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• Cooking with Wessty: WordPress and HTML 5

  - by David Wesst

  WordPress is easily one, if not the most, popular blogging platforms on the web. With the release of WordPress 3.x, the potential for what you can do with this open source software is limitless. This technique intends to show you how to get your WordPress wielding the power of the future web, that being HTML 5. --- Ingredients WordPress 3.x Your favourite HTML 5 compliant browser (e.g. Internet Explorer 9) Directions Setup WordPress on your server or host. Note: You can setup a WordPress.com account, but you will require an paid add-on to really take advantage of this technique.Login to the administration panel. Login to the administration section of your blog, using your web browser.  On the left side of the page, click the Appearance heading. Then, click on Themes. At the top of the page, select the Install Themes tab. In the search box, type the “toolbox” and click search. In the search results, you should see an theme called Toolbox. Click the Install link in the Toolbox item. A dialog window should appear with a sample picture of what the theme looks like. Click on the Install Now button in the bottom right corner. Et voila! Once the installation is done, you are done and ready to bring your blog into the future of the web. Try previewing your blog in HTML 5 by clicking the preview link.   Now, you are probably thinking “Man…HTML 5 looks like junk”. To that, I respond: “HTML was never why your site looked good in the first place. It was the CSS.” Now you have an un-stylized theme that uses HTML 5 elements throughout your WordPress site. If you want to learn how to apply CSS to your WordPress blog, you should check out the WordPress codex that pretty much covers everything there is to cover about WordPress development. Now, remember how we noted earlier that your free WordPress.com account wouldn’t take advantage of this technique? That is because, as of the time of this writing, you needed to pay a fee to use custom CSS. Remember now, this only gives you the foundation to create your own HTML 5 WordPress site. There are some HTML 5 themes out there that already look good, and were built using this as the foundation and added some CSS 3 to really spice it up. Looking forward to seeing more HTML 5 WordPress sites! Enjoy developing the future of the web. Resources Toolbox Theme JustCSS Theme WordPress Installation Tutorial WordPress Theme Development Tutorial This post also appears at http://david.wes.st

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• Friday Fun: Play Your Favorite 8-Bit NES Games Online

  - by Mysticgeek

  We finally made it to another Friday and once again we bring you some NES fun to waste the rest of the day before the weekend. Today we take a look at a site that contains a lot of classic NES games you can play online. vNES VirtualNES.com contains hundreds of vintage NES games you can play online. If you’re old enough to remember, when the NES came out, it breathed life back into home console gaming. Here we will take a look at a few of the games they offer that will certainly bring back memories. Super Mario Bros 3 which is a personal favorite from the 8-bit era.   Play Super Mario Bros 3 Excite Bike was one of the coolest dirt bike racing games at the time as it even allowed you to create your own tracks.   Play ExciteBike Of course The Legend of Zelda was one of the first fantasy games many an hour have been spent on. Play The Legend of Zelda We’d be remiss if we didn’t bring up Pac-man since the game recently celebrated it’s 30th anniversary. Play Pac-Man If you don’t like the default keyboard controls you can change them on the Options page. Join their forum and more…this site will definitely bring you back to the good old 8-bit NES days.   The site contains hundreds of different games for you to get on your old school NES fix. If you’re sick of waiting for the whistle to blow, this site will bring you back to the good old days when you had nothing to do but mash buttons all day. Play NES Games at virtualnes.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Go Retro with PacmanFriday Fun: Five More Time Wasting Online GamesFriday Fun: Online Flash Games to Usher in the WeekendFriday Fun: Online Sports Flash Games 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Awesome World Cup Soccer Calendar Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version

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• Enhance Your Gmail Account in Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you tired of items like the Chat and Invite Boxes cluttering up your Gmail account? Then join us as we look at the Better Gmail extension for Google Chrome. Before Here are some examples of items that you may be tired of looking at in your Gmail account such as the “Footer” below your “Inbox”, the “Chat Box”, and the “Invitation Box”. Perhaps you would also like to have the “New Window, Print all, & Create a document Commands” moved elsewhere. And of course there is everyone’s “favorite” sponsored links… Time to do some cleaning up and reorganizing. Better Gmail in Action As soon as you have installed Better Gmail a new tab will automatically open and present you with the available options. Place a “checkmark” in the box for each option that you would like activated and click on “Save” when finished. Note: The final option entry is a tie-in with two other “linked” extensions (Folders4Gmail & HTML Signature) while the middle listing is a link to an article for disabling Google Buzz. Once you have saved your changes in the “Options” you will be prompted to refresh your Gmail tab to see the changes. Going back to our “Inbox Area” everything looks so much more streamlined and clean now. Goodbye clutter! The “New Window, Print all, & Create a document Commands” definitely look a lot nicer as a small toolbar above our e-mail. And the right side…you can see for yourself just how much better that looks. No more distractions there to bother you as you read your e-mail. Conclusion If you have been wanting to get rid of the undesirable elements visible in your Gmail account then hurry over to the Better Gmail page, grab the extension and enjoy the better view. Links Download the Better Gmail extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Figure out which Online accounts are selling your email to spammersAdd a Remember The Milk Task Pane to Gmail in ChromeHow to Send and Receive Hotmail from Your Gmail AccountAdd Your Gmail To Windows Live MailOpen Your Gmail Account in a Popup Window 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet

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• Stop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in Chrome

  - by The Geek

  If you’ve actually used the internet before, you’ve probably come across a page with an auto-playing YouTube clip, and chances are good it was a rather annoying one. Here’s how to stop them from starting automatically in Chrome. We’ve already told you how to stop them from automatically playing if you’re a Firefox user (best answer: use Flashblock!), but now it’s time for Chrome users to get their turn. Use the Stop Autoplay for YouTube Extension The great thing about this extension is that it stops the video from playing, but it allows it to continue buffering, so when you do feel like playing the video, it’ll already be downloaded—really useful for people with slower internet connections. There’s no UI or anything fancy, just head to the extension page and click the Install button. If you want to get rid of it later, use the Tools –> Extensions menu (or you can type chrome://extensions/ into your address bar), and then click the Uninstall link for that add-on.   Download Stop Autoplay for YouTube [Google Chrome Extensions] Using FlashBlock for Chrome If you really wanted to, you could just disable Flash across the board using FlashBlock for Chrome. Once you’ve installed the extension, you won’t see any Flash elements anywhere, and you’ll have to move your mouse over them and click to enable them each time. When I installed the extension the first time, I noticed that YouTube was already in the allow list. I’m not sure if that’s the default setting or not, but you can use the icon in the address bar, or the Options from the Extensions panel to get to the settings page, and from there you can remove anything from the White List that you wouldn’t want. Another nice feature about Flash Block is that it can also block Silverlight, or you could simply uninstall or remove unnecessary Chrome plug-ins. Download FlashBlock for Chrome Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Stop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in FirefoxDisable YouTube Comments while using ChromeApologies About An Awful Audio AdvertisementImprove YouTube Video Viewing in Google ChromeWatch YouTube Videos in Cinema Style in Firefox 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 Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites

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• Microsoft Virtual Academy

  Carpe Diem It's been since a while that I could write an article for this blog but alas, I was (and still am) very busy with customer's work. Which is actually good. So, what is this article going to tell you? Well, in general, just what I already tweeted, that life is constant process of learning - especially as software craftsman. Due to an upcoming new customer project in ASP.NET I had to seize the opportunity to get my head deeper into latest available technologies, like Windows Azure and SQL Azure. I know... cloud computing and so on is not a recent development and already available since quite a while but I never any means to get myself into this since roughly two weeks ago. Microsoft Virtual Academy I can't remember exactly what guided me towards the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA), oh wait... Yes, it was a posting on Facebook from an old CLIP community friend. He posted a shortened URL with #MVA tag that caught my attention. Thanks for that Thomas Kuberek. After the usual sign in or registration via Live ID I was a little bit surprised that Mauritius is not an available country option... Quick mail exchange with the MVA Decan, and yeah, apologies for the missing entry. So, currently I'm learning about Microsoft products and services, and collecting points under "Not Listed Country" until Mauritius is going to be added. Hopefully soon, as MVA honors your effort with different knowledge ranks that are compared to other students with public profiles. I think it's a nice move to add some game and competition factor into the learning game. The tracks and their different modules are mainly references to publicly available material online, namely on either MSDN, TechNet, Channel9, or other Microsoft based sites. The course material therefore also varies in different media and formats, ranging from simple online articles over downloadable documents (.docx or .pdf) to Silverlight / Windows Media streams with download options. Self-assessment and students ranking Each module in a track can be finished by taking part in a self-assessment. Up to now, the assessment I did (and passed) were limited to 10 minutes available time, and consisted of six to seven questions on the module training material. Nothing too serious but it gives you a glimpse idea how Microsoft certification exams are structured. Conclusion Nothing really new but nicely gathered, assembled and presented to the MVA students. At the moment, I wouldn't dare to compare the richness and quality of those courses with professional training offers, like Pluralsight .NET Training, LearnDevNow, VTC, etc. at all, but I think that MVA has potential. Give it a try, and let me know about your opinions.

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• What can a Service do on Windows?

  - by Akemi Iwaya

  If you open up Task Manager or Process Explorer on your system, you will see many services running. But how much of an impact can a service have on your system, especially if it is ‘corrupted’ by malware? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answers to a curious reader’s questions. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Forivin wants to know how much impact a service can have on a Windows system, especially if it is ‘corrupted’ by malware: What kind malware/spyware could someone put into a service that does not have its own process on Windows? I mean services that use svchost.exe for example, like this: Could a service spy on my keyboard input? Take screenshots? Send and/or receive data over the internet? Infect other processes or files? Delete files? Kill processes? How much impact could a service have on a Windows installation? Are there any limits to what a malware ‘corrupted’ service could do? The Answer SuperUser contributor Keltari has the answer for us: What is a service? A service is an application, no more, no less. The advantage is that a service can run without a user session. This allows things like databases, backups, the ability to login, etc. to run when needed and without a user logged in. What is svchost? According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”. Could we have that in English please? Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective, this makes more sense for reusability…but the problem is that you can not launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born. So, essentially a service which uses svchost is just calling a .dll and can do pretty much anything with the right credentials and/or permissions. If I remember correctly, there are viruses and other malware that do hide behind the svchost process, or name the executable svchost.exe to avoid detection. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

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• How to get tens of millions of pages indexed by Google bot?

  - by Chris Adragna

  We are currently developing a site that currently has 8 million unique pages that will grow to about 20 million right away, and eventually to about 50 million or more. Before you criticize... Yes, it provides unique, useful content. We continually process raw data from public records and by doing some data scrubbing, entity rollups, and relationship mapping, we've been able to generate quality content, developing a site that's quite useful and also unique, in part due to the breadth of the data. It's PR is 0 (new domain, no links), and we're getting spidered at a rate of about 500 pages per day, putting us at about 30,000 pages indexed thus far. At this rate, it would take over 400 years to index all of our data. I have two questions: Is the rate of the indexing directly correlated to PR, and by that I mean is it correlated enough that by purchasing an old domain with good PR will get us to a workable indexing rate (in the neighborhood of 100,000 pages per day). Are there any SEO consultants who specialize in aiding the indexing process itself. We're otherwise doing very well with SEO, on-page especially, besides, the competition for our "long-tail" keyword phrases is pretty low, so our success hinges mostly on the number of pages indexed. Our main competitor has achieved approx 20MM pages indexed in just over one year's time, along with an Alexa 2000-ish ranking. Noteworthy qualities we have in place: page download speed is pretty good (250-500 ms) no errors (no 404 or 500 errors when getting spidered) we use Google webmaster tools and login daily friendly URLs in place I'm afraid to submit sitemaps. Some SEO community postings suggest a new site with millions of pages and no PR is suspicious. There is a Google video of Matt Cutts speaking of a staged on-boarding of large sites, too, in order to avoid increased scrutiny (at approx 2:30 in the video). Clickable site links deliver all pages, no more than four pages deep and typically no more than 250(-ish) internal links on a page. Anchor text for internal links is logical and adds relevance hierarchically to the data on the detail pages. We had previously set the crawl rate to the highest on webmaster tools (only about a page every two seconds, max). I recently turned it back to "let Google decide" which is what is advised.

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• Stop Saying "Multi-Channel!"

  - by David Dorf

  I keep hearing the term "multi-channel" in our industry, but its time to move on. It kinda reminds me of the term "ECR" or electronic cash register. Long ago ECR was a leading-edge term, but nowadays its rarely used because its table-stakes. After all, what cash register today isn't electronic? The same logic applies to multi-channel, at least when we're talking about tier-1 and tier-2 retailers. If you're still talking about multi-channel retailing, you're in big trouble. Some have switched over to the term "cross-channel," and that's a step in the right direction but still falls short. Its kinda like saying, "I upgraded my ECR to accept debit cards!" Yawn. Who hasn't? Today's retailers need to focus on omni-channel, which I first heard from my friends over at RSR but was originally coined at IDC. First retailers added e-commerce to their store and catalog channels yielding multi-channel retailing. Consumers could use the channel that worked best for them. Then some consumers wanted to combine channels with features like buy-on-the-Web, pickup-in-the-store. Thus began the cross-channel initiatives to breakdown the silos and enable the channels to communicate with each other. But the multi-channel architecture is full of duplication that thwarts efforts of providing a consistent experience. Each has its own cart, its own pricing, and often its own CRM. This was an outcrop of trying to bring the independent channels to market quickly. Rather than reusing and rebuilding existing components to meet the new demands, silos were created that continue to exist today. Today's consumers want omni-channel retailing. They want to interact with brands in a consistent manner that is channel transparent, yet optimized for that particular interaction. The diagram below, from the soon-to-be-released NRF Mobile Blueprint v2, shows this progression. For retailers to provide an omni-channel experience, there needs to be one logical representation of products, prices, promotions, and customers across all channels. The only thing that varies is the presentation of the content based on the delivery mechanism (e.g. shelf labels, mobile phone, web site, print, etc.) and often these mechanisms can be combined in various ways. I'm looking forward to the day in which I can use my phone to scan QR-codes in a catalog to create a shopping cart of items. Then do some further research on the retailer's Web site and be told about related items that might interest me. Be able to easily solicit opinions and reviews from social sites, and finally enter the store to pickup my items, knowing that any applicable coupons have been applied. In this scenario, I the consumer are dealing with a single brand that is aware of me and my needs throughout the entire transaction. Nirvana.

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• Oracle CRM For Public Sector, Commercial Business, Education

  - by michael.seback

  Chongqing Transport Commission Improves Management of Transport Projects The Chongqing Transport Commission is responsible for public passenger, road, and waterway transport in urban and rural areas of Chongqing. The commission administers the region's road and water industry; oversees the construction of transport infrastructure; and manages civil aviation, railroads, roads, waterways, ports, and wharves. "After studying the IT initiatives of other provincial transport commissions, we decided to use Siebel Public Sector to build our integrated transport service system. The Siebel software offers powerful functions that allow us to integrate information and improve the management of our road, rail, and waterway infrastructure projects." - Chen Xiaoming, Vice Director, Information Center, Chongqing Transport Commission. Read more here. Siemens Information Services Increases Productivity by 20% Siemens Information Services Pvt, Ltd. provides back-office account processing services to Siemens' vendors. The company works with Siemens' healthcare, energy, and industry divisions in Europe, the United States, and parts of the Asia-Pacific region. It approves financial services such as processing payroll, accounts data, purchase orders, invoices, and payments, and also creates service catalogs for customers and internal teams. "Oracle CRM ON Demand provides us with a complete view of each customer's data from the moment they log a request to the time we close it. This has eliminated manual requests, and improved the service we offer to our clients across the Asia-Pacific region." -Sunil Zutshi, General Manager, IT, Siemens Information Services Pvt, Ltd. Read more here. China Distance Education Holdings Improves Call Center Productivity by 24% China Distance Education Holdings Limited is a leading provider of online education. The organization offers 174 courses through 16 Web sites, including accounting, healthcare, law, and engineering. In 2010, 215,000 students were enrolled. "Online education is a fast growing sector in China. To maintain our competitiveness, we implemented Oracle Contact Center Anywhere to make it easier and faster for our call center staff to respond to student enquiries. As a result, their productivity increased by 24%." - Qin Songjiang, Chief Technology Officer, China Distance Education Holdings Limited. Read more here.

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• WebAPI and MVC4 and OData

  - by Aligned

  I was looking closer into WebAPI, specificially how to use OData to avoid writing GetCustomerByCustomerId(int id) methods all over the place. I had problems just returning IQueryable<T> as some sites suggested in the WebpAPI (Assembly System.Web.Http.dll, v4.0.0.0).  I think things changed in the release version and the blog posts are still out of date. There is no [Queraable] as the answer to this question suggests. Once I get WebAPI.Odata Nuget package, and added the [Queryable] to the method http://localhost:57146/api/values/?$filter=Id%20eq%201 worked (don’t forget the ‘$’). Now the main question is whether I should do this and how to stop logged in users from sniffing the url and getting data for other users. I John V. Peterson has a post on securing WebAPI with headers and intercepting the call at that point. He had an update to use HttpMessageHandlers instead. I think I’ll use this to force the call to contain some kind of unique code for the user, but I’m still thinking about this. I will not expose this to the public, just to my calls with-in my Forms Authentication areas. Other links: http://robbincremers.me/2012/02/16/building-and-consuming-rest-services-with-asp-net-web-api-and-odata-support/ ~lots of good information John V Peterson example: https://github.com/johnvpetersen/ASPWebAPIExample ~ all data access goes through the WebApi and the web client doesn’t have a connection string ~ There is code library for calling the WebApi from MVC using the HttpClient. It’s a great starting point http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexj/archive/2012/08/15/odata-support-in-asp-net-web-api.aspx ~ Beta (9/18/2012) Nuget package to help with what I want to do? ~ has a sample code project with examples http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexj/archive/2012/08/15/odata-support-in-asp-net-web-api.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexj/archive/2012/08/21/web-api-queryable-current-support-and-tentative-roadmap.aspx http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10885868/asp-net-mvc4-rc-web-api-odata-filter-not-working-with-iqueryable JSON, pass the correct format in the header (Accept: application/json). $format=JSON doesn’t appear to be working. Async methods built into WebApi! Look for the GetAsync methods.

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• Tales of a corrupt SQL log

  - by guybarrette

  Warning: I’m a simple dev, not an all powerful DBA with godly powers. This morning, one of my sites was down and DNN reported a problem with the database.  A quick series of tests revealed that the culprit was a corrupted log file. Easy fix I said, I have daily backups so it’s just a mater of restoring a good copy of the database and log files.  Well, I found out that’s not exactly true.  You see, for this database, I have daily file backups and these are not database backups created by SQL Server. So I restored a set of files from a couple of days ago, stopped the SQL service, copied the files over the bad ones, restarted the service only to find out that SQL doesn’t like when you do that.  It suspects something fishy and marks the database as suspect.  A database marked as suspect can’t be accessed at all.  So now what? I searched throughout the tubes of the InterWeb and found that you can restore from a corrupted log file by creating a new database with the same name as the defective one, then copy the restored database file (the one with data) over the newly created one.  Sweet!  But you still end up with SQL marking the database as suspect but at least, the newly created log is OK.  Well not true, it’s not corrupted but the lack of data makes it not OK for SQL so you need to rebuild the log.  How can you do that when SQL blocks any action the database?  First, you need to change the database status from suspect to emergency.  Then you need to set the database for single access only.  After that, you need to repair the log with DBCC and do the DBA dance.  If you dance long enough, SQL should repair the log file.  Now you need to set the access back to multi user.  Here’s the T-SQL script: use master GO EXEC sp_resetstatus 'MyDatabase' ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase SET EMERGENCY Alter database MyDatabase set Single_User DBCC checkdb('MyDatabase') ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE DBCC CheckDB ('MyDatabase', REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS) ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase SET MULTI_USER So I guess that I would have been a lot easier to restore a SQL backup.  I can’t really say but the InterWeb seems to say so.  Anyway, lessons learned: Vive la différence: File backups are different then SQL backups. Don’t touch me: SQL doesn’t like when you restore a file over a corrupted one. The more the merrier: You should do both SQL and file backups. WTF?: The InterWeb provides you with dozens of way to deal with the problem but many are SQL 2000 or SQL 2005 only, many are confusing and many are written in strange dialects only DBAs understand. var addthis_pub="guybarrette";

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• How exactly is Google Webmaster Tools measuring "Site Performance"?

  - by Rémi

  I've been working for two months now on improving our response time (mainly server side) on a new forum (a brand new product on a technical point of view) we've launched in Germany a few month ago and I'm a lot surprised by the results I get. I monitor our response time using Apache logs and our own implementation of Boomerang beacon. Using my stats, I can see that our new product responds in about 680 ms where our old product was responding in about 1050 ms. On the other side, Google Webmaster Tool tells us that our pages have an average reponse time of about 1500 ms today where it was 700 three months ago with our old product. I've figured that GWT was taking client side metrics into account so I've added some measures on our Boomerang beacon and everything looks just fine. I've also ran some random pages on ySlow and Google's Page Speed and everything looks better than it was before. We event have a 82% on Google's Page Speed tool which is quite cool for a site with some ads in it :) Lately, we have signed a deal with Akamai to use two of their products : CDN for our static files (we were using another CDN before but it wasn't very effective) and RMA to improve Networks routes. We have also introduced a new agressive cache mecanism to ensure that most of the pages served to crawlers are cached by our memcache grid. After checking my metrics, it seems that this changes have improved from 650ms to about 500ms, which is good (still not great but it is definitly an improvement). But webmaster tools continues to report an increasing average response time where we see it decreasing in the same time. Have you ever had the same kind of wierd behavior on your sites while doing performance improvements ? Do you have any idea how to monitor the same thing Google does with Site Performance in Google Webmaster Tools so that we could improve our site and constantly check if it is what Google wants ? Edit 2011/07/26 : Thanks for your answers guys ! Nevertheless, I was not precise enough. The main issue we have is not with the Site Performance page but with the Crawl Stats one for now. We probably found an issue on our side with some very slow pages (around 3000 ms !!) and we are trying to fix them. I'll keep you posted as soon I'll have some infos. Thanks again !

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• Avoiding Duplicate Content Penalties on a Corporate/Franchise website

  - by heath

  My question is really an extension of a previous question that was ported from stackoverflow and closed so I cannot edit it. The basic gist is a regional franchise company has decided to force all independent stores into one website look; they currently all have their own domains and completely different websites. After reading the helpful answers and looking over some links provided, I think my solution is to put a 301 on each franchise store site (acme-store1.com, acme-store2.com, etc) back to the main corporate site (acme.com). All of the company history, product info, etc (about 90% of the entire site) applies to all stores. However, each store should have some exclusive content such as staff, location pictures, exclusive events and promotions, etc. I originally thought that I would simply do something like acme.com/store1/staff, acme.com/store2/staff, etc for the store exclusive content and then acme.com/our-company, for example, would cover all stores. However, I now see two issues that I don't know how to solve. They want to see site stats based on what store site they came from. If a user comes from acme-store1.com, is redirected to acme.com and hits several pages, don't I need to somehow keep that original site in the new url to track each page in that user's session and show they originally came from acme-store1.com? Each store is still independently owned and is essentially still in competition with the other stores, albeit, in less competition than they are with other brands. This is important because each store would like THEIR contact info, links to their social media pages, their mailing list sign-up and customer requests on EVERY page. So if a user originally goes to acme-store1.com and is redirected to acme.com, it still should look to the user that it's all about store 1, even though 90% of the content will be exactly the same as it is in the store 2, store 3 and corporate site. For example, acme.com/our-company would have the same company history, same header/footer/navigation, BUT depending on the original site the user came from, it would display contact and links to THAT store. If someone came directly to the corporate site, it would display their contact and links (they have their own as well). I was considering that all redirects would be to store1.acme.com, store2.acme.com, etc (or acme.com/store1) and then I can dynamically add the contact info and appropriate links based on the subdomain or subfolder. But, then I have to worry about duplicate content penalties because, again, about 90% of the text in these "subdomains" are all the same. For reference, this is a PHP5 site. I've already written a compact framework utilizing templates and mod-rewrite that I've used for other sites. Is this an easy fix that I'm just not grasping? Any suggestions?

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• ASP.NET Web Forms is bad, or what am I missing?

  - by iveqy

  Being a PHP guy myself I recently had to write a spider to an asp.net site. I was really surprised by the different approach to ajax and form-handling. For example, in the PHP sites I've worked with, a deletion of a database entry would be something like: GET delete.php?id=&confirm=yes and get a "success" back in some form (in the ajax case, probably a json reply). In this asp.net application you would instead post a form, including all inputs on the page, with a huge __VIEWSTATE and __EVENTVALIDATION. This would be more than 10 times as big as above. The reply would be the complete side again, with a footer containing some structured data for javascript to parse and display the result. Again, the whole page is sent, and then throwed away(?) since it's already displayed. Why not just send the footer with the data to parse (it's not json nor xml but a | separated list). I really can't see why you would design a system that way. Usually you've a fast client, and a somewhat fast server but a really slow connection. Why not keep the datatransfer to a minimum? Why those huge __VIEWSTATE and __EVENTVALIDATION? It seems that everything is done way to chatty and way to complicated. I really can't see the point and that usually means that I'm missing something. So please tell me, what are the reasons for this design and what benefits (and weaknesses) does it have? (Yes I know that __VIEWSTATE is used to tell what type of form-konfiguration should be sent back to the server. But WHY is this needed?) Please keep this discussion strictly technical and avoid flamewars. Update: Please excuse the somewhat rantish question. I tried to explain my view to be able to get a better answer. I am not saying that asp.net is bad, I am saying that I don't understand the meaning of those concepts. Usually that means that I've things to learn instead of the concepts beeing wrong. I appreciate the explanations about that "you don't have to do this way in asp.net", I'll read up on MVC and other .net technologies. However, there most be a reason for this site (the one I referred to) to be written the way it is. It's written by professionals for a big organisation with far more experience than what I've. Any explanation about their (possible) design choice would be welcome.

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• GWT: Generate more complete crawl error report

  - by Mike

  I'm a developer in charge of managing Webmasters and related issues (including correcting crawl errors) for dozens (hundreds, maybe?) of active sites and as part of my duties I create a report of every discrepancy, including all pages generating a 404 and all pages that link to those pages. Currently within Webmaster Tools I'm able to download a csv file of all pages with a 404 response, but I'm then having to manually click on every single one of those links and copy the "linked from" field to paste into my spreadsheet. This is extremely tedious and seems unnecessary; I would expect the ability to download all that data at once. I'm ultimately looking for the end result of one csv file that has every url with a 404, but also has every url that links to each one of them. Am I overlooking this functionality somewhere or does anyone have a good solution? Edit 1 (2/11/2013): Example of what the csv output looks like now: URL,Response Code,News Error,Detected,Category http://www.abcdef.com/123.php,404,,11/12/13,Not found http://www.abcdef.com/456.php,404,,11/12/13,Not found Which is great, but let's say 123.php has 5 pages that link to it. Now I have to duplicate that row in my spreadsheet 4 more times, then go into Webmasters, get all the url's that link to the page, and add that data to my spreadsheet. The output I would prefer: URL,Response Code,Linked From,News Error,Detected,Category http://www.abcdef.com/123.php,404,http://www.ghijkl.com/naughtypage1.php,,11/12/13,Not found http://www.abcdef.com/123.php,404,http://www.ghijkl.com/naughtypage2.php,,11/12/13,Not found http://www.abcdef.com/123.php,404,http://www.ghijkl.com/naughtypage3.php,,11/12/13,Not found http://www.abcdef.com/456.php,404,http://www.ghijkl.com/naughtypage1.php,,11/12/13,Not found http://www.abcdef.com/456.php,404,http://www.ghijkl.com/naughtypage2.php,,11/12/13,Not found http://www.abcdef.com/456.php,404,http://www.ghijkl.com/naughtypage3.php,,11/12/13,Not found Note the (hypothetical) addition of a "Linked From" column, as well as the fact there are only 2 unique URL's now (like before) but all of the "Linked To" pages are shown in one report. Edit 2 (2/12/2013): To clarify, my question is less about detecting and correcting 404's, but more about generating a report of what Google has listed as errors. Oftentimes, these errors aren't even valid anymore but I still need documentation to show that Google detected a problem and that problem is now fixed. Many of the "linked from" url's I find are actually outdated, cached resources. For example, I'll frequently see that the linked-from url is the sitemap, which is actually an old sitemap cached by Google that points to an old page. Neither the sitemap or old page exist, but they still appear in my crawl error reports because they are cached resources.

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• Are You an IT Geek? Why Not Write for How-To Geek?

  - by The Geek

  Are you a geek in the IT field that wants to share your skills with the world? We’re looking for an experienced Sysadmin / IT Admin / Webmaster geek with writing skills that wants to join our team on a part-time basis. Please apply if you have the following qualities: You must be a geek at heart, willing to try and make the boring world of IT sound glamorous and sexy. If that’s not possible, at least be willing to share your wisdom and skills to help other IT geeks save time and become better at what they do. You must be able to write articles that are easy to understand. Either Windows or Linux writers are welcome to apply. You must be able to follow our style guide. You must be creative. You must generate ideas for articles on your own, and take suggestions like a pro. You’re ambitious, looking to build your skills and your name, and are prepared to work hard. If you aren’t willing to work hard, put some dedication and pride into your work, or aren’t really interested in the topic, this job might not be for you. We’re looking for serious individuals that want to grow with us, and as we grow, you’ll grow as well. How To Apply If you think this job is a good fit for you, send an email to [email protected] and include some background information about yourself, why you’d be a good fit, some topic areas you are familiar with, and hopefully some examples of your work. Bonus points if you have a ninja costume and a keyboard strapped to your back. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips What Topics Should The How-To Geek Write About?Got Awesome Skills? Why Not Write for How-To Geek?Got Awesome Geek Skills? The How-To Geek is Looking for WritersAbout the GeekThe How-To Geek Bounty Program 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 QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job?

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• Sweden Azure Group with Michele Laroux Bustamente &amp; Maartin Balliauw Thursday 22nd May

  - by Alan Smith

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/asmith/archive/2014/05/19/156418.aspxSweden Azure Group (SWAG) has the privilege of welcoming Michele Laroux Bustamente and Maartin Balliauw to present sessions at our meeting this Thursday. Michele and Maartin are two of the world’s leading experts in Cloud Computing and Azure, and will be taking time out from their busy schedules to share their ideas with us, and answer any questions. Knowit Stockholm are kindly hosting the event at their offices, and providing food and refreshments. It should be a great evening. You can register for the event here. Azure Q & A - Michele Leroux Bustamante In this interactive Q & A session Michele Leroux Bustamante will be on hand to share her wealth of experience on Azure related issues. If you are new to Azure and wanting some tips to get started, or an experienced developer needing to negotiate the legal and political protocols related to Cloud Computing Michele will have been there, done that, and be willing to share her experiences. This session will be entirely driven by that attendees, so please come prepared with questions. Reducing latency on the web with the Windows Azure CDN – Maarten Balliauw Serving up content on the Internet is something our web sites do daily. But are we doing this in the fastest way possible? How are users in faraway countries experiencing our apps? Why do we have three webservers serving the same content over and over again? In this session, we’ll explore the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network or CDN, a service which makes it easy to serve up blobs, videos and other content from servers close to our users. We’ll explore simple file serving as well as some more advanced, dynamic edge caching scenarios. Michele Leroux Bustamante Michele Leroux Bustamante is CIO at Solliance (solliance.net), cofounder of Snapboard (snapboard.com), and is recognized as a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP. Michele is a thought leader with over 20 years specializing in building scalable and secure end-to-end system design, identity and access management, and cloud computing technologies – for companies of all sizes. In recent years Michele has also helped launch several startup business ventures and has been a mentor to startups in several accelerator programs – providing both technical and business guidance. Michele shares her experiences through presentations and keynotes all over the world, and has been publishing regularly in technology journals. Maarten Balliauw Maarten Balliauw is a Technical Evangelist at JetBrains. His interests are all web: ASP.NET MVC, PHP and Windows Azure. He’s a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Azure and an ASPInsider. He has published many articles in both PHP and .NET literature such as MSDN magazine and PHP architect. Maarten is a frequent speaker at various national and international events such as MIX (Las Vegas), TechDays, DPC, …

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• Web Development Goes Pre-Visual InterDev

  - by Ken Cox [MVP]

  As a longtime and hardcore ASP.NET webforms developer, I’m finding the new client-side development world a bit of a grind.  I love learning new technologies, but I can’t help feeling we’ve regressed and lost our old RAD advantage as we move heavy lifting to the client. For my latest project, I’m using Telerik’s KendoUI in Visual Studio 2012. To say I feel clumsy writing this much JavaScript is an understatement. It seems like the only safe way to ‘write’ this code is by copying a working snippet from someone else and pasting it into my HTML page.  For me, JavaScript has largely been for small UI tasks like client-side validation and a bit of AJAX – and often emitted by a server-side control. I find myself today lost in nests of curly braces that Ctrl+K, Ctrl+D doesn’t seem to understand that well either. IntelliSense, my old syntax saviour, doesn’t seem to have kept up with this cobweb of code either. Code completion? Not seeing it. As I fumbled about this evening, I thought about how web development rocketed forward when Microsoft introduced Visual InterDev. Its Design-Time Controls (DTCs) changed the way we created sites. All the iterations of Visual Studio have enhanced that server-side experience where you let a tool write the bulk of the code and manually finesse it from there. What happened? Why am I typing  properties and values (especially default values!) into VS 2012 to get a client-side grid on a page? Where are the drag and drop objects that traditionally provided 70 percent of the mark-up and configuration?  Did we forget how to write Property Pages where you enter a value and the correct syntax appears magically in the source code? To me, the tooling was looking the other way as the scene shifted from server-side code to nimble client-side script. It’ll have to catch up. Although JavaScript is the lingua franca of web browsers, the language is unwieldy, tough to maintain, and messy to debug. If a .NET JIT compiler can turn our VB, F#, and C# source code into an Intermediate Language that executes on a computer, I don’t see why there can’t be a client-side compiler that turns a .NET language into JavaScript that browsers can consume.

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• Web Apps vs Web Services: 302s and 401s are not always good Friends

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  It is not very uncommon to have web sites that have web UX and services content. The UX part maybe uses WS-Federation (or some other redirect based mechanism). That means whenever an authorization error occurs (401 status code), this is picked by the corresponding redirect module and turned into a redirect (302) to the login page. All is good. But in services, when you emit a 401, you typically want that status code to travel back to the client agent, so it can do error handling. These two approaches conflict. If you think (like me) that you should separate UX and services into separate apps, you don’t need to read on. Just do it ;) If you need to mix both mechanisms in a single app – here’s how I solved it for a project. I sub classed the redirect module – this was in my case the WIF WS-Federation HTTP module and modified the OnAuthorizationFailed method. In there I check for a special HttpContext item, and if that is present, I suppress the redirect. Otherwise everything works as normal: class ServiceAwareWSFederationAuthenticationModule : WSFederationAuthenticationModule {     protected override void OnAuthorizationFailed(AuthorizationFailedEventArgs e)     {         base.OnAuthorizationFailed(e);         var isService = HttpContext.Current.Items[AdvertiseWcfInHttpPipelineBehavior.DefaultLabel];         if (isService != null)         {             e.RedirectToIdentityProvider = false;         }     } } Now the question is, how do you smuggle that value into the HttpContext. If it is a MVC based web service, that’s easy of course. In the case of WCF, one approach that worked for me was to set it in a service behavior (dispatch message inspector to be exact): public void BeforeSendReply( ref Message reply, object correlationState) {     if (HttpContext.Current != null)     {         HttpContext.Current.Items[DefaultLabel] = true;     } } HTH

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• Apache doesn't load .php files

  - by Haddex

  First, sorry for my English and asking something that it's quite answered all over the web. I've read a lot of post about this problem but I still can't find the solution. I'm a web developer who recently moved to Ubuntu from Windows 7. I had a website done (it's online and working) and I set up LAMP to keep working with it. I made a test.php file with: <?php phpinfo(); ?> and put it on /var/www/html directory, it shows all the information about the php and I was really happy: "Ok, it's all done, tomorrow I will work hard" But I placed my whole web into /var/www/html , not in a folder, the index.php is in /var/www/html but guess what: doesn't load any of my .php files, the browser just keep thinking. What I did: I rebooted Apache: /etc/init.d/apache2 restart I tried again with the test.php file and it works fine I put in /var/www/html a .html file and works fine. I looked for /etc/apache2/sites-enable/000-default.conf and it says: DocumentRoot /var/www/html I looked for /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dir.conf and it says: DirectoryIndex index.html index.cgi index.pl index.php ... Edit* I think it's something related to phpmyadmin, like if I'm not able to connect with the database. But I got nothing on the screen when trying to load the page so...I'm not sure. I can access to the url localhost/phpmyadmin and I edited the connection.php file like this: <?php # FileName="Connection_php_mysql.htm" # Type="MYSQL" # HTTP="true" $hostname_rakstadconnection = "localhost"; $database_rakstadconnection = "rakstadclandb"; $username_rakstadconnection = "root"; $password_rakstadconnection = "admin"; $rakstadconnection = mysql_connect($hostname_rakstadconnection, $username_rakstadconnection, $password_rakstadconnection) or trigger_error(mysql_error(),E_USER_ERROR); mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'"); ?> The name of the database is correct, like the user and password. http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k220/Haddex/Capturadepantallade2014-06-09112609_zpsc45ddb72.png http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k220/Haddex/Capturadepantallade2014-06-09112120_zps0b9e15f7.png *Edit2: could this be because it's a website that I brought to Linux from Windows? I used Dreamweaver. Edit3: I changed the # to /*/, nothing. The error.log file says: [Mon Jun 09 17:08:13.627881 2014] [:error] [pid 1517] [client 127.0.0.1:46663] PHP Warning: require_once(/var/www/html/Connections/rakstadconnection.php): failed to open stream: Permission denied in /var/www/html/index.php on line 1 [Mon Jun 09 17:08:13.627933 2014] [:error] [pid 1517] [client 127.0.0.1:46663] PHP Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required 'Connections/rakstadconnection.php' (include_path='.:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear') in /var/www/html/index.php on line 1 I'm reading error log but...should I add a linux path into a my index.php file? Don't think so. Thanks.

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• Finding a new programming language for web development?

  - by Xeoncross

  I'm wondering if there are any un-biased resources that give good, specific overviews of programming languages and their intended goals. I would like to learn a new language, but visiting the sites of each language isn't working. Each one talks about how great it is without much mention of it's weaknesses or specific goals. Ruby is a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. Python is a programming language that lets you work more quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. Having been a PHP developer for years, Vic Cherubini sums up my plight well: I knew PHP well, had my own framework, and could work quickly to get something up and running. I programmed like this throughout the MVC revolution. I got better and better jobs (read: better paying, better title) as a PHP developer, but all along the way realizing that the code I wrote on my own time was great, and the code I worked with at work was horrible. Like, worse than horrible. Atrocious. OS Commerce level bad. Having side projects kept me sane, because the code I worked with at work made me miserable. This is why I'm retiring from PHP for my side projects and new programming ventures. I'm spent with PHP. Exhausted, if you will. I've reached a level where I think I'm at the top with it as a language and if I don't move on to a new language soon, I'll be done completely with programming and I do not want that. Languages I've looked at include JavaScript (for node.js), Ruby, Python, & Erlang. I've even thought about Scala or C++. The problem is figuring out which ones are built to handle my needs the best. So where can I go to skip the hype and get real information about the maturity of a platform, the size of the community, and the strengths & weaknesses of that language. If I know these then picking a language to continue my web development should be easy.

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• Why should I not do a masters degree

  - by aurel

  I have left university on July 2010 where I studied web design (as we all know you learn more by your self but that’s not the issue at the moment). Since then I have not managed to find a job (apart from a one month work experience), from the way things are going, and by taking into account the fact that all my university friends are in the same situation, I don’t think that I am going to find a job soon (within the industry) Now as we all do, even though I don’t have a job, I am still working on personal projects and try to keep up to date (I don’t need a job or uni to do this) – but I am thinking, because there is not work available, would it be worth going back to uni for a master degree? I know I don’t need it and I know that is unlikely that I will learn anything important, as I believe in self learning, and in most cases it is a lot more effective (but I have to say I don’t mind going back to school) The only reason I am thinking of doing the master is, (and this is where I need your help): If it takes me a year to get a job, then on the interview, would the employer think “what the hell did this guy do since he left university” – now if I go to university that would solve this problem. Or I’m I making up a problem that does not exist Plus, I know that employers need examples of sites that I have been working on, at the moment I only have 3 (as when working on personal projects, where their is not time limit I tend drag things in order to get them perfect, and they never get perfect) – so by going back to uni, then this problem maybe solved I said all this as I have read a lot about the fact that you don’t need to have a masters degree to work on web design market (and I totally agree) but considering my concern, the question is should I do a masters course to avoid just spending hours in my room working and learning in my own (but that it would be hard to convince employers that I was really learning in my room) Maybe because I’m still young age 22 not that old anyway :), but I don’t have the “dream” of being rich, so if I were to tell the truth I don’t really care of the fact that I don’t have a job (at the moment), because regardless, I am working on what I love every day, but I know that in the future when I will need the job I may find it harder to get one, if I neglect doing so now Every time I ask a question that I’m not sure about, I keep going on and on, but I really hope you get what I am trying to get across. By the way the course that I am looking at for a masters says that it would teach me how to do these: e-commerce e-government e-science e-learning I don’t know any of them, a part from e-commerce Thanks

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• Career Development: What should I learn next after Python? and Why? [closed]

  - by Josh

  Hi all I'm currently learning Python. I want to know what should I learn next out of these programming langauages: PHP Actionscript 3 Objective-C (iPhone applications) I work in the Multimedia industry and have decided to learn Python as a first programming language seriously because I would like to learn the basics of programming, to mainly write scripts at work that Automate task (eg. Edit multiple XML files quickly) At work we have a senior developer who knows Actionscript and PHP very well (although knows PHP better). We also have been developing iPhone applications for 2 weeks, Our senior developer could learn it although we have lots of work currently with PHP and Actionscript 3 type work and haven't had time or reason to pick up iOS development. Here are the reasons I want to learn each language, But I cannot decide what I'll learn next: PHP: I want to learn PHP because it will help with Web Development. PHP is very wanted by employers. Senior developer at work writes everything in it web sites, CMS etc. (including XML checks and scripts), I will learn a lot from him (once I learn the basics). However, I don't want to learn Web because you have to deal with lots of cross-browser problems. Actionscript 3: At work we are looking to put on another developer to help with online activities and very small games (using Actionscript 3.0 and Flash CS5) for (eg. First Aid Activities etc) I would like to do things that have a element of design as I'm better at Photoshop then developing. I want to be creative, I like to interact with users in a fun way. Objective-C (iPhone applications): We are a all mac office, we may get more iPhone, iPad application work(jobs) that need to be created. Work has found it nearly impossible to find good iPhone developers. I like apple products (Macs and iPhones), I would like to make my own games, applications in my spare time(if I knew how). Should I learn Actionscript first because it would be easier to learn then Objective-C? Should I learn PHP because it is very widely used? Should I learn Objective-C because it is really wanted by employers now?

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• Turnkey with LightSwitch

  - by Laila

  Microsoft has long wanted to find a replacement for Microsoft Access. The best attempt yet, which is due out in, or before, September is Visual Studio LightSwitch, with which it is said to be as 'easy as flipping a switch' to use Silverlight to create simple form-driven business applications. It is easy to get confused by the various initiatives from Microsoft. No, this isn't WebMatrix. There is no 'Razor', for this isn't meant for cute little ecommerce sites, but is designed to build simple database-applications of the card-box type. It is more clearly a .NET-based solution to the problem that every business seems to suffer from; the plethora of Access-based, and Excel-based 'private' and departmental database-applications. These are a nightmare for any IT department since they are often 'stealth' applications built by the business in the teeth of opposition from the IT Department zealots. As they are undocumented, it is scarily easy to bring a whole department into disarray by decommissioning a PC tucked under a desk somewhere. With LightSwitch, it is easy to re-write such applications in a standard, maintainable, way, using a SQL Server database, deployed somewhere reasonably safe such as Azure. Even Sharepoint or Windows Communication Foundation can be used as data sources. Oracle's ApEx has taken off remarkably well, and has shaken the perception that, for the business user, Oracle must remain a mystic force accessible only to the priests and acolytes. Microsoft, by comparison had only Access, which was first released in 1992, the year of the Madonna conical bustier. It looks just as dated. Microsoft badly needed an entirely new solution to the same business requirement that led to Access's and Foxpro's long-time popularity, but which had the same allure as ApEx. LightSwitch is sound in its ideas, and comfortingly conventional in its architecture. By giving an easy access to SQL Server databases, and providing a 'thumb and blanket' migration path to Access-heads, LightSwitch seems likely to offer a simple way of pulling more Microsoft users into the .NET community. If Microsoft puts its weight behind it, then it will give some glimmer of hope to the many Silverlight developers that Microsoft is capable of seeing through its .NET revolution.

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• Is there an API for determining congressional districts?

  - by ardavis

  I'm looking to determine the congressional district based on an address my user is providing. This will avoid having the user to look it up themselves. Does an API of this sort exist? Note Through my attempts to find one, I've only come across these: http://www.govtrack.us/developers/api (not sure how to submit an an address or zip code however) The following resources are available in the API ...Bills and resolutions in the U.S. Congress since 1973 (the 93rd Congress). ...A (bill, person) pair indicating cosponsorship, with join and withdrawn dates. ...Members of Congress and U.S. Presidents since the founding of the nation. ...Terms held in office by Members of Congress and U.S. Presidents. Each term corresponds with an election, meaning each term in the House covers two years (one 'Congress'), as President four years, and in the Senate six years (three 'Congresses'). ...Roll call votes in the U.S. Congress since 1789. How people voted is accessed through the Vote_voter API. ...How people voted on roll call votes in the U.S. Congress since 1789. See the Vote API. Filter on the vote field to get the results of a particular vote... http://www.opencongress.org/api (seems to be a way to find congress information, but not districts) This API provides programmers with structured access to all the data on OpenCongress, everything from official bill info to news and blog coverage to user-generated votes on bills and much more... This API defaults to returning XML. All queries can also return JSON... https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/opendems-discuss/CeKyi_aANaE (similar question, no resolution) I've been looking over Open Dems, and seeing what's exposed at this point and what isn't. I work with Democrats Abroad, and am interested in using stuff from the lab for their sites. I quickly looked over the Precinct API, which does both more and less than what I'd need. An ideal resource would be any way of translating addresses into CD at the very least (getting state district data would be good as well), since that would make it easier for DA's membership to make a difference in races like last month's NY26 race... Update I'm looking at the source for the govtrack.us website and the 'doGeoCode' function may be useful. view-source:http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members If no one has any suggestions, I will try to go off of what they are doing.

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