatically Remove the Default Value from a Select Box   Required drop-down select boxes often have a default option which reads 'Please select...' (or something like that), but once someone has selected a value, there's no need to retain that. This function removes the default option from any select boxes on the page which have a data-val-remove-default attribute once one of the non-default options has been chosen: function removeDefaultSelectOptionOnSelect() {     $("select[data-val-remove-default='']").change(function () {         var sel = $(this);         if (sel.val() != "") { sel.children("option[value='']:first").remove(); }     }); } Automatically add a Required Label and Stars to a Form   It's pretty standard to have a little * next to required form field elements. This function adds the text * Required to the top of the first form on the page, and adds *s to any element within the form with the class editor-label and a data-val-required attribute: function addRequiredFieldLabels() {     var elements = $(".editor-label[data-val-required='']");     if (!elements.length) { return; }     var requiredString = "<div class='editor-required-key'>* Required</div>";     var prependString = "<span class='editor-required-label'> * </span>"; var firstFormOnThePage = $("form:first");     if (!firstFormOnThePage.children('div.editor-required-key').length) {         firstFormOnThePage.prepend(requiredString);     }     elements.each(function (index, value) { var formElement = $(this);         if (!formElement.children('span.editor-required-label').length) {             formElement.prepend(prependString);         }     }); } I hope those come in handy :)

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• Different bounding volumes for culling and collision detection

  - by Serthy

  Should an object in a 3D-engine use different bounding volumes for collision-detection (broad-phase) and culling? Basically class renderBounds and class physBounds versus class boundingVolume? Each of this classes then could either contain the same type of volumes (AABB's, kDOP's, sphere's etc.) or a special fitting one for the particular object. (note: without considering of using an external physics engine)

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• Fetching database query through function

  - by Shubham Maurya

  I am sick of connecting database in each script i need a more OOP approach to fetching database results. ex like wordpress use wpdb class to fetch results. This what wordpress does to get data <?php $posts = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID, post_title FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type='post' ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0,4") ?> How can i create the same feature too using any class or function and use it in my script Thank you

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• Using elapsed time for SlowMo in XNA

  - by Dave Voyles

  I'm trying to create a slow-mo effect in my pong game so that when a player is a button the paddles and ball will suddenly move at a far slower speed. I believe my understanding of the concepts of adjusting the timing in XNA are done, but I'm not sure of how to incorporate it into my design exactly. The updates for my bats (paddles) are done in my Bat.cs class: /// Controls the bat moving up the screen /// </summary> public void MoveUp() { SetPosition(Position + new Vector2(0, -moveSpeed)); } /// <summary> /// Controls the bat moving down the screen /// </summary> public void MoveDown() { SetPosition(Position + new Vector2(0, moveSpeed)); } /// <summary> /// Updates the position of the AI bat, in order to track the ball /// </summary> /// <param name="ball"></param> public virtual void UpdatePosition(Ball ball) { size.X = (int)Position.X; size.Y = (int)Position.Y; } While the rest of my game updates are done in my GameplayScreen.cs class (I'm using the XNA game state management sample) Class GameplayScreen { ........... bool slow; .......... public override void Update(GameTime gameTime, bool otherScreenHasFocus, bool coveredByOtherScreen) base.Update(gameTime, otherScreenHasFocus, false); if (IsActive) { // SlowMo Stuff Elapsed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; if (Slowmo) Elapsed *= .8f; MoveTimer += Elapsed; double elapsedTime = gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds; if (Keyboard.GetState().IsKeyDown(Keys.Up)) slow = true; else if (Keyboard.GetState().IsKeyDown(Keys.Down)) slow = false; if (slow == true) elapsedTime *= .1f; // Updating bat position leftBat.UpdatePosition(ball); rightBat.UpdatePosition(ball); // Updating the ball position ball.UpdatePosition(); and finally my fixed time step is declared in the constructor of my Game1.cs Class: /// <summary> /// The main game constructor. /// </summary> public Game1() { IsFixedTimeStep = slow = false; } So my question is: Where do I place the MoveTimer or elapsedTime, so that my bat will slow down accordingly?

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• Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 4)

  - by hinkmond

  And now here's the Java code that you'll need to read your ghost sensor on your Raspberry Pi The general idea is that you are using Java code to access the GPIO pin on your Raspberry Pi where the ghost sensor (JFET trasistor) detects minute changes in the electromagnetic field near the Raspberry Pi and will change the GPIO pin to high (+3 volts) when something is detected, otherwise there is no value (ground). Here's that Java code: try { /*** Init GPIO port(s) for input ***/ // Open file handles to GPIO port unexport and export controls FileWriter unexportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/unexport"); FileWriter exportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/export"); for (String gpioChannel : GpioChannels) { System.out.println(gpioChannel); // Reset the port File exportFileCheck = new File("/sys/class/gpio/gpio"+gpioChannel); if (exportFileCheck.exists()) { unexportFile.write(gpioChannel); unexportFile.flush(); } // Set the port for use exportFile.write(gpioChannel); exportFile.flush(); // Open file handle to input/output direction control of port FileWriter directionFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/gpio" + gpioChannel + "/direction"); // Set port for input directionFile.write(GPIO_IN); } /*** Read data from each GPIO port ***/ RandomAccessFile[] raf = new RandomAccessFile[GpioChannels.length]; int sleepPeriod = 10; final int MAXBUF = 256; byte[] inBytes = new byte[MAXBUF]; String inLine; int zeroCounter = 0; // Get current timestamp with Calendar() Calendar cal; DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss.SSS"); String dateStr; // Open RandomAccessFile handle to each GPIO port for (int channum=0; channum And, then we just load up our Java SE Embedded app, place each Raspberry Pi with a ghost sensor attached in strategic locations around our Santa Clara office (which apparently is very haunted by ghosts from the Agnews Insane Asylum 1906 earthquake), and watch our analytics for any ghosts. Easy peazy. See the previous posts for the full series on the steps to this cool demo: Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 1) Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 2) Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 3) Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 4) Hinkmond

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• Social Engagement: One Size Doesn't Fit Anyone

  - by Mike Stiles

  The key to achieving meaningful social engagement is to know who you’re talking to, know what they like, and consistently deliver that kind of material to them. Every magazine for women knows this. When you read the article titles promoted on their covers, there’s no mistaking for whom that magazine is intended. And yet, confusion still reigns at many brands as to exactly whom they want to talk to, what those people want to hear, and what kind of content they should be creating for them. In most instances, the root problem is brands want to be all things to all people. Their target audience…the world! Good luck with that. It’s 2012, the age of aggregation and custom content delivery. To cope with the modern day barrage of information, people have constructed technological filters so that content they regard as being “for them” is mostly what gets through. Even if your brand is for men and women, young and old, you may want to consider social properties that divide men from women, and young from old. Yes, a man might find something in a women’s magazine that interests him. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to subscribe to it, or buy even one issue. In fact he’ll probably never see the article he’d otherwise be interested in, because in his mind, “This isn’t for me.” It wasn’t packaged for him. News Flash: men and women are different. So it’s a tall order to craft your Facebook Page or Twitter handle to simultaneously exude the motivators for both. The Harris Interactive study “2012 Connecting and Communicating Online: State of Social Media” sheds light on the differing social behaviors and drivers. -65% of women (vs. 59% of men) stay glued to social because they don’t want to miss anything. -25% of women check social when they wake up, before they check email. Only 18% of men check social before e-mail. -95% of women surveyed belong to Facebook vs. 86% of men. -67% of women log in to Facebook once a day or more vs. 54% of men. -Conventional wisdom is Pinterest is mostly a woman-thing, right? That may be true for viewing, but not true for sharing. Men are actually more likely to share on Pinterest than women, 23% to 10%. -The sharing divide extends to YouTube. 68% of women use it mainly for consumption, as opposed to 52% of men. -Women are as likely to have a Twitter account as men, but they’re much less likely to check it often. 54% of women check it once a week compared to 2/3 of men. Obviously, there are some takeaways from this depending on your target. Women don’t want to miss out on anything, so serialized content might be a good idea, right? Promotional posts that lead to a big payoff could keep them hooked. Posts for women might be better served first thing in the morning. If sharing is your goal, maybe male-targeted content is more likely to get those desired shares. And maybe Twitter is a better place to aim your male-targeted content than Facebook. Some grocery stores started experimenting with male-only aisles. The results have been impressive. Why? Because while it’s true men were finding those same items in the store just fine before, now something has been created just for them. They have a place in the store where they belong. Each brand’s strategy and targets are going to differ. The point is…know who you’re talking to, know how they behave, know what they like, and deliver content using any number of social relationship management targeting tools that meets their expectations. If, however, you’re committed to a one-size-fits-all, “our content is for everybody” strategy (or even worse, a “this is what we want to put out and we expect everybody to love it” strategy), your content will miss the mark for more often than it hits. @mikestilesPhoto via stock.schng

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• Simple thruster like behaviour when rotating sprite

  - by ensamgud

  I'm prototyping some 2D game concepts with XNA and have added some basic keyboard inputs to control a triangle sprite. When I press key up the sprite accelerates in it's current facing direction, when I release the key it brakes down. For rotation, when I press left/right keys I rotate the sprite. Currently the sprite immedately changes direction when I rotate it. What I want is for it to keep moving in the same direction when I rotate, until I hit key up, adding thrust in whatever direction the sprite is pointing at. This would simulate thrusters on a classic space shooter like Asteroids. I'm adding an image to describe the behaviour I'm after and some code samples of how I'm doing things at the moment. This is my player struct, holding information of the sprite. public struct PlayerData { public Vector2 Position; // where to draw the sprite public Vector2 Direction; // travel direction of sprite public float Angle; // rotation of sprite public float Velocity; public float Acceleration; public float Decelleration; public float RotationAcceleration; public float RotationDecceleration; public float TopSpeed; public float Scale; } This is how I'm currently handling thrusting / braking (when pressing/releasing key up) (simplified, removed some bounds checking etc): player.Velocity += player.Acceleration * 0.1f; player.Velocity -= player.Acceleration * 0.1f; And when I rotate the sprite left and right: player.Angle -= player.RotationAcceleration * 0.1f; player.Angle += player.RotationAcceleration * 0.1f; This runs in the update loop, keeps the direction updated and updates the position: Vector2 up = new Vector2(0f, -1f); Matrix rotMatrix = Matrix.CreateRotationZ(player.Angle); player.Direction = Vector2.Transform(up, rotMatrix); player.Direction *= player.Velocity; player.Position += player.Direction; I am following along various beginner tutorials and haven't found any describing this, but I have tried some on my own without success. Do I need to change my velocity and acceleration fields to Vectors instead of floats to accomplish this type of movement? I realise my Angle and the Direction vector is currently tied together and I need to disconnect these somehow to be able to rotate freely without changing the direction of the movement, but I can't quite figure out how to do this while keeping the acceleration/decceleration functional. Would appreciate an explanation rather than pure code samples. Thanks,

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• I&rsquo;m offended by your antisemantic views

  - by Brian Schroer

  CSS class names should usually be “semantic” (describing the meaning of the styled areas, e.g. “article-title”, “author-info”, “errror-message”, not “structural” (e.g. “left-side-navbar”, “small-title”). …and they definitely shouldn’t explicitly describe the styling. I’ve seen a class names like “bold-red-12pt”. If you’re going to do that, you might as well just use inline font tags. This article explains it much better than I can…

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• Using NBuilder to mock up a data driven UI - Part 2

  In this article we will continue our discussion by filling out the implementation in our service class with some NBuilder code. Once we have the working service class in place we can then create a working UI (in the ASP.NET MVC project we created in the last article).

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• Lambda&rsquo;s for .NET made easy&hellip;

  - by mbcrump

  The purpose of my blog is to explain things for a beginner to intermediate c# programmer. I’ve seen several blog post that use lambda expressions always assuming the audience is familiar with them. The purpose of this post is to make them simple and easily understood. Let’s begin with a definition. A lambda expression is an anonymous function that can contain expressions and statements, and can be used to create delegates or expression tree types. So anonymous function… delegates or expression tree types? I don’t get it??? Confused yet?   Lets break this into a few definitions and jump right into the code. anonymous function – is an "inline" statement or expression that can be used wherever a delegate type is expected. delegate - is a type that references a method. Once a delegate is assigned a method, it behaves exactly like that method. The delegate method can be used like any other method, with parameters and a return value. Expression trees - represent code in a tree-like data structure, where each node is an expression, for example, a method call or a binary operation such as x < y.   Don’t worry if this still sounds confusing, lets jump right into the code with a simple 3 line program. We are going to use a Function Delegate (all you need to remember is that this delegate returns a value.) Lambda expressions are used most commonly with the Func and Action delegates, so you will see an example of both of these. Lambda Expression 3 lines. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             Func<int, int> myfunc = x => x *x;             Console.WriteLine(myfunc(6).ToString());             Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Is equivalent to Old way of doing it. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {               Console.WriteLine(myFunc(6).ToString());             Console.ReadLine();         }            static int myFunc(int x)          {              return x * x;            }       } } In the example, there is a single parameter, x, and the expression is x*x. I’m going to stop here to make sure you are still with me. A lambda expression is an unnamed method written in place of a delegate instance. In other words, the compiler converts the lambda expression to either a : A delegate instance An expression tree All lambda have the following form: (parameters) => expression or statement block Now look back to the ones we have created. It should start to sink in. Don’t get stuck on the => form, use it as an identifier of a lambda. A Lamba expression can also be written in the following form: Lambda Expression. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             Func<int, int> myFunc = x =>             {                 return x * x;             };               Console.WriteLine(myFunc(6).ToString());             Console.ReadLine();         }       } } This form may be easier to read but consumes more space. Lets try an Action delegate – this delegate does not return a value. Action Delegate example. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             Action<string> myAction = (string x) => { Console.WriteLine(x); };             myAction("michael has made this so easy");                                   Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Lambdas can also capture outer variables (such as the example below) A lambda expression can reference the local variables and parameters of the method in which it’s defined. Outer variables referenced by a lambda expression are called captured variables. Capturing Outer Variables using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             string mike = "Michael";             Action<string> myAction = (string x) => {                 Console.WriteLine("{0}{1}", mike, x);          };             myAction(" has made this so easy");                                   Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Lamba’s can also with a strongly typed list to loop through a collection.   Used w a strongly typed list. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             List<string> list = new List<string>() { "1", "2", "3", "4" };             list.ForEach(s => Console.WriteLine(s));             Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Outputs: 1 2 3 4 I think this will get you started with Lambda’s, as always consult the MSDN documentation for more information. Still confused? Hopefully you are not.

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• Do any OO languages support a mechanism to guarantee an overriden method will call the base?

  - by Aaron Anodide

  I think this might be a useful language feature and was wondering if any languages already support it. The idea is if you have: class C virtual F statement1 statement2 and class D inherits C override F statement1 statement2 C.F() There would be a keyword applied to C.F() such that removing the last line of code above would cause a compiler error because it's saying "This method can be overridden but the implementation here needs to run no matter what".

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• Mutable Records in F#

  - by MarkPearl

  I’m loving my expert F# book – today I thought I would give a post on using mutable records as covered in Chapter 4 of Expert F#. So as they explain the simplest mutable data structures in F# are mutable records. The whole concept of things by default being immutable is a new one for me from my C# background. Anyhow… lets look at some C# code first. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; namespace MutableRecords { public class DiscreteEventCounter { public int Total { get; set; } public int Positive { get; set; } public string Name { get; private set; } public DiscreteEventCounter(string name) { Name = name; } } class Program { private static void recordEvent(DiscreteEventCounter s, bool isPositive) { s.Total += 1; if (isPositive) s.Positive += 1; } private static void reportStatus (DiscreteEventCounter s) { Console.WriteLine("We have {0} {1} out of {2}", s.Positive, s.Name, s.Total); } static void Main(string[] args) { var longCounter = new DiscreteEventCounter("My Discrete Counter"); recordEvent(longCounter, true); recordEvent(longCounter, true); reportStatus(longCounter); Console.ReadLine(); } } } Quite simple, we have a class that has a few values. We instantiate an instance of the class and perform increments etc on the instance. Now lets look at an equivalent F# sample. namespace EncapsulationNS module Module1 = open System type DiscreteEventCounter = { mutable Total : int mutable Positive : int Name : string } let recordEvent (s: DiscreteEventCounter) isPositive = s.Total <- s.Total+1 if isPositive then s.Positive <- s.Positive+1 let reportStatus (s: DiscreteEventCounter) = printfn "We have %d %s out of %d" s.Positive s.Name s.Total let newCounter nm = { Total = 0; Positive = 0; Name = nm } // // Using it... // let longCounter = newCounter "My Discrete Counter" recordEvent longCounter (true) recordEvent longCounter (true) reportStatus longCounter System.Console.ReadLine() Notice in the type declaration of the DiscreteEventCounter we had to explicitly declare that the total and positive value holders were mutable. And that’s it – a very simple example of mutable types.

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• Dynamic Document Template

  - by ell

  I would like to create a "C++ Class" document template, I know you can make static ones by putting them into ~/Templates, but I would like to be able for the content to change according to the file name on creation, for example, using a template like such (pseudocode): #ifndef $(filename)_HPP_INCLUDED #define $(filename)_HPP_INCLUDED class $(filename) { public: } #endif $(filename)_HPP_INCLUDED Is this possible? If so, how can I do it? Thanks in advance, ell.

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• Do I need "cube subclasses" to represent the blocks in a Minecraft-like world?

  - by stighy

  I would like to try to develop a very simple game like Minecraft for my own education. My main problem at the moment is figuring out how to model classes that represent the world, which will be made of blocks of various types (such as dirt, stone and sand). I am thinking of creating the following class structure: Cube (with proprerties like color, strength, flammable, gravity) with subclasses: Dirt Stone Sand et cetera My question is, do I need the Cube subclasses or a single class Cube sufficient?

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