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• First Impressions of a MacBook (from a PC guy)

  - by dgreen

  Disclaimer: I've been a PC guy my entire working career. I'd probably characterize myself as a power user. Never afraid to bust out the console line. But working with a Mac is totally foreign to me. So for those Mac guys who are curious, this is how your world appears from the outside to a computer literate person :)My Macbook Air has arrived! And it's a thing of beauty:First, the specs: 13" MacBook Air, 2.0GHz Core i7 processor. Upgraded to 8GB of RAM for an additional $100, SSD flash storage  = 256GB. The plan is ultimately to use this baby for some iOS development but also some decent lifting in Windows with Visual Studio. Done a lot of reading  and between VMWare Fusion, Parallels and Bootcamp...I'm going to go with VMWare Fusion for $49.99And now my impressions (please re-read disclaimer before proceeding!):I open the box and am trying to understand exactly how the magsafe connector works (and how to disconnect it).  Why does it have two socket outlet plugs? Who knows.  I feel like Hansel in Zoolander. The files are "in" the computer.Stuck in my external hard drive (usb). So how do I get to the files? To the Googles!Argh...it can't read my external NTFS drive. Fat32 can't support field over 4GB…problematic since some of my existing VMWare image files are much larger than 4GB. Didn't see this coming.Three year old loves iPhoto. Super easy to use. Don't even know what I'm doing but I've already (accidentally) discovered the image filtering options. Fun stuff.First thing I downloaded ever => Chrome. I need something to ground me, something familiar. My token, if you will (sorry, gratuitous Inception joke).Ok, I get it… Finder == windows explorer. But where is my hierarchical structure? I miss the tree :(On that note, yeah…how do I see what "path" my files reside in? I'm afraid to know the answer. You know what scares more though…this notion of a smart folder. Feel like the godfather - just get the job done, I don't care how you handle it, I don't want to know...just get it done. What the hell is AirDrop?Mail…just worked. Still in shock that they have a free client for yahoo mail (please no yahoo jokes).mail -> deleting a message takes 5 seconds. Have they heard of async?"Command" key instead of "Control" ok, then what the $%&^! is the control key for then"aliases" == shortcuts I thinkI don't see the file system. And I'm scared. All these things I'm downloading…these .dmg files (bad name) where are they going? Can't seem to delete when they're doneUgh...realized need to buy a mini-to-vga adaptor if I want to use my external monitor ($13 on ebay, $39 in apple store).Windows docking is trickiest for me…this notion of detached windows with a menu bar at the top. I don't like this paradigm, it's confusing. But maybe because I've been using Windows for too long.Evernote, Dropbox desktop clients seem almost identical…few quirks here and there I need to get used to.iTunes is still a bit gross. In a weird way it's actually worse on a Mac if thats possible. This is not the MacBook's fault…this is a software design issue. Overall: UI will take some getting used to. Can't decide if this represents the future and I'm stuck in the past…or this is the past and I've been spoiled by the future (which would be Windows…don't be hating I happen to be very productive in Win7)  So there you go - my 90 minute first impression of the MacBook universe.

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• PECL OCI8 2.0 Production Release Announcement

  - by cj

  The PHP OCI8 2.0.6 extension for Oracle Database is now "production" status. The source code is available on PECL. This can be used immediately to update your OCI8 extension in PHP 5.2 and later versions. The extension compiles with Oracle 10.2 or later client libraries. Oracle's standard cross-version database connectivity applies. OCI8 2.0 and PHP 5.5.5 RPMs for Oracle and Red Hat Linux are available from oss.oracle.com. Windows DLLs are available on PECL for PHP 5.3, PHP 5.4 and PHP 5.5. OCI8 2.0 source code will also be automatically included in the next major version of PHP. New Functionality Oracle Database 12c Implicit Result Set support. IRS's make it easy to pass query results back from stored PL/SQL procedures or anonymous PL/SQL blocks. Individual IRS statement resources, each corresponding to a single query, can be obtained with the new function oci_get_implicit_resultset(). These 'child' statement resources can be passed to any oci_fetch_* function. See Using PHP and Oracle Database 12c Implicit Result Sets and the PHP Manual: oci_get_implicit_resultset(). DTrace Dynamic Trace static probes. This well respected DTrace tracing framework is available on a number of platforms, including Oracle Linux. PHP OCI8 static user-space probes can be enabled with PHP's --enable-dtrace configuration option. See Using PHP DTrace on Oracle Linux. Documentation is also available in the PHP Manual OCI8 and DTrace Dynamic Tracing Improved Functionality Using oci_execute($s, OCI_NO_AUTO_COMMIT) for a SELECT no longer unnecessarily initiates an internal ROLLBACK during connection close. This can improve overall scalability by reducing "round trips" between PHP and the database. Changed Functionality PHP OCI8 2.0's minimum pre-requisites are now PHP 5.2 and Oracle client library 10.2. Later versions of both are usable and, in fact, recommended. Use the older PHP OCI8 1.4.10 extension when using PHP 4.3.9 through to PHP 5.1.x, or when only Oracle Database 9.2 client libraries are available. oci_set_*($connection, ...) meta data setting call error handling is fixed so that oci_error($connection) works for these calls. Note: The old, deprecated function aliases like ocilogon still exist but are not recommended for new applications. Phpinfo() Changes Some cosmetic changes were made to the output of php --ri oci8 and the phpinfo() function. The oci8.event and oci8.connection_class values are now shown only when the Oracle client libraries support the respective functionality. Connection statistics are now in a separate phpinfo() table. Temporary LOB and Collection support status lines in phpinfo() output were removed. These two features have always been enabled since 2007. Oci_internal_debug() Changes The oci_internal_debug() function is now a no-op. Use PHP's --enable-dtrace functionality with DTrace or SystemTap instead. References OCI8 Extension source code and Windows DLLs http://pecl.php.net/package/oci8 Oracle Linux RPMs oss.oracle.com PHP Manual for OCI8 OCI8 and DTrace Dynamic Tracing Oracle OpenWorld Conference paper What's New in Oracle Database 12c for PHP

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• Hey Retailers, Are You Ready For The Holiday Season?

  - by Jeri Kelley

  With online holiday spending reaching $35.3 billion in 2011 and American shoppers spending just under $750 on average on their holiday purchases this year, how ready is your business for the 2012 holiday season?   ?? Today’s shoppers do not take their purchases lightly.  They are more connected, interact with more resources to make decisions, diligently compare products and services, seek out the best deals, and ask for input from friends and family.   This holiday season, as consumers browse for apparel, tablets, toys, and much more, they will be bombarded with retailer communication - from emails and commercials to countless search engine results and social recommendations.  With a flurry of activity coming at consumers from every channel and competitor, your success this year will rely on communicating a consistent, personalized message no matter where your customers are shopping.  Here are a few ideas to help with your commerce strategy this holiday season: CONSISTENCY COUNTS FOR MULTICHANNEL SHOPPERS??According to a November 2011 study commissioned by Oracle, “Channel Commerce 2011: The Consumer View,” 54% of consumers in the U.S. and Canada regularly employ two or more channels before they make a purchase.  While each channel has its own unique benefit, user profile, and purpose, it’s critical that your shoppers have a consistent core experience wherever they’re looking for information or making a purchase.  Be sure consumers can consistently search and browse the same product information and receive the same promotions online, on their mobile devices, and in-store.? USE YOUR CUSTOMER’S CONTEXT TO SURFACE RELEVANT CONTENTYour Web site is likely the hub of your holiday activity.  According to a Monetate infographic, 39% of shoppers will visit your Web site directly to find out about the best holiday deals.   Use everything you know about your customers from past purchase data to browsing history to provide a relevant experience at every click, and assemble content in a context that entices shoppers to buy online, or influences an offline purchase.? TAKE ADVANTAGE OF MOBILE BEHAVIOR?Having a mobile program is no longer a choice.   Armed with smartphones and tablets, consumers now have access to more and more product information and can compare products and prices from anywhere.  In fact, approximately 52% of smartphone users will use their device to research products, redeem coupons and use apps to assist in their holiday gift purchase.  At a minimum, be sure your mobile environment has store information, consistent pricing and promotions, and simple checkout capabilities. ARM IN-STORE ASSOCIATES WITH TABLETS?According to RISNews.com, 31% of retailers plan to begin testing tablets in stores in 2012, 22% have already begun such testing and 6% had fully deployed tablets within stores.   Take advantage of this compelling sales tool to get shoppers interacting with videos, user reviews, how-to guides, side-by-side product comparisons, and specs.  Automatically trigger upsell and cross sell suggestions for store associates to recommend for each product or category, build in alerts for promotions, and allow associates to place orders and check inventory from their tablet.  ? WISDOM OF THE CROWDS IS GOOD, BUT WISDOM FROM FRIENDS IS BETTER?Shoppers who grapple with options are looking for recommendations; they’d rather get advice from friends, and they’re more likely to spend more while doing so.    In fact, according to an infographic by Mr. Youth, 66% of social media users made a purchase on Black Friday or Cyber Monday as a direct result of social media interactions with brands or family.   This holiday season, be sure you are leveraging your social channels from Facebook to Pinterest to drive consistent promotions and help your brand to become part of the conversation. So, are you ready for the holidays this year?  

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• Heading out to Dallas GiveCamp 2011

  - by dotgeek

  The day has finally arrived for twelve local charities here in the Dallas area, when they’ll get some help from various local Developers with their website initiative needs at this years Dallas GiveCamp. I’m really looking forward to helping out at this year event and what I hope will be the start of many more GiveCamps to follow. Similar to Habitat for Humanity, where people gather to help build and improve homes for people in need, GiveCamp brings together programmers and equips them with the virtual tools they need to build and improve their existing websites. Tonight is when things will kickoff for this weekends events and teams will start working on their various projects. The building continues on through the night then and all the way through until Sunday afternoon. The end goal for the teams and charities is to have a completed and working website for each charity to begin using and turn over all the production code and digital assets to them. None of this would be possible with out the great sponsors we have returning once again and their donations of various products to help these charities out with their projects, like Telerik's CMS product Sitefinity 4.0, paired with a year of hosting from Verio to mention just a few of them. Just like the skilled builders who might help train volunteers in the use of a nail gun in building a house. Training is also available here on site for the Developers and these local Charities. Giving them all the skills in how to manage and use these products, from site development and then into actual production is a key to the success of this weekends event.     Tonight's training sessions will kick off with a real treat from Giovanni Gallucci, as he speaks about Social Media for NPOs and then later Gabe Sumner from Telerik will begin a training session on Sitefinity for Developers. These training sessions will continue through out the weekend with .Net Nuke and Mojo Portal sessions also planned as well. If you’re a developer and would like to help out in the future, then check in your area and with your local User Groups to find out if you already have a GiveCamp near you to help out. If you don’t have one available, then consider starting up a local GiveCamp and then you too can help Code it Forward. About GiveCamp GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. This custom software could be a new website for the nonprofit organization, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, or a application for the Red Cross that automatically emails a blood donor three months after they’ve donated blood to remind them that they are now eligible to donate again. The only limitation is that the project should be scoped to be able to be completed in a weekend. During GiveCamp, developers are welcome to go home in the evenings or camp out all weekend long. There are usually food and drink provided at the event. There are sometimes even game systems set up for when you and your need a little break! Overall, it’s a great opportunity for people to work together, developing new friendships, and doing something important for their community. At GiveCamp, there is an expectation of “What Happens at GiveCamp, Stays at GiveCamp”. Therefore, all source code must be turned over to the charities at the end of the weekend (developers cannot ask for payment) and the charities are responsible for maintaining the code moving forward (charities cannot expect the developers to maintain the codebase).

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• Node.js Lockstep Multiplayer Architecture

  - by Wakaka

  Background I'm using the lockstep model for a multiplayer Node.js/Socket.IO game in a client-server architecture. User input (mouse or keypress) is parsed into commands like 'attack' and 'move' on the client, which are sent to the server and scheduled to be executed on a certain tick. This is in contrast to sending state data to clients, which I don't wish to use due to bandwidth issues. Each tick, the server will send the list of commands on that tick (possibly empty) to each client. The server and all clients will then process the commands and simulate that tick in exactly the same way. With Node.js this is actually quite simple due to possibility of code sharing between server and client. I'll just put the deterministic simulator in the /shared folder which can be run by both server and client. The server simulation is required so that there is an authoritative version of the simulation which clients cannot alter. Problem Now, the game has many entity classes, like Unit, Item, Tree etc. Entities are created in the simulator. However, for each class, it has some methods that are shared and some that are client-specific. For instance, the Unit class has addHp method which is shared. It also has methods like getSprite (gets the image of the entity), isVisible (checks if unit can be seen by the client), onDeathInClient (does a bunch of stuff when it dies only on the client like adding announcements) and isMyUnit (quick function to check if the client owns the unit). Up till now, I have been piling all the client functions into the shared Unit class, and adding a this.game.isServer() check when necessary. For instance, when the unit dies, it will call if (!this.game.isServer()) { this.onDeathInClient(); }. This approach has worked pretty fine so far, in terms of functionality. But as the codebase grew bigger, this style of coding seems a little strange. Firstly, the client code is clearly not shared, and yet is placed under the /shared folder. Secondly, client-specific variables for each entity are also instantiated on the server entity (like unit.sprite) and can run into problems when the server cannot instantiate the variable (it doesn't have Image class like on browsers). So my question is, is there a better way to organize the client code, or is this a common way of doing things for lockstep multiplayer games? I can think of a possible workaround, but it does have its own problems. Possible workaround (with problems) I could use Javascript mixins that are only added when in a browser. Thus, in the /shared/unit.js file in the /shared folder, I would have this code at the end: if (typeof exports !== 'undefined') module.exports = Unit; else mixin(Unit, LocalUnit); Then I would have /client/localunit.js store an object LocalUnit of client-side methods for Unit. Now, I already have a publish-subscribe system in place for events in the simulator. To remove the this.game.isServer() checks, I could publish entity-specific events whenever I want the client to do something. For instance, I would do this.publish('Death') in /shared/unit.js and do this.subscribe('Death', this.onDeathInClient) in /client/localunit.js. But this would make the simulator's event listeners list on the server and the client different. Now if I want to clear all subscribed events only from the shared simulator, I can't. Of course, it is possible to create two event subscription systems - one client-specific and one shared - but now the publish() method would have to do if (!this.game.isServer()) { this.publishOnClient(event); }. All in all, the workaround off the top of my head seems pretty complicated for something as simple as separating the client and shared code. Thus, I wonder if there is an established and simpler method for better code organization, hopefully specific to Node.js games.

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• Indentify Codecs & Technical Information About Video Files

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Have you ever wanted to play an audio or video file but didn’t have the proper codec installed? Today we’ll show how to determine codecs, along with a host of other technical details about your media files with MediaInfo. Installation Download and install MediaInfo. You can find the download link at the bottom of the page. Note: When installing MediaInfo there is a recommended software bundle which you can opt out of by selecting Do not install option. Each recommended software choice may be different, like in this example it offers Spyware Terminator. The cool thing though is they use Open Candy which opts you out of the install. Just double check to make sure you’re not installing extra crapware. Using MediaInfo The first time you run MediaInfo it will display the Preferences window. There are various option such as language, output format, and whether or not you want MediaInfo to check for new versions. Click OK. Select a file or folder to analyze by clicking on the File or Folder icons on the left of the application window or by selecting File > Open from the menu. You can also drag and drop a file directly onto the application. MediaInfo will display details of your media file. In Basic view, you’ll see basic information. Notice in the example below the video and audio codecs, along with file size, running time of the media file, and even the application used to create the video file (Writing application).    You can switch to some of the other views by selecting View from the Menu and choosing form the dropdown list.   Sheet View will present the information a bit more clearly. You can see in the example below that the video and audio codec are listing in clearly identified columns. (AVC is often more commonly referred to H.264.)   Tree View is perhaps the most detailed. You can see from the example below the codec used for this AVI file is XviD.   Scrolling down even further you’ll see additional information like video and audio bit rates, frame rate, aspect ratio, and more.   In Basic View (and also in Sheet view) you can click to find a player for your file. In this instance with an MP4 file, it took me to the download page for Quicktime. This is by no means the only media player for this file, but if you are stuck for how to play a media file, this will forward you to a solution that works. You can do the same thing with Video codec. Click Go to the web site of this video codec to find a download.   MediaInfo is a simple but powerful tool that can be used to discover the details of a media file, or just to find a compatible codec. It works with most any video file type and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Some Mac and Linux versions, however, are currently command line only. Download MediaInfo Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Convert Videos to 3GP for Mobile PhonesFix for VLC Skipping and Lagging Playing High-Def Video FilesUsing VLC Player Under VistaUse Your Mac Mini as a Media Server Part 2How to Play .OGM Video Files in Windows Vista 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor tinysong gives a shortened URL for you to post on Twitter (or anywhere)

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• Enterprise Manager in EPM 11.1.2.x...a game of hide and seek!

  - by THE

  Normal 0 21 false false false DE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} guest article: Maurice Bauhahn: Users of Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management 11.1.2.0 and 11.1.2.1 may puzzle why the URL http://<servername>:7001/em may not conjure up Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control. This powerful tool has been installed by default...but WebLogic may not have been 'Extended' to allow you to call it up (we are hopeful this ‘Extend’  step will not be needed with 11.1.2.2). The explanation is on pages 425 and following of the following document: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/epm-tips-issues-1-72-427329.pdf A close look at the screen dumps in that section reveals a somewhat scary prospect, however: the non-AdminServer servlets had all failed (see the red down-arrow icons to the right of their names) after the configuration! Of course you would want to avoid that scenario! A rephrasing of the instructions might help: Ensure the WebLogic AdminServer is not running (in a default scenario that would mean port 7001 is not active). Ensure you have logged into the computer as the installing owner of EPM. Since Enterprise Manager uses a LOT of resources, be sure that there is adequate free RAM to accommodate the added load. On the machine where WebLogic AdminServer is set up (typically the Foundation Services machine), run \Oracle\Middleware\wlserver_10.3\common\bin\config (config.sh on Unix). Select the 'Extend an existing WebLogic domain' option, and click the 'Next' button. Select the domain being used by EPM System. - Typically, the default domain is created under /Oracle/Middleware/user_projects/domains and is named EPMSystem. - Click 'Next'. Under 'Extend my domain automatically to support the following added products' - place a check mark before 'Oracle Enterprise Manager - 11.1.1.0 [oracle_common]' to select it. - Continue accepting the defaults by clicking 'Next' on each page until - on the last page you click 'Extend'. - The system will grind for a few minutes while it configures (deploys?) EM. - Start the AdminServer. Sometimes there is contention in the startup order of the various servlets (resulting in some not coming up). To avoid that problem on Microsoft Windows machines you may start and stop services via the following analogous command line commands to those run on Linux/Unix (these more carefully space out timings of these events): Ensure EPM is up:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\bin\start.bat Ensure WebLogic is up:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\domains\EPMSystem\bin\startWebLogic.cmd Shut down WebLogic:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\domains\EPMSystem\bin\stopWebLogic.cmd Shut down EPM:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\bin\stop.bat  Now you should be able to more successfully troubleshoot with the EM tool:

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• Building on someone else's DefaultButton Silverlight work...

  - by KyleBurns

  This week I was handed a "simple" requirement - have a search screen execute its search when the user pressed the Enter key instead of having to move hands from keyboard to mouse and click Search.  That is a reasonable request that has been met for years both in Windows and Web apps.  I did a quick scan for code to pilfer and found Patrick Cauldwell's Blog posting "A 'Default Button' In Silverlight".  This posting was a great start and I'm glad that the basic work had been done for me, but I ran into one issue - when using bound textboxes (I'm a die-hard MVVM enthusiast when it comes to Silverlight development), the search was being executed before the textbox I was in when the Enter key was pressed updated its bindings.  With a little bit of reflection work, I think I have found a good generic solution that builds upon Patrick's to make it more binding-friendly.  Also, I wanted to set the DefaultButton at a higher level than on each TextBox (or other control for that matter), so the use of mine is intended to be set somewhere such as the LayoutRoot or other high level control and will apply to all controls beneath it in the control tree.  I haven't tested this on controls that treat the Enter key special themselves in the mix. The real change from Patrick's solution here is that in the KeyUp event, I grab the source of the KeyUp event (in my case the textbox containing search criteria) and loop through the static fields on the element's type looking for DependencyProperty instances.  When I find a DependencyProperty, I grab the value and query for bindings.  Each time I find a binding, UpdateSource is called to make sure anything bound to any property of the field has the opportunity to update before the action represented by the DefaultButton is executed. Here's the code: public class DefaultButtonService { public static DependencyProperty DefaultButtonProperty = DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("DefaultButton", typeof (Button), typeof (DefaultButtonService), new PropertyMetadata (null, DefaultButtonChanged)); private static void DefaultButtonChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) { var uiElement = d as UIElement; var button = e.NewValue as Button; if (uiElement != null && button != null) { uiElement.KeyUp += (sender, arg) => { if (arg.Key == Key.Enter) { var element = arg.OriginalSource as FrameworkElement; if (element != null) { UpdateBindings(element); } if (button.IsEnabled) { button.Focus(); var peer = new ButtonAutomationPeer(button); var invokeProv = peer.GetPattern(PatternInterface.Invoke) as IInvokeProvider; if (invokeProv != null) invokeProv.Invoke(); arg.Handled = true; } } }; } } public static DefaultButtonService GetDefaultButton(UIElement obj) { return (DefaultButtonService) obj.GetValue(DefaultButtonProperty); } public static void SetDefaultButton(DependencyObject obj, DefaultButtonService button) { obj.SetValue(DefaultButtonProperty, button); } public static void UpdateBindings(FrameworkElement element) { element.GetType().GetFields(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Static).ForEach(field => { if (field.FieldType.IsAssignableFrom(typeof(DependencyProperty))) { try { var dp = field.GetValue(null) as DependencyProperty; if (dp != null) { var binding = element.GetBindingExpression(dp); if (binding != null) { binding.UpdateSource(); } } } // ReSharper disable EmptyGeneralCatchClause catch (Exception) // ReSharper restore EmptyGeneralCatchClause { // swallow exceptions } } }); } }

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• Fixing some Visual Studio RC install issues

  - by terje

  The Visual Studio RC has shown some install issues in some cases, particularly for those who upgrades from VS 11 Beta.  I have listed the fixes known now below, and will update if there are more issues.  Note that a repair will not fix the issue, and a Windows restore and subsequent reinstall may not fix it either.  The system seems to remember too much. That was the case for me, at least.  The fixes below however, cures these issues. 1. The Team Explorer Build node doesn’t work You get an error saying System.TypeLoadException like this: To solve this do as follows: 1. Open a command prompt as administrator 2. Go to your program files directory for VS 2012 and down to  the extension folder like:   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer 3. Run “gacutil –if Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Controls.dll     2. The SQL Editor gives loading error When you start up VS 2012 RC you get a loading error message.  The same happens if you try to go from the menu to  SQL/Transact-SQL Editor/New Query.    To solve this do as follows: 1. Open Control Panel/Programs and Features 2. Locate the “Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Data-Tier App Framework     (Note , you might find up to 4 such instances) The ones with version numbers ending in 55 is from the SQL 2012 RC, the ones ending in 60 is from the SQL 2012 RTM.  There are two of each, one for x32 and one for x64.  Which is which no one knows. 3. Right click each of them, and select Repair. (It would be nice if someone with this issue tries only the latest RTM ones, and see if that clears the error, and comment back to this post. I am out of non-functioning VS’s )   3.  Errors referring to some extension You get errors referring to some extension that can’t be loaded, or can’t be found.  Check the activity log (see below), and verify there.  If you see yellow collision warnings there, the fix here should solve those too. To solve these:    1. Open a Visual Studio 2012 command prompt 2.  Run:   devenv /resetsettings     How to check for errors using the log Do as follows to get to the activity log for Visual studio 2012 RC 1. Open a Visual Studio 2012 command prompt 2. Run:   devenv /log This starts up Visual Studio.  3. Go to %appdata%/Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0 4. Double click the file named ActivityLog.xml.  It will start up in your browser, and be formatted using the xslt in the same directory. 5.  Look for items marked in red.  Example for Issue 1 :

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• Taking a screenshot from within a Silverlight #WP7 application

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Often times, you want to take a screenshot of an application’s page. There can be multiple reasons. For instance, you can use this to provide an easy feedback method to beta testers. I find this super invaluable when working on integration of design in an app, and the user can take quick screenshots, attach them to an email and send them to me directly from the Windows Phone device. However, the same mechanism can also be used to provide screenshots are a feature of the app, for example if the user wants to save the current status of his application, etc. Caveats Note the following: The code requires an XNA library to save the picture to the media library. To have this, follow the steps: In your application (or class library), add a reference to Microsoft.Xna.Framework. In your code, add a “using” statement to Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media. In the Properties folder, open WMAppManifest.xml and add the following capability: ID_CAP_MEDIALIB. The method call will fail with an exception if the device is connected to the Zune application on the PC. To avoid this, either disconnect the device when testing, or end the Zune application on the PC. While the method call will not fail on the emulator, there is no way to access the media library, so it is pretty much useless on this platform. This method only prints Silverlight elements to the output image. Other elements (such as a WebBrowser control’s content for instance) will output a black rectangle. The code public static void SaveToMediaLibrary( FrameworkElement element, string title) { try { var bmp = new WriteableBitmap(element, null); var ms = new MemoryStream(); bmp.SaveJpeg( ms, (int)element.ActualWidth, (int)element.ActualHeight, 0, 100); ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); var lib = new MediaLibrary(); var filePath = string.Format(title + ".jpg"); lib.SavePicture(filePath, ms); MessageBox.Show( "Saved in your media library!", "Done", MessageBoxButton.OK); } catch { MessageBox.Show( "There was an error. Please disconnect your phone from the computer before saving.", "Cannot save", MessageBoxButton.OK); } } This method can save any FrameworkElement. Typically I use it to save a whole page, but you can pass any other element to it. On line 7, we create a new WriteableBitmap. This excellent class can render a visual tree into a bitmap. Note that for even more features, you can use the great WriteableBitmapEx class library (which is open source). On lines 9 to 16, we save the WriteableBitmap to a MemoryStream. The only format supported by default is JPEG, however it is possible to convert to other formats with the ImageTools library (also open source). Lines 18 to 20 save the picture to the Windows Phone device’s media library. Using the image To retrieve the image, simply launch the Pictures library on the phone. The image will be in Saved Pictures. From here, you can share the image (by email, for instance), or synchronize it with the PC using the Zune software. Saving to other platforms It is of course possible to save to other platforms than the media library. For example, you can send the image to a web service, or save it to the isolated storage on the device. To do this, instead of using a MemoryStream, you can use any other stream (such as a web request stream, or a file stream) and save to that instead. Hopefully this code will be helpful to you! Happy coding, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Screen Aspect Ratio

  - by Bill Evjen

  Jeffrey Dean, Pixar Aspect Ratio is very important to home video. What is aspect ratio – the ratio from the height to the width 2.35:1 The image is 2.35 times wide as it is high Pixar uses this for half of our movies This is called a widescreen image When modified to fit your television screen They cut this to fit the box of your screen When a comparison is made huge chunks of picture is missing It is harder to find what is going on when these pieces are missing The whole is greater than the pieces themselves. If you are missing pieces – you are missing the movie The soul and the mood is in the film shots. Cutting it to fit a screen, you are losing 30% of the movie Why different aspect ratios? Film before the 1950s 1.33:1 Academy Standard There were all aspects of images though. There was no standard. Thomas Edison developed projecting images onto a wall/screen He didn’t patent it as he saw no value in it. Then 1.37:1 came about to add a strip of sound This is the same size as a 35mm film Around 1952 – TV comes along NTSC Television followed the Academy Standard (4x3) Once TV came out, movie theater attendance plummets So Film brought forth color to combat this. Also early 3D Also Widescreen was brought forth. Cinema-Scope Studios at the time made movies bigger and bigger There was a Napoleon movie that was actually 4x1 … really wide. 1.85:1 Academy Flat 2.35:1 Anamorphic Scope (aka Panavision/Cinemascope) Almost all movies are made in these two aspect ratios Pixar has done half in one and half in the other Why choose one over the other? Artist choice It is part of the story the director wants to tell Can we preserve the story outside of the theaters? TVs before 1998 – they were very square Now TVs are very wide Historical options Toy Story released as it was and people cut it in a way that wasn’t liked by the studio Pan and Scan is another option Cut and then scan left or right depending on where the action is Frame Height Pixar can go back and animate more picture to account for the bottom/top bars. You end up with more sky and more ground The characters seem to get lost in the picture You lose what the director original intended Re-staging For animated movies, you can move characters around – restage the scene. It is a new completely different version of the film This is the best possible option that Pixar came up with They have stopped doing this really as the demand as pretty much dropped off Why not 1.33 today? There has been an evolution of taste and demands. VHS is a linear item The focus is about portability and not about quality Most was pan and scan and the quality was so bad – but people didn’t notice DVD was introduced in 1996 You could have more content – two versions of the film You could have the widescreen version and the 1.33 version People realized that they are seeing more of the movie with the widescreen High Def Televisions (16x9 monitors) This was introduced in 2005 Blu-ray Disc was introduced in 2006 This is all widescreen You cannot find a square TV anymore TVs are roughly 1.85:1 aspect ratio There is a change in demand Users are used to black bars and are used to widescreen Users are educated now What’s next for in-flight entertainment? High Def IFE Personal Electronic Devices 3D inflight

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• Use your iPhone or iPod Touch as a Boxee Remote

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you a Boxee user looking for a remote control solution? Well, you might not need to look any further than your pocket. The free Boxee Remote App turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a a simple and easy-to-use Boxee remote. The Boxee Remote App works over WiFi, so there is no need for to buy or install additional hardware on your PC. Plus, you don’t even need to be within the line of sight for it to work. Using the Boxee Remote App Download the free Boxee Remote App from the App Store and install it on your iPhone or iPod Touch. See download link below. Next, make sure you have Boxee running on your PC. Select the Boxee icon to open the App.   The first time you log in you’ll be greeted by an introduction screen that will explain the two modes. Click Continue. When opened in “Button” mode, you’ll be presented with 4 directional buttons, an “OK” button, and a back arrow button that works like the Esc key does in Boxee. Button mode performs just as a normal remote. Touching the directional buttons moves your on screen selection right, left, up, and down. Tap the OK button to open or select an item. To enter “Gesture” mode, tap the Gesture button along the top of the Screen. Gesture mode works similar to a touch pad or trackball on a laptop. You drag the Boxee icon with your thumb or finger across the screen to move around within Boxee. The icon will turn red while being dragged or touched. Simply tap the icon to select.   The Settings button allows you to manually add or delete a host computer, or adjust the sensitivity of the controls.     If you need to enter text, such as enter logon credentials for an App, the on screen keyboard will pop up. While watching a video you’ll have on-screen Stop and Pause buttons along with a volume slider.   The Boxee Remote App is simple and easy to use. As long as you can connect via WiFi, you can use it to control any instance of Boxee running on any computer on your network. Download the Boxee Remote App Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Why Wait? Amazing New Add-on Turns Your iPhone into an iPad! [Comic]Getting Started with BoxeeIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Watch Netflix Instant Movies in BoxeeWin a Free iPod Touch in the How-To Geek Facebook Giveaway! 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 Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 Cool Looking Screensavers for Windows SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) If it were only this easy Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook

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• Azure Web Sites FTP credentials

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  A quick tip for all you new enthusiastic users of the amazing new Azure. I struggled for a few minutes finding this, so I thought I’d share. The Azure dashboard doesn’t seem to give easy access to your FTP credentials, and they are not the login and password you use everywhere else. What Azure does give you though is a Publish Profile that you can download: This is a plain XML file that should look something like this: <publishData> <publishProfile profileName="nameofyoursite - Web Deploy" publishMethod="MSDeploy" publishUrl="waws-prod-blu-001.publish.azurewebsites.windows.net:443" msdeploySite="nameofyoursite" userName="$NameOfYourSite" userPWD="sOmeCrYPTicL00kIngStr1nG" destinationAppUrl="http://nameofyoursite.azurewebsites.net" SQLServerDBConnectionString="" mySQLDBConnectionString="" hostingProviderForumLink="" controlPanelLink="http://windows.azure.com"> <databases/> </publishProfile> <publishProfile profileName="nameofyoursite - FTP" publishMethod="FTP" publishUrl="ftp://waws-prod-blu-001.ftp.azurewebsites.windows.net/site/wwwroot" ftpPassiveMode="True" userName="nameofyoursite\$nameofyoursite" userPWD="sOmeCrYPTicL00kIngStr1nG" destinationAppUrl="http://nameofyoursite.azurewebsites.net" SQLServerDBConnectionString="" mySQLDBConnectionString="" hostingProviderForumLink="" controlPanelLink="http://windows.azure.com"> <databases/> </publishProfile> </publishData> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } I’ve highlighted the FTP server name, user name and password. This is what you need to use in Filezilla or whatever you use to access your site remotely. Notice how the password looks encrypted. Well, it’s not really encrypted in fact. This is your password in clear text. It’s just crypto-random gibberish, which is the best kind of password. UPDATE: About 2 minutes after I posted that, David Ebbo mentioned to me on Twitter that if you've configured publishing credentials (for Git typically) those will work too. Don't forget to include the full user name though, which should be of the form nameofthesite\username. The password is the one you defined. That’s it. Enjoy.

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• Hardware wireless switch has no effect after suspend and 13.10 upgrade

  - by blaineh

  This seems to be a fairly chronic problem, as shown by the following questions: How do I fix a "Wireless is disabled by hardware switch" error? Wireless disabled by hardware switch "Wireless disabled by hardware switch" after suspend and other hardware buttons ineffective - how can I solve this? but no good solutions have been found! Wireless works fine after a reboot, but after a suspend the hardware switch (for my laptop this is f12) has no effect on the wireless, it is just permanently off, and shows that it is with a red LED. All My rfkill list all reads: 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes 1: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes Any combination with rfkill <un>block wifi doesn't work, although one time first blocking then unblocking actually turned it on again. sudo lshw -C network reads: *-network DISABLED description: Wireless interface product: AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) vendor: Qualcomm Atheros physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 01 serial: 78:e4:00:65:2e:3f width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=3.11.0-12-generic firmware=N/A ip=155.99.215.79 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn resources: irq:17 memory:90100000-9010ffff *-network DISABLED description: Ethernet interface product: RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 02 serial: c8:0a:a9:89:b4:30 size: 10Mbit/s capacity: 100Mbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=half latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=MII speed=10Mbit/s resources: irq:42 ioport:2000(size=256) memory:90010000-90010fff memory:90000000-9000ffff memory:90020000-9002ffff Also, adding a /etc/pm/sleep.d/brcm.sh file as recommended here simply prevents the laptop from suspending at all, which of course is no good. This question has an answer urging to install the original driver, but it wasn't an "accepted answer" so I'd rather not take a chance on it. Also I'll admit I'm a bit lost on that and would like help doing so with the specific information I've given. xev shows that no internal event is triggered for my wireless switch (f12), but other function keys also acting as hardware switches work fine. I would be happy to provide more information, so long as you're willing to help me find it for you! This is a very annoying bug. I have a Compaq Presario CQ62. Edit. I just tried to reload bios defaults (or something) as shown by this video. Didn't work. Edit. I tried the contents of this answer, and it didn't work. Edit. I made a pastebin of dmesg. I couldn't even begin to understand the contents. Edit. Output of lspci | grep Network: 02:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)

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• A story of Murphy&ndash;my technical issues at TechDays Switzerland #chtd

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  I had two sessions at the recent Swiss TechDays. While the first one (Advanced Development for Windows Phone 8) went extremely well (I think), I had a very annoying technical issue in the beginning of my second session. First let me add that I talked to Microsoft about that and I hope they will change a few things in the room assignment for next year. My two sessions were one right after the other, with only 15 minutes break to change room. I don’t mind having two sessions so close from each other, but I would really like them to be in the same room in order to avoid having to move my laptops (plural, that will become important later) and redoing the tech check. That being said, I am guilty of not checking where my talks would be before the day before the conference, and when I did notice, it was too late to change it. After my first session, I quickly moved to the other room and setup my main laptop, a Dell Precision. We tested the video output (VGA) and didn’t notice anything special. The projectors are using a fairly high resolution (kudos to the Basel conference center for not having old school 1024x768 projectors anymore, that makes Blend really hard to demo ;) but since everything went great during the first talk, I was not worried. In fact I even had some time to chat with some early attendees about my Microsoft Surface and the Samsung Slate 7, which I had carried with me in addition to the Precision. I just thought it would be nice to show the hardware that Windows 8 can run on, without thinking any further. When the session started, I immediately noticed that the main screen was not showing anything. I thought I had just forgotten to switch to “duplicate” for the video output, and did that with a quick Win-P. However it didn’t “hold”. After 2 seconds, it reverted back to a black display for my attendees. Then I started to really worry. We tried everything, switching from VGA to HDMI, changing the resolution, setting the projector as primary display, but nothing did the trick. The projector was just refusing to show my screen. Now, to show you how despaired I started to be, I even considered using the “extend” setting (which worked just fine), and to use one of the feedback monitors on the floor but really it was super cumbersome. Eventually, my last resort arrived: I started my Samsung Slate 7, which by chance has Visual Studio 12 and Blend 5 installed, plugged the HDMI projector in the dock (yes, I had the dock with me, which I usually don’t!), connected it to internet (had to enter a long password for that), loaded the source code from my main machine using a USB stick and…. finally started to give my presentation. All in all I think we lost about 10 minutes. Amongst the most horrible minutes of my whole life, truly (yes I am blessed, I didn’t have that many horrible minutes in my life ;) I really want to apologize to my attendees. We joked a bit during the attempts to resolve the issue, the reactions I had after the session were all very nice and sympathetic. Only a handful of people left my session while I was having the issues, and I really don’t blame them (who knew how long the problem would last!!). But still, I probably talked at more than 60 sessions over the years, and this was by far my most painful moment. What did I learn? So what did I learn from this? Well from now on I will always have my slate ready with the latest source code, internet connection and every tool I might need during the presentation. This way, if I detect even a hint that the Precision might not work, I will just switch to the Slate. The experience of presenting on the slate is actually not bad at all, it is just a bit slow for my taste, but it does work. By the way, I will be posting the code and slides for my sessions very soon, I just need to “clean it and zip it”. Stay tuned, and thanks again for your patience in that horrible circumstance. Cheers Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• How much is a subscriber worth?

  - by Tom Lewin

  This year at Red Gate, we’ve started providing a way to back up SQL Azure databases and Azure storage. We decided to sell this as a service, instead of a product, which means customers only pay for what they use. Unfortunately for us, it makes figuring out revenue much trickier. With a product like SQL Compare, a customer pays for it, and it’s theirs for good. Sure, we offer support and upgrades, but, fundamentally, the sale is a simple, upfront transaction: we’ve made this product, you need this product, we swap product for money and everyone is happy. With software as a service, it isn’t that easy. The money and product don’t change hands up front. Instead, we provide a service in exchange for a recurring fee. We know someone buying SQL Compare will pay us $X, but we don’t know how long service customers will stay with us, or how much they will spend. How do we find this out? We use lifetime value analysis. What is lifetime value? Lifetime value, or LTV, is how much a customer is worth to the business. For Entrepreneurs has a brilliant write up that we followed to conduct our analysis. Basically, it all boils down to this equation: LTV = ARPU x ALC To make it a bit less of an alphabet-soup and a bit more understandable, we can write it out in full: The lifetime value of a customer equals the average revenue per customer per month, times the average time a customer spends with the service Simple, right? A customer is worth the average spend times the average stay. If customers pay on average $50/month, and stay on average for ten months, then a new customer will, on average, bring in $500 over the time they are a customer! Average spend is easy to work out; it’s revenue divided by customers. The problem comes when we realise that we don’t know exactly how long a customer will stay with us. How can we figure out the average lifetime of a customer, if we only have six months’ worth of data? The answer lies in the fact that: Average Lifetime of a Customer = 1 / Churn Rate The churn rate is the percentage of customers that cancel in a month. If half of your customers cancel each month, then your average customer lifetime is two months. The problem we faced was that we didn’t have enough data to make an estimate of one month’s cancellations reliable (because barely anybody cancels)! To deal with this data problem, we can take data from the last three months instead. This means we have more data to play with. We can still use the equation above, we just need to multiply the final result by three (as we worked out how many three month periods customers stay for, and we want our answer to be in months). Now these estimates are likely to be fairly unreliable; when there’s not a lot of data it pays to be cautious with inference. That said, the numbers we have look fairly consistent, and it’s super easy to revise our estimates when new data comes in. At the very least, these numbers give us a vague idea of whether a subscription business is viable. As far as Cloud Services goes, the business looks very viable indeed, and the low cancellation rates are much more than just data points in LTV equations; they show that the product is working out great for our customers, which is exactly what we’re looking for!

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• Upgrade issues due to broken "dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-image-generic" error

  - by tsukune1791

  okay, I've recently upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04 and I've been having some issues. I don't know if its a bug or not, but I thought I would submit it here. Okay here's a little background; I ran the distro update from the update manager and got a couple errors that I didn't catch. the computer restarted, and when I logged the Launcher and my top bar of the Ubuntu desktop didn't load. While it was trying to load a couple error messages came up, I think they were called "apport", saying they couldn't send the bug information for some reason. I believe it said somethings wrong with my internet connection, but nothing's wrong with it. Anyway I tried running some things in terminal, namely sudo apt-get -f install sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and keep getting the following errors; dustin@marceau-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade [sudo] password for dustin: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Calculating upgrade... Done 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 4 not fully installed or removed. After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y Setting up initramfs-tools (0.99ubuntu13) ... update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated) Setting up linux-image-3.2.0-24-generic (3.2.0-24.37) ... Running depmod. update-initramfs: deferring update (hook will be called later) Examining /etc/kernel/postinst.d. run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms 3.2.0-24-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools 3.2.0-24-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-24-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/pm-utils 3.2.0-24-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/update-notifier 3.2.0-24-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-runlilo 3.2.0-24-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic Fatal: No images have been defined. run-parts: /etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-runlilo exited with return code 1 Failed to process /etc/kernel/postinst.d at /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-image-3.2.0-24-generic.postinst line 1010. dpkg: error processing linux-image-3.2.0-24-generic (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-image-generic: linux-image-generic depends on linux-image-3.2.0-24-generic; however: Package linux-image-3.2.0-24-generic is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing linux-image-generic (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-generic: linux-generic depends on linux-image-generic (= 3.2.0.24.26); however: Package linux-image-generic is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing linux-generic (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ... No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-24-generic Fatal: No images have been defined. run-parts: /etc/initramfs/post-update.d//runlilo exited with return code 1 dpkg: error processing initramfs-tools (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Errors were encountered while processing: linux-image-3.2.0-24-generic linux-image-generic linux-generic initramfs-tools localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/locale: 0 KiB localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/man: 0 KiB localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/gnome/help: 0 KiB localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/omf: 0 KiB localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/doc/kde/HTML: 0 KiB Total disk space freed by localepurge: 0 KiB E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) And my Ubuntu desktop is still not working. I can log into Gnome and Ubuntu 2D but the Launcher, I think it's call, doesn't load. Can someone help me fix these error, or point me in the right direction to get them fixed? It is much appriciated.

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• apt-get upgrade stuck at the same package

  - by decibyte

  Current status I've started to suspect this is not an Ubuntu issue, but related to the internet connection here at my work. Until I'm sure, Im leaving my question below: Original question I'm stuck, can't upgrade my system. Running sudo apt-get upgrade gives me the following: mmm@alalunga:~$ sudo apt-get upgrade Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages have been kept back: ginn libgrip0 linux-generic-pae linux-headers-generic-pae linux-image-generic-pae The following packages will be upgraded: apport apport-gtk bind9-host build-essential dhcp3-client dhcp3-common dnsutils eog evince evince-common firefox firefox-branding firefox-dbg firefox-globalmenu firefox-gnome-support firefox-locale-en gimp gimp-data gir1.2-totem-1.0 glib-networking glib-networking-common glib-networking-services gnupg gpgv icedtea-6-jre-cacao icedtea-6-jre-jamvm icedtea-6-plugin icedtea-netx icedtea-netx-common icedtea-plugin isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common libapache2-mod-php5 libart-2.0-2 libbind9-80 libdns81 libevince3-3 libgimp2.0 libisc83 libisccc80 libisccfg82 liblwres80 libssl-dev libssl-doc libssl1.0.0 libtotem0 linux-firmware linux-libc-dev openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jre-headless openjdk-6-jre-lib openssl php-pear php5-cli php5-common php5-curl php5-dev php5-gd php5-mysql php5-xsl policykit-1-gnome python-apport python-django python-gst0.10 python-problem-report resolvconf thunderbird thunderbird-globalmenu thunderbird-gnome-support totem totem-common totem-mozilla totem-plugins xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 74 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 5 not upgraded. Need to get 317 MB/327 MB of archives. After this operation, 1.481 kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:4 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:5 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:6 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:7 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] 9% [7 openjdk-6-jre-headless 27,3 MB/27,3 MB 100%] It keeps downloading the package openjdk-6-jre-headless, then does nothing for a while (hanging on what's the last line above), then download the package again. It's at its 13th download attempt at the moment of writing. The actual downloads seem to be done just fine, but whatever it does after downloading seems to be failing. I tried removing openjdk-6, but then it wanted to install openjdk-7 instead, with the same result, hanging at openjdk-7-jre-headless instead. I also tried changing servers from my local (Danish) to the main server. No luck. It's also keeping me from upgrading alle the other packages. What to do? Update After following instructions in the answer by @lpanebr, it is now stuck at the linux-firmware package. So, maybe it's a more general problem than being related to specific package(s)? Although it did download some packages without problems before getting stuck at linux-firmware.

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• Platform jumping problems with AABB collisions

  - by Vee

  See the diagram first: When my AABB physics engine resolves an intersection, it does so by finding the axis where the penetration is smaller, then "push out" the entity on that axis. Considering the "jumping moving left" example: If velocityX is bigger than velocityY, AABB pushes the entity out on the Y axis, effectively stopping the jump (result: the player stops in mid-air). If velocityX is smaller than velocitY (not shown in diagram), the program works as intended, because AABB pushes the entity out on the X axis. How can I solve this problem? Source code: public void Update() { Position += Velocity; Velocity += World.Gravity; List<SSSPBody> toCheck = World.SpatialHash.GetNearbyItems(this); for (int i = 0; i < toCheck.Count; i++) { SSSPBody body = toCheck[i]; body.Test.Color = Color.White; if (body != this && body.Static) { float left = (body.CornerMin.X - CornerMax.X); float right = (body.CornerMax.X - CornerMin.X); float top = (body.CornerMin.Y - CornerMax.Y); float bottom = (body.CornerMax.Y - CornerMin.Y); if (SSSPUtils.AABBIsOverlapping(this, body)) { body.Test.Color = Color.Yellow; Vector2 overlapVector = SSSPUtils.AABBGetOverlapVector(left, right, top, bottom); Position += overlapVector; } if (SSSPUtils.AABBIsCollidingTop(this, body)) { if ((Position.X >= body.CornerMin.X && Position.X <= body.CornerMax.X) && (Position.Y + Height/2f == body.Position.Y - body.Height/2f)) { body.Test.Color = Color.Red; Velocity = new Vector2(Velocity.X, 0); } } } } } public static bool AABBIsOverlapping(SSSPBody mBody1, SSSPBody mBody2) { if(mBody1.CornerMax.X <= mBody2.CornerMin.X || mBody1.CornerMin.X >= mBody2.CornerMax.X) return false; if (mBody1.CornerMax.Y <= mBody2.CornerMin.Y || mBody1.CornerMin.Y >= mBody2.CornerMax.Y) return false; return true; } public static bool AABBIsColliding(SSSPBody mBody1, SSSPBody mBody2) { if (mBody1.CornerMax.X < mBody2.CornerMin.X || mBody1.CornerMin.X > mBody2.CornerMax.X) return false; if (mBody1.CornerMax.Y < mBody2.CornerMin.Y || mBody1.CornerMin.Y > mBody2.CornerMax.Y) return false; return true; } public static bool AABBIsCollidingTop(SSSPBody mBody1, SSSPBody mBody2) { if (mBody1.CornerMax.X < mBody2.CornerMin.X || mBody1.CornerMin.X > mBody2.CornerMax.X) return false; if (mBody1.CornerMax.Y < mBody2.CornerMin.Y || mBody1.CornerMin.Y > mBody2.CornerMax.Y) return false; if(mBody1.CornerMax.Y == mBody2.CornerMin.Y) return true; return false; } public static Vector2 AABBGetOverlapVector(float mLeft, float mRight, float mTop, float mBottom) { Vector2 result = new Vector2(0, 0); if ((mLeft > 0 || mRight < 0) || (mTop > 0 || mBottom < 0)) return result; if (Math.Abs(mLeft) < mRight) result.X = mLeft; else result.X = mRight; if (Math.Abs(mTop) < mBottom) result.Y = mTop; else result.Y = mBottom; if (Math.Abs(result.X) < Math.Abs(result.Y)) result.Y = 0; else result.X = 0; return result; }

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• How do you update live web sites with code changes?

  - by Aaron Anodide

  I know this is a very basic question. If someone could humor me and tell me how they would handle this, I'd be greatful. I decided to post this because I am about to install SynchToy to remedy the issue below, and I feel a bit unprofessional using a "Toy" but I can't think of a better way. Many times I find when I am in this situation, I am missing some painfully obvious way to do things - this comes from being the only developer in the company. ASP.NET web application developed on my computer at work Solution has 2 projects: Website (files) WebsiteLib (C#/dll) Using a Git repository Deployed on a GoGrid 2008R2 web server Deployment: Make code changes. Push to Git. Remote desktop to server. Pull from Git. Overwrite the live files by dragging/dropping with windows explorer. In Step 5 I delete all the files from the website root.. this can't be a good thing to do. That's why I am about to install SynchToy... UPDATE: THANKS for all the useful responses. I can't pick which one to mark answer - between using a web deployment - it looks like I have several useful suggesitons: Web Project = whole site packaged into a single DLL - downside for me I can't push simple updates - being a lone developer in a company of 50, this remains something that is simpler at times. Pulling straight from SCM into web root of site - i originally didn't do this out of fear that my SCM hidden directory might end up being exposed, but the answers here helped me get over that (although i still don't like having one more thing to worry about forgetting to make sure is still true over time) Using a web farm, and systematically deploying to nodes - this is the ideal solution for zero downtime, which is actually something I care about since the site is essentially a real time revenue source for my company - i might have a hard time convincing them to double the cost of the servers though. -- finally, the re-enforcement of the basic principal that there needs to be a single click deployment for the site OR ELSE THERE SOMETHING WRONG is probably the most useful thing I got out of the answers. UPDATE 2: I thought I come back to this and update with the actual solution that's been in place for many months now and is working perfectly (for my single web server solution). The process I use is: Make code changes Push to Git Remote desktop to server Pull from Git Run the following batch script: cd C:\Users\Administrator %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe stop site "/site.name:Default Web Site" robocopy Documents\code\da\1\work\Tree\LendingTreeWebSite1 c:\inetpub\wwwroot /E /XF connectionsconfig Web.config %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe start site "/site.name:Default Web Site" As you can see this brings the site down, uses robocopy to intelligently copy the files that have changed then brings the site back up. It typically runs in less than 2 seconds. Since peak traffic on this site is about 2 requests per second, missing 4 requests per site update is acceptable. Sine I've gotten more proficient with Git I've found that the first four steps above being a "manual process" is also acceptable, although I'm sure I could roll the whole thing into a single click if I wanted to. The documentation for AppCmd.exe is here. The documentation for Robocopy is here.

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• What are some good questions (and good/bad answers) to ask at an interview to gauge the competency of the company/team?

  - by Wayne M

  I'm already familiar with the Joel Test, but it's been my experience that some of the questions there have the answers "massaged" to make the company seem better than it is. I've had several jobs in the past that, for instance, claimed they had a QA process and did unit testing, and what they really meant is "The programmers test the app, and test with the debugger and via trial-and-error."; they said they used SVN but they just lumped everything into one giant repository and had no concept of branching/merging or anything more complicated than updating and committing; said they can build in one step and what they really mean is it's "one step" to copy dozens of files by hand from the programmer's PC to the live server. How do you go about properly gauging a company's environment to make sure that it's a well-evolved company and not stuck on doing things a certain way because they've done it for years and they're ignorant of change? You can almost never ask to see their source code, so you're stuck trying to figure out if the interviewer's answer is accurate or BS to make the company seem good. Besides the Joel Test what are some other good questions to get the proper feel for a company, and more importantly what are some good and bad answers that could indicate a good or bad company? I mean something like (take at face value, please, it's all I could think of at short notice): Question: How does the software team apply the SOLID principles and Inversion of Control to their code? Good Answer: We adhere to SOLID wherever possible; we use TDD so it kind of forces us to write abstract, testable code. We use Ninject for our IoC container because it's fairly easy to configure - it was that or StructureMap but I find Ninject a bit more intuitive, and who doesn't like ninjas? You're not a pirate, are you? Bad Answer: Our code is pretty secure, yeah. And what's this Inversion of Control thing? I've never heard of it before. You see what I did there. The "good" answer uses facts to back it up and has a bit of "in crowd" humor; the bad answer shows complete ignorance of the question - not necessarily a bad thing if you are interviewing for a manger/director position, but a terrible answer and a huge red flag if you're interviewing as a developer and talking to a senior developer or manager! My biggest problem at the moment is being able to take a generic response and gauge whether it's the good or bad answer; more often than not it's the bad kind and I find myself frustrated almost from day one at the new job. I suppose I could name drop if I ask about specific things (e.g. "Do you write unit tests?" and if the answer is yes, ask if they use NUnit, MbUnit or something else; if they mention data access ask if they use a clean ORM like NHibernate or something more coupled like EF or Linq) but is there another way short of being resolute to actually call the interview on things (which will almost certainly result in not getting the job, but if they are skirting the question it's probably not a job I want).

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• Ti Launchpad

  - by raysmithequip

  Just thought I would get a couple of notes up here for reference to anyone that is interested...it is now Feb 2011 and I have not been posting here enough to remember this blog. Back in Nov 2010 I ordered the Ti launchpad msp430, it is a little target board kit replete with a mini USB cable, two very inexpensive programmable mcu's and a couple of pin headers with a couple of led's on board, a spi connector some on board jumpers and two programmable micro switches....all for less than $5.00...INCLUDING SHIPPING!!....not bad when the ardruino's are running around 20.00 for the target board, atmega328 and cable off of eBay...I wont even mention the microchip pic right now.  Naw, for $5.00 the Ti launchpad kit is about the cheapest fun around...if-uns your a geek that is... Well, the launchpad was backordered for almost two months, came like Xmas eve in fact...I had almost forgotten it!! And really, it was way late and not my idea of an Xmas present for myself.  That would of been the web expressions 4 I bought a few weeks back.  With all the holidays, I did not even look at it till last week, in fact I passed the wrapped board around at my local ham club meeting during points of personal privilege....some oh's and ahhs but mostly duhs...I actually ordered it to avoid downloading the huge code compressor studio 4 (CCS) that was supposed to be included on the cd.  No cd.  I had already downloaded IAR  another programming IDE for these little micro bugs. In my spare time I toyed with IAR and the launchpad board but after about two days of playing delete the driver with windows I decided to just download CCS 4, the code limited version, and give that a shot......CCS 4, is a good rewrite from the earlier versions, it is based on Eclipse as an IDE and includes the drivers for the msp430 target board I received in the kit.  Once installed I quickly configured the debugger for the target chip which was already plugged into the dip socket at the factory, msp430G2131 from he drop down list and clicked ok...I was in!! The CCS4 is full of bells and whistles compared to the IAR, which I would of preferred for the simplicity.  But the code compressor studio really does have it all!!..the code limited version is free, and of all things will give you java script editor box.  The whole layout in debugger mode reminds me of any modern programmer IDE...I mean sure give me Tex anytime but you simply must admire all the boxes and options included in the GUI.  It was a simple matter to check the assembly code in the flash and ram memory that came preloaded for the launchpad kit.  Assembly.  I am right now looking for my old assembly textbooks...sure I remember how to use mov and add etc but a couple of the commands are a little more than vague anymore.  Still, these little mcu's are about 50 cents each and might just work in a couple of projects I have lined up for the near future.  I may document the code here.  Luckily, I plan to write the code in c++ for the main project but if it has to be assembly, no prob.  For reference, the program that came already on the 2131 in the kit was a temperature indicator that alternately flashed red and green leds and changed the intensity of either depending on whether the temp was rising or falling...neat.  Neat enough that it might be worthwhile banging out a little GUI in windows 7 to test the new user device system calls, maybe put a temp gauge widget up on the desktop...just to keep from getting bored.  If you see some assembly code on this blog, you know I was doing something with one of the many mcu's out there.....thats all for now, more to follow...a bit later, of course.

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• Learn Many Languages

  - by Phil Factor

  Around twenty-five years ago, I was trying to solve the problem of recruiting suitable developers for a large business. I visited the local University (it was a Technical College then). My mission was to remind them that we were a large, local employer of technical people and to suggest that, as they were in the business of educating young people for a career in IT, we should work together. I anticipated a harmonious chat where we could suggest to them the idea of mentioning our name to some of their graduates. It didn’t go well. The academic staff displayed a degree of revulsion towards the whole topic of IT in the world of commerce that surprised me; tweed met charcoal-grey, trainers met black shoes. However, their antipathy to commerce was something we could have worked around, since few of their graduates were destined for a career as university lecturers. They asked me what sort of language skills we needed. I tried ducking the invidious task of naming computer languages, since I wanted recruits who were quick to adapt and learn, with a broad understanding of IT, including development methodologies, technologies, and data. However, they pressed the point and I ended up saying that we needed good working knowledge of C and BASIC, though FORTRAN and COBOL were, at the time, still useful. There was a ghastly silence. It was as if I’d recommended the beliefs and practices of the Bogomils of Bulgaria to a gathering of Cardinals. They stared at me severely, like owls, until the head of department broke the silence, informing me in clipped tones that they taught only Modula 2. Now, I wouldn’t blame you if at this point you hurriedly had to look up ‘Modula 2′ on Wikipedia. Based largely on Pascal, it was a specialist language for embedded systems, but I’ve never ever come across it in a commercial business application. Nevertheless, it was an excellent teaching language since it taught modules, scope control, multiprogramming and the advantages of encapsulating a set of related subprograms and data structures. As long as the course also taught how to transfer these skills to other, more useful languages, it was not necessarily a problem. I said as much, but they gleefully retorted that the biggest local employer, a defense contractor specializing in Radar and military technology, used nothing but Modula 2. “Why teach any other programming language when they will be using Modula 2 for all their working lives?” said a complacent lecturer. On hearing this, I made my excuses and left. There could be no meeting of minds. They were providing training in a specific computer language, not an education in IT. Twenty years later, I once more worked nearby and regularly passed the long-deserted ‘brownfield’ site of the erstwhile largest local employer; the end of the cold war had led to lean times for defense contractors. A digger was about to clear the rubble of the long demolished factory along with the accompanying growth of buddleia and thistles, in order to lay the infrastructure for ‘affordable housing’. Modula 2 was a distant memory. Either those employees had short working lives or they’d retrained in other languages. The University, by contrast, was thriving, but I wondered if their erstwhile graduates had ever cursed the narrow specialization of their training in IT, as they struggled with the unexpected variety of their subsequent careers.

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• Oracle support note for Leap Second Hang problem that may result into 100% CPU utilization in Linux environment

  - by Anand Akela

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} On or around July 1, 2012, Oracle has become aware of an issue on Linux distributions resulting from the introduction of the leap second; this is causing problems for some customers.  Leap seconds may be introduced at the end of June or December in a calendar year, like 2012, as necessary to maintain time standards. Servers hosting Oracle products which are clients of an NTP server (Network Time Protocol) may be particularly susceptible to this issue as the NTP server is updated. Linux distributions which may be affected include Oracle Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle VM and Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. Asianux 2 and 3, based on RHEL 4 and 5, may also be affected. One report of correction to high agent CPU using Note 1472421.1 on SLES11 has also been reported. Not all customers will be affected, but those, who are affected, may observe higher than normal CPU consumption on their Linux environments where JVM's are utilized.  In Oracle Enterprise Manager ( EM ) , this problem can manifest itself as high CPU consumption with the EM Agent process (which runs on a JVM in EM 12c, for instance).  It is possible that the OMS is also affected. We would advise customers to review the description of this problem in MOS Note 1472651.1 and take action if they observe that their environment is affected. Contributed by Andrew Bulloch , Director, Application Systems Management Products

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• History of Mobile Technology

  - by David Dorf

  Over the last ten years, mobile phones have gone through several incremental technology leaps that have added capabilities that impact the retail industry.  I've listed the six major ones below, along with their long-lasting impact. 1. Location In the US, the FCC required mobile phones to implement E911 (emergency calls) by 2006, requiring the caller to be located to within 300 meters.  Back in 2000, GPS was opened up for civilian use, and by 2004 Qualcomm had figured out how to use GPS in mobile phones.  So mobile operators moved from cell tower triangulation to GPS, principally for E911.  But then lots of other uses became apparent, especially navigation.  The earliest mobile apps from retailers made it easy to find nearby stores, and companies are looking at ways to use WiFi triangulation inside stores. 2. Computer Vision In 1997 Philippe Kahn shared a photo of his newborn using a mobile phone thus launching the popularity of instant visual communications.  Over the years the quality of the cameras got better, reaching the point where barcodes could be read around 2008.  That's when Occipital came on the scene with their Red Laser application, which was eventually acquired by eBay.  This opened up the ability for consumers to easily price compare inside stores.  Other interesting apps included Tesco's Wine Finder and Amazon's Price Checker, both allowing products to be identified by picture. 3. Augmented Reality Once the mobile phone had GPS, a video camera, and compass functionality it was suddenly possible to overlay digital information on the screen in real-time.  Yelp, which was using GPS to find nearby merchants, created a backdoor called Monocle on the iPhone that showed nearby merchants overlayed on the video camera view.  Today AR apps are mostly used by retailers for marketing, like Moosejaw's app that undresses models in their catalog. 4. Geo-Fencing So if we're able to track the location of a mobile phone, why not use that context to offer timely information?  My first experience with geo-fencing came courtesy of North Face, the outdoor enthusiast store. When a mobile phone enters a predetermined area, like near a store, a text message is sent to phone with an offer or useful information.  Of course retailers can geo-fence their competitors as well and find out which customers are aren't so loyal. 5. Digital Wallet Mobile payments leverage different technologies such as NFC, QRCodes, bluetooth, and SMS to facilitate communication between the consumers's phone and the retailer's point-of-sale. The key here is the potential to consolidate loyalty cards, coupons, and bank cards into the mobile phone and enable faster checkout.  Nobody does this better than Starbucks today, but McDonald's and Duncan Donuts aren't far behind.  Google, Isis, Paypal, Square, and MCX are all vying for leadership in this area.  If NFC does finally take off, it will be leveraged by retailers in more places than just the POS. 6. Voice Response Mobile Phones have had the ability to interpret simple voice commands for a while, but Google and Amazon were the first to use voice to allow searches for products.  Allowing searches by text, barcode, and voice makes it easy to comparison shop in the aisles.  Walmart even uses voice to build shopping lists, and if the Siri API is even opened we could see lots more innovation in this area.

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