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  • How To Validate an Email Address

    - by Richard Jones
    I’m using my blog today as book mark service today. I just found this article on howto really validate if an email address exists. I’ll have a go at wrapping this article into a WCF/Webservice http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/how-to-check-if-an-email-address-exists-without-sending-an-email/

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  • HLSL - Creating Shadows in 2D

    - by richard
    The way that I create shadows is by the following technique: http://www.catalinzima.com/2010/07/my-technique-for-the-shader-based-dynamic-2d-shadows/ But I have questions to HLSL. The way that I currently do it is, I have a black and white image, where Black means 'object', and white means 'nothing'. I then distort the image like in the tutorial. I do this with a pixel shader, but instead of rendering to the screen, I render to a texture, back to my application. I then take this, and create the shadows, and then send it back to the graphics card to undo the distortion, after the shadow has been added - this comes back and I have a stencil of shadow. I can put this ontop of the original image and send them back to the graphics card, which then puts them on the screen. To me this is alot of back and forth. Is there a way i can avoid this? The problem that I am having is that I need to basically go through all positions in the texture 3 times, and use the new new texture every time instead of the orginal one. I tried to read up on Passes, but i don't think that i am heading in the right direction there. Help?

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  • What is Object Oriented Programming ill-suited for?

    - by Richard JP Le Guen
    In Martin Fowler's book Refactoring, Fowler speaks of how when developers learn something new, they don't consider when it's inappropriate for the job: Ten years ago it was like that with objects. If someone asked me when not to use objects, it was hard to answer. [...] It was just that I didn't know what those limitations were, although I knew what the benefits were. Reading this, it occurred to me I don't know what the limitations or potential disadvantages of Object-Oriented Programming are. What are the limitations of Object Oriented Programming? When should one look at a project and think "OOP is not best suited for this"?

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  • isometric background that covers the viewport [on hold]

    - by Richard
    The background image should cover the viewport. The technique I use now is a loop with an innerloop that draws diamond shaped images on a canvas element, but it looks like a rotated square. This is a nice example: ,that covers the whole viewport. I have heard something about clickthrough maps, but what more ways are there that are most efficient with mobile devices and javascript? Any advice in grid design out there?.

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  • DIVs of equal height

    - by Richard Mitchell
    It's the same old old problem you want to make a set of columns the same height but life it too short for the CSS only version. It's technically possible to do but nowadays you can't run the web without having javascript turned on. There must be an easier way. After a short amount of googling I came across a few solutions. A couple were GPL'd which ruled them straight out as I want Red Gate to pay for my mortgage. The best simple solution was found at. http://www.cssnewbie.com/equal-height-columns-with-jquery/...(read more)

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  • Should a model binder populate all of the model?

    - by Richard
    Should a model binder populate all of the model, or only the bits that are being posted? For example, I am adding a product in my system and on the form i want the user to select which sites the new product will appear on. Therefore, in my model I want to populate a collection called "AllAvailableSites" to render the checkboxes for the user to choose from. I also need to populate the model with any chosen sites on a post in case the form does not validate, and I need to represent the form showing the initial selections. It would seem that I should let the model binder set the chosen sites on the model, and (once in the controller method) I set the "AllAvailableSites" on the model. Does that sound right? It seems more efficient to set everything in the model binder but someone is suggesting it is not quite right. I am grateful for any advice; I have to say that all the MVC model binding help online seems to cite really simple examples, nothing complicated. Do I really need a GET and a POST version of a method? Can't they just take the same view model? Then I check in my model binder if it is a GET/POST, and populate all the model accordingly.

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  • Getting Ethernet driver to crippled machine

    - by Richard
    The reply at How do I install drivers for the Atheros AR8161 Ethernet controller? probably helps me. I have a Toshiba S855, bought yesterday. lspci -vv | grep Atheros command from the terminal shows me I have the AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 10) However the answer sudo apt-get install ... requires an internet connection. How can I, using another machine, capture the necessary information on that other machine to copy across to the crippled machine, and then how do I build from there. Thanks in anticipation

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  • "Siebel2FusionCRM Integration" solution by ec4u (D)

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    ec4u, a CRM System Integration leader based in Germany and Switzerland, and an historical Oracle/Siebel partner, offers a complete "Siebel2FusionCRM Integration" solution, based on tools methodology and services. ec4u Siebel2FusionCRM Integration solution's main objectives are: Integration between Siebel (on-premise) and Fusion CRM / Marketing (“in the cloud”) Accounts, Contacts and Addresses are maintained by Sales in Siebel CRM and synchronized in real-time into Fusion CRM / Marketing CDM Processing ensures clean data for marketing campaigns (validation and deduplication) Create E-Mail marketing campaigns and newsletters in Fusion The solution features: Upsert processes figure out what information needs to be updated, inserted or terminated (deleted). However, as Siebel is the data master, it is still a one-way synchronization. Handle deleted or nullified information by terminating them in Fusion CRM (set start and end date to define the validity period) Initial load and real-time synchronization use the same processes Invocations/Operations can be repeated due to no transactional support from Fusion web services Tagging sub entries in case of 1 to N mapping (Example: Telephone number is one simple field in Siebel but in Fusion you can have multiple telephone numbers in a sub table) E-Mail-Notification in case of any error (containing error message, instance number, detailed payload) Schematron Validation Interested? Looking for more details or a partnership with ec4u for a "Siebel2FusionCRM Integration" project? Contact: Gregor Bublitz, Director Expert Services ([email protected])

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  • Translating Your Customizations

    - by Richard Bingham
    This blog post explains the basics of translating the customizations you can make to Fusion Applications products, with the inclusion of information for both composer-based customizations and the generic design-time customizations done via JDeveloper. Introduction Like most Oracle Applications, Fusion Applications installs on-premise with a US-English base language that is, in Release 7, supported by the option to add up to a total of 22 additional language packs (In Oracle Cloud production environments languages are pre-installed already). As such many organizations offer their users the option of working with their local language, and logically that should also apply for any customizations as well. Composer-based UI Customizations Customizations made in Page Composer take into consideration the session LOCALE, as set in the user preferences screen, during all customization work, and stores the customization in the MDS repository accordingly. As such the actual new or changed values used will only apply for the same language under which the customization was made, and text for any other languages requires a separate upload. See the Resource Bundles section below, which incidentally also applies to custom UI changes done in JDeveloper. You may have noticed this when you select the “Select Text Resource” menu option when editing the text on a page. Using this ensures that the resource bundles are used, whereas if you define a static value in Expression Builder it will never be available for translation. Notice in the screenshot below the “What’s New” custom value I have already defined using the ‘Select Text Resource’ feature is internally using the adfBundle groovy function to pull the custom value for my key (RT_S_1) from the ComposerOverrideBundle. Figure 1 – Page Composer showing the override bundle being used. Business Objects Customizing the Business Objects available in the Applications Composer tool for the CRM products, such as adding additional fields, also operates using the session language. Translating these additional values for these fields into other installed languages requires loading additional resource bundles, again as described below. Reports and Analytics Most customizations to Reports and BI Analytics are just essentially reorganizations and visualizations of existing number and text data from the system, and as such will use the appropriate values based on the users session language. Where a translated value or string exists for that session language, it will be used without the need for additional work. Extending through the addition of brand new reports and analytics requires another method of loading the translated strings, as part of what is known as ‘Localizing’ the BI Catalog and Metadata. This time it is via an export/import of XML data through the BI Administrators console, and is described in the OBIEE Admin Guide. Fusion Applications reports based on BI Publisher are already defined in template-per-locale, and in addition provide an extra process for getting the data for translation and reloading. This again uses the standard resource bundle format. Loading a custom report is illustrated in this video from our YouTube channel which shows the screen for both setting the template local and running an export for translation. Fusion Applications Menus Whilst the seeded Navigator and Global Menu values are fully translated when the additional language is installed, if they are customized then the change or new menu item will apply universally, not currently per language. This is set to change in a future release with the new UI Text Editor feature described below. More on Resource Bundles As mentioned above, to provide translations for most of your customizations you need to add values to a resource bundle. This is an industry open standard (OASIS) format XML file with the extension .xliff, and store translated values for the strings used by ADF at run-time. The general process is that these values are exported from the MDS repository, manually edited, and then imported back in again.This needs to be done by an administrator, via either WLST commands or through Enterprise Manager as per the screenshot below. This is detailed out in the Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide. For SaaS environments the Cloud Operations team can assist. Figure 2 – Enterprise Manager’s MDS export used getting resource bundles for manual translation and re-imported on the same screen. All customized strings are stored in an override bundle (xliff file) for each locale, suffixed with the language initials, with English ones being saved to the default. As such each language bundle can be easily identified and updated. Similarly if you used JDeveloper to create your own applications as extensions to Fusion Applications you would use the native support for resource bundles, and add them into the faces-config.xml file for inclusion in your application. An example is this ADF customization video from our YouTube channel. JDeveloper also supports automatic synchronization between your underlying resource bundles and any translatable strings you add – very handy. For more information see chapters on “Using Automatic Resource Bundle Integration in JDeveloper” and “Manually Defining Resource Bundles and Locales” in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer’s Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework. FND Messages and Look-ups FND Messages, as defined here, are not used for UI labels (they are known as ‘strings’), but are the responses back to users as a result of an action, such as from a page submit. Each ‘message’ is defined and stored in the related database table (FND_MESSAGES_B), with another (FND_MESSAGES_TL) holding any language-specific values. These come seeded with the additional language installs, however if you customize the messages via the “Manage Messages” task in Functional Setup Manager, or add new ones, then currently (in Release 7) you’ll need to repeat it for each language. Figure 3 – An FND Message defined in an English user session. Similarly Look-ups are stored in a translation table (FND_LOOKUP_VALUES_TL) where appropriate, and can be customized by setting the users session language and making the change  in the Setup and Maintenance task entitled “Manage [Standard|Common] Look-ups”. Online Help Yes, in fact all the seeded help is applied as part of each language pack install as part of the post-install provisioning process. If you are editing or adding custom online help then the Create Help screen provides a drop-down of which language your help customization will apply to. This is shown in the video below from our YouTube channel, and obviously you’ll need to it for each language in use. What is Coming for Translations? Currently planned for Release 8 is something called the User Interface (UI) Text Editor. This tool will allow the editing of all the text shown on the pages and forms of Fusion Application. This will provide a search based on a particular term or word, say “Worker”, and will allow it to be adjusted, say to “Employee”, which then updates all the Resource Bundles that contain it. In the case of multi-language environments, it will use the users session language (locale) to know which Resource Bundles to apply the change to. This capability will also support customization sandboxes, to help ensure changes can be tested and approved.  It is also interesting to note that the design currently allows any page-specific customizations done using Page Composer or Application Composer to over-write the global changes done via the UI Text Editor, allowing for special context-sensitive values to still be used. Further Reading and Resources The following short list provides the mains resources for digging into more detail on translation support for both Composer and JDeveloper customization projects. There is a dedicated chapter entitled “Translating Custom Text” in the Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide. This has good examples and steps for many tasks, especially administering resource bundles. Using localization formatting (numbers, dates etc) for design-time changes is well documented in the Fusion Applications Developer Guide. For more guidelines on general design-time globalization, see either the ‘Internationalizing and Localizing Pages’ chapter in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer’s Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle Fusion Applications Edition) or the general Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide. The Oracle Architecture ‘A-Team’ provided a recent post on customizing the user session timeout popup, using design-time changes to resource bundles. It has detailed step-by-step examples which can be a useful illustration.

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  • A Facelift for Fusion

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    It's simple. It's modern. It was the buzz at OpenWorld in San Francisco. See what the UX team has been up to and what customers are going to love. At OpenWorld 2012, the Oracle Applications User Experience (UX) team unveiled the new face of Fusion Applications. You might have seen it in sessions presented by Chris Leone, Anthony Lye, Jeremy Ashley and others or you may have gotten a look on the demogrounds. Why are we delivering a new face for Fusion Applications? "Because," says Ashley, vice president of the Oracle Applications User Experience team, "we want to provide a simple, modern, productive way for users to complete their top quick-entry tasks. The idea is to provide a clear, productive user experience that is backed by the full functionality of Fusion Applications." The first release of the new face of Fusion focuses on three types of users. It provides a fully functional gateway to Fusion Applications for: ·         New and casual users who need quick access to self-service tasks ·         Professional users who need fast access to quick-entry, high-volume tasks ·         Users who are looking for a way to quickly brand their portal for employees The new face of Fusion allows users to move easily from navigation to action, Ashley said, and it has been designed for any device -- Mac, PC, iPad, Android, SmartBoard -- in the browser. How Did We Build It? The new face of Fusion essentially is a custom shell, developed by the Apps UX team, and a set of page templates that embodies a simple design aesthetic. It's repeatable, providing consistency across its pages, and the need for training is little to zero. More specifically, the new face of Fusion has been built on ADF. The Applications UX team created pages in JDeveloper using local tasks flows bound to existing view objects. Three new components were commissioned from ADF and existing Fusion components were re-skinned to deliver a simple, modern user experience. It really is that simple - and to prove that point, we've been sharing our new face of Fusion story on several Oracle channels such as this one. If you want to learn more, check OpenWorld presentation on the Fusion Learning Center.

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  • iOS UITab Bar Icons

    - by Richard Jones
    I’ve been struggling trying to create the icons that are used for different tabs on an iPhone app. The difficulty is, is that each image is a PNG,  but alpha channels are used to represent their selected state. I’ve just come across this fab tool, that takes all the pain away,  using 30x30 png images,  I was able to create a really nice set of icons. http://scottpenberthy.com/tab/   (Respect)

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  • Apress Deal of the day - 6/Feb/2011 - Ultra-Fast ASP.NET: Building Ultra-Fast and Ultra-Scalable Websites Using ASP.NET and SQL Server

    - by TATWORTH
    Today's $10 deal of the day at http://www.apress.com/info/dailydeal  is Ultra-Fast ASP.NET: Building Ultra-Fast and Ultra-Scalable Websites Using ASP.NET and SQL Server by Richard Kessig - ISBN 978-1-4302-2383-2 I won a copy of this book at 101 Books. Richard Kessig is an all-star member of forums.asp.net - see http://forums.asp.net/members/RickNZ.aspx " Ultra-Fast ASP.NET provides a practical guide to building extremely fast and scalable web sites using ASP.NET and SQL Server. It strikes a balance between imparting usable advice and backing that advice up with supporting background information. $49.99 | Published Nov 2009 | Rick Kiessig"

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  • How do I EFI boot Zenbook Prime UX31A from built-in card reader?

    - by Richard Ayotte
    How do I EFI boot Zenbook Prime UX31A from built-in card reader? Ubuntu 12.10 64bit has been copied onto an a SD card which I'm trying to boot from. When I power on my Zenbook and press ESC, the SD card isn't an option. There is an "Add boot option" in the BIOS but it requires a few a things that I'm not quite sure of. Add boot option - I guess any identifier works here. I've been entering ubuntu. Select Filesystem - The only option available is PCI(1F|2)\DevicePath(Type 3, SubType 12)HD(Part1,Sig787e6287-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx) Path for boot option - I've been entering ubuntu:\EFI\BOOT\BOOTx64.EFI Then I select Create and the new boot option appears in the boot menu but it doesn't work.

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  • Highlights from the Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    The Oracle Customer Experience Summit was the first-ever event covering the full breadth of Oracle's CX portfolio -- Marketing, Sales, Commerce, and Service. The purpose of the Summit was to articulate the customer experience imperative and to showcase the suite of Oracle products that can help our customers create the best possible customer experience. This topic has always been a very important one, but now that there are so many alternative companies to do business with and because people have such public ways to voice their displeasure, it's necessary for vendors to have multiple listening posts in place to gauge consumer sentiment. They need to know what is going on in real time and be able to react quickly to turn negative situations into positive ones. Those can then be shared in a social manner to enhance the brand and turn the customer into a repeat customer. The Summit was focused on Oracle's portfolio of products and entirely dedicated to customers who are committed to building great customer experiences within their businesses. Rather than DBAs, the attendees were business people looking to collaborate with other like-minded experts and find out how Oracle can help in terms of technology, best practices, and expertise. The event was at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco as part of Oracle OpenWorld. We had eight hundred people attend, which was great for the first year. Next year, there's no doubt in my mind, we can raise that number to 5,000. Alignment and Logic Oracle's Customer Experience portfolio is made up of a combination of acquired and organic products owned by many people who are new to Oracle. We include homegrown Fusion CRM, as well as RightNow, Inquira, OPA, Vitrue, ATG, Endeca, and many others. The attendees knew of the acquisitions, so naturally they wanted to see how the products all fit together and hear the logic behind the portfolio. To tell them about our alignment, we needed to be aligned. To accomplish that, a cross functional team at Oracle agreed on the messaging so that every single Oracle presenter could cover the big picture before going deep into a product or topic. Talking about the full suite of products in one session produced overflow value for other products. And even though this internal coordination was a huge effort, everyone saw the value for our customers and for our long-term cooperation and success. Keynotes, Workshops, and Tents of Innovation We scored by having Seth Godin as our keynote speaker ? always provocative and popular. The opening keynote was a session orchestrated by Mark Hurd, Anthony Lye, and me. Mark set the stage by giving real-world examples of bad customer experiences, Anthony clearly articulated the business imperative for addressing these experiences, and I brought it all to life by taking the audience around the Customer Lifecycle and showing demos and videos, with partners included at each of the stops around the lifecycle. Brian Curran, a VP for RightNow Product Strategy, presented a session that was in high demand called The Economics of Customer Experience. People loved hearing how to build a business case and justify the cost of building a better customer experience. John Kembel, another VP for RightNow Product Strategy, held a workshop that customers raved about. It was based on the journey mapping methodology he created, which is a way to talk to customers about where they want to make improvements to their customers' experiences. He divided the audience into groups led by facilitators. Each person had the opportunity to engage with experts and peers and construct some real takeaways. The conference hotel was across from Union Square so we used that space to set up Innovation Tents. During the day we served lunch in the tents and partners showed their different innovative ideas. It was very interesting to see all the technologies and advancements. It also gave people a place to mix and mingle and to think about the fringe of where we could all take these ideas. Product Portfolio Plus Thought Leadership Of course there is always room for improvement, but the feedback on the format of the conference was positive. Ninety percent of the sessions had either a partner or a customer teamed with an Oracle presenter. The presentations weren't dry, one-way information dumps, but more interactive. I just followed up with a CEO who attended the conference with his Head of Marketing. He told me that they are using John Kembel's journey mapping methodology across the organization to pull people together. This sort of thought leadership in these highly competitive areas gives Oracle permission to engage around the technology. We have to differentiate ourselves and it's harder to do on the product side because everyone looks the same on paper. But on thought leadership ? we can, and did, take some really big steps. David Vap Group Vice President Oracle Applications Product Development

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  • PHP not working with hosting

    - by Richard
    I have been playing with a php CMS site for someone that I am ready to deploy but am running into a couple problems that I assume to be hosting related. I have been developing and playing with it localy and deploying to a hosting environment friendly towards this specific CMS (joomla). I have recently been trying to deploy to a client's hosting and have been running in to some trouble. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have been in contact with the clients hosting and have had them set up a mysql DB for me and enable php. Simple php was working but joomla was not able to create the config files it needed to run on this hosting. Therefore I havnt been able to successfully deploy my work. While playing around with some simple php pages I have started getting http 500 errors and now cant seem to get anywhere. This is a smaller hosting company that seems willing to work with me but I dont really know what i need to ask from them to get me working. My questions to you webmaster geniuses would be as follows: Given the situation I have described, is there anything specifically i should do to get my joomla/php site running on this hosting? What specifically should I ask my current hosting providers to do to help me get working? Thanks

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  • FULL LIST Difference Edubuntu over Ubuntu

    - by Richard Kemp
    I have always used Edubuntu rather than Ubuntu because I have many children including home educated ones who casually use the education offerings. I appreciate many but not all of the extra offerings. I never got beyond 8.04.4 LTS, so am considering updating. I note now with Edubuntu 12.04 it is 2GB i.e.4 times bigger, even apparently using squashfs. I do now have to consider whether the extra resources are worth it in each computer in my household. I am sick of reading over and over again 'Edubuntu is Unbuntu with extras such as blah blah', and in a different place the same thing but with a different blah blah. I downloaded Edubuntu 12.04 and ran it 'live'. Can't say I got on at all with the Unity Interface (this can be changed when installed), but the apparent education stuff seemed quite small and pathetic, I am obviously not finding it. Is there anywhere a FULL LIST of what Edubuntu has pre-installed has over Ubuntu, so a sensible decision can be made whether to go for it, or just add packages that look relevant to me to Ubuntu. Is there truly no other difference between Unbuntu/Edubuntu but the extra educational packages? (I for example have no school server, but if I understood exactly what is involved, with the number of computers in the house, it may be worth creating one!) Please advise. Thank You.

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  • Is gettext appropriate for internationalizing user help documentation?

    - by Richard JP Le Guen
    On my project, we have po files to internationalize/translate various labels, error messages, button-text etc. We also have separate po files for the entirety of our help documentation, which is included in the product. Is this an appropriate use of gettext - putting entire documents in po files as opposed to just labels and messages? The format has been made all the more complicated because sometimes (for tooltips or "what's this" icons) only a small part of the help doc is needed, resulting in single phrases/paragraphs being entries in the po file, which are then concatenated together when the user views the help... making the actual act of translation challenging. Is there a better way to internationalize end user help documentation?

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  • VBUG Spring Conference, 28th and 29th March in Reading

    - by Eric Nelson
    I presented at VBUG last year and can confirm that they put on a really good event. This year I stood aside for my “replacement” Steve Plank to work his magic. Worth checking out… VBUG SPRING CONFERENCE 28/29 March 2011 Wokefield Park, Mortimer, Reading RG7 3AH Day One (Mon 28 March): Developing SharePoint 2010 with Visual Studio 2010 - Dave McMahon Cache Out with Windows Server AppFabric – Phil Pursglove Extending your Corporate Network in to the Windows Azure Data Centre with Windows Azure Connect – Steve Plank Silverlight Development on Windows Phone 7 - Andy Wigley Day Two (Tues 29 March): Self Service BI for your users, but what does that mean for you? - Andrew Fryer Design Patterns – Compare and Contrast – Gary Short Projecting your corporate identity to the cloud – Steve Plank May the Silverlight 4 be with you – Richard Costall The Step up to ALM – an Introduction to Visual Studio 2010 TFS for the Visual Sourcesafe User - Richard Fennell For more information go to http://cms.vbug.net (It isn’t free but it is high quality)

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  • How long was Microsoft working on .NET before they released it?

    - by Richard DesLonde
    With the whole CLI, CTS, CLS, etc., not only did they release a powerful platform/infrastructure, but they released all the specs that describe it etc. It supports potentially infinite myriad languages, platforms, etc. This seems like an insane amount of work, even for a behemoth like Microsoft - especially since it turns out they did a damn good job. How long were they working on this before releasing it (.NET 1.0)?

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  • Static teams or dynamic teams?

    - by Richard DesLonde
    Is it better to assemble permanent teams of developers within the company that always work together, from project to project, or is it better to have dynamic teams that assemble for a project, and then dissasemble afterwards? My inclination is to treat the entire company as a "platoon" and to assemble "fireteams" for individual projects, choosing from the "platoon" those developers best suited for the project.

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  • Getting Windows Azure SDK 1.1 To Talk To A Local DB

    - by Richard Jones
    Just found this, if you’re using Azure 1.1,  which you probably will be if yo'u’ve moved to Visual Studio 2010. To change the default database to something other than sqlexpress for Development Storage do this - Look at this - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd203058.aspx At the bottom it states -   Using Development Storage with SQL Server Express 2008 By default the local Windows Group BUILTIN\Administrator is not included in the SQL Server sysadmin server role on new SQL Server Express 2008 installations.  Add yourself to the sysadmin role in order to use the Development Storage Services on SQL Server Express 2008.  See SQL Server 2008 Security Changes for more information. Changing the SQL Server instance used by Development Storage By default, the Development Storage will use the SQL Express instance.  This can be changed by calling “DSInit.exe /sqlinstance:<SQL Server instance>” from the Windows Azure SDK command prompt.

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  • Procedural world generation oriented on gameplay features

    - by Richard Fabian
    In large procedural landscape games, the land seems dull, but that's probably because the real world is largely dull, with only limited places where the scenery is dramatic or tactical. Looking at world generation from this point of view, a landscape generator for a game (that is, not for the sake of scenery, but for the sake of gameplay) needs to not follow the rules of landscaping, but instead some rules married to the expectations of the gamer. For example, there could be a choke point / route generator that creates hills ravines, rivers and mountains between cities, rather than the natural way cities arise, scattered on the land based on resources or conditions generated by the mountains and rainfall patterns. Is there any existing work being done like this? Start with cities or population centres and then add in terrain afterwards? The reason I'm asking is that I'd previously pondered taking existing maps from fantasy fiction (my own and others), putting the information into the system as a base point, and then generating a good world to play in from it. This seems covered by existing technology, that is, where the designer puts in all the necessary information such as the city populations, resources, biomes, road networks and rivers, then allows the PCG fill in the gaps. But now I'm wondering if it may be possible to have a content generator generate also the overall design. Generate the cities and population centres, balancing them so that there is a natural seeming need of commerce, then generate the positions and connectivity, then from the type of city produce the list of necessary resources that must be nearby, and only then, maybe given some rules on how to make the journey between cities both believable and interesting, generate the final content including the roads, the choke points, the bridges and tunnels, ferries and the terrain including the biomes and coastline necessary. If this has been done before, I'd like to know, and would like to know what went wrong, and what went right.

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  • Mark Hurd on the Customer Revolution: Oracle's Top 10 Insights

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    Reprint of an article from Forbes Businesses that fail to focus on customer experience will hear a giant sucking sound from their vanishing profitability. Because in today’s dynamic global marketplace, consumers now hold the power in the buyer-seller equation, and sellers need to revamp their strategy for this new world order. The ability to relentlessly deliver connected, personalized and rewarding customer experiences is rapidly becoming one of the primary sources of competitive advantage in today’s dynamic global marketplace. And the inability or unwillingness to realize that the customer is a company’s most important asset will lead, inevitably, to decline and failure. Welcome to the lifecycle of customer experience, in which consumers explore, engage, shop, buy, ask, compare, complain, socialize, exchange, and more across multiple channels with the unconditional expectation that each of those interactions will be completed in an efficient and personalized manner however, wherever, and whenever the customer wants. While many niche companies are offering point solutions within that sprawling and complex spectrum of needs and requirements, businesses looking to deliver superb customer experiences are still left having to do multiple product evaluations, multiple contract negotiations, multiple test projects, multiple deployments, and–perhaps most annoying of all–multiple and never-ending integration projects to string together all those niche products from all those niche vendors. With its new suite of customer-experience solutions, Oracle believes it can help companies unravel these challenges and move at the speed of their customers, anticipating their needs and desires and creating enduring and profitable relationships. Those solutions span the full range of marketing, selling, commerce, service, listening/insights, and social and collaboration tools for employees. When Oracle launched its suite of Customer Experience solutions at a recent event in New York City, president Mark Hurd analyzed the customer experience revolution taking place and presented Oracle’s strategy for empowering companies to capitalize on this important market shift. From Hurd’s presentation and related materials, I’ve extracted a list of Hurd’s Top 10 Insights into the Customer Revolution. 1. Please Don’t Feed the Competitor’s Pipeline!After enduring a poor experience, 89% of consumers say they would immediately take their business to your competitor. (Except where noted, the source for these findings is the 2011 Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report including a survey commissioned by RightNow (acquired by Oracle in March 2012) and conducted by Harris Interactive.) 2. The Addressable Market Is Massive. Only 1% of consumers say their expectations were always met by their actual experiences. 3. They’re Willing to Pay More! In return for a great experience, 86% of consumers say they’ll pay up to 25% more. 4. The Social Media Microphone Is Always Live. After suffering through a poor experience, more than 25% of consumers said they posted a negative comment on Twitter or Facebook or other social media sites. Conversely, of those consumers who got a response after complaining, 22% posted positive comments about the company. 5.  The New Deal Is Never Done: Embrace the Entire Customer Lifecycle. An appropriately active and engaged relationship, says Hurd, extends across every step of the entire processs: need, research, select, purchase, receive, use, maintain, and recommend. 6. The 360-Degree Commitment. Customers want to do business with companies that actively and openly demonstrate the desire to establish strong and seamless connections across employees, the company, and the customer, says research firm Temkin Group in its report called “The CX Competencies.” 7. Understand the Emotional Drivers Behind Brand Love. What makes consumers fall in love with a brand? Among the top factors are friendly employees and customer reps (73%), easy access to information and support (55%), and personalized experiences, such as when companies know precisely what products or services customers have purchased in the past and what issues those customers have raised (36%). 8.  The Importance of Immediate Action. You’ve got one week to respond–and then the opportunity’s lost. If your company needs more than a week to answer a prospect’s question or request, most of those prospects will terminate the relationship. 9.  Want More Revenue, Less Churn, and More Referrals? Then improve the overall customer experience: Forrester’s research says that approach put an extra $900 million in the pockets of wireless service providers, $800 million for hotels, and $400 million for airlines. 10. The Formula for CX Success.  Hurd says it includes three elegantly interlaced factors: Connected Engagement, to personalize the experience; Actionable Insight, to maximize the engagement; and Optimized Execution, to deliver on the promise of value. RECOMMENDED READING: The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues For 2013 Wal-Mart, Amazon, eBay: Who’s the Speed King of Retail? Career Suicide and the CIO: 4 Deadly New Threats Memo to Marc Benioff: Social Is a Tool, Not an App

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