online code editing - Page 794

Creating dynamic breadcrumb in asp.net mvc with mvcsitemap provider

- by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

I have done lots breadcrumb kind of things in normal asp.net web forms I was looking for same for asp.net mvc. After searching on internet I have found one great nuget package for mvpsite map provider which can be easily implemented via site map provider. So let’s check how its works. I have create a new MVC 3 web application called breadcrumb and now I am adding a reference of site map provider via nuget package like following. You can find more information about MVC sitemap provider on following URL. https://github.com/maartenba/MvcSiteMapProvid So once you add site map provider. You will find a Mvc.SiteMap file like following. And following is content of that file. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <mvcSiteMap xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://mvcsitemap.codeplex.com/schemas/MvcSiteMap-File-3.0" xsi:schemaLocation="http://mvcsitemap.codeplex.com/schemas/MvcSiteMap-File-3.0 MvcSiteMapSchema.xsd" enableLocalization="true"> <mvcSiteMapNode title="Home" controller="Home" action="Index"> <mvcSiteMapNode title="About" controller="Home" action="About"/> </mvcSiteMapNode> </mvcSiteMap> So now we have added site map so now its time to make breadcrumb dynamic. So as we all know that with in the standard asp.net mvc template we have action link by default for Home and About like following. <div id="menucontainer"> <ul id="menu"> <li>@Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home")</li> <li>@Html.ActionLink("About", "About", "Home")</li> </ul> </div> Now I want to replace that with our sitemap provider and make it dynamic so I have added the following code. <div id="menucontainer"> @Html.MvcSiteMap().Menu(true) </div> That’s it. This is the magic code @Html.MvcSiteMap will dynamically create breadcrumb for you. Now let’s run this in browser. You can see that it has created breadcrumb dynamically without writing any action link code. So here you can see with MvcSiteMap provider we don’t have to write any code we just need to add menu syntax and rest it will do automatically. That’s it. Hope you liked it. Stay tuned for more till then happy programming.

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glsl shader to allow color change of skydome ogre3d

- by Tim

I'm still very new to all this but learning a lot. I'm putting together an application using Ogre3d as the rendering engine. So far I've got it running, with a simple scene, a day/night cycle system which is working okay. I'm now moving on to looking at changing the color of the skydome material based on the time of day. What I've done so far is to create a struct to hold the ColourValues for the different aspects of the scene. struct todColors { Ogre::ColourValue sky; Ogre::ColourValue ambient; Ogre::ColourValue sun; }; I created an array to store all the colours todColors sceneColours [4]; I populated the array with the colours I want to use for the various times of the day. For instance DayTime (when the sun is high in the sky) sceneColours[2].sky = Ogre::ColourValue(135/255, 206/255, 235/255, 255); sceneColours[2].ambient = Ogre::ColourValue(135/255, 206/255, 235/255, 255); sceneColours[2].sun = Ogre::ColourValue(135/255, 206/255, 235/255, 255); I've got code to work out the time of the day using a float currentHours to store the current hour of the day 10.5 = 10:30 am. This updates constantly and updates the sun as required. I am then calculating the appropriate colours for the time of day when relevant using else if( currentHour >= 4 && currentHour < 7) { // Lerp from night to morning Ogre::ColourValue lerp = Ogre::Math::lerp<Ogre::ColourValue, float>(sceneColours[GT_TOD_NIGHT].sky , sceneColours[GT_TOD_MORNING].sky, (currentHour - 4) / (7 - 4)); } My original attempt to get this to work was to dynamically generate a material with the new colour and apply that material to the skydome. This, as you can probably guess... didn't go well. I know it's possible to use shaders where you can pass information such as colour to the shader from the code but I am unsure if there is an existing simple shader to change a colour like this or if I need to create one. What is involved in creating a shader and material definition that would allow me to change the colour of a material without the overheads of dynamically generating materials all the time? EDIT : I've created a glsl vertex and fragment shaders as follows. Vertex uniform vec4 newColor; void main() { gl_FrontColor = newColor; gl_Position = ftransform(); } Fragment void main() { gl_FragColor = gl_Color; } I can pass a colour to it using ShaderDesigner and it seems to work. I now need to investigate how to use it within Ogre as a material. EDIT : I created a material file like this : vertex_program colour_vs_test glsl { source test.vert default_params { param_named newColor float4 0.0 0.0 0.0 1 } } fragment_program colour_fs_glsl glsl { source test.frag } material Test/SkyColor { technique { pass { lighting off fragment_program_ref colour_fs_glsl { } vertex_program_ref colour_vs_test { } } } } In the code I have tried : Ogre::MaterialPtr material = Ogre::MaterialManager::getSingleton().getByName("Test/SkyColor"); Ogre::GpuProgramParametersSharedPtr params = material->getTechnique(0)->getPass(0)->getVertexProgramParameters(); params->setNamedConstant("newcolor", Ogre::Vector4(0.7, 0.5, 0.3, 1)); I've set that as the Skydome material which seems to work initially. I am doing the same with the code that is attempting to lerp between colours, but when I include it there, it all goes black. Seems like there is now a problem with my colour lerping.

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Deploying a SharePoint 2007 theme using Features

- by Kelly Jones

I recently had a requirement to update the branding on an existing Windows SharePoint Services (WSS version 3.0) site. I needed to update the theme, along with the master page. An additional requirement is that my client likes to have all changes bundled up in SharePoint solutions. This makes it much easier to move code from dev to test to prod and more importantly, makes it easier to undo code migrations if any issues would arise (I agree with this approach). Updating the theme was easy enough. I created a new theme, along with a two new features. The first feature, scoped at the farm level, deploys the theme, adding it to the spthemes.xml file (in the 12 hive –> \Template\layouts\1033 folder). Here’s the method that I call from the feature activated event: private static void AddThemeToSpThemes(string id, string name, string description, string thumbnail, string preview, SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) { XmlDocument spThemes = new XmlDocument(); //use GetGenericSetupPath to find the 12 hive folder string spThemesPath = SPUtility.GetGenericSetupPath(@"TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\spThemes.xml"); //load the spthemes file into our xmldocument, since it is just xml spThemes.Load(spThemesPath); XmlNode root = spThemes.DocumentElement; //search the themes file to see if our theme is already added bool found = false; foreach (XmlNode node in root.ChildNodes) { foreach (XmlNode prop in node.ChildNodes) { if (prop.Name.Equals("TemplateID")) { if (prop.InnerText.Equals(id)) { found = true; break; } } } if (found) { break; } } if (!found) //theme not found, so add it { //This is what we need to add: // <Templates> // <TemplateID>ThemeName</TemplateID> // <DisplayName>Theme Display Name</DisplayName> // <Description>My theme description</Description> // <Thumbnail>images/mythemethumb.gif</Thumbnail> // <Preview>images/mythemepreview.gif</Preview> // </Templates> StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); sb.Append("<Templates><TemplateID>"); sb.Append(id); sb.Append("</TemplateID><DisplayName>"); sb.Append(name); sb.Append("</DisplayName><Description>"); sb.Append(description); sb.Append("</Description><Thumbnail>"); sb.Append(thumbnail); sb.Append("</Thumbnail><Preview>"); sb.Append(preview); sb.Append("</Preview></Templates>"); root.CreateNavigator().AppendChild(sb.ToString()); spThemes.Save(spThemesPath); } } Just as important, is the code that removes the theme when the feature is deactivated: private static void RemoveThemeFromSpThemes(string id) { XmlDocument spThemes = new XmlDocument(); string spThemesPath = HostingEnvironment.MapPath("/_layouts/") + @"1033\spThemes.xml"; spThemes.Load(spThemesPath); XmlNode root = spThemes.DocumentElement; foreach (XmlNode node in root.ChildNodes) { foreach (XmlNode prop in node.ChildNodes) { if (prop.Name.Equals("TemplateID")) { if (prop.InnerText.Equals(id)) { root.RemoveChild(node); spThemes.Save(spThemesPath); break; } } } } } So, that takes care of deploying the theme. In order to apply the theme to the web, my activate feature method looks like this: public override void FeatureDeactivating(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) { using (SPWeb curweb = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent) { curweb.ApplyTheme("myThemeName"); curweb.Update(); } } Deactivating is just as simple: public override void FeatureDeactivating(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) { using (SPWeb curweb = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent) { curweb.ApplyTheme("none"); curweb.Update(); } } Ok, that’s the code necessary to deploy, apply, un-apply, and retract the theme. Also, the solution (WSP file) contains the actual theme files. SO, next is the master page, which I’ll cover in my next blog post.

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Write TSQL, win a Kindle.

- by Fatherjack

So recently Red Gate launched sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com and showed the world how to embed your own scripts harmoniously in a third party tool to get the details that you want about your SQL Server performance. The site has a way to submit your own metrics and take a copy of the ones that other people have submitted to build a library of code to keep track of key metrics of your servers performance. There have been several submissions already but they have now launched a competition to provide an incentive for you to get creative and show us what you can do with a bit of TSQL and the SQL Monitor framework*. What’s it worth? Well, if you are one of the 3 winners then you get to choose either a Kindle Fire or $199. How do you win? Simply write the T-SQL for a SQL Monitor custom metric and the relevant description and introduction for it and submit it via sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com before 14th Sept 2012 and then sit back and wait while the judges review your code and your aims in writing the metric. Who are the judges and how will they judge the metrics? There are two judges for this competition, Steve Jones (Microsoft SQL Server MVP, co-founder of SQLServerCentral.com, author, blogger etc) and Jonathan Allen (um, yeah, Steve has done all the good stuff, I’m here by good fortune). We will be looking to rate the metrics on each of 3 criteria: how the metric can help with performance tuning SQL Server. how having the metric running enables DBA’s to meet best practice. how interesting /original the idea for the metric is. Our combined decision will be final etc etc ** What happens to my metric? Any metrics submitted to the competition will be automatically entered into the site library and become available for sharing once the competition is over. You’ll get full credit for metrics you submit regardless of the competition results. You can enter as many metrics as you like. How long does it take? Honestly? Once you have the T-SQL sorted then so long as you can type your name and your email address you are done : http://sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com/share-a-metric/ What can I monitor? If you really really want a Kindle or $199 (and let’s face it, who doesn’t? ) and are momentarily stuck for inspiration, take a look at these example custom metrics that have been written by Stuart Ainsworth, Fabiano Amorim, TJay Belt, Louis Davidson, Grant Fritchey, Brad McGehee and me to start the library off. There are some great pieces of TSQL in those metrics gathering important stats about how SQL Server is performing. * – framework may not be the best word here but I was under pressure and couldnt think of a better one. If you prefer try ‘engine’, or ‘application’? I don’t know, pick something that makes sense to you. ** – for the full (legal) version of the rules check the details on sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com or send us an email if you want any point clarified. Disclaimer – Jonathan is a Friend of Red Gate and as such, whenever they are discussed, will have a generally positive disposition towards Red Gate tools. Other tools are often available and you should always try others before you come back and buy the Red Gate ones. All code in this blog is provided “as is” and no guarantee, warranty or accuracy is applicable or inferred, run the code on a test server and be sure to understand it before you run it on a server that means a lot to you or your manager.

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Extend Your Applications Your Way: Oracle OpenWorld Live Poll Results

- by Applications User Experience

Lydia Naylor, Oracle Applications User Experience Manager At OpenWorld 2012, I attended one of our team’s very exciting sessions: “Extend Your Applications, Your Way”. It was clear that customers were engaged by the topics presented. Not only did we see many heads enthusiastically nodding in agreement during the presentation, and witness a large crowd surround our speakers Killian Evers, Kristin Desmond and Greg Nerpouni afterwards, but we can prove it…with data! Figure 1. Killian Evers, Kristin Desmond, and Greg Nerpouni of Oracle at the OOW 2012 session. At the beginning of our OOW 2012 journey, Greg Nerpouni, Fusion HCM Principal Product Manager, told me he really wanted to get feedback from the audience on our extensibility direction. Initially, we were thinking of doing a group activity at the OOW UX labs events that we hold every year, but Greg was adamant- he wanted “real-time” feedback. So, after a little tinkering, we came up with a way to use an online survey tool, a simple QR code (Quick Response code: a matrix barcode that can include information like URLs and can be read by mobile device cameras), and the audience’s mobile devices to do just that. Figure 2. Actual QR Code for survey Prior to the session, we developed a short survey in Vovici (an online survey tool), with questions to gather feedback on certain points in the presentation, as well as demographic data from our participants. We used Vovici’s feature to generate a mobile HTML version of the survey. At the session, attendees accessed the survey by simply scanning a QR code or typing in a TinyURL (a shorthand web address that is easily accessible through mobile devices). Killian, Kristin and Greg paused at certain points during the session and asked participants to answer a few survey questions about what they just presented. Figure 3. Session survey deployed on a mobile phone The nice thing about Vovici’s survey tool is that you can see the data real-time as participants are responding to questions - so we knew during the session that not only was our direction on track but we were hitting the mark and fulfilling Greg’s request. We planned on showing the live polling results to the audience at the end of the presentation but it ran just a little over time, and we were gently nudged out of the room by the session attendants. We’ve included a quick summary below and this link to the full results for your enjoyment. Figure 4. Most important extensions to Fusion Applications So what did participants think of our direction for extensibility? A total of 94% agreed that it was an improvement upon their current process. The vast majority, 80%, concurred that the extensibility model accounts for the major roles involved: end user, business systems analyst and programmer. Attendees suggested a few supporting roles such as systems administrator, data architect and integrator. Customers and partners in the audience verified that Oracle‘s Fusion Composers allow them to make changes in the most common areas they need to: user interface, business processes, reporting and analytics. Integrations were also suggested. All top 10 things customers can do on a page rated highly in importance, with all but two getting an average rating above 4.4 on a 5 point scale. The kinds of layout changes our composers allow customers to make align well with customers’ needs. The most common were adding columns to a table (94%) and resizing regions and drag and drop content (both selected by 88% of participants). We want to thank the attendees of the session for allowing us another great opportunity to gather valuable feedback from our customers! If you didn’t have a chance to attend the session, we will provide a link to the OOW presentation when it becomes available.

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Triangle Line-Segment Intersection - detecting near misses

- by Will

A ray is a very poor approximation of a player! I think approximating a player with a sphere traveling a straight line each game tick will solve my problems of the player intersecting edges of scenery because their line segment missed it yet their own model is not infinitely thin... I have a 3D triangle and a line segment. I have the normal triangle-line-segment intersection code which I admit I have only a woolly grasp of. To model movement and compute collisions of the player I have to determine if a line passes within sphere-radius of a triangle. But I can find no convenient line near-miss intersection code! Here's the classic triangle intersection ### commented ### code with my starting assumptions: function triangle_ray_intersection(a,b,c,ray_origin,ray_dir,ray_radius) { // http://softsurfer.com/Archive/algorithm_0105/algorithm_0105.htm#intersect_RayTriangle%28%29 // get triangle edge vectors and plane normal var u = vec3_sub(b,a); var v = vec3_sub(c,a); var n = vec3_cross(u,v); if(n[0]==0 && n[1]==0 && n[2]==0) return null; // triangle is degenerate var w0 = vec3_sub(ray_origin,a); var j = vec3_dot(n,ray_dir); if(Math.abs(j) < 0.00000001) { //### if parallel, might still pass within ray_radius of it return null; // parallel, disjoint or on plane } var i = -vec3_dot(n,w0); // get intersect point of ray with triangle plane var k = i / j; if(k < 0.0) return null; // ray goes away from triangle //### as its a line segment, k > 1+ray_radius means no intersect var hit = vec3_add(ray_origin,vec3_scale(ray_dir,k)); // intersect point of ray and plane // is I inside T? //### here I'm a bit lost; this is presumably computing barycentric coordinates? var uu = vec3_dot(u,u); var uv = vec3_dot(u,v); var vv = vec3_dot(v,v); var w = vec3_sub(hit,a); var wu = vec3_dot(w,u); var wv = vec3_dot(w,v); var D = uv * uv - uu * vv; var s = (uv * wv - vv * wu) / D; //### therefore, compute if its within ray_radius scaled to the 0..1 of barycentric coordinates? if(s<0.0 || s>1.0) return null; // I is outside T var t = (uv * wu - uu * wv) / D; if(t<0.0 || (s+t)>1.0) return null; // I is outside T //### finally, if it passses a barycentric test it might still be too far //### to a point; must check that its distance from a corner is within ray_radius too if more than one barycentric coord is >1 //### so we have rounded corners... return [hit,n]; // I is in T } Given the distance between the point of plane intersection and each corner, I ought to be able to determine distance at world scale of how far beyond the edge - beyond 1.0 in barycentric coordinates for each axis - that point is... At this point my head explodes! Is this the right track? What's the actual code? UPDATE: you can earn 100 pts on SO if you answer this question there...! How can you determine if a line segment passes within some distance of a triangle?

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Algorithm to Find the Aggregate Mass of "Granola Bar"-Like Structures?

- by Stuart Robbins

I'm a planetary science researcher and one project I'm working on is N-body simulations of Saturn's rings. The goal of this particular study is to watch as particles clump together under their own self-gravity and measure the aggregate mass of the clumps versus the mean velocity of all particles in the cell. We're trying to figure out if this can explain some observations made by the Cassini spacecraft during the Saturnian summer solstice when large structures were seen casting shadows on the nearly edge-on rings. Below is a screenshot of what any given timestep looks like. (Each particle is 2 m in diameter and the simulation cell itself is around 700 m across.) The code I'm using already spits out the mean velocity at every timestep. What I need to do is figure out a way to determine the mass of particles in the clumps and NOT the stray particles between them. I know every particle's position, mass, size, etc., but I don't know easily that, say, particles 30,000-40,000 along with 102,000-105,000 make up one strand that to the human eye is obvious. So, the algorithm I need to write would need to be a code with as few user-entered parameters as possible (for replicability and objectivity) that would go through all the particle positions, figure out what particles belong to clumps, and then calculate the mass. It would be great if it could do it for "each" clump/strand as opposed to everything over the cell, but I don't think I actually need it to separate them out. The only thing I was thinking of was doing some sort of N2 distance calculation where I'd calculate the distance between every particle and if, say, the closest 100 particles were within a certain distance, then that particle would be considered part of a cluster. But that seems pretty sloppy and I was hoping that you CS folks and programmers might know of a more elegant solution? Edited with My Solution: What I did was to take a sort of nearest-neighbor / cluster approach and do the quick-n-dirty N2 implementation first. So, take every particle, calculate distance to all other particles, and the threshold for in a cluster or not was whether there were N particles within d distance (two parameters that have to be set a priori, unfortunately, but as was said by some responses/comments, I wasn't going to get away with not having some of those). I then sped it up by not sorting distances but simply doing an order N search and increment a counter for the particles within d, and that sped stuff up by a factor of 6. Then I added a "stupid programmer's tree" (because I know next to nothing about tree codes). I divide up the simulation cell into a set number of grids (best results when grid size ˜7 d) where the main grid lines up with the cell, one grid is offset by half in x and y, and the other two are offset by 1/4 in ±x and ±y. The code then divides particles into the grids, then each particle N only has to have distances calculated to the other particles in that cell. Theoretically, if this were a real tree, I should get order N*log(N) as opposed to N2 speeds. I got somewhere between the two, where for a 50,000-particle sub-set I got a 17x increase in speed, and for a 150,000-particle cell, I got a 38x increase in speed. 12 seconds for the first, 53 seconds for the second, 460 seconds for a 500,000-particle cell. Those are comparable speeds to how long the code takes to run the simulation 1 timestep forward, so that's reasonable at this point. Oh -- and it's fully threaded, so it'll take as many processors as I can throw at it.

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October 2012 Critical Patch Update and Critical Patch Update for Java SE Released

- by Eric P. Maurice

Hi, this is Eric Maurice. Oracle has just released the October 2012 Critical Patch Update and the October 2012 Critical Patch Update for Java SE. As a reminder, the release of security patches for Java SE continues to be on a different schedule than for other Oracle products due to commitments made to customers prior to the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems. We do however expect to ultimately bring Java SE in line with the regular Critical Patch Update schedule, thus increasing the frequency of scheduled security releases for Java SE to 4 times a year (as opposed to the current 3 yearly releases). The schedules for the “normal” Critical Patch Update and the Critical Patch Update for Java SE are posted online on the Critical Patch Updates and Security Alerts page. The October 2012 Critical Patch Update provides a total of 109 new security fixes across a number of product families including: Oracle Database Server, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle E-Business Suite, Supply Chain Products Suite, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise, Oracle Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Oracle Industry Applications, Oracle FLEXCUBE, Oracle Sun products suite, Oracle Linux and Virtualization, and Oracle MySQL. Out of these 109 new vulnerabilities, 5 affect Oracle Database Server. The most severe of these Database vulnerabilities has received a CVSS Base Score of 10.0 on Windows platforms and 7.5 on Linux and Unix platforms. This vulnerability (CVE-2012-3137) is related to the “Cryptographic flaws in Oracle Database authentication protocol” disclosed at the Ekoparty Conference. Because of timing considerations (proximity to the release date of the October 2012 Critical Patch Update) and the need to extensively test the fixes for this vulnerability to ensure compatibility across the products stack, the fixes for this vulnerability were not released through a Security Alert, but instead mitigation instructions were provided prior to the release of the fixes in this Critical Patch Update in My Oracle Support Note 1492721.1. Because of the severity of these vulnerabilities, Oracle recommends that this Critical Patch Update be installed as soon as possible. Another 26 vulnerabilities fixed in this Critical Patch Update affect Oracle Fusion Middleware. The most severe of these Fusion Middleware vulnerabilities has received a CVSS Base Score of 10.0; it affects Oracle JRockit and is related to Java vulnerabilities fixed in the Critical Patch Update for Java SE. The Oracle Sun products suite gets 18 new security fixes with this Critical Patch Update. Note also that Oracle MySQL has received 14 new security fixes; the most severe of these MySQL vulnerabilities has received a CVSS Base Score of 9.0. Today’s Critical Patch Update for Java SE provides 30 new security fixes. The most severe CVSS Base Score for these Java SE vulnerabilities is 10.0 and this score affects 10 vulnerabilities. As usual, Oracle reports the most severe CVSS Base Score, and these CVSS 10.0s assume that the user running a Java Applet or Java Web Start application has administrator privileges (as is typical on Windows XP). However, when the user does not run with administrator privileges (as is typical on Solaris and Linux), the corresponding CVSS impact scores for Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability are "Partial" instead of "Complete", typically lowering the CVSS Base Score to 7.5 denoting that the compromise does not extend to the underlying Operating System. Also, as is typical in the Critical Patch Update for Java SE, most of the vulnerabilities affect Java and Java FX client deployments only. Only 2 of the Java SE vulnerabilities fixed in this Critical Patch Update affect client and server deployments of Java SE, and only one affects server deployments of JSSE. This reflects the fact that Java running on servers operate in a more secure and controlled environment. As discussed during a number of sessions at JavaOne, Oracle is considering security enhancements for Java in desktop and browser environments. Finally, note that the Critical Patch Update for Java SE is cumulative, in other words it includes all previously released security fixes, including the fix provided through Security Alert CVE-2012-4681, which was released on August 30, 2012. For More Information: The October 2012 Critical Patch Update advisory is located at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/cpuoct2012-1515893.html The October 2012 Critical Patch Update for Java SE advisory is located at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/javacpuoct2012-1515924.html. An online video about the importance of keeping up with Java releases and the use of the Java auto update is located at http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/1218969104001 More information about Oracle Software Security Assurance is located at http://www.oracle.com/us/support/assurance/index.html

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Thinktecture.IdentityModel: Comparing Strings without leaking Timinig Information

- by Your DisplayName here!

Paul Hill commented on a recent post where I was comparing HMACSHA256 signatures. In a nutshell his complaint was that I am leaking timing information while doing so – or in other words, my code returned faster with wrong (or partially wrong) signatures than with the correct signature. This can be potentially used for timing attacks like this one. I think he got a point here, especially in the era of cloud computing where you can potentially run attack code on the same physical machine as your target to do high resolution timing analysis (see here for an example). It turns out that it is not that easy to write a time-constant string comparer due to all sort of (unexpected) clever optimization mechanisms in the CLR. With the help and feedback of Paul and Shawn I came up with this: Structure the code in a way that the CLR will not try to optimize it In addition turn off optimization (just in case a future version will come up with new optimization methods) Add a random sleep when the comparison fails (using Shawn’s and Stephen’s nice Random wrapper for RNGCryptoServiceProvider). You can find the full code in the Thinktecture.IdentityModel download. [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoOptimization)] public static bool IsEqual(string s1, string s2) { if (s1 == null && s2 == null) { return true; } if (s1 == null || s2 == null) { return false; } if (s1.Length != s2.Length) { return false; } var s1chars = s1.ToCharArray(); var s2chars = s2.ToCharArray(); int hits = 0; for (int i = 0; i < s1.Length; i++) { if (s1chars[i].Equals(s2chars[i])) { hits += 2; } else { hits += 1; } } bool same = (hits == s1.Length * 2); if (!same) { var rnd = new CryptoRandom(); Thread.Sleep(rnd.Next(0, 10)); } return same; }

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Experience the iPad UI On Your PC

- by Matthew Guay

Want to test drive iPad without heading over to an Apple store? Here’s a way you can experience some of the iPad UI straight from your browser! The iPad is the latest gadget from Apple to wow the tech world, and people even waited in line all night to be one of the first to get their hands on one. Thanks to a simple JavaScript trick, however, you can get a feel for some of its new features without leaving your computer. This won’t let you try out everything on the iPad, but it will let you see how the new lists and pop-over menus work just like they do in the new apps. Test drive the iPad’s UI from your browser Normally, the Apple iPhone developer library online looks like a standard webpage. But, on the iPad, it looks and feels like a full-blown native iPad app. With a nifty JavaScript trick from boredzo.org you can use this same interface on your PC. Since the iPad uses the Safari browser, we ran this test in Safari for Windows. If you don’t already have it installed, you can download it from Apple (link below) and setup as normal. Now, open Safari and browse to Apple’s developer page at: http://www.developer.apple.com Now, enter the following in the address bar, and press Enter. javascript:localStorage.setItem('debugSawtooth', 'true') Finally, click this link to go to the iPhone OS documentation. http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/iPad/ After a short delay, it should open in full iPad style! The left menu works just like the menus on the iPad, complete with transitions. It feels entirely like a native application, instead of a webpage. To scroll through text, click and pull up or down similar to the way you would use it on a touch screen. Some pages even include a pop-over menu like many of the new iPad apps use. Note that the page will be rendered for the size of your browser, and if you resize your window the page will not resize with it. Simply press F5 to reload the page, and it will resize to fit the new window size. If you resize your window to be tall and narrow, like the iPad in horizontal mode, the webpage will change and the left menu will disappear in lieu of a drop-down menu just like it would if you rotated the iPad. This works in Chrome as well, since it, like Safari, is based on Webkit. However, it didn’t seem to work in our test on Firefox or other browsers. We’ve previously covered how you can experience some of the iPhone’s UI with the online iPhone user guide. Check it out if you haven’t yet: View Mobile Websites in Windows with Safari 4 Developer Tools Conclusion Although this doesn’t let you really try out all of the iPad’s interface, it at least gives you a taste of how it works. It’s exciting to see how much functionality can be packed into webapps today. And don’t forget, How-to Geek is giving away an iPad to a random fan! Head over to our Facebook page and fan How-to Geek if you haven’t already done so. Win an iPad on the How-To Geek Facebook Fan Page Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Want an iPad? How-To Geek is Giving One Away!Why Wait? Amazing New Add-on Turns Your iPhone into an iPad! [Comic]The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and TutorialsShare Your Windows Vista Experience Index ScoreAnother Blog You Should Subscribe To TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Awesome Lyrics Finder for Winamp & Windows Media Player Download Videos from Hulu Pixels invade Manhattan Convert PDF files to ePub to read on your iPad Hide Your Confidential Files Inside Images Get Wildlife Photography Tips at BBC’s PhotoMasterClasses

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In GLSL is it possible to offset vertices based on height map colour?

- by Rob

I am attempting to generate some terrain based upon a heightmap. I have generated a 32 x 32 grid and a corresponding height map - In my vertex shader I am trying to offset the position of the Y axis based upon the colour of the heightmap, white vertices being higher than black ones. //Vertex Shader Code #version 330 uniform mat4 modelMatrix; uniform mat4 viewMatrix; uniform mat4 projectionMatrix; uniform sampler2D heightmap; layout (location=0) in vec4 vertexPos; layout (location=1) in vec4 vertexColour; layout (location=3) in vec2 vertexTextureCoord; layout (location=4) in float offset; out vec4 fragCol; out vec4 fragPos; out vec2 fragTex; void main() { // Retreive the current pixel's colour vec4 hmColour = texture(heightmap,vertexTextureCoord); // Offset the y position by the value of current texel's colour value ? vec4 offset = vec4(vertexPos.x , vertexPos.y + hmColour.r, vertexPos.z , 1.0); // Final Position gl_Position = projectionMatrix * viewMatrix * modelMatrix * offset; // Data sent to Fragment Shader. fragCol = vertexColour; fragPos = vertexPos; fragTex = vertexTextureCoord; } However the code I have produced only creates a grid with none of the y vertices higher than any others. This is the C++ code that generates the grid and texture co-orientates which I believe to be correct as the texture is mapped to the grid, hence the white blob in the middle. The grid-lines are generated in the fragment shader, sorry for any confusion. I have tried multiplying the r value of hmColour by 1000 unfortunately that had no effect. The only other problem it could be is that the texture coordinate data is incorrect ? for (int z = 0; z < MAP_Z ; z++) { for(int x = 0; x < MAP_X ; x++) { //Generate Vertex Buffer vertexData[iVertex++] = float (x) * MAP_X; vertexData[iVertex++] = 0; vertexData[iVertex++] = -(float) (z) * MAP_Z; //Colour Buffer NOT NEEDED colourData[iColour++] = 255.0f; // R colourData[iColour++] = 1.0f; // G colourData[iColour++] = 0.0f; // B //Texture Buffer textureData[iTexture++] = (float ) x * (1.0f / MAP_X); textureData[iTexture++] = (float ) z * (1.0f / MAP_Z); } } The heightmap texture I am trying to use appears like so (without grid-lines). This is the corresponding fragment shader // Fragment Shader Code #version 330 uniform sampler2D hmTexture; layout (location=0) out vec4 fragColour; in vec2 fragTex; in vec4 pos; void main(void) { vec2 line = fragTex * 32; // Without Gridlines fragColour = texture(hmTexture,fragTex); // With grid lines // + mix(vec4(0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0), vec4(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0), // smoothstep(0.05,fract(line.y), 0.99) * smoothstep(0.05,fract(line.x),0.99)); }

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F# in ASP.NET, mathematics and testing

- by DigiMortal

Starting from Visual Studio 2010 F# is full member of .NET Framework languages family. It is functional language with syntax specific to functional languages but I think it is time for us also notice and study functional languages. In this posting I will show you some examples about cool things other people have done using F#. F# and ASP.NET As I am ASP/ASP.NET MVP I am – of course – interested in how people use different languages and technologies with ASP.NET. C# MVP Tomáš Petrícek writes about developing ASP.NET MVC applications using F#. He also shows how to use LINQ To SQL in F# (using F# PowerPack) and provides sample solution and Visual Studio 2010 template for F# MVC web applications. You may also find interesting how you can create controllers in F#. Excellent work, Tomáš! Vladimir Matveev has interesting example about how to use F# and ApplicationHost class to process ASP.NET requests ouside of IIS. This is simple and very straight-forward example and I strongly suggest you to take a look at it. Very cool example is project Strom in Codeplex. Storm is web services testing tool that is fully written on F#. Take a look at this site because Codeplex offers also source code besides binaries. Math Functional languages are strong in fields like mathematics and physics. When I wrote my C# example about BigInteger class I found out that recursive version of Fibonacci algorithm in C# is not performing well. In same time I made same experiment on F# and in F# there were no performance problems with recursive version. You can find F# version of Fibonacci algorithm from Bob Palmer’s blog posting Fibonacci numbers in F#. Although golden spiral is useful for solving many problems I looked for some practical code example and found one. Kean Walmsley published in his Through the Interface blog very interesting posting Creating Fibonacci spirals in AutoCAD using F#. There are also other cool examples you may be interested in. Using numerical components by Extreme Optimization it is possible to make some numerical integration (quadrature method) using F# (also C# example is available). fsharp.it introduces factorials calculation on F#. Robert Pickering has made very good work on programming The Game of Life in Silverlight and F# – I definitely suggest you to try out this example as it is very illustrative too. Who wants something more complex may take a look at Newton basin fractal example in F# by Jonathan Birge. Testing After some searching and surfing I found out that there is almost everything available for F# to write tests and test your F# code. FsCheck - FsCheck is a port of Haskell's QuickCheck. Important parts of the manual for using FsCheck is almost literally "adapted" from the QuickCheck manual and paper. Any errors and omissions are entirely my responsibility. FsTest - This project is designed to Language Oriented Programming constructs around unit testing and behavior testing in F#. The goal of this project is to create a Domain Specific Language for testing F# code in a way that makes sense for functional programming. FsUnit - FsUnit makes unit-testing with F# more enjoyable. It adds a special syntax to your favorite .NET testing framework. xUnit.NET - xUnit.net is a developer testing framework, built to support Test Driven Development, with a design goal of extreme simplicity and alignment with framework features. It is compatible with .NET Framework 2.0 and later, and offers several runners: console, GUI, MSBuild, and Visual Studio integration via TestDriven.net, CodeRush Test Runner and Resharper. It also offers test project integration for ASP.NET MVC. Getting started Well, as a first thing you need Visual Studio 2010. Then take a look at these resources: F# samples @ MSDN Microsoft F# Developer Center @ MSDN F# Language Reference @ MSDN F# blog F# forums Real World Functional Programming: With Examples in F# and C# (Amazon) Happy F#-ing! :)

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Autoscaling in a modern world…. last chapter

- by Steve Loethen

As we all know as coders, things like logging are never important. Our code will work right the first time. So, you can understand my surprise when the first time I deployed the autoscaling worker role to the actual Azure fabric, it did not scale. I mean, it worked on my machine. How dare the datacenter argue with that. So, how did I track down the problem? (turns out, it was not so much code as lack of the right certificate) When I ran it local in the developer fabric, I was able to see a wealth of information. Lots of periodic status info every time the autoscalar came around to check on my rules and decide to act or not. But that information was not making it to Azure storage. The diagnostics were not being transferred to where I could easily see and use them to track down why things were not being cooperative. After a bit of digging, I discover the problem. You need to add a bit of extra configuration code to get the correct information stored for you. I added the following to my app.config: Code Snippet <system.diagnostics> <sources> <source name="Autoscaling General"switchName="SourceSwitch" switchType="System.Diagnostics.SourceSwitch" > <listeners> <add name="AzureDiag" /> <remove name="Default"/> </listeners> </source> <source name="Autoscaling Updates"switchName="SourceSwitch" switchType="System.Diagnostics.SourceSwitch" > <listeners> <add name="AzureDiag" /> <remove name="Default"/> </listeners> </source> </sources> <switches> <add name="SourceSwitch" value="Verbose, Information, Warning, Error, Critical" /> </switches> <sharedListeners> <add type="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics.DiagnosticMonitorTraceListener,Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" name="AzureDiag"/> </sharedListeners> <trace> <listeners> <add type="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics.DiagnosticMonitorTraceListener,Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" name="AzureDiagnostics"> <filter type="" /> </add> </listeners> </trace> </system.diagnostics> Suddenly all the rich tracing info I needed was filling up my storage account. After a few cycles of trying to attempting to scale, I identified the cert problem, uploaded a correct certificate, and away it went. I hope this was helpful.

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SQLUG Events - London/Edinburgh/Cardiff/Reading - Masterclass, NoSQL, TSQL Gotcha's, Replication, BI

- by tonyrogerson

We have acquired two additional tickets to attend the SQL Server Master Class with Paul Randal and Kimberly Tripp next Thurs (17th June), for a chance to win these coveted tickets email us ([email protected]) before 9pm this Sunday with the subject "MasterClass" - people previously entered need not worry - your still in with a chance. The winners will be announced Monday morning.As ever plenty going on physically, we've got dates for a stack of events in Manchester and Leeds, I'm looking at Birmingham if anybody has ideas? We are growing our online community with the Cuppa Corner section, to participate online remember to use the #sqlfaq twitter tag; for those wanting to get more involved in presenting and fancy trying it out we are always after people to do 1 - 5 minute SQL nuggets or Cuppa Corners (short presentations) at any of these User Group events - just email us [email protected] removing from this email list? Then just reply with remove please on the subject line.Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal Master Class - Thurs, 17th June - LondonREGISTER NOW AND GET A SECOND REGISTRATION FREE*The top things YOU need to know about managing SQL Server - in one place, on one day - presented by two of the best SQL Server industry trainers!This one-day MasterClass will focus on many of the top issues companies face when implementing and maintaining a SQL Server-based solution. In the case where a company has no dedicated DBA, IT managers sometimes struggle to keep the data tier performing well and the data available. This can be especially troublesome when the development team is unfamiliar with the affect application design choices have on database performance.The Microsoft SQL Server MasterClass 2010 is presented by Paul S. Randal and Kimberly L. Tripp, two of the most experienced and respected people in the SQL Server world. Together they have over 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server in the field, and on the SQL Server product team itself. This is a unique opportunity to hear them present at a UK event which will:>> Debunk many of the ingrained misconceptions around SQL Server's behaviour >> Show you disaster recovery techniques critical to preserving your company's life-blood - the data >> Explain how a common application design pattern can wreak havoc in the database >> Walk through the top-10 points to follow around operations and maintenance for a well-performing and available data tier! Where: Radisson Edwardian Heathrow Hotel, LondonWhen: Thursday 17th June 2010*REGISTER TODAY AT www.regonline.co.uk/kimtrippsql on the registration form simply quote discount code: BOGOF for both yourself and your colleague and you will save 50% off each registration – that’s a 249 GBP saving! This offer is limited, book early to avoid disappointment.Wed, 23 JunREADINGEvening Meeting, More info and registerIntroduction to NoSQL (Not Only SQL) - Gavin Payne; T-SQL Gotcha's and how to avoid them - Ashwani Roy; Introduction to Recency Frequency - Tony Rogerson; Reporting Services - Tim LeungThu, 24 JunCARDIFFEvening Meeting, More info and registerAlex Whittles of Purple Frog Systems talks about Data warehouse design case studies, Other BI related session TBC Mon, 28 JunEDINBURGHEvening Meeting, More info and registerReplication (Components, Adminstration, Performance and Troubleshooting) - Neil Hambly Server Upgrades (Notes and Best practice from the field) - Satya Jayanty Wed, 14 JulLONDONEvening Meeting, More info and registerMeeting is being sponsored by DBSophic (http://www.dbsophic.com/download), database optimisation software. Physical Join Operators in SQL Server - Ami LevinWorkload Tuning - Ami LevinSQL Server and Disk IO (File Groups/Files, SSD's, Fusion-IO, In-RAM DB's, Fragmentation) - Tony RogersonComplex Event Processing - Allan MitchellMany thanks,Tony Rogerson, SQL Server MVPUK SQL Server User Grouphttp://sqlserverfaq.com"

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Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7, I Can only boot ubuntu through recovery mode

- by Alec

I want to become a new user of Ubuntu, however this problem is preventing me. I have/had Window 7 professional on my computer. I recently looked into getting linux. I discovered dual-booting and decided to give it a try. First I created a bootable flash drive with ubuntu 12.10 64 bit. I then followed the instructions on: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot after I finished going through the setup, my computer rebooted. After the reboot I was able to select Ubuntu, advanced options for Ubuntu, 2 memory tests, and windows 7 (loader). So I chose Windows ( honestly i was more concerned that i still had everything on windows at this point). I then rebooted again and selected Ubuntu. When i selected Ubuntu, the background screen of Grub (the crimson/burgandy color) stayed for a few seconds then the screen went black: video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kKcG4sT7Lg&feature=plcp I tried again with the same results. so i redid the ubuntu install differently using http://www.liberiangeek.net/2012/10/dual-booting-windows-7-and-ubuntu-12-10-quantal-quetzal/. After rebooting the same thing happened. After that i was stumped, so i figured it could hurt to experiment. after all i backed up my windows 7 stuff, and i have the software disk. I tried booting in recovery mode under "advanced options for Ubuntu" and sure enough, after selecting continue to normal reboot it worked. So i updated and everything but when i rebooted it still wouldn't boot under Ubuntu. It would always boot after recovery mode. So i try installing 12.10 32 bit Ubuntu. the same problem keeps happening. I can still get to Ubuntu through recovery mode. so i went online and tried using the terminal (in ubuntu that i booted through recovery mode) when i was using it i discovered that "Error in sitecustomize; set PYTHONVERBOSE for traceback: EOFError: EOF read where not expected" kept showing up. also i noticed a notification in the top right corner that looked like a do not enter sign. it said "an error occured, please run package manager from the right-click menu or apt-get in a terminal to see what is wrong. the error message was: 'ror in sitecustomize;set PYTHONVERBOSE for traceback: EOFError: EOF read where not expected traceback (most recent called last): File "/usr/bin/lsb_release EOFError: EOF read where not expected 39;0' this usually means that your installed packages have unmet dependencies" Naturally i assumed this was what was causing my boot problems. I downloaded synaptic and updated everything and the error went away. but my boot problem was still a problem. so i go online find some things that have worked for others, like this Try to do this (in your terminal: sudo nano /etc/default/grub Look for: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" Change it too : GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet" And update Grub: sudo update-grub This should fix stuff.) I did this and i still have the problem. sorry for the excessive explanation, please help.

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Fill a Flash Drive with Portable Software using Lupo PenSuite

- by Asian Angel

A flash drive full of portable software is helpful to have along wherever you go. The Lupo PenSuite lets you choose from three different versions to get the best fit for your everyday needs. Note: If running the full version you will need a 512 MB USB flash drive or larger. Using Lupo PenSuite The one window to watch for during the setup process is where you have the opportunity to add a specific language pack if needed. Outside of that all that you need to do is sit back and wait for the suite to be extracted. Note: Extraction times will vary based on version and extraction location. Here we browsed to our flash drive to extract it to… Once the setup process is complete locate and double click the Lupo_PenSuite.exe file. This one time window will present you the opportunity to start using the suite immediately, or go directly into the options. When the suite is active you will have a new system tray icon that operates as a start menu button. At the bottom you can monitor the remaining room on your flash drive, and use the close button to exit the suite (may display as a power button based on menu theme). A quick look at the set up inside the suite. There is a pre-configured area for organizing and storing your personal files. Prefer a classic style menu? Just select for it in the options (various tab) and enjoy a smaller streamlined look. Note: You can also change the theme for the regular menu and add a user pic. The suite provides access to your portable software and online sites. You get to enjoy the best of both as shown in the following examples. Websites will open using the suite’s portable Firefox install. VLC is ready to play your downloaded videos. The suite also has some very nice photo editing programs added in. Installing Additional Apps If one of your favorite programs is not included in the suite version, it only takes a few minutes to add it in. Go to the Additional Apps webpage, download the app(s), and extract them onto your hard-drive. Note: Link for additional apps webpage provided below. Add the extracted app(s) to the MyApps folder in the suite’s folder hierarchy. Click on ASuite in the suite’s start menu. Drag and drop the portable app’s exe file into the MyApps section in the ASuite window. Your new software’s shortcut should display as shown here. Close this window when finished. Checking the suite’s start menu will show your new software ready to be used. Conclusion If you need a good portable software collection to carry with you on a flash drive then Lupo PenSuite is definitely worth taking a look at. We tested Lupo PenSuite on XP, Vista, and Windows 7 and it works great on all three. Another popular choice is PortableApps and you can check out our Review of that too they are essentially the same thing, each is just packaged differently. Links Download Lupo PenSuite (Full, Lite, & Zero versions) *Download links approximately one-third down the page. Download Additional Apps for Lupo PenSuite Download Additional Skins for Lupo PenSuite Start Menu View Video Tutorials *Has tutorial for easy updating of entire suite. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Install and Run Applications from Your iPod, Flash Drive or Mp3 PlayerRebit Backup Software [Review]BitLocker To Go Encrypts Portable Flash Drives in Windows 7Create a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy WaySpeed up Your Windows Vista Computer with ReadyBoost TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor

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Remove Ubuntu or XP from the Windows 7 Boot Menu

- by Trevor Bekolay

If you’ve ever used a dual-boot system and then removed one of the operating systems, it can still show up in Windows 7’s boot menu. We’ll show you how to get rid of old entries and speed up the boot process. To edit the boot menu, we will use a program called bcdedit that’s included with Windows 7. There are some third-party graphical applications that will edit the menu, but we prefer to use built-in applications when we can. First, we need to open a command prompt with Administrator privileges. Open the start menu and type cmd into the search box. Right click on the cmd program that shows up, and select Run as administrator. Alternatively, if you’ve disabled the search box, you can find the command prompt in All Programs > Accessories. In the command prompt, type in bcdedit and press enter. A list of the boot menu entries will appear. Find the entry that you would like to delete – in our case, this is the last one, with the description of “Ubuntu”. What we need is the long sequence of characters marked as the identifier. Rather than type it out, we will copy it to be pasted later. Right-click somewhere in the command prompt window and select Mark. By clicking the left mouse button and dragging over the appropriate text, select the identifier for the entry you want to delete, including the left and right curly braces on either end. Press the Enter button. This will copy the text to the clipboard. In the command prompt, type in: bcdedit /delete and then right-click somewhere in the command prompt window and select Paste. Press Enter to input the now completed command. The boot menu entry will now be deleted. Type in bcdedit again to confirm that the offending entry is now gone from the list. If you reboot your machine now, you will notice that the boot menu does not even come up, because there is only one entry in the list (unless you had more than two entries to begin with). You’ve shaved a few seconds off of the boot process! Not to mention the added effort of pressing the enter button. There’s a lot more that you can do with bcdedit, like change the description of boot menu entries, create new entries, and much more. For a list of what you can do with bcdedit, type the following into the Command Window. bcdedit /help While there are third-party GUI solutions for accomplishing the same thing, using this method will save you time by not having to go through the extra steps of installing an extra program. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reinstall Ubuntu Grub Bootloader After Windows Wipes it OutClean Up Ubuntu Grub Boot Menu After UpgradesHow To Switch to Console Mode for Ubuntu VMware GuestSet Windows as Default OS when Dual Booting UbuntuChange the GRUB Menu Timeout on Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3

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Silverlight Cream for March 08, 2011 -- #1056

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Joost van Schaik, Manas Patnaik, Kevin Hoffman, Jesse Liberty, Deborah Kurata, Dhananjay Kumar, Dennis Delimarsky, Samuel Jack, Peter Kuhn, WindowsPhoneGeek, and Jfo. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "How I let the trees grow" Peter Kuhn WP7: "Simple Windows Phone 7 / Silverlight drag/flick behavior" Joost van Schaik Shoutouts: SilverlightShow has their top 5 from last week posted, plus the ECOContest is ready to be voted on: SilverlightShow for Feb 28 - March 06, 2011 Drew DeVault is a young man involved with the Microsoft Student Insiders. He gave a WP7 presentation at RMTT and has posted his material: Post-Session: Windows Phone 7 @ RMTT Rui Marinho has an app in the ECO Contest called Forest Findr. is based on the BIng Map Control for silverlight and Sql Spatial data, and helps you find Forests and get geolocated pictures and wikipedia information, and has a post up with a bunch of info on it here: Forest Findr. my entry on the SilverlightShow EcoContest From SilverlightCream.com: Simple Windows Phone 7 / Silverlight drag/flick behavior Joost van Schaik has a behavior that makes *anything* draggable and 'flickable' in WP7 ... read the intro, scroll to the bottom to watch the demo, and then grab up the code... cool stuff, Joost! Data Aggregation Using Presentation Model in RIA and Silverlight 4 Manas Patnaik sent me a link to his blog, and it appears he's got lots of Silverlight goodness out there so you'll be hearing more about him. This first post is on the Presentation Model in RIA and Silverlight 4... good discussion, diagrams and code... good job, Manas! WP7 for iPhone and Android Developers - Advanced UI Kevin Hoffman has part 3 of an ambitious 12-part tutorial series up on WP7 development ... this go-around is concentrating on Advanced UI - Panorama/Pivot controls, DataBinding, ObservableCollections, and Converters... whew! Sterling DB on top of Isolated Storage – 2 Jesse Liberty has part 2 of his Sterling series up... this time setting up the database in App.xaml so it can be used for dealing with tombstoning. Silverlight Charting: Formatting the Tick Marks Deborah Kurata's next chart tutorial is all about showing you how to continue to dress up your charts.. this time by formatting the tick marks... if you don't know what that is... check out the first image in the post. Stored Procedure in WCF Data Service Dhananjay Kumar has a very nice tutorial up on using a stored proc with WCF Data Services... I happen to know someone working on just that at this time. If you have this in mind, here's a step-by-step guide to getting it done. Windows Phone 7 – Episode 5 – Pages Dennis Delimarsky has part 5 of his WP7 tutorial series up and is discussing Pages in this 17 minute video. Unpacking Simon Squared: My mini framework-independent animation library Samuel Jack has not only Open-Sourced the WP7 game he built and blogged about, but he's now explaining some of the structure of the game in posts such as this one about the animation library he wrote that his game is built on. How I let the trees grow Peter Kuhn shares with us the code he used for the tree animation in his ECO Contest entry. There's a lot to learn in this post about performance ... the fully-animated tree has about 20K elements... 5K branches and 20K leaves... check it out. WP7 ToastPrompt in depth WindowsPhoneGeek takes a deep dive into the ToastPrompt control in the Coding4fun Toolkit... everything you need to completely use the control including sample code. Beware the loaded event Jfo talks about another frustration point she had with WP7 development, and that is around the use of the loaded event... read these tips from someone that's been there. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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Why SQL Developer Rocks for the Advanced User Too

- by thatjeffsmith

While SQL Developer may be ‘perfect for Oracle beginners,’ that doesn’t preclude advanced and intermediate users from getting their fair share of toys! I’ve been working with Oracle since the 7.3.4 days, and I think it’s pretty safe to say that the WAY an ‘old timer’ uses a tool like SQL Developer is radically different than the ‘beginner.’ If you’ve been reluctant to use SQL Developer because it’s a GUI, give me a few minutes to try to convince you it’s worth a second (or third) look. 1. Help when you want it, and only when you want it One of the biggest gripes any user has with a piece of software is when said software can’t get out of it’s own way. When you’re typing in a word processor, sometimes you can do without the grammar and spelling checks, the offer to auto-complete your words, and all of the additional mark-up. This drives folks to programs like Notepad++ and vi. You can disable the code insight feature so you can type unmolested by SQL Developer’s attempt to auto-complete your object names. Now, if you happen to come across a long or hard to spell object name, you can still invoke the feature on demand using Ctrl+Spacebar Code Editor – Completion Insight – Enable Completion Auto-Popup (Keyword being Auto) 2. Automatic File Tracking SQL*Minus is nice. Vi is cool. Notepad++ has a lot of features I like. But not too many editors offer automatic logging of changes to your files without having to setup a source control system. I was doing some work on my login.sql. I’m not doing anything crazy, but seeing what I had done in previous iterations was helpful. Now imagine how nice it would be to have this available for your l,000+ line scripts! Track your scripts as they change, no setup required! 3. Extend the Functionality Know SQL and XML? Wish SQL Developer did JUST a little bit more? Build your own extensions. You can have custom context menus and object pages in just a few minutes. This is an example of lazy developers writing code that write code. 4. Get Your Money’s Worth You’ve licensed Enterprise Edition. You got your Diagnostic and Tuning packs. Now start using them! Not everyone has access to Enterprise Manager, especially developers. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need help with troubleshooting and optimizing poorly performing SQL statements. ASH, AWR, Real-Time SQL Monitoring and the SQL Tuning Advisor are built into the Reports and Worksheet. Yes you could make the package calls, but that’s a whole lot of typing, and I’d rather just get to the results. 5. Profile, Debug, & Unit Testing PLSQL An Interactive Development Environment (IDE) built by the same folks that own the programming language (Hello – Oracle PLSQL!) should be complete. It should ‘hug’ the developer and empower them to churn out programs that work, run fast, and are easy to maintain. Write it, test it, debug it, and tune it. When you’re running your programs and you just want to see the data that’s returned, that shouldn’t require any special settings or workaround to make it happen either. Magic! And a whole lot more… I could go on and talk about the support for things like DataPump, RMAN, and DBMS_SCHEDULER, but you’re experts and you’re plenty busy. If you think SQL Developer is falling short somewhere, I want you to let us know about it.

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Java Hint in NetBeans for Identifying JOptionPanes

- by Geertjan

I tend to have "JOptionPane.showMessageDialogs" scattered through my code, for debugging purposes. Now I have a way to identify all of them and remove them one by one, since some of them are there for users of the application so shouldn't be removed, via the Refactoring window: Identifying instances of code that I'm interested in is really trivial: import org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints.ErrorDescription; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.ConstraintVariableType; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.ErrorDescriptionFactory; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.Hint; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.HintContext; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.TriggerPattern; import org.openide.util.NbBundle.Messages; @Hint( displayName = "#DN_ShowMessageDialogChecker", description = "#DESC_ShowMessageDialogChecker", category = "general") @Messages({ "DN_ShowMessageDialogChecker=Found \"ShowMessageDialog\"", "DESC_ShowMessageDialogChecker=Checks for JOptionPane.showMes" }) public class ShowMessageDialogChecker { @TriggerPattern(value = "$1.showMessageDialog", constraints = @ConstraintVariableType(variable = "$1", type = "javax.swing.JOptionPane")) @Messages("ERR_ShowMessageDialogChecker=Are you sure you need this statement?") public static ErrorDescription computeWarning(HintContext ctx) { return ErrorDescriptionFactory.forName( ctx, ctx.getPath(), Bundle.ERR_ShowMessageDialogChecker()); } } Stick the above class, which seriously isn't much code at all, in a module and run it, with this result: Bit trickier to do the fix, i.e., add a bit of code to let the user remove the statement, but I looked in the NetBeans sources and used the System.out fix, which does the same thing: import com.sun.source.tree.BlockTree; import com.sun.source.tree.StatementTree; import com.sun.source.util.TreePath; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Iterator; import java.util.List; import org.netbeans.api.java.source.CompilationInfo; import org.netbeans.api.java.source.WorkingCopy; import org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints.ErrorDescription; import org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints.Fix; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.ConstraintVariableType; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.ErrorDescriptionFactory; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.Hint; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.HintContext; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.JavaFix; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.TriggerPattern; import org.openide.util.NbBundle.Messages; @Hint( displayName = "#DN_ShowMessageDialogChecker", description = "#DESC_ShowMessageDialogChecker", category = "general") @Messages({ "DN_ShowMessageDialogChecker=Found \"ShowMessageDialog\"", "DESC_ShowMessageDialogChecker=Checks for JOptionPane.showMes" }) public class ShowMessageDialogChecker { @TriggerPattern(value = "$1.showMessageDialog", constraints = @ConstraintVariableType(variable = "$1", type = "javax.swing.JOptionPane")) @Messages("ERR_ShowMessageDialogChecker=Are you sure you need this statement?") public static ErrorDescription computeWarning(HintContext ctx) { Fix fix = new FixImpl(ctx.getInfo(), ctx.getPath()).toEditorFix(); return ErrorDescriptionFactory.forName( ctx, ctx.getPath(), Bundle.ERR_ShowMessageDialogChecker(), fix); } private static final class FixImpl extends JavaFix { public FixImpl(CompilationInfo info, TreePath tp) { super(info, tp); } @Override @Messages("FIX_ShowMessageDialogChecker=Remove the statement") protected String getText() { return Bundle.FIX_ShowMessageDialogChecker(); } @Override protected void performRewrite(TransformationContext tc) throws Exception { WorkingCopy wc = tc.getWorkingCopy(); TreePath statementPath = tc.getPath(); TreePath blockPath = tc.getPath().getParentPath(); while (!(blockPath.getLeaf() instanceof BlockTree)) { statementPath = blockPath; blockPath = blockPath.getParentPath(); if (blockPath == null) { return; } } BlockTree blockTree = (BlockTree) blockPath.getLeaf(); List<? extends StatementTree> statements = blockTree.getStatements(); List<StatementTree> newStatements = new ArrayList<StatementTree>(); for (Iterator<? extends StatementTree> it = statements.iterator(); it.hasNext();) { StatementTree statement = it.next(); if (statement != statementPath.getLeaf()) { newStatements.add(statement); } } BlockTree newBlockTree = wc.getTreeMaker().Block(newStatements, blockTree.isStatic()); wc.rewrite(blockTree, newBlockTree); } } } Aside from now being able to use "Inspect & Refactor" to identify and fix all instances of JOptionPane.showMessageDialog at the same time, you can also do the fixes per instance within the editor:

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Simple task framework - building software from reusable pieces

- by RuslanD

I'm writing a web service with several APIs, and they will be sharing some of the implementation code. In order not to copy-paste, I would like to ideally implement each API call as a series of tasks, which are executed in a sequence determined by the business logic. One obvious question is whether that's the best strategy for code reuse, or whether I can look at it in a different way. But assuming I want to go with tasks, several issues arise: What's a good task interface to use? How do I pass data computed in one task to another task in the sequence that might need it? In the past, I've worked with task interfaces like: interface Task<T, U> { U execute(T input); } Then I also had sort of a "task context" object which had getters and setters for any kind of data my tasks needed to produce or consume, and it gets passed to all tasks. I'm aware that this suffers from a host of problems. So I wanted to figure out a better way to implement it this time around. My current idea is to have a TaskContext object which is a type-safe heterogeneous container (as described in Effective Java). Each task can ask for an item from this container (task input), or add an item to the container (task output). That way, tasks don't need to know about each other directly, and I don't have to write a class with dozens of methods for each data item. There are, however, several drawbacks: Each item in this TaskContext container should be a complex type that wraps around the actual item data. If task A uses a String for some purpose, and task B uses a String for something entirely different, then just storing a mapping between String.class and some object doesn't work for both tasks. The other reason is that I can't use that kind of container for generic collections directly, so they need to be wrapped in another object. This means that, based on how many tasks I define, I would need to also define a number of classes for the task items that may be consumed or produced, which may lead to code bloat and duplication. For instance, if a task takes some Long value as input and produces another Long value as output, I would have to have two classes that simply wrap around a Long, which IMO can spiral out of control pretty quickly as the codebase evolves. I briefly looked at workflow engine libraries, but they kind of seem like a heavy hammer for this particular nail. How would you go about writing a simple task framework with the following requirements: Tasks should be as self-contained as possible, so they can be composed in different ways to create different workflows. That being said, some tasks may perform expensive computations that are prerequisites for other tasks. We want to have a way of storing the results of intermediate computations done by tasks so that other tasks can use those results for free. The task framework should be light, i.e. growing the code doesn't involve introducing many new types just to plug into the framework.

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Windows Azure Emulators On Your Desktop

- by BuckWoody

Many people feel they have to set up a full Azure subscription online to try out and develop on Windows Azure. But you don’t have to do that right away. In fact, you can download the Windows Azure Compute Emulator – a “cloud development environment” – right on your desktop. No, it’s not for production use, and no, you won’t have other people using your system as a cloud provider, and yes, there are some differences with Production Windows Azure, but you’ll be able code, run, test, diagnose, watch, change and configure code without having any connection to the Internet at all. The best thing about this approach is that when you are ready to deploy the code you’ve been testing, a few clicks deploys it to your subscription when you make one. So what deep-magic does it take to run such a thing right on your laptop or even a Virtual PC? Well, it’s actually not all that difficult. You simply download and install the Windows Azure SDK (you can even get a free version of Visual Studio for it to run on – you’re welcome) from here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsazure/cc974146.aspx This SDK will also install the Windows Azure Compute Emulator and the Windows Azure Storage Emulator – and then you’re all set. Right-click the icon for Visual Studio and select “Run as Administrator”: Now open a new “Cloud” type of project: Add your Web and Worker Roles that you want to code: And when you’re done with your design, press F5 to start the desktop version of Azure: Want to learn more about what’s happening underneath? Right-click the tray icon with the Azure logo, and select the two emulators to see what they are doing: In the configuration files, you’ll see a “Use Development Storage” setting. You can call the BLOB, Table or Queue storage and it will all run on your desktop. When you’re ready to deploy everything to Windows Azure, you simply change the configuration settings and add the storage keys and so on that you need. Want to learn more about all this? Overview of the Windows Azure Compute Emulator: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg432968.aspx Overview of the Windows Azure Storage Emulator: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg432983.aspx January 2011 Training Kit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=413E88F8-5966-4A83-B309-53B7B77EDF78&displaylang=en

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BizTalk 2009 - Pipeline Component Wizard

- by Stuart Brierley

Recently I decided to try out the BizTalk Server Pipeline Component Wizard when creating a new pipeline component for BizTalk 2009. There are different versions of the wizard available, so be sure to download the appropriate version for the BizTalk environment that you are working with. Following the download and expansion of the zip file, you should be left with a Visual Studio solution. Open this solution and build the project. Following this installation is straight foward - locate and run the built setup.exe file in the PipelineComponentWizard Setup project and click through the small number of installation screens. Once you have completed installation you will be ready to use the wizard in Visual Studio to create your BizTalk Pipeline Component. Start by creating a new project, selecting BizTalk Projects then BizTalk Server Pipeline Component. You will then be presented with the splash screen. The next step is General Setup, where you will detail the classname, namespace, pipeline and component types, and the implementation language for your Pipeline Component. The options for pipeline type are Receive, Send or Any. Depending on the pipeline type chosen there are different options presented for the component type, matching those available within the BizTalk Pipelines themselves: Receive - Decoder, Disassembling Parser, Validate, Party Resolver, Any. Send - Encoder, Assembling Serializer, Any. Any - Any. The options for implementation language are C# or VB.Net Next you must set up the UI settings - these are the settings that affect the appearance of the pipeline component within Visual Studio. You must detail the component name, version, description and icon. Next is the definition of the variables that the pipeline component will use. The values for these variables will be defined in Visual Studio when creating a pipeline. The options for each variable you require are: Designer Property - The name of the variable. Data Type - String, Boolean, Integer, Long, Short, Schema List, Schema With None Clicking finish now will complete the wizard stage of the creation of your pipeline component. Once the wizard has completed you will be left with a BizTalk Server Pipeline Component project containing a skeleton code file for you to complete. Within this code file you will mainly be interested in the execute method, which is left mostly empty ready for you to implement your custom pipeline code: #region IComponent members /// <summary> /// Implements IComponent.Execute method. /// </summary> /// <param name="pc">Pipeline context</param> /// <param name="inmsg">Input message</param> /// <returns>Original input message</returns> /// <remarks> /// IComponent.Execute method is used to initiate /// the processing of the message in this pipeline component. /// </remarks> public Microsoft.BizTalk.Message.Interop.IBaseMessage Execute(Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.Interop.IPipelineContext pc, Microsoft.BizTalk.Message.Interop.IBaseMessage inmsg) { // // TODO: implement component logic // // this way, it's a passthrough pipeline component return inmsg; } #endregion Once you have implemented your custom code, build and compile your Custom Pipeline Component then add the compiled .dll to C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009\Pipeline Components . When creating a new pipeline, in Visual Studio reset the toolbox and the custom pipeline component should appear ready for you to use in your Biztalk Pipeline. Drop the pipeline component into the relevant pipeline stage and configure the component properties (the variables defined in the wizard). You can now deploy and use the pipeline as you would any other custom pipeline.

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Flash Actionscript 3.0 Game Projectile Creation

- by Christian Basar

I have been creating a side-scrolling Actionscript 3.0 game. In this game I want the Player to be able to shoot blow darts as weapons. I had some trouble getting the darts to be created in the right place (in front of the player), but eventually got it working with some help from this page (please look at it for background information on this problem): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8031553/flash-actionscript-3-0-game-projectile-creation I got the darts to be created in the right place (near the player) and a 'movePlayerDarts()' function moves them. But I actually have a new problem. When the player moves after firing a dart, the dart tries to follow him! If the player jumps, the dart rises up. If the player moves to the left, the dart moves slightly to the left. Obviously, there is some code somewhere which is telling the darts to follow the player. I do not see how, unless the 'playerDartContainer' has something to do with that. But the container is always at position (0,0) and it does not move. Also, as a test I traced a dart's 'y' coordinate within the constantly-running 'movePlayerDarts()' function. As you can see, that function constantly moves the dart down the y axis by increasing its y-coordinate value. But when I jump, the 'y' coordinate being traced is never reduced, even though the dart clearly looks like it's rising! If anybody has any suggestions, I'd appreciate them! Here is the code I use to create the darts: // This function creates a dart public function createDart():void { if (playerDartContainer.numChildren <= 4) { // Play dart shooting sound sndDartShootIns.play(); // Create a new 'PlayerDart' object playerDart = new PlayerDart(); // Set the new dart's initial position and direction depending on the player's direction // Player's facing right if (player.scaleX == 1) { // Create dart in front of player's dart gun playerDart.x = player.x + 12; playerDart.y = player.y - 85; // Dart faces right, too playerDart.scaleX = 1; } // Player's facing left else if (player.scaleX == -1) { // Create dart in front of player's dart gun playerDart.x = player.x - 12; playerDart.y = player.y - 85; // Dart faces left, too playerDart.scaleX = -1; } playerDartContainer.addChild(playerDart); } } // End of 'createDart()' function This code is the EnterFrameHandler for the player darts: // In every frame, call 'movePlayerDarts()' to move the darts within the 'playerDartContainer' public function playerDartEnterFrameHandler(event:Event):void { // Only move the Player's darts if their container has at least one dart within if (playerDartContainer.numChildren > 0) { movePlayerDarts(); } } And finally, this is the code that actually moves all of the player's darts: // Move all of the Player's darts public function movePlayerDarts():void { for (var pdIns:int = 0; pdIns < playerDartContainer.numChildren; pdIns++) { // Set the Player Dart 'instance' variable to equal the current PlayerDart playerDartIns = PlayerDart(playerDartContainer.getChildAt(pdIns)); // Move the current dart in the direction it was shot. The dart's 'x-scale' // factor is multiplied by its speed (5) to move the dart in its correct // direction. If the 'x-scale' factor is -1, the dart is pointing left (as // seen in the 'createDart()' function. (-1 * 5 = -5), so the dart will go // to left at a rate of 5. The opposite is true for the right-ward facing // darts playerDartIns.x += playerDartIns.scaleX * 1; // Make gravity work on the dart playerDartIns.y += 0.7; //playerDartIns.y += 1; // What if the dart hits the ground? if (HitTest.intersects(playerDartIns, floor, this)) { playerDartContainer.removeChild(playerDartIns); } //trace("Dart x: " + playerDartIns.x); trace("Dart y: " + playerDartIns.y); } }

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Bad Spot to Be In: Playing Catch-up with Mobile Advertising

- by Mike Stiles

You probably noticed, there’s a mass migration going on from online desktop/laptop usage to smartphone/tablet usage. It’s an indicator of how we live our lives in the modern world: always on the go, with no intention of being disconnected while out there. Consequently, paid as it relates to mobile advertising is taking the social spotlight. eMarketer estimated that in 2013, US adults would spend about 2 hours, 21 minutes a day on mobile, not counting talking time. More people in the world own smartphones than own toothbrushes (bad news I suppose if you’re marketing toothpaste). They’re using those mobile devices to access social networks, consuming at least 17% of their mobile time on them. Frankly, you don’t need a deep dive into mobile usage stats to know what’s going on. Just look around you in any store, venue or coffee shop. It’s really obvious…our mobile devices are now where we “are,” so that’s where marketers can increasingly reach us. And it’s a smart place for them to do just that. Mobile devices can be viewed more and more as shopping facilitators. Usually when someone is on mobile, they are not in passive research mode. They are likely standing near a store or in front of a product, using their mobile to seek reassurance that buying that product is the right move. They are the hottest of hot prospects. Consider that 4 out of 5 consumers use smartphones to shop, 52% of Americans use mobile devices for in-store for research, 70% of mobile searches lead to online action inside of an hour, and people that find you on mobile convert at almost 3x the rate as those that find you on desktop or laptop. But what are marketers doing? Enter statistics from Mary Meeker’s latest State of the Internet report. Common sense says you buy advertising where people are spending their eyeball time, right? But while mobile is 20% of media use and rising, the ad spend there is 4%. Conversely, while print usage is at 5% and falling, ad spend there is 19%. We all love nostalgia, but come on. There are reasons marketing dollar migration to mobile has not matched user migration, including the availability of mobile ad products and the ability to measure user response to mobile ads. But interesting things are happening now. First came Facebook’s mobile ad, which let app developers pay to get potential downloads. Then their mobile ad network was announced at F8, allowing marketers to target users across non-Facebook apps while leveraging the wealth of diverse data Facebook has on those users, a big deal since Nielsen has pointed out mobile apps make up 89% of the media time spent on mobile. Twitter has a similar play in motion with their MoPub acquisition. And now mobile deeplinks have arrived, which can take users straight to sub-pages of mobile apps for a faster, more direct shopper/researcher user experience. The sooner the gratification, the smoother and faster the conversion. To be clear, growth in mobile ad spending is well underway. After posting $13.1 billion in 2013, Gartner expects global mobile ad spending to reach $18 billion this year, then go to $41.9 billion by 2017. Cheap smartphones and data plans are spreading worldwide, further fueling the shift to mobile. Mobile usage in India alone should grow 400% by 2018. And, of course, there’s the famous statistic that mobile should overtake desktop Internet usage this year. How can we as marketers mess up this opportunity? Two ways. We could position ourselves in perpetual “catch-up” mode and keep spending ad dollars where the public used to be. And we could annoy mobile users with horrid old-school marketing practices. Two-thirds of users told Forrester they think interruptive in-app ads are more annoying than TV ads. Make sure your brand’s social marketing technology platform is delivering a crystal clear picture of your social connections so the mobile touch point is highly relevant, mobile optimized, and delivering real value and satisfying experiences. Otherwise, all we’ve done is find a new way to be unwanted. @mikestiles @oraclesocialPhoto: Kate Mallatratt, freeimages.com

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