Search Results

Search found 19373 results on 775 pages for '4thpage media and services'.

Page 7/775 | < Previous Page | 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14  | Next Page >

  • Services or Shared Libraries?

    - by Royal
    I work in an environment where we have several different web applications, where each of them have different features but still need to do similar things: authentication, read from common data sources, store common data, etc. Is it better to build the shared functionality into a set of services, to be called by the web apps, or is it better to make a shared library, which the webapps include? The services or libraries would need to access various databases, and it seems like keeping that access in a single place (service) is a good idea. It would also reduce the number of database connections needed. A service would also keep the logic in a single place, but then it could be argued that a shared library can do the same thing. Are there other benefits to be gained from using services over shared libraries?

    Read the article

  • How to view the filter graph used by Windows Media Player

    - by Ian Boyd
    i have a video that i cannot render in Graph Edit: GSpot cannot render: and AVISynth's DirectShowSource cannot open: And yet Windows Media Player (12) can play it fine. How can i figure out the filters that Windows Media Player is using, when DirectShow itself cannot render the file? i tried running GraphEdit as an adminstrator and connecting to a remote graph, but Windows Media Player does not register its graph in the running objects table: Related question: How can i access a file in AviSynth that Windows Media Player can play, but DirectShow cannot?

    Read the article

  • How to make Windows Media Player play only audio of video files - Windows 7

    - by blasteralfred
    Usually, for any video file, Windows Media Player plays video along with audio, unless user press mute, so that only video comes out. In such a way reverse, is it possible to make media player play videos in which audio may come out, not video, and media player may show a blank screen or default animation instead of video? I use Windows 7. Is it possible to play videos without displaying video in Windows Media Player 12

    Read the article

  • Windows Azure: General Availability of Web Sites + Mobile Services, New AutoScale + Alerts Support, No Credit Card Needed for MSDN

    - by ScottGu
    This morning we released a major set of updates to Windows Azure.  These updates included: Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites with SLA Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services with SLA Auto-Scale: New automatic scaling support for Web Sites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines Alerts/Notifications: New email alerting support for all Compute Services (Web Sites, Mobile Services, Cloud Services, and Virtual Machines) MSDN: No more credit card requirement for sign-up All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Web Sites. The Windows Azure Web Sites service is perfect for hosting a web presence, building customer engagement solutions, and delivering business web apps.  Today’s General Availability release means we are taking off the “preview” tag from the Free and Standard (formerly called reserved) tiers of Windows Azure Web Sites.  This means we are providing: A 99.9% monthly SLA (Service Level Agreement) for the Standard tier Microsoft Support available on a 24x7 basis (with plans that range from developer plans to enterprise Premier support) The Free tier runs in a shared compute environment and supports up to 10 web sites. While the Free tier does not come with an SLA, it works great for rapid development and testing and enables you to quickly spike out ideas at no cost. The Standard tier, which was called “Reserved” during the preview, runs using dedicated per-customer VM instances for great performance, isolation and scalability, and enables you to host up to 500 different Web sites within them.  You can easily scale your Standard instances on-demand using the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can adjust VM instance sizes from a Small instance size (1 core, 1.75GB of RAM), up to a Medium instance size (2 core, 3.5GB of RAM), or Large instance (4 cores and 7 GB RAM).  You can choose to run between 1 and 10 Standard instances, enabling you to easily scale up your web backend to 40 cores of CPU and 70GB of RAM: Today’s release also includes general availability support for custom domain SSL certificate bindings for web sites running using the Standard tier. Customers will be able to utilize certificates they purchase for their custom domains and use either SNI or IP based SSL encryption. SNI encryption is available for all modern browsers and does not require an IP address.  SSL certificates can be used for individual sites or wild-card mapped across multiple sites (we charge extra for the use of a SSL cert – but the fee is per-cert and not per site which means you pay once for it regardless of how many sites you use it with).  Today’s release also includes the following new features: Auto-Scale support Today’s Windows Azure release adds preview support for Auto-Scaling web sites.  This enables you to setup automatic scale rules based on the activity of your instances – allowing you to automatically scale down (and save money) when they are below a CPU threshold you define, and automatically scale up quickly when traffic increases.  See below for more details. 64-bit and 32-bit mode support You can now choose to run your standard tier instances in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode (previously they only ran in 32-bit mode).  This enables you to address even more memory within individual web applications. Memory dumps Memory dumps can be very useful for diagnosing issues and debugging apps. Using a REST API, you can now get a memory dump of your sites, which you can then use for investigating issues in Visual Studio Debugger, WinDbg, and other tools. Scaling Sites Independently Prior to today’s release, all sites scaled up/down together whenever you scaled any site in a sub-region. So you may have had to keep your proof-of-concept or testing sites in a separate sub-region if you wanted to keep them in the Free tier. This will no longer be necessary.  Windows Azure Web Sites can now mix different tier levels in the same geographic sub-region. This allows you, for example, to selectively move some of your sites in the West US sub-region up to Standard tier when they require the features, scalability, and SLA of the Standard tier. Full pricing details on Windows Azure Web Sites can be found here.  Note that the “Shared Tier” of Windows Azure Web Sites remains in preview mode (and continues to have discounted preview pricing).  Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Mobile Services.  Mobile Services is perfect for building scalable cloud back-ends for Windows 8.x, Windows Phone, Apple iOS, Android, and HTML/JavaScript applications.  Customers We’ve seen tremendous adoption of Windows Azure Mobile Services since we first previewed it last September, and more than 20,000 customers are now running mobile back-ends in production using it.  These customers range from startups like Yatterbox, to university students using Mobile Services to complete apps like Sly Fox in their spare time, to media giants like Verdens Gang finding new ways to deliver content, and telcos like TalkTalk Business delivering the up-to-the-minute information their customers require.  In today’s Build keynote, we demonstrated how TalkTalk Business is using Windows Azure Mobile Services to deliver service, outage and billing information to its customers, wherever they might be. Partners When we unveiled the source control and Custom API features I blogged about two weeks ago, we enabled a range of new scenarios, one of which is a more flexible way to work with third party services.  The following blogs, samples and tutorials from our partners cover great ways you can extend Mobile Services to help you build rich modern apps: New Relic allows developers to monitor and manage the end-to-end performance of iOS and Android applications connected to Mobile Services. SendGrid eliminates the complexity of sending email from Mobile Services, saving time and money, while providing reliable delivery to the inbox. Twilio provides a telephony infrastructure web service in the cloud that you can use with Mobile Services to integrate phone calls, text messages and IP voice communications into your mobile apps. Xamarin provides a Mobile Services add on to make it easy building cross-platform connected mobile aps. Pusher allows quickly and securely add scalable real-time messaging functionality to Mobile Services-based web and mobile apps. Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 This week during //build/ keynote, we demonstrated how Visual Studio 2013, Mobile Services and Windows 8.1 make building connected apps easier than ever. Developers building Windows 8 applications in Visual Studio can now connect them to Windows Azure Mobile Services by simply right clicking then choosing Add Connected Service. You can either create a new Mobile Service or choose existing Mobile Service in the Add Connected Service dialog. Once completed, Visual Studio adds a reference to Mobile Services SDK to your project and generates a Mobile Services client initialization snippet automatically. Add Push Notifications Push Notifications and Live Tiles are a key to building engaging experiences. Visual Studio 2013 and Mobile Services make it super easy to add push notifications to your Windows 8.1 app, by clicking Add a Push Notification item: The Add Push Notification wizard will then guide you through the registration with the Windows Store as well as connecting your app to a new or existing mobile service. Upon completion of the wizard, Visual Studio will configure your mobile service with the WNS credentials, as well as add sample logic to your client project and your mobile service that demonstrates how to send push notifications to your app. Server Explorer Integration In Visual Studio 2013 you can also now view your Mobile Services in the the Server Explorer. You can add tables, edit, and save server side scripts without ever leaving Visual Studio, as shown on the image below: Pricing With today’s general availability release we are announcing that we will be offering Mobile Services in three tiers – Free, Standard, and Premium.  Each tier is metered using a simple pricing model based on the # of API calls (bandwidth is included at no extra charge), and the Standard and Premium tiers are backed by 99.9% monthly SLAs.  You can elastically scale up or down the number of instances you have of each tier to increase the # of API requests your service can support – allowing you to efficiently scale as your business grows. The following table summarizes the new pricing model (full pricing details here):   You can find the full details of the new pricing model here. Build Conference Talks The //BUILD/ conference will be packed with sessions covering every aspect of developing connected applications with Mobile Services. The best part is that, even if you can’t be with us in San Francisco, every session is being streamed live. Be sure not to miss these talks: Mobile Services – Soup to Nuts — Josh Twist Building Cross-Platform Apps with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner Connected Windows Phone Apps made Easy with Mobile Services — Yavor Georgiev Build Connected Windows 8.1 Apps with Mobile Services — Nick Harris Who’s that user? Identity in Mobile Apps — Dinesh Kulkarni Building REST Services with JavaScript — Nathan Totten Going Live and Beyond with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Kirill Gavrylyuk , Paul Batum Protips for Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner AutoScale: Dynamically scale up/down your app based on real-world usage One of the key benefits of Windows Azure is that you can dynamically scale your application in response to changing demand. In the past, though, you have had to either manually change the scale of your application, or use additional tooling (such as WASABi or MetricsHub) to automatically scale your application. Today, we’re announcing that AutoScale will be built-into Windows Azure directly.  With today’s release it is now enabled for Cloud Services, Virtual Machines and Web Sites (Mobile Services support will come soon). Auto-scale enables you to configure Windows Azure to automatically scale your application dynamically on your behalf (without any manual intervention) so you can achieve the ideal performance and cost balance. Once configured it will regularly adjust the number of instances running in response to the load in your application. Currently, we support two different load metrics: CPU percentage Storage queue depth (Cloud Services and Virtual Machines only) We’ll enable automatic scaling on even more scale metrics in future updates. When to use Auto-Scale The following are good criteria for services/apps that will benefit from the use of auto-scale: The service/app can scale horizontally (e.g. it can be duplicated to multiple instances) The service/app load changes over time If your app meets these criteria, then you should look to leverage auto-scale. How to Enable Auto-Scale To enable auto-scale, simply navigate to the Scale tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal for the app/service you wish to enable.  Within the scale tab turn the Auto-Scale setting on to either CPU or Queue (for Cloud Services and VMs) to enable Auto-Scale.  Then change the instance count and target CPU settings to configure the Auto-Scale ranges you want to maintain. The image below demonstrates how to enable Auto-Scale on a Windows Azure Web-Site.  I’ve configured the web-site so that it will run using between 1 and 5 VM instances.  The exact # used will depend on the aggregate CPU of the VMs using the 40-70% range I’ve configured below.  If the aggregate CPU goes above 70%, then Windows Azure will automatically add new VMs to the pool (up to the maximum of 5 instances I’ve configured it to use).  If the aggregate CPU drops below 40% then Windows Azure will automatically start shutting down VMs to save me money: Once you’ve turned auto-scale on, you can return to the Scale tab at any point and select Off to manually set the number of instances. Using the Auto-Scale Preview With today’s update you can now, in just a few minutes, have Windows Azure automatically adjust the number of instances you have running  in your apps to keep your service performant at an even better cost. Auto-scale is being released today as a preview feature, and will be free until General Availability. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 separate auto-scale rules across all of the resources they have (Web sites, Cloud services or Virtual Machines). If you hit the 10 limit, you can disable auto-scale for any resource to enable it for another. Alerts and Notifications Starting today we are now providing the ability to configure threshold based alerts on monitoring metrics. This feature is available for compute services (cloud services, VM, websites and mobiles services). Alerts provide you the ability to get proactively notified of active or impending issues within your application.  You can define alert rules for: Virtual machine monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (CPU percentage, network in/out, disk read bytes/sec and disk write bytes/sec) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Cloud service monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (same as VM), monitoring metrics from the guest VM (from performance counters within the VM) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. For Web Sites and Mobile Services, alerting rules can be configured on monitoring metrics from monitoring endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Creating Alert Rules You can add an alert rule for a monitoring metric by navigating to the Setting -> Alerts tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal. Click on the Add Rule button to create an alert rule. Give the alert rule a name and optionally add a description. Then pick the service which you want to define the alert rule on: The next step in the alert creation wizard will then filter the monitoring metrics based on the service you selected:   Once created the rule will show up in your alerts list within the settings tab: The rule above is defined as “not activated” since it hasn’t tripped over the CPU threshold we set.  If the CPU on the above machine goes over the limit, though, I’ll get an email notifying me from an Windows Azure Alerts email address ([email protected]). And when I log into the portal and revisit the alerts tab I’ll see it highlighted in red.  Clicking it will then enable me to see what is causing it to fail, as well as view the history of when it has happened in the past. Alert Notifications With today’s initial preview you can now easily create alerting rules based on monitoring metrics and get notified on active or impending issues within your application that require attention. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 alert rules across all of the services that support alert rules. No More Credit Card Requirement for MSDN Subscribers Earlier this month (during TechEd 2013), Windows Azure announced that MSDN users will get Windows Azure Credits every month that they can use for any Windows Azure services they want. You can read details about this in my previous Dev/Test blog post. Today we are making further updates to enable an easier Windows Azure signup for MSDN users. MSDN users will now not be required to provide payment information (e.g. no credit card) during sign-up, so long as they use the service within the included monetary credit for the billing period. For usage beyond the monetary credit, they can enable overages by providing the payment information and remove the spending limit. This enables a super easy, one page sign-up experience for MSDN users.  Simply sign-up for your Windows Azure trial using the same Microsoft ID that you use to manage your MSDN account, then complete the one page sign-up form below and you will be able to spend your free monthly MSDN credits (up to $150 each month) on any Windows Azure resource for dev/test:   This makes it trivially easy for every MDSN customer to start using Windows Azure today.  If you haven’t signed up yet, I definitely recommend checking it out. Summary Today’s release includes a ton of great features that enable you to build even better cloud solutions.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

    Read the article

  • Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Exposing OData Services

    OData is an emerging set of extensions for the ATOM protocol that makes it easier to share data over the web. To show off OData in RIA Services, lets continue our series.       We think it is very interesting to expose OData from a DomainService to facilitate data sharing.   For example I might want users to be able to access my data in a rich way in Excel as well as my custom Silverlight client.   Id like to be able to enable that without writing...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

    Read the article

  • Replication Services as ETL extraction tool

    - by jorg
    In my last blog post I explained the principles of Replication Services and the possibilities it offers in a BI environment. One of the possibilities I described was the use of snapshot replication as an ETL extraction tool: “Snapshot Replication can also be useful in BI environments, if you don’t need a near real-time copy of the database, you can choose to use this form of replication. Next to an alternative for Transactional Replication it can be used to stage data so it can be transformed and moved into the data warehousing environment afterwards. In many solutions I have seen developers create multiple SSIS packages that simply copies data from one or more source systems to a staging database that figures as source for the ETL process. The creation of these packages takes a lot of (boring) time, while Replication Services can do the same in minutes. It is possible to filter out columns and/or records and it can even apply schema changes automatically so I think it offers enough features here. I don’t know how the performance will be and if it really works as good for this purpose as I expect, but I want to try this out soon!” Well I have tried it out and I must say it worked well. I was able to let replication services do work in a fraction of the time it would cost me to do the same in SSIS. What I did was the following: Configure snapshot replication for some Adventure Works tables, this was quite simple and straightforward. Create an SSIS package that executes the snapshot replication on demand and waits for its completion. This is something that you can’t do with out of the box functionality. While configuring the snapshot replication two SQL Agent Jobs are created, one for the creation of the snapshot and one for the distribution of the snapshot. Unfortunately these jobs are  asynchronous which means that if you execute them they immediately report back if the job started successfully or not, they do not wait for completion and report its result afterwards. So I had to create an SSIS package that executes the jobs and waits for their completion before the rest of the ETL process continues. Fortunately I was able to create the SSIS package with the desired functionality. I have made a step-by-step guide that will help you configure the snapshot replication and I have uploaded the SSIS package you need to execute it. Configure snapshot replication   The first step is to create a publication on the database you want to replicate. Connect to SQL Server Management Studio and right-click Replication, choose for New.. Publication…   The New Publication Wizard appears, click Next Choose your “source” database and click Next Choose Snapshot publication and click Next   You can now select tables and other objects that you want to publish Expand Tables and select the tables that are needed in your ETL process In the next screen you can add filters on the selected tables which can be very useful. Think about selecting only the last x days of data for example. Its possible to filter out rows and/or columns. In this example I did not apply any filters. Schedule the Snapshot Agent to run at a desired time, by doing this a SQL Agent Job is created which we need to execute from a SSIS package later on. Next you need to set the Security Settings for the Snapshot Agent. Click on the Security Settings button.   In this example I ran the Agent under the SQL Server Agent service account. This is not recommended as a security best practice. Fortunately there is an excellent article on TechNet which tells you exactly how to set up the security for replication services. Read it here and make sure you follow the guidelines!   On the next screen choose to create the publication at the end of the wizard Give the publication a name (SnapshotTest) and complete the wizard   The publication is created and the articles (tables in this case) are added Now the publication is created successfully its time to create a new subscription for this publication.   Expand the Replication folder in SSMS and right click Local Subscriptions, choose New Subscriptions   The New Subscription Wizard appears   Select the publisher on which you just created your publication and select the database and publication (SnapshotTest)   You can now choose where the Distribution Agent should run. If it runs at the distributor (push subscriptions) it causes extra processing overhead. If you use a separate server for your ETL process and databases choose to run each agent at its subscriber (pull subscriptions) to reduce the processing overhead at the distributor. Of course we need a database for the subscription and fortunately the Wizard can create it for you. Choose for New database   Give the database the desired name, set the desired options and click OK You can now add multiple SQL Server Subscribers which is not necessary in this case but can be very useful.   You now need to set the security settings for the Distribution Agent. Click on the …. button Again, in this example I ran the Agent under the SQL Server Agent service account. Read the security best practices here   Click Next   Make sure you create a synchronization job schedule again. This job is also necessary in the SSIS package later on. Initialize the subscription at first synchronization Select the first box to create the subscription when finishing this wizard Complete the wizard by clicking Finish The subscription will be created In SSMS you see a new database is created, the subscriber. There are no tables or other objects in the database available yet because the replication jobs did not ran yet. Now expand the SQL Server Agent, go to Jobs and search for the job that creates the snapshot:   Rename this job to “CreateSnapshot” Now search for the job that distributes the snapshot:   Rename this job to “DistributeSnapshot” Create an SSIS package that executes the snapshot replication We now need an SSIS package that will take care of the execution of both jobs. The CreateSnapshot job needs to execute and finish before the DistributeSnapshot job runs. After the DistributeSnapshot job has started the package needs to wait until its finished before the package execution finishes. The Execute SQL Server Agent Job Task is designed to execute SQL Agent Jobs from SSIS. Unfortunately this SSIS task only executes the job and reports back if the job started succesfully or not, it does not report if the job actually completed with success or failure. This is because these jobs are asynchronous. The SSIS package I’ve created does the following: It runs the CreateSnapshot job It checks every 5 seconds if the job is completed with a for loop When the CreateSnapshot job is completed it starts the DistributeSnapshot job And again it waits until the snapshot is delivered before the package will finish successfully Quite simple and the package is ready to use as standalone extract mechanism. After executing the package the replicated tables are added to the subscriber database and are filled with data:   Download the SSIS package here (SSIS 2008) Conclusion In this example I only replicated 5 tables, I could create a SSIS package that does the same in approximately the same amount of time. But if I replicated all the 70+ AdventureWorks tables I would save a lot of time and boring work! With replication services you also benefit from the feature that schema changes are applied automatically which means your entire extract phase wont break. Because a snapshot is created using the bcp utility (bulk copy) it’s also quite fast, so the performance will be quite good. Disadvantages of using snapshot replication as extraction tool is the limitation on source systems. You can only choose SQL Server or Oracle databases to act as a publisher. So if you plan to build an extract phase for your ETL process that will invoke a lot of tables think about replication services, it would save you a lot of time and thanks to the Extract SSIS package I’ve created you can perfectly fit it in your usual SSIS ETL process.

    Read the article

  • Screenshot Tour: XBMC 11 Eden Rocks Improved iOS Support, AirPlay, and Even a Custom XBMC OS

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    XBMC, the wildly popular, free, and robust open-source media center suite, has a new version. XBMC 11 Eden is bursting with new features, improvements, and is even available as a stand-alone XBMC-centric OS. We’re big XBMC fans around here, so you’ll have to excuse us if we gush a little about how great the new XBMC 11 Eden release is. If you’re currently on XBMC 10, you’re in for quite a few treats with this upgrade. If you’ve never used XBMC before, well then, you’re in for a media center experience like you’ve never had one before. Here is what’s new in XBMC 11. How To Be Your Own Personal Clone Army (With a Little Photoshop) How To Properly Scan a Photograph (And Get An Even Better Image) The HTG Guide to Hiding Your Data in a TrueCrypt Hidden Volume

    Read the article

  • Implementing User-Defined Hierarchies in SQL Server Analysis Services

    To be able to drill into multidimensional cube data at several levels, you must implement all of the hierarchies on the database dimensions. Then you'll create the attribute relationships necessary to optimize performance. Analysis Services hierarchies offer plenty of possibilities for displaying the data that your business requires. Rob Sheldon continues his series on SQL Server Analysis Services 2008.

    Read the article

  • Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Exposing WCF (SOAP\WSDL) Services

    Continuing in our series, I wanted to touch on how a RIA Services can be exposed as a Soap\WSDL service.   This is very useful if you want to enable the exact same business logic\data access logic is available to clients other than Silverlight.    For example to a WinForms application or WPF or even a console application.  SOAP is a particularly good model for interop with the Java\JEE world as well.    First you need to add a reference to Microsoft.ServiceModel.DomainSerivves.Hosting.EndPoints...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

    Read the article

  • Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Exposing WCF (SOAP\WSDL) Services

    Continuing in our series, I wanted to touch on how a RIA Services can be exposed as a Soap\WSDL service.   This is very useful if you want to enable the exact same business logic\data access logic is available to clients other than Silverlight.    For example to a WinForms application or WPF or even a console application.  SOAP is a particularly good model for interop with the Java\JEE world as well.    First you need to add a reference to Microsoft.ServiceModel.DomainSerivves.Hosting.EndPoints...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

    Read the article

  • Windows Media Center doesn't see my movies

    - by DrJekyll
    I am trying to configure my Windows Media Center (Windows 7 Ultimate). I selected folder with my movies and added it to the library, but when I went to the movies library, it says "There are no items in this library yet - Windows Media Center is searching for media files in the background...". I have all necessary codecs installed, Windows Media Player opens those movies correctly. When I right click on the file - Open with - Windows Media Center it also plays them without any problem. Any ideas why they don't appear in the libraries?

    Read the article

  • Music player alternative to windows Media Player

    - by patjbs
    I find the UI and general usability of the prepackaged windows Media Player to be cludgy and at times incomprehensible. I used to use programs like WinAmp and Sonique, many years ago. What are some current alternatives to the windows Media Player? I don't have iTunes - I'm pretty happy with ripping my own audio files from my album collection. I'm specifically looking for the follow qualities/abilities: Easy sorting and manipulation of the media library Easy tagging of media - marking favorites and ratings, etc. Preferably lightweight. Something like a Picasa for audio media.

    Read the article

  • Is there a way to browse a media server (MediaTomb) with a media player (VLC)?

    - by twig
    I currently have an EEE PC set up with LinuxMint as my media server using MediaTomb. I use VLC as my media player on another Windows computer to watch videos off the media server. It works fine, but the current process is: Open up browser and navigate to folder Find the file I want to play and copy URL Paste URL into VLC and watch. This is fine for me on the PC, but it is a little troublesome for my parents to grasp (or for me to use on the phone). Ideally I'd like to: Open up VLC Browse to the file (using VLC) Click/select to play If there is any solution which is similar to this, please let me know. I'm willing to change the software on both server and client to accommodate (although it somewhat depends on which formats are supported on the server) Side note: I've tried searching online for this but I find a lot of jargon such as "media server/centre", media streaming, DLNA, UPNP and feel that some people are either using them interchangeably or incorrectly.

    Read the article

  • Intel RAID0 on Windows 8 not Displaying Correct Media Type

    - by kobaltz
    I have my primary C Drive which consists of 2 Intel 120GB SSD Drives in a RAID0. I have a clean install of Windows 8 Pro, latest MEI software, latest RST software, latest Intel Toolbox. Prior to this I had installed Windows 8 Pro as an upgrade. When I went into the Optimize Drives while in the Upgrade installation, it showed the Media Types as Solid State Drives. However, now since I am in a brand new install, it is showing the Media Type as Hard Disk Drive. I am worried about this because of the trim not working properly. Before when in the upgrade, it showed SSD as the media type and the Optimize option would perform a manual trim. Unfortunately, my search credentials on Google are so common to many other things (ie Raid0, SSD, Windows 8, Media Type) that all I am finding are useless topics. Before, (found on random site) it showed the Media Type as below

    Read the article

  • Building services with .Net Part 1

    - by Allan Rwakatungu
    On the 26th of May 2010 , I made a presentation to the .NET user group meeting (thanks to Malisa Ncube for organizing this event every month … ). If you missed my presentation , we talked about why we should all be building services … better still using the .NET framework. This blog post is an introduction to services , why you would want to build services and how you can build services using the .NET framework. What is a service? OASIS defines service as "a mechanism to enable access to one or more capabilities, where the access is provided using a prescribed interface and is exercised consistent with constraints and policies as specified by the service description." [1]. If the above definition sounds to academic , you can also define a service as loosely coupled units of functionality that have no calls to each other embedded in the. Instead of services embedding calls to each other in their service code they use defined protocols that describe how services pass and parse messages. This is a good way to think about services if you’re from an objected oriented background. While in object oriented programming functions make calls to each other, in service oriented programming, functions pass messages between each other. Why would you want to use services? 1. If your enterprise architecture looks like this   Services are the building blocks for SOA . With SOA you can move away from the sphaggetti infrastructure that is common in most enterprises. The complexity or lack of visibility of the integration points in your enterprises makes it difficult and costly to implement new initiatives and changes into the business - and even impossible in some cases - as it is not possible to identify the impact a change in one system might have to other systems. With services you can move to an architecture like this Your building blocks from Spaghetti infrastructure to something that is more well-defined and manageable to achieve cost efficiency and not least business agility - enabling you to react to changes in the market with speed and achieve operational efficiency and control are services. 2. If you want to become the Gates or Zuckerburger. Have you heard about Web 2.0 ? Mashups? Software as a service (SAAS) ? Cloud computing ?   They all offer you the opportunity to have scalable but low cost business models and they built using services.  Some of my favorite companies that leverage services for their business models include  https://www.salesforce.com/ (cloud CRM) http://www. twitter.com (more people use twitter clients built by 3rd parties than their official clients) http://www.kayak.com/ (compares data from other travel sites to give information to users in one location) Services with the .NET framework      If you are a .NET developer and you want to develop services, Windows Communication Framework (WCF) is the tool for you. WCF is Microsoft’s unified programming model (service model) for building service oriented applications. ( Before .NET 3.0 you had several models for programming services in .NET including .NET remoting, Web services (ASMX), COM +, Microsoft Messaging queuing (MSMQ) etc, after .NET 3.0 the programming model was unified into one i.e. WCF ). Windows Communication Framework (WCF) provides you 1. An Software Development Kit (SDK) for creating SOA applications 2. A runtime for running services on the Windows platform Why should you use Windows Communication Foundation if you’re programming services?   1. It supports interoperable and open standards e.g. WS* protocols for programming SOAP services 2. It has a unified programming model. Whether you use TCP or Http or Pipes or transmitting using Messaging Queues, programmers need to learn just one way to program. Previously you had .NET remoting, MSMQ, Web services, COM+ and they were all done differently 3. Productive programming model You don’t have to worry about all the plumbing involved to write services. You have a rich declarative programming model to add stuff like logging, transactions, and reliable messages in-built in the Windows Communication Framework. Understanding services in WCF The basic principles of WCF are as easy as ABC A – Address This is where the service is located B- Binding This describes how you communicate with the service e.g. Use TCP, HTTP or both. How to exchange security information with the service etc. C – Contract This defines what the service can do. E.g. Pay water bill, Make a phone call A - Addresses In WCF, an address is a combination of transport, server name, port and path Example addresses may include http://localhost:8001 net.tcp://localhost:8002/MyService net.pipe://localhost/MyPipe net.msmq://localhost/private/MyService net.msmq://localhost/MyService B- Binding   There are numerous ways to communicate with services , different ways that a message can be formatted/sent/secured, that allows you to tailor your service for the compatibility/performance you require for your solution. Transport You can use HTTP TCP MSMQ , Named pipes, Your own custom transport etc Message You  can send a plain text binary, Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) message Communication security No security Transport security Message security Authenticating and authorizing callers etc Behaviour You service can support Transactions Be reliable Use queues Support ajax etc C - Contract You define what your service can do using Service contracts :- Define operations that your service can do, communications and behaviours Data contracts :- Define the messages that are passed from and into your service and how they are formatted Fault contracts :- Defines errors types in your service   As an example, suppose your service service shows money. You define your service contract using a interface [ServiceContract] public interface IShowMeTheMoney {   [OperationContract]    Money Show(); } You define the data contract by annotating a class it with the Data Contract attribute and fields you want to pass in the message as Data Members. (Note:- In the latest versions of WCF you dont have to use attributes if you passing all the objects properties in the message) [DataContract] public Money {   [DataMember]   public string Currency { get; set; }   [DataMember]   public Decimal Amount { get; set; }   public string Comment { get; set; } } Features of Windows Communication Foundation Windows Communication Foundation is not only simple but feature rich , offering you several options to tweak your service to fit your business requirements. Some of the features of WCF include 1. Workflow services You can combine WCF with Windows WorkFlow Foundation (WWF) to write workflow type services 2. Control how your data (messages) are transferred and serialized e.g. you can serialize your business objects as XML or binary 3. control over session management , instance creation and concurrency management without writing code if you like 4. Queues and reliable sessions. You can store messages from the sending client and later forward them to the receiving application. You can also guarantee that messages will arrive at their destincation. 5.Transactions:  You can have different services participate in a transaction operations that can be rolled back if needed 6. Security. WCF has rich features for authorization and authentication  as well as keep audit trails 7. Web programming model. WCF allows developers to expose services as non SOAP endpoints 8. Inbuilt features that you can use to write JSON and services that support AJAX applications And lots more In my next blog I will show you how you can use WCF features to write a real world business service.               Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

    Read the article

  • Ria Services vs WCF Dataservices

    - by NPehrsson
    My Team are evaluation to a bigger Business portal. (Invoicing, Bookkeeping, Salaries.....) We are all used to work with DDD, O/R mappers with NHibernate as our first choice. We have chosen to work with CompositeWPF to keep modularity between all modules and part system in the business portal. Now we have evaluated Ria Services and are kind of disappointed how it works in a Data Oriented way, Data Oriented can be good in a service oriented scenario, but we feel that we can with an Object Oriented approach to, and we feel that we can get an application with less complexity with the OO approach than the DO approach. For example it doesn't allow Value Objects, Many-to-many relations, everything needs to have keys and so on. We haven't looked at WCF Data Services yet so our question is WCF Data Services our answere? Does it integrate good with Silverlight 4? Can we work with it in a OO manor?

    Read the article

  • WCF RIA Services and RFCs

    - by Kottan
    I want (have) to write a Silverlight and (or) ASP.NET based webapplication with SAP in the backend (in other words, the datasource is no classical database) . The usage of Silverlight and ASP.NET is a precondition. Is it possible to use the WCF RIA Services (and Silverlight) where the data-source are RFCs from SAP ? Makes this sense ? If yes, how the pattern/architecture could be shortly described ? Or should I take other architectures into considerations (usage of plan WCF services, WCF data services,...) ?

    Read the article

  • Usage of WCF RIA Services, where the datasource isn't a classical (relational) database

    - by Kottan
    I want (have) to write a Silverlight and (or) ASP.NET based webapplication with SAP in the backend (in other words, the datasource is no classical database) . The usage of Silverlight and ASP.NET is a precondition. Is it possible to use the WCF RIA Services (and Silverlight) where the data-source are RFCs from SAP ? Makes this sense ? If yes, how the pattern/architecture could be shortly described ? Or should I take other architectures into considerations (usage of plain WCF services, WCF data services,...) ?

    Read the article

  • Consuming services that consume other services.

    - by phthomas
    What is the best way to confirm that these consumed services are actually up and running before I actually try to invoke its operation contracts? I want to do this so that I can gracefully display some message to the customer to give him/her a more pleasant user experience. Thanks.

    Read the article

  • Keyboard's media keys are blocked by a program

    - by Mike Hanson
    I've got a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. In addition to the regular keys, it's also got keys for Web/Home, Search, Mail, Favorites (5), Calculator, and Media functions (Mute, Volume Up/Down, and Play/Pause). Everything works most of the time, and the exception is rather odd. I use a programming system called Clarion. When that has focus, the Media keys don't work. (All the others still do.) I've also discovered that programs that I create using Clarion also block the media keys (only when they have focus). This indicates that it's probably something in Clarion's Run-Time Library (RTL) that's causing the trouble. The keys will work if I click on a non-Clarion window before hitting the media key, but that's an undesirable hassle. The odd thing is that I have many colleagues with the same keyboard, and they have no problem. When I recently upgraded from Vista Professional to Win7 Ultimate, I noticed that various things "appear" differently. For example, with my old system, when I changed the volume or muted the volume bar visualization always appeared at the bottom right on the screen. Now it doesn't appear in certain programs, even when it works. This indicates an order of precedence for visual elements. I'm fairly certain a similar order of precedence exists for keyboard hooks. Depending on how the hooks are defined, and the order in which they're applied, it would seem that sometimes the IntelliType drivers don't see the media keystrokes. The Media keys probably behave differently than the rest of the "special" keys, because they are more of a standard across all keyboards, so perhaps are handled by a different driver hooking mechanism. Does anyone have any suggestions of how I might fix this problem? Is there some way to change the order of hooks? Delay the loading of the IntelliType driver? Thanks in advance!

    Read the article

  • Keyboard's media keys are blocked by a program

    - by Mike Hanson
    I've got a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. In addition to the regular keys, it's also got keys for Web/Home, Search, Mail, Favorites (5), Calculator, and Media functions (Mute, Volume Up/Down, and Play/Pause). Everything works most of the time, and the exception is rather odd. I use a programming system called Clarion. When that has focus, the Media keys don't work. (All the others still do.) I've also discovered that programs that I create using Clarion also block the media keys (only when they have focus). This indicates that it's probably something in Clarion's Run-Time Library (RTL) that's causing the trouble. The keys will work if I click on a non-Clarion window before hitting the media key, but that's an undesirable hassle. The odd thing is that I have many colleagues with the same keyboard, and they have no problem. When I recently upgraded from Vista Professional to Win7 Ultimate, I noticed that various things "appear" differently. For example, with my old system, when I changed the volume or muted the volume bar visualization always appeared at the bottom right on the screen. Now it doesn't appear in certain programs, even when it works. This indicates an order of precedence for visual elements. I'm fairly certain a similar order of precedence exists for keyboard hooks. Depending on how the hooks are defined, and the order in which they're applied, it would seem that sometimes the IntelliType drivers don't see the media keystrokes. The Media keys probably behave differently than the rest of the "special" keys, because they are more of a standard across all keyboards, so perhaps are handled by a different driver hooking mechanism. Does anyone have any suggestions of how I might fix this problem? Is there some way to change the order of hooks? Delay the loading of the IntelliType driver? Thanks in advance!

    Read the article

  • Windows media player sort automatically by rating on startup.

    - by user18151
    Hello, I want my Windows Media Player to open with sorting done on the basis of rating by default, currently its on the basis of Album name. The reason why I don't want to just click on the top bar to sort on the basis of rating is that my music library is 37GB and it takes WMP around 5 seconds to get done rearranging, and I dislike that. Its WMP12 with Windows 7 Thanks.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14  | Next Page >