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• Silverlight Cream for December 07, 2010 -- #1004

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: András Velvárt, Kunal Chowdhury(-2-), AvraShow, Gill Cleeren, Ian T. Lackey, Richard Waddell, Joe McBride, Michael Crump, Xpert360, keyboardP, and Pete Vickers(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Grouping Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView" Kunal Chowdhury WP7: "Phone 7 Back Button and the ListPicker control" Ian T. Lackey Shoutouts: Colin Eberhardt has some Silverlight 5 Adoption Predictions you may want to check out. Michael Crump has a post up showing lots of the goodness of Silverlight 5 from the Firestarter... screenshots, code snippets, etc: Silverlight 5 – What’s New? (Including Screenshots & Code Snippets) Kunal Chowdhury has a pretty complete Silverlight 5 feature set from the Firestarter and an embedded copy of Scott Guthrie's kenote running on the page: New Features Announced for Silverlight 5 Beta From SilverlightCream.com: Just how productive is WP7 development compared to iOS, Android and mobile Web? András Velvárt blogged about a contest he took part in to build a WP7 app in 1-1/2 hours without any prior knowledge of it's funtion. He and his team-mate were pitted against other teams on Android, IOS, and mobile Web... guess who got (almost) their entire app running? ... just too cool Andras! ... Grouping Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView Kunal Chowdhury has a couple good posts up, this first one is on using the PagedCollectionView to group the records in a DataGrid... code included. Filtering Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView Kunal Chowdhury then continues with another post on the PagedCollectionView only this time is showing how to do some filtering. DeepZoom Tips and Techniques AvraShow has a post up discussing using DeepZoom to explore, in his case, a Printed Circuit Board, with information about how he proceeded in doing that, and some tips and techniques along the way. The validation story in Silverlight (Part 2) Gill Cleeren has Part 2 of his Silverlight Validation series up at SilverlightShow. This post gets into IDataErrorInfo and INotifyDataErrorInfo. Lots of code and the example is available for download. Phone 7 Back Button and the ListPicker control Ian T. Lackey has a post up about the WP7 backbutton and what can get a failure from the Marketplace in that area, and how that applies to the ListPicker as well. Very Simple Example of ICommand CanExecute Method and CanExecuteChanged Event Richard Waddell has a nice detailed tutorial on ICommand and dealing with CanExecute... lots of Blend love in this post. Providing an Alternating Background Color for an ItemsControl Joe McBride has a post up discussing putting an alternating background color on an ItemsControl... you know, how you do on a grid... interesting idea, and all the code... Pimp my Silverlight Firestarter Michael Crump has a great Firestarter post up ... where and how to get the videos, the labs... a good Firestarter resource for sure. Adventures with PivotViewer Part 7: Slider control Xpert360 has part 7 of the PivotViewer series they're doing up. This time they're demonstrating taking programmatic control of the Zoom slider. Creating Transparent Lockscreen Wallpapers for WP7 I don't know keyboardP's name, but he's got a cool post up about getting an image up for the WP7 lock screen that has transparent regions on it... pretty cool actually. Windows Phone 7 Linq to XML 'strangeness' Pete Vickers has a post up describing a problem he found with Linq to XML on WP7. He even has a demo app that has the problem, and the fix... and it's all downloadable. Windows Phone 7 multi-line radio buttons Pete Vickers has another quick post up on radio buttons with so much text that it needs wrapping ... this is for WP7, but applies to Silverlight in general. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• How to create array with unique sprites? in cocos2d iphone

  - by prakash s

  I write the code like this. This displays only one sprite (red colour bubble) with number of times and moving down, but actually I want to display different sprites (different colour bubble) every time and moving down. I also add no of .png images in resource folder of my project. Here I used only 3.png, but I need to display all *.png images (different colour bubbles) in my project but I don't know how to get this. Please help me Thank you. Here is the code: -(void)addTarget { CCSprite *target = [CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"3.png" rect:CGRectMake(0, 0, 256, 256)]; CGSize winSize = [[CCDirector sharedDirector] winSize]; int minY = target.contentSize.height/2; int maxY = winSize.height - target.contentSize.height/2; int rangeY = maxY - minY; int actualY = (arc4random() % rangeY) + minY; // Create the target slightly off-screen along the right edge, // and along a random position along the Y axis as calculated above target.position = ccp(winSize.width + (target.contentSize.width/2), actualY); [self addChild:target]; // Determine speed of the target int minDuration = 4.0; int maxDuration = 12.0; int rangeDuration = maxDuration - minDuration; int actualDuration = (arc4random() % rangeDuration) + minDuration; // Create the actions id actionMove = [CCMoveTo actionWithDuration:actualDuration position:ccp(-target.contentSize.width/2,actualY)]; id actionMoveDone = [CCCallFuncN actionWithTarget:self selector:@selector(spriteMoveFinished:)]; [target runAction:[CCSequence actions:actionMove, actionMoveDone, nil]]; // Add to targets array target.tag = 2; [_targets addObject:target]; } -(void)gameLogic:(ccTime)dt { [self addTarget]; } -(id) init { if( (self=[super initWithColor:ccc4(255,255,255,255)] )) { // Enable touch events self.isTouchEnabled = YES; // Initialize arrays _targets = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; _projectiles = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; // Get the dimensions of the window for calculation purposes CGSize winSize = [[CCDirector sharedDirector] winSize]; [self schedule:@selector(gameLogic:) interval:1.0]; [self schedule:@selector(update:)]; } return self; } - (void)update:(ccTime)dt { NSMutableArray *projectilesToDelete = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; for (CCSprite *projectile in _projectiles) { CGRect projectileRect = CGRectMake(projectile.position.x - (projectile.contentSize.width/2), projectile.position.y - (projectile.contentSize.height/2), projectile.contentSize.width, projectile.contentSize.height); NSMutableArray *targetsToDelete = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; for (CCSprite *target in _targets) { CGRect targetRect = CGRectMake(target.position.x - (target.contentSize.width/2), target.position.y - (target.contentSize.height/2), target.contentSize.width, target.contentSize.height); if (CGRectIntersectsRect(projectileRect, targetRect)) { [targetsToDelete addObject:target]; } } for (CCSprite *target in targetsToDelete) { [_targets removeObject:target]; [self removeChild:target cleanup:YES]; _projectilesDestroyed++; if (_projectilesDestroyed > 30) { //GameOverScene *gameOverScene = [GameOverScene node]; // [gameOverScene.layer.label setString:@"You Win!"]; // [[CCDirector sharedDirector] replaceScene:gameOverScene]; } } if (targetsToDelete.count > 0) { [projectilesToDelete addObject:projectile]; } [targetsToDelete release]; } for (CCSprite *projectile in projectilesToDelete) { [_projectiles removeObject:projectile]; [self removeChild:projectile cleanup:YES]; } [projectilesToDelete release]; }

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for August 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared via the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the month of August 2012. Now Available: Oracle SQL Developer 3.2 (3.2.09.23) New features include APEX listener, UI enhancements, and 12c database support. The Role of Oracle VM Server for SPARC in a Virtualization Strategy In this article, Matthias Pfutzner discusses hardware, desktop, and operating system virtualization, along with various Oracle virtualization technologies, including Oracle VM Server for SPARC. How to Manually Install Flash Player Plugin to see the Oracle Enterprise Manager Performance Page | Kai Yu So, you're a DBA and you want to check the Performance page in Oracle Enterprise Manager (11g or 12c). So you click the Performance tab and… nothing. Zip. Nada. The Flash plugin is a no-show. Relax! Oracle ACE Director Kai Yu shows you what you need to do to see all the pretty colors instead of that dull grey screen. Relationally Challenged (CX - CRM - EQ/RQ/CRQ) | Chris Warticki Self-proclaimed Oracle Support "spokesmodel" Chris Chris Warticki has some advice for those interested in Customer Relationship Management: "How about we just dumb it down, strip it to the core, keep it simple and LISTEN?! No more focus groups, no more surveys, and no need to gather more data. We have plenty of that. Why not just provide the customer what they are asking for?" Free WebLogic Server Course | Middleware Magic So you want to sharpen your Oracle WebLogic Server skills, but you prefer to skip the whole classroom bit and don't want to be bothered with dealing with an instructor? No problem! Oracle ACE Rene van Wijk, a prolific Middleware Magic blogger, has information on an Oracle WebLogic course you can take on your own time, at your own pace. Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.20 released Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.20 was just released at the community and Oracle download sites, reports the Fat Bloke. This is a maintenance release containing bug fixes and stability improvements. Optimizing OLTP Oracle Database Performance using Dell Express Flash PCIe SSDs | Kai Yu Oracle ACE Director Kai Yu shares resources based on "several extensive performance studies on a single node Oracle 11g R2 database as well as a two node 11gR2 Oracle Real Application clusters (RAC) database running on Dell PowerEdge R720 servers with Dell Express Flash PCIe SSDs on Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.2 platform." Oracle ACE sessions at Oracle OpenWorld With so many great sessions at this year's event, building your Oracle OpenWorld schedule can involve making a lot of tough choices. But you'll find that the sessions led by Oracle ACEs just might be the icing on the cake for your OpenWorld experience. MySQL Update: The Cleveland MySQL Meetup (Independence, OH) Oracle MySQL team member Benjamin Wood, a MySQL engineer and five year veteran of the MySQL organization, will speak at the Cleveland MySQL Meetup event on September 12. The presentation will include a MySQL 5.5 Overview, Oracle's Roadmap for MySQL, including specifics on MySQL 5.6, best practices and how to overcome development and operational MySQL challenges, and the new MySQL commercial extensions. Click the link for time and location information. Parsing XML in Oracle Database | Martijn van der Kamp Martijn van der Kamp's post deals with processing XML in PL/SQL code and processing the data into the database. Thought for the Day "Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen." — Edward V. Berard Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Creating a Synchronous BPEL composite using File Adapter

  - by [email protected]

  By default, the JDeveloper wizard generates asynchronous WSDLs when you use technology adapters. Typically, a user follows these steps when creating an adapter scenario in 11g: 1) Create a SOA Application with either "Composite with BPEL" or an "Empty Composite". Furthermore, if  the user chooses "Empty Composite", then he or she is required to drop the "BPEL Process" from the "Service Components" pane onto the SOA Composite Editor. Either way, the user comes to the screen below where he/she fills in the process details. Please note that the user is required to choose "Define Service Later" as the template. 2) Creates the inbound service and outbound references and wires them with the BPEL component:     3) And, finally creates the BPEL process with the initiating <receive> activity to retrieve the payload and an <invoke> activity to write the payload.     This is how most BPEL processes that use Adapters are modeled. And, if we scrutinize the generated WSDL, we can clearly see that the generated WSDL is one way and that makes the BPEL process asynchronous (see below)   In other words, the inbound FileAdapter would poll for files in the directory and for every file that it finds there, it would translate the content into XML and publish to BPEL. But, since the BPEL process is asynchronous, the adapter would return immediately after the publish and perform the required post processing e.g. deletion/archival and so on.  The disadvantage with such asynchronous BPEL processes is that it becomes difficult to throttle the inbound adapter. In otherwords, the inbound adapter would keep sending messages to BPEL without waiting for the downstream business processes to complete. This might lead to several issues including higher memory usage, CPU usage and so on. In order to alleviate these problems, we will manually tweak the WSDL and BPEL artifacts into synchronous processes. Once we have synchronous BPEL processes, the inbound adapter would automatically throttle itself since the adapter would be forced to wait for the downstream process to complete with a <reply> before processing the next file or message and so on. Please see the tweaked WSDL below and please note that we have converted the one-way to a two-way WSDL and thereby making the WSDL synchronous: Add a <reply> activity to the inbound adapter partnerlink at the end of your BPEL process e.g.   Finally, your process will look like this:   You are done.   Please remember that such an excercise is NOT required for Mediator since the Mediator routing rules are sequential by default. In other words, the Mediator uses the caller thread (inbound file adapter thread) for processing the routing rules. This is the case even if the WSDL for mediator is one-way.

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• SSRS Parameters and MDX Data Sets

  - by blakmk

  Having spent the past few weeks creating reports and dashboards in SSRS and SSAS 2008, I was frustrated by how difficult it is to use custom datasets to generate parameter drill downs. It also seems Reporting Services can be quite unforgiving when it comes to renaming things like datasets, so I want to share a couple of techniques that I found useful. One of the things I regularly do is to add parameters to the querys. However doing this causes Reporting Services to generate a hidden dataset and parameter name for you. One of the things I like to do is tweak these hidden datasets removing the ‘ALL’ level which is a tip I picked up from Devin Knight in his blog: There are some rules i’ve developed for myself since working with SSRS and MDX, they may not be the best or only way but they work for me. Rule 1 – Never trust the automatically generated hidden datasets Or even ANY, automatically generated MDX queries for that matter.... I’ve previously blogged about this here.   If you examine the MDX generated in the hidden dataset you will see that it generates the MDX in the context of the originiating query by building a subcube, this mean it may NOT be appropriate to use this in a subsequent query which has a different context. Make sure you always understand what is going on. Often when i’m developing a dashboard or a report there are several parameter oriented datasets that I like to manually create. It can be that I have different datasets using the same dimension but in a different context. One example of this, is that I often use a dataset for last month and a dataset for the last 6 months. Both use the same date hierarchy. However Reporting Services seems not to be too smart when it comes to generating unique datasets when working with and renaming parameters and datasets. Very often I have come across this error when it comes to refactoring parameter names and default datasets. "an item with the same key has already been added" The only way I’ve found to reliably avoid this is to obey to rule 2. Rule 2 – Follow this sequence when it comes to working with Parameters and DataSets: 1.    Create Lookup and Default Datasets in advance 2.    Create parameters (set the datasets for available and default values) 3.    Go into query and tick parameter check box 4.    On dataset properties screen, select the parameter defined earlier from the parameter value defined earlier. Rule 3 – Dont tear your hair out when you have just renamed objects and your report doesn’t build Just use XML notepad on the original report file. I found I gained a good understanding of the structure of the underlying XML document just by using XML notepad. From this you can do a search and find references of the missing object. You can also just do a wholesale search and replace (after taking a backup copy of course ;-) So I hope the above help to save the sanity of anyone who regularly works with SSRS and MDX.

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• BizTalk 2009 - Pipeline Component Wizard

  - by Stuart Brierley

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

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• Retail CEO Interviews

  - by David Dorf

  Businessweek's 2012 Interview Issue has interviews with three retail CEOs that are worth a quick read.  I copied some excerpts below, but please follow the links to the entire interviews. Ron Johnson, CEO JCPenney Take me through your merchandising. One of the things I learned from Steve [Jobs]—Steve said three times in his life he had the chance to be part of the change of an interface. If you change the interface, you can dramatically change the entire experience of the product. For Steve, that was the mouse, the scroll wheel on the iPod, and then the [touch]screen. What we’re trying to do here is change the interface of retail. What we call that is the street, and you’re standing in the middle of it. When you walk into a store today, you’re overwhelmed by merchandise. There is a narrow aisle. Typically, it’s filled with product on tables and you’re overwhelmed with the noise of signs and promotions. Especially in the age of the Internet, the idea of going to a very large store and having so much abundance is actually not very appealing. The first thing you find here is you’re inspired. I have used the mannequins. The street is actually this new navigation path for a retail store. So if you come in here—you’ll notice that these aisles are 14 feet wide. These are wider than Nordstrom’s (JWN). Slide show of JCPenney store. Walter Robb, co-CEO Whole Foods What did you learn from the recent recession about selling groceries?It was a lot of humble pie, because our sales experienced a drop that I have never seen in 32 years of retail. Customers left us in droves. We also learned that there were some very loyal customers who loved Whole Foods (WFM), people who said, “I like what you stand for. I like coming here. I like this experience.” That was very affirming. I think the realization was that we’ve got some customers, and we need to make sure we know who they are. So instead of chasing every customer out there, we started doing customer discussion groups. We were growing for growth’s sake, which is not a good strategy. We were chasing the rainbow. We cut the growth in half overnight and said, “All right, slow down. Let’s make sure we’re doing this better and more thoroughly and more thoughtfully.” This company is a mission-based company. This company started to change the world by bringing healthier food to the world. It’s not about the money, it’s about the impact, and this company is back on track as a result of those experiences. Video of Whole Foods store tour. Kay Krill, CEO Ann Taylor You’ve worked in retail all your life. What drew you to it?I graduated from college, and I did not know what I wanted to do. Macy’s (M) came to campus to interview for their training program, and I thought, “Let me give it a try.” I got the job and fell in love with the industry. The president of Macy’s at the time said, “If you don’t wake up every morning dying to go to work, then retailing is not for you; it has to be in your blood.” It was in my blood. I love the fact that every day is different. You can get to be creative one day, financial the next day, marketing the next. I love going to stores. I love talking to associates. I love talking to clients. There’s not a predictable day.

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• Increasing touch surface (#wp7dev)

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  When you design for Windows Phone 7 (or for any touch device, for that matter, and most especially small screens), you need to be very careful to give enough surface to your users’ fingers. It is easy to miss a touch on such small screens, and that can be horrifyingly frustrating. This is especially true when people are on the move, and trying to hit the control while walking and holding their device in one hand, or when the device is mounted in a car and vibrating with the engine. In my experience, a touch surface should be ideally minimum 60x60 pixels to be easy to activate on the Windows Phone 7 screen (which is, as we know, 800 pixels x 480 pixels). Ideally, I try to make my touch surfaces 80x80 pixels minimum. This causes a few design challenges of course. Using transparent backgrounds However, one thing is helping us tremendously: some surfaces can be made transparent, and yet react to touch. The secret is the following: If you have a panel that has a Null background (i.e. the Background is not set at all), then the empty surface does not react to touch. If however the Background is set to the Transparent color (or any color where the Alpha channel is set to 0), then it will react to touch. Setting a transparent background is easy. For example: <Grid Background="#00000000"> </Grid> or <Grid Background="Transparent"> </Grid> In C#: var grid = new Grid { Background = new SolidColorBrush( Colors.Transparent) }; Using negative margins Having a transparent background reactive to touch is a good start, but in addition, you must make sure that the surface is big enough for my clumsy fingers. One way to achieve that is to increase the transparent, touch-reactive surface, and reposition the element using negative margins. For example, consider the following UI. I changed the transparent background of the HyperlinkButton to Red, in order to visualize the touch surface. In this figure, the Settings HyperlinkButton is 105 pixels x 31 pixels. This is wide enough, but really small in height and easy to miss. To improve this, we can use negative margins, for instance: <HyperlinkButton Content="Settings" HorizontalAlignment="Right" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Height="60" Margin="0,0,0,-15" /> Notice the usage of negative bottom margin to bring the HyperlinkButton back at the bottom of the main Grid’s first row, where it belongs. And the result is: Notice how the touch surface is much bigger than before. This makes the HyperlinkButton easier to reach, and improves the user experience. With the background set back to normal, the UI looks exactly the same, as it should: In summary: Remember to maximize the touch surface for your controls. Plan your design in consequence by reserving enough room around each control to allow their hit surface to be expanded as shown in this article. Do not cram too many controls in one page. If REALLY needed, use an additional page (or even better: use a Pivot control with multiple pivot items) for the controls that don’t fit on the first one. This should ensure a smoother user experience and improved touch behavior. Happy coding! Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Five geeky things you must do with your Android Smartphone

  - by Gopinath

  Android is the Windows of next generation. Its open, free, widely adopted and smart enough to outsmart Apple’s iOS. It’s a stolen product and cheap imitation of iOS, but Steve Job’s once quoted saying good artists copy and great artists steal. Alright, this post is not about Android vs iOS or is it really stolen or not. Android is a great OS for mobile devices and it lets you do amazing through mobiles.  In this post I want to write about the geeky things we can do with an Android Smartphone. Control your computer using mobile Assume that it is a lazy weekend and you are on a couch watching movies on a laptop which is a meter away. Now you want to adjust volume or skip a scene/song. How to control your laptop without moving out of couch? Just install Universal Remote free app on your smartphone and start control your computer using phone. Universal Remove app controls computers over Wifi or Bluetooth networks with dedicated remote controls for various media players and applications like YouTube, VLC & Spotify.  The application is very easy to use and works amazingly well in controlling computers. Few of the remote controls provided in the app are – Mouse, Keyboard, Media Controls, Power, Start, Windows Media Player, VLC Player,  YouTube. There is also paid version of this app with additional remotes, but for most of the users Free version is good enough. Stream YouTube videos playing on you mobile to computer You can stream YouTube videos playing on your mobile to computer/smart tv. This is something similar to Apple’s most popular AirPlay feature, but works only with YouTube videos. To start streaming videos install Google’s YouTube Remote on your smartphone, open youtube.com/leanback on your computer  and pair up mobile with computer. Once the pairing is done, videos played on YouTube Remote app will be streamed on to your computer. Access your mobile using any web browser – send/receive SMS, view photos/call logs, etc. Want to control your mobile phone using a computer? Install AirDroid app on your phone and start controlling your phone using computer browser – send and receive messages, view call logs, play music, upload/download files, edit contacts and many more. At times it’s lot of fun to access mobile using a big screen devices like laptops. Launch a webpage on your mobile browser using your computer With Google Chrome to Phone installed on your computer and mobile, you can send links and other information from Chrome browser to your Android device. With a click on Chrome browser, the current webpage of Chrome browser will be automatically launched on Android device. This is very handy when you want to send links, send driving direction to mobile using Google Maps and launch phone dialer with number selected on webpage. Install Apps on mobile using computer To install apps on your smartphone you really don’t need to touch it. Open any web browser, sing in to Google Play with your Google id that is associated with smartphone and start installing apps on to your phone right from the browser. As you browse apps on Google Play store, you find Install button and all you need to do is to just click Install. Google will automatically installs app on your mobile within few seconds.

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• Why I&rsquo;m Getting an iPad

  - by andrewbrust

  I have never purchased an Apple product in my life.  That’s a “true fact.”  And, for that matter, the last Apple product I really wanted was an Apple IIe, back in the 1980s.  I couldn’t afford it though (I was in high school), so I got a Commodore 64 instead…it had the same microprocessor, after all.  If the iPhone were on Verizon, I probably would have picked one up in December, when I got my Droid.  And if the iPod Touch worked with my Napster subscription (which of course it does not, but my Sonos does) I might have picked on of those instead. That’s three strikes, but Apple’s not out.  I’ve decided I want the iPad.  Why?  Well, to start with, my birthday is March 31st…the iPad comes out on April 3rd, and my wife wanted to know what to get me.  Also, my house is a 7-minute walk from the Apple Store on West 14th Street in Manhattan.  This makes it easy to get my pre-ordered device on launch day, and get home quickly with it.  Oh, and I agreed to write an article for Redmond Magazine, the fee for which will pay for the device…that way the birthday present doesn’t have to be an extravagant expense.  Plus, I’m a contrarian, so I want to buy the one device from Apple that the fanboys have actually panned. Think those are bad reasons? How about this: I want to experience iPhone and iPad development and, although my app will probably never hit the App Store and run on the actual device, I still think owning one will help me develop something better.  i want to see if the slate form factor has good business usage scenarios.  I want to see if Business Intelligence technology on a device like this can work.  Imagine a dashboard on this thing. And, for the consumer experience, I really want a touch device on which I can surf the Web while I’m in the kitchen, or on the couch.  I don’t want the small form factor of my phone, I don’t want to use my TV, and I don’t want a keyboard that will get dirty or in my way. I don’t want to watch movies on it (my TV is good for that), so I don’t care that the iPad has a 4:3 screen.  I don’t want to read books on it, so I don’t care that the display is backlit LCD, rather than eInk. But really what I want is to understand, first hand, why people have such brand loyalty to Apple.  I know the big reasons; I’m not detached from society.  But I want to know the subtle points of what Apple does really well, and also what they do poorly.  And I’d like to know, once and for all, if Microsoft can beat Apple, if Microsoft can think the right way to beat Apple and if Microsoft should  even try to beat Apple. I expect to share my thoughts on these questions, as they develop.

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• Monitor System Resources from the Windows 7 Taskbar

  - by Asian Angel

  The problem with most system monitoring apps is that they get covered up with all of your open windows, but you can solve that problem by adding monitoring apps to the Taskbar. Setting Up & Using SuperbarMonitor All of the individual monitors and the .dll files necessary to run them come in a single zip file for your convenience. Simply unzip the contents, add them to an appropriate “Program Files Folder”, and create shortcuts for the monitors that you would like to use on your system. For our example we created shortcuts for all five monitors and set the shortcuts up in their own “Start Menu Folder”. You can see what the five monitors (Battery, CPU, Disk, Memory, & Volume) look like when running…they are visual in appearance without text to clutter up the looks. The monitors use colors (red, green, & yellow) to indicate the amount of resources being used for a particular category. Note: Our system is desktop-based but the “Battery Monitor” was shown for the purposes of demonstration…thus the red color seen here. Hovering the mouse over the “Battery, CPU, Disk, & Memory Monitors” on our system displayed a small blank thumbnail. Note: The “Battery Monitor” may or may not display more when used on your laptop. Going one step further and hovering the mouse over the thumbnails displayed a small blank window. There really is nothing that you will need to worry with outside of watching the color for each individual monitor. Nice and simple! The one monitor with extra features on the thumbnail was the “Volume Monitor”. You can turn the volume down, up, on, or off from here…definitely useful if you have been wanting to hide the “Volume Icon” in the “System Tray”. You can also pin the monitors to your “Taskbar” if desired. Keep in mind that if you do close any of the monitors they will “temporarily” disappear from the “Taskbar” until the next time they are started. Note: If you want the monitors to start with your system each time you will need to add the appropriate shortcuts to the “Startup Sub-menu” in your “Start Menu”. Conclusion If you have been wanting a nice visual way to monitor your system’s resources then SuperbarMonitor is definitely worth trying out. Links Download SuperbarMonitor Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Monitor CPU, Memory, and Disk IO In Windows 7 with Taskbar MetersUse Windows Vista Reliability Monitor to Troubleshoot CrashesTaskbar Eliminator Does What the Name Implies: Hides Your Windows TaskbarBring Misplaced Off-Screen Windows Back to Your Desktop (Keyboard Trick)How To Fix System Tray Tooltips Not Displaying in Windows XP 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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• Change The Windows 7 Start Orb the Easy Way

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to make your Windows 7 PC even more unique and personalized?  Then check out this easy guide on how to change your start orb in Windows 7. Getting Started First, download the free Windows 7 Start Button Changer (link below), and extract the contents of the folder.  It contains the app along with a selection of alternate start button orbs you can try out.   Before changing the start button, we advise creating a system restore point in case anything goes wrong.  Enter System Restore in your Start menu search, and select “Create a restore point”. Please note:  We tested this on both the 32 bit and 64 bit editions of Windows 7, and didn’t encounter any problems or stability issues.  That said, it is always prudent to make a restore point just in case a problem did happen. Click the Create button… Then enter a name for the restore point, and click Create. Changing the Start Orb. Once this is finished, run the Windows 7 Start Button Changer as administrator by right-clicking on it and selecting “Run as administrator”.  Accept the UAC prompt that will appear. If you don’t run it as an administrator, you may see the following warning.  Click Quit, and then run again as administrator. You should now see the Windows 7 Start Button Changer.  On the left it shows what your current (default) start orb looks like inactive, when hovered over, and when selected.  Click the orb on the right to select a new start button. Here we browsed to the sample orbs folder, and selected one of them.  Let’s give Windows the Media Center orb for a start orb.  Click the orb you want, and then select open. When you click Open, your screen will momentarily freeze and your taskbar will disappear.  When it reappears, your computer will have gone from having the old, default Start orb style… …to your new, exciting Start orb!  Here it is default, and glowing when hovered over. Now, the Windows 7 Start Orb Changer will change, and show your new Start orb on the left side.  If you would like to revert to the default orb, simply click the folder icon to restore it.  Or, if you would like to change the orb again, restore the original first and then select a new one. The orbs don’t have to be round; here’s a fancy Windows 7 logo as the start button. The start orb change will work in the Aero and Aero basic (which Windows 7 Start uses) themes, but will not show up in the classic, Windows 2000 style themes.  Here’s how the new start button looks with the Aero Classic theme: There are tons of orbs available, including this cute smiley, so choose one that you like to make your computer uniquely yours. Conclusion This is a cute way to make your desktop unique, and can be a great way to make a truly personalized theme.  Let us know your favorite Start orb! Link Download the Windows 7 Start Button Changer Find more Start orbs at deviantART Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Change the Windows 7 or Vista Power Buttons to Shut Down/Sleep/HibernateQuick Tip: Change the Registered Owner in WindowsSpeed up Windows Vista Start Menu Search By Limiting ResultsWhy Does My Password Expire in Windows?Change Your Computer Name in Windows 7 or 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Quickly Schedule Meetings With NeedtoMeet Share Flickr Photos On Facebook Automatically Are You Blocked On Gtalk? Find out Discover Latest Android Apps On AppBrain The Ultimate Guide For YouTube Lovers Will it Blend? iPad Edition

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• Taking Your Business Scorecard Golfing

  - by tobyehatch

  Our workplace world is definitely changing. Not only are we taking work home, but we are working during odd hours in some very strange places.  I had the pleasure of interviewing Jacques Vigeant, Product Strategy Manager for Oracle Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management, on a Podcast, and he enlightened me about how our mobile devices and business scorecards are enabling us to be more accountable and keep a watchful eye on business – even while on the golf course.Business scorecards have been around for many years - so I asked Jacques if he felt they had changed significantly due to technology. His answer was, “Yes, and no.”  Jacques agreed that scorecard enthusiasts are still passionate about executing the company strategy and monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), but scorecards and Business Intelligence (BI) as a whole have changed.  He explained that five to six years ago, people did BI work at the office and, for the most part, disconnected from their computer and workplace when they went home – with the exception of checking email and making a phone call or two. But now, that is no longer the case. People are virtually always connected with work and, more importantly, expect their BI and scorecards to be ‘always on,’ regardless of whether they are at their desk or somewhere else.Basically, the BI paradigm has changed from a 'pull' model, where employees are at their desks querying or pulling information from the system, to a 'push' model where employees expect their BI and scorecard systems to reach out (or push information) to them when there is something of note to learn or something on which they need to take action. I found this very interesting. However mobile devices do have their limitations with respect to screen sizes – does it really make sense to look at your strategy/scorecard on tiny devices? What kind of scorecard activities can you really expect to be able to do? Jacques’ answer was very logical. “When you think of a scorecard, it is really comprised of an organization of KPIs that are aligned with the strategic objectives of your company. KPIs are the heart of how you will execute your strategy. So, if you decompose that a little more, each KPI is well defined with the thresholds that you should keep an eye on and who is responsible for them. When we talk about scorecarding on a phone, we aren’t talking about surfing the strategy and exploring the strategy map like we do on the desktop. In a scorecarding context, we use the phone more as an alerting mechanism or simple monitoring device for your KPIs.”Jacques gave a great example of an inventory manager who took part of an afternoon off to go golfing before winter finally hit, and while on the front nine holes, his phone vibrated. His scorecard was alerting him that the inventory levels for one of the products was below some threshold that he had set.  From his phone, he had set up three options within Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management (OSSM) for this type of situation:  1. Contact the warehouse manager directly by phone and work it out (standard phone function)  2. Tap/hold the KPI and add an annotation to the KPI in OSSM using the dictation capabilities of the phone and deal with it more fully when he gets back to the office  3. Tap/hold the KPI and invoke a business process from OSSM to transfer product from another warehouse with higher stock levels to the one that needs it  Being on a phone should still give you options to quickly deal with situations as needed, but mobile phones are not designed for nor should try to replicate the full desktop experience. We covered other interesting subjects in the interview, including how Oracle is keeping pace with mobile innovation and new devices such as Google Glasses, Galaxy Gear, Pebble Watches and more, and how Oracle is handling mobile security– which is great news for our mobile workforce. To listen to the entire Podcast, click here.To learn more about Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management, click here.

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• General Availability of Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in 12.1.0.1.0

  - by user810030

  We are pleased to announce the General Availability of Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in 12.1.0.1.0, an integral part of Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite. The combination of Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control and the Application Management Suite combines functionality that was available in the standalone Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite and Application Change Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle’s Real User Experience Insight product and the Configuration & Compliance capabilities to provide the most complete solution for managing Oracle E-Business Suite applications. The features that were available in the standalone management packs are now packaged into the Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in, which is now fully certified with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control. This latest plug-in extends Cloud Control with E-Business Suite specific system management capabilities and features enhanced change management support. This new release offers the following key enhancements: General: Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Base Platform uptake: All components of the management suite are certified with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control. Security: Privilege Delegation: The Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in now extends Enterprise Manager’s privilege delegation through Sudo and PowerBroker to Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in host targets.  Privileges and Roles for Managing Oracle E-Business Suite: This release includes new ready-to-use target and resource privileges to monitor, manage, and perform Change Management functionality.  Cloning: Named Credentials Uptake in Cloning: The Clone module transactions now let users leverage the Named Credential feature introduced in Enterprise Manager 12c, thereby passing all the benefits of Named Credentials features in Enterprise Manager to the Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in users.  Smart Clone improvements: The new and improved Smart Clone UI supports the adding of "pre and post" custom steps to a copy of the ready-to-use cloning deployment procedure. Now a user can pass parameters to the custom steps through the interview screen of the UI as well as pass ready-to-use parameters to the custom steps.  Change Management Enhancements Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite provides a centralized view to monitor and orchestrate changes (both functional and technical) across multiple Oracle E-Business Suite systems. In this latest release, it provides even more control and flexibility in managing Oracle E-Business Suite changes. Customization Manager: Support for longer file names: Customization Manager now handles file names up to thirty characters in length.  Patch Manager: Queuing of Patch Manager Runs: This feature allows patch runs to queue up if Patch Manager detects a specific target is in a blackout state.  Multi-node system patching: The patch run interview has been enhanced to allow Enterprise Manager Administrator to choose which nodes adpatch will run on.  New AD Administration Options: The patch run interview has been extended to include AD Administration Options "Relink Application Programs", "Generate Product Jars Files", "Generate Report Files", and "Generate Form Files".  Release Technical Details Product documentation for the plug-in is available on My Oracle Support as note 1434392.1.  The Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in can be accessed in one of the following ways:  Fresh install  Enterprise Manager Store  Oracle Software Delivery Cloud Upgrades  Oracle Technology Network Please refer to the Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite Guide for further details.  Related Software Component Oracle Real User Experience Insight 12.1.0.0.1  Product documentation is available on Oracle Technology Network in the "Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 1 (12.1) Documentation" set under the "Associated Document" tab. (http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26370_01/index.htm)  Product may be downloaded individually from Oracle Technology Network software download page for Oracle Enterprise Manager under "Additional Enterprise Manager Downloads." (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/grid-control/downloads/index.html)  Product may also be downloaded individually from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud. Select "Oracle Enterprise Manager" product pack, "Oracle Real User Experience Insight 12c Release 1 Media Pack for x8  Collateral Can be accessed on the Application Management Page on Oracle Technology Network

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• F1 Pit Pragmatics

  - by mikef

  "I hate computers. No, really, I hate them. I love the communications they facilitate, I love the conveniences they provide to my life. but I actually hate the computers themselves." - Scott Merrill, 'I hate computers: confessions of a Sysadmin' If Scott's goal was to polarize opinion and trigger raging arguments over the 'real reasons why computers suck', then he certainly succeeded. Impassioned vitriol sits side-by-side with rational debate. Yet Scott's fundamental point is absolutely on the money - Computers are a means to an end. The IT industry is finally starting to put weight behind the notion that good User Experience is an absolutely crucial goal, a cause championed by the likes of Microsoft's Bill Buxton, and which Apple's increasingly ubiquitous touch screen interface exemplifies. However, that doesn't change the fact that, occasionally, you just have to man up and deal with complex systems. In fact, sometimes you just need to sacrifice everything else in the name of performance. You'll find a perfect example of this Faustian bargain in Trevor Clarke's fascinating look into the (diabolical) IT infrastructure of modern F1 racing - high performance, high availability. high everything. To paraphrase, each car has up to 100 sensors, transmitting around 30Gb of data over the course of a race (70% in real-time). This data is then processed by no less than 3 servers (per car) so that the engineers in the pit have access to telemetry, strategy information, timing feeds, a connection back to the operations room in the team's home base - the list goes on. All of this while the servers are exposed "to carbon dust, oil, vibration, rain, heat, [and] variable power". Now, this is admittedly an extreme context where there's no real choice but to use complex systems where ease-of-use is, at best, a secondary concern. The flip-side is seen in small-scale personal computing such as that seen in Apple's iDevices, which are incredibly intuitive but limited in their scope. In terms of what kinds of systems they prefer to use, I suspect that most SysAdmins find themselves somewhere along this axis of Power vs. Usability, and which end of this axis you resonate with also hints at where you think the IT industry should focus its energy. Do you see yourself in the F1 pit, making split-second decisions, wrestling with information flows and reticent hardware to bend them to your will? If so, I imagine you feel that computers are subtle tools which need to be tuned and honed, using the advanced knowledge possessed only by responsible SysAdmins (If you have an iPhone, I suspect it's jail-broken). If the machines throw enigmatic errors, it's the price of flexibility and raw power. Alternatively, would you prefer to have your role more accessible, with users empowered by knowledge, spreading the load of managing IT environments? In that case, then you want hardware and software to have User Experience as their primary focus, and are of the "means to an end" school of thought (you're probably also fed up with users not listening to you when you try and help). At its heart, the dichotomy is between raw power (which might be difficult to use) and ease-of-use (which might have some limitations, but you can be up and running immediately). Of course, the ultimate goal is a fusion of flexibility, power and usability all in one system. It's achievable in specific software environments, and Red Gate considers it a target worth aiming for, but in other cases it's a goal right up there with cold fusion. I think it'll be a long time before we see it become ubiquitous. In the meantime, are you Power-Hungry or a Champion of Usability? Cheers, Michael Francis Simple Talk SysAdmin Editor

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• Cutting-Edge Demos Coming to Collaborate12

  - by mvaughan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience Are you building your Collaborate 2012 agenda? Leave room for a stop at the demogrounds while you’re in Las Vegas from April 22-26. In addition to several presentations on the Oracle user experience, the Applications User Experience (UX) team will be on the demo grounds with a new eye-tracking tool, as well as demos that showcase new user experience designs. Check out our cutting-edge technology, which we use to obtain feedback that helps improve the user experience of Oracle applications, and see what our next-generation designs are in the HCM and FIN user experiences.  Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Photo by Martin Taylor – Oracle Applications User Experience An Apps UX team member demonstrates what happens during an eye-tracking test. The dots on the screen show were test participants were looking and how long they spent at each point in the page. The UX team will also be staffing an on-site lab at Collaborate. At on-site labs, conference participants can sign up to join customer feedback sessions on several different kinds of work flow designs, from HCM to FIN to CRM to mobile. The feedback UX team members collect helps inform and fine-tune the user experiences being designed for next-generation applications. At Collaborate12, for example, user experience designs around Help and organizational charts will be tested for usability. The Apps UX team brings on-site labs to many major user group conferences, including OpenWorld 2012 in October in San Francisco. Stay tuned to find out when our recruiters are ready to sign up participants, or leave a comment below to find out whether an on-site lab will be at your next conference. For information on the following presentations, which will be delivered by Apps UX team members, check the Usable Apps Events page. • The Fusion Applications User Experience: Transforming Work into Insight • Customizations Under the Covers – Making Fusion Applications Your Own • OAUG Fusion Middleware SIG (FMWSIG) • 18 Months with Fusion Applications – Stories From The Trenhes • PeopleTools Tips and Techniques

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• Extract Audio from a Video File with Pazera Free Audio Extractor

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Have you ever wanted to extract some or all of the audio from a video file?  Today we’ll take a look at Pazera Free Audio Extractor. A simple audio converter that specializes in that very task. Download the Pazera Free Audio Extractor. (See download link below) You’ll need to unzip the download folder, but there is no need to install the application. Simply double-click the AudioExtractor.exe file to run the application. To add your video files to the queue to be converted, click on the Add files  button at the top left. You can add multiple files to the queue and convert them all at one time. Browse for your video file, and click Open.   Your video will be added to the Queue for processing.   Under Output directory you can choose to output to a folder of your choice. Outputting to the same folder as the input folder is the default.   Pazera Free Audio Extractor includes pre-configured profiles that will simplify the process of choosing conversion settings. To load a profile, choose one from the Profile drop down list and then click the Load button. You can choose to output to MP3, AAC, AC3, WMA, FLAC, OGG or WAV file format.   You will see the profile update the Audio settings in the panels at the lower left of the application. If you wish, you may also select your own custom settings. Advanced Settings The Advanced settings can be used if you want to extract only a portion of the the audio, such as a clip of dialog or a song from a movie. To extract only a portion of the audio, set the start time by selecting the Start time offset check box, then entering the time in the video clip where the audio begins. To set the end time, begin by selecting the Duration check box. Now, you can either select the Duration radio button and enter the amount of time for which you would like to extract the audio, or you can select the End time offset radio button and enter the time in the video clip where the audio ends. When you are ready to convert, click the CONVERT button on the menu at the top of the screen.   An output box will open and display the conversion progress. When finished, click Close.   Now you are ready to enjoy your audio clip. Pazera Free Audio Extractor is a basic audio tool that is easy enough for everyone to use. It runs on Windows only and supports most common video formats including AVI, FLV, MP4, MPG, MOV, 3GP, and WMV. Download Free Audio Extractor 1.3 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Eufony Free Audio Player – Resource Gentle Audio PlayerConvert .3GP and .3G2 Files to AVI / MPEG for FreeTurn Off Auto-Play of Audio and Video CDs and DVDs in UbuntuHow to Make/Edit a movie with Windows Movie Maker in Windows VistaEasily Change Audio File Formats with XRECODE 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 Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems Icelandic Volcano Webcams Open Multiple Links At One Go NachoFoto Searches Images in Real-time Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs

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• Wireless Network Found, can't connect, repeated requests for authentication

  - by Herm Holland

  After trawling through the internet, on forums, support websites, and through dozens upon dozens of answered questions on this site, I've not found a solution to what seems like a fairly regular problem... I cannot connect to a wireless network, and am continually asked for the network password. I have tried countless suggested solutions on the different locations I've already referred to. None of them have worked. Details of my experience are as follows: I have just recently installed Ubuntu 12.04.1 (32-bit). Ubuntu installed on my system seemingly fine, and I even formatted my hard drive during the process. It's as if it were a new desktop computer. During the installation I was asked to connect to a Wireless Network. I have a USB Wireless Card connected which I have used to connect desktop PC's, laptops, and a Wii to the internet from approximately the same area of the house (thus the same distance from the Wireless Router). I chose my network, entered the correct password for it (I double checked; it's definitely the right password) and proceeded with the installation. Several times before the installation was complete, I was asked to authenticate the connection, and this seemed to do nothing each time. On the repeated screens the password was already entered in the appropriate box. When Ubuntu booted up the first thing I was faced with (other than something about Language settings, or something) was another request for authentication. Again, the password was already there, so I clicked connect. It did not connect. Instead, I was once again faced with repeated requests every few minutes. I went onto my laptop, which is connected to this network, checked the details of the network, and entered them manually into my Ubuntu PC (including the IPv4 and IPv6 information) but this didn't work either, so I set it back to finding the settings automatically. Note, also, that the "Connect automatically" and "Available to all users" boxes are checked, and have been unchecked & rechecked countless times. I have also tried having my User account connect automatically, and to need a password entered at the welcome screen. Whilst I've been writing this, it has gone through a spat of connecting successfully to the network for less than a minute, before coming offline again, only to repeat the process. But it has now returned to prompting me for a password every couple of minutes. This computer has already run on the Fedora OS, and had no trouble connecting to, and maintaining a connection. I also have a laptop running Windows 7 less than a metre away from this desktop PC, which is connected and has no trouble maintaining a connection at 50%-100% strength (fluctuating). Therefore: - I know it's not the wireless card - I know it's not the PC itself - I know it's not the access point - I know it's not the location of my PC or wireless card - It is solely because of Ubuntu Everything else has worked fine, but the moment Ubuntu was introduced into the equation, it has gone completely wrong. Honestly; I prefer Ubuntu as an OS to Fedora, but if I can't solve the problem it'll be straight back to Fedora that I'll have to go. Can anyone help me at all?

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• Upgrading from MVC 1.0 to MVC2 in Visual Studio 2010 and VS2008.

  - by Sam Abraham

  With MVC2 officially released, I was involved in a few conversations regarding the feasibility of upgrading existing MVC 1.0 projects to quickly leverage the newly introduced MVC features. Luckily, Microsoft has proactively addressed this question for both Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 and many online resources discussing the upgrade process are a "Bing/Google Search" away. As I will happen to be speaking about MVC2 and Visual Studio 2010 at the Ft Lauderdale ArcSig .Net User Group Meeting on April 20th 2010 (Check http://www.fladotnet.com for more info.), I decided to include a quick demo on upgrading the NerdDinner project (which I consider the "Hello MVC World" project) from MVC 1.0 to MVC2 using Visual studio 2010 to demonstrate how simple the upgrade process is. In the next few lines, I will be briefly touching on upgrading to MVC2 for Visual Studio 2008 then discussing, in more detail, the upgrade process using Visual Studio 2010 while highlighting the advantage of its multi-targeting support. Using Visual Studio 2008 SP1 For upgrading to MVC2 Using VS2008 SP1, a Microsoft White Paper [1] presents two approaches:  1- Using a provided automated upgrade tool, 2-Manually upgrading the project. I personally prefer using the automated tool although it comes with an "AS IS" disclaimer. For those brave souls, or those who end up with no luck using the tool, detailed manual upgrade steps are also provided as a second option. Backing up the project in question is a must regardless of which route one would take to upgrade. Using Visual Studio 2010 Life is much easier for developers who already adopted Visual Studio 2010. Simply opening the MVC 1.0 solution file brings up the upgrade wizard as shown in figures 1, 2, 3 and 4. As we proceed with the upgrade process, the wizard requests confirmation on whether we choose to upgrade our target framework version to .Net 4.0 or keep the existing .Net 3.5 (Figure 5). VS2010 does a good job with multi-targeting where we can still develop .Net 3.5 applications while leveraging all the new bells and whistles that VS2010 brings to the table (Multi-targeting enables us to develop with as early as .Net 2.0 in VS2010) Figure 1 - Open Solution File Using VS2010   Figure 2 - VS2010 Conversion Wizard Figure 3- Ready To Convert To VS2010 Confirmation Screen Figure 4 - VS2010 Solution Conversion Progress Figure 5 - Confirm Target Framework Upgrade In an attempt to make my demonstration realistic, I decided to opt to keep the project targeted to the .Net 3.5 Framework.  After the successful completion of the conversion process,  a quick sanity check revealed that the NerdDinner project is still targeted to the .Net 3.5 framework as shown in figure 6. Inspecting the Web.Config revealed that the MVC DLL version our code compiles against has been successfully upgraded to 2.0 (Figure 7) and hence we should now be able to leverage the newly introduced features in MVC2 and VS2010 with no effort or time invested on modifying existing code. Figure 6- Confirm Target Framework Remained .Net 3.5  Figure 7 - Confirm MVC DLL Version Has Been Upgraded In Conclusion, Microsoft has empowered developers with the tools necessary to quickly and seamlessly upgrade their MVC solutions to the newly released MVC2. The multi-targeting feature in Visual Studio 2010 enables us to adopt this latest and greatest development tool while supporting development in as early as .Net 2.0. References 1. "Upgrading an ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Application to ASP.NET MVC 2" http://www.asp.net/learn/whitepapers/aspnet-mvc2-upgrade-notes

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• Countdown of Top 10 Reasons to Never Ever Use a Pie Chart

  - by Tony Wolfram

    Pie charts are evil. They represent much of what is wrong with the poor design of many websites and software applications. They're also innefective, misleading, and innacurate. Using a pie chart as your graph of choice to visually display important statistics and information demonstrates either a lack of knowledge, laziness, or poor design skills. Figure 1: A floating, tilted, 3D pie chart with shadow trying (poorly)to show usage statistics within a graphics application.   Of course, pie charts in and of themselves are not evil. This blog is really about designers making poor decisions for all the wrong reasons. In order for a pie chart to appear on a web page, somebody chose it over the other alternatives, and probably thought they were doing the right thing. They weren't. Using a pie chart is almost always a bad design decision. Figure 2: Pie Chart from an Oracle Reports User Guide   A pie chart does not do the job of effectively displaying information in an elegant visual form.  Being circular, they use up too much space while not allowing their labels to line up. Bar charts, line charts, and tables do a much better job. Expert designers, statisticians, and business analysts have documented their many failings, and strongly urge software and report designers not to use them. It's obvious to them that the pie chart has too many inherent defects to ever be used effectively. Figure 3: Demonstration of how comparing data between multiple pie charts is difficult.   Yet pie charts are still used frequently in today's software applications, financial reports, and websites, often on the opening page as a symbol of how the data inside is represented. In an attempt to get a flashy colorful graphic to break up boring text, designers will often settle for a pie chart that looks like pac man, a colored spinning wheel, or a 3D floating alien space ship.     Figure 4: Best use of a pie chart I've found yet.   Why is the pie chart so popular? Through its constant use and iconic representation as the classic chart, the idea persists that it must be a good choice, since everyone else is still using it. Like a virus or an urban legend, no amount of vaccine or debunking will slow down the use of pie charts, which seem to be resistant to logic and common sense. Even the new iPad from Apple showcases the pie chart as one of its options.     Figure 5: Screen shot of new iPad showcasing pie charts. Regardless of the futility in trying to rid the planet of this often used poor design choice, I now present to you my top 10 reasons why you should never, ever user a pie chart again.    Number 10 - Pie Charts Just Don't Work When Comparing Data Number 9 - You Have A Better Option: The Sorted Horizontal Bar Chart Number 8 - The Pie Chart is Always Round Number 7 - Some Genius Will Make It 3D Number 6 - Legends and Labels are Hard to Align and Read Number 5 - Nobody Has Ever Made a Critical Decision Using a Pie Chart Number 4 - It Doesn't Scale Well to More Than 2 Items Number 3 - A Pie Chart Causes Distortions and Errors Number 2 - Everyone Else Uses Them: Debunking the "Urban Legend" of Pie Charts Number 1 - Pie Charts Make You Look Stupid and Lazy  

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• Access Music from Amie Street in Boxee

  - by Mysticgeek

  One of our favorite sites for discovering new music is Amie Street. Today we take a look at the Amie Street app for Boxee that allows you to access your favorite tunes from the Boxee interface. Amie Street is a cool site that allows you to discover a lot of cool music from independent artists. What makes Amie Street unique is that most of the music starts out free, then the price goes up incrementally as its popularity grows. The Amie Street App for Boxee let’s you access music and playlists you’ve created on the site, with more features are on the way. For this example we’re using the mouse and keyboard, but of course you can also get to each section using your remote if you have one. Or you can turn your iPod touch into a Boxee remote too. Amie Street in Boxee To access the Amie Street app, launch Boxee and click on Apps from the main menu. Under the Search Sidebar type in Amie Street and select it from the results field.   Then you can add it to the My Apps section…and double-click on the icon. Click on Start to begin using it. You’ll be be presented with a Welcome screen where you can sign into your account. If you don’t have an account yet, there is also an option to go to the Amie Street site and create one. Enter in your account credentials… Now you’ll be able to access your Library, Playlists, Search for new tunes, and check out your Recommended bands and artists. Hover the pointer over an album to get a bit more info about it such as the music genre. You’ll be able to play the songs from the playlists you created on the Amie Street site. You can browse through the history of the music you’ve played as well. Not all the features of this app seem to work as you’d expect them to, and some of the features are not yet available like the Browse feature.   Conclusion At the time of this writing we weren’t able to purchase music or get additional information about the artists. As development continues on Boxee and this app, you can expect more of a full user experience and the ability to purchase music. Even though some of the features are a bit buggy or not available, if you’re a Boxee user and a fan of Amie Street, this is cool app to add to your collection. Download Boxee for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu Learn more about Amie Street on Boxee Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Amie Street Downloader Makes Purchasing Music EasierFind Free or Cheap Indie Music at Amie StreetIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Using Pandora in BoxeeGetting Started with Boxee 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 Watch World Cup Online On These Sites Speed Up Windows With ReadyBoost Awesome World Cup Soccer Calendar Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like)

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• Site Review: Facebook.com and Blockbuster.com - Navigation Schemes

  After cycling through a list of my favorite sites I decided to select Facebook.com and Blockbuster.com for this  post because I found their navigation schemes very intuitive. Facebook in my opinion took a very simplistic and minimalistic approach when they designed their site and its navigation. For example, when you login to your account you will find on the upper left hand side a generic section of the site common areas to all users like news, messages, events, photos and friends. Below this in a separate navigation menu is a list of applications that a user has elected to access through bookmarks. Finally in the upper right hand corner of the site contains links to administer the user’s account like account settings, public profile, and a link back to the users’ home page. Blockbuster on the other had tried to make site navigation a little more slick by using a menu-submenu approach to navigation where user can click on things like Rent, Buy, On Demand, Games, Stores, and Gifts and a submenu of corresponding items appears below the original menu item. In addition they also took this approach and added categorized lists of movies that they offer on the homepage so that users can click on an item like “DVD Spotlight” and a list of movies represented as actual DVD box cases appear on the user’s screen so they can scroll through the list by using left and right arrows on either side of the images displayed. Both Facebook and Blockbuster have more than one navigation groupings because their respected sites are so large and offer an absorbent amount of features. Because of this reason they have to group the main functionality of information in to logical groups based on their actions they perform and the access to specific information. For example it would not make sense for Facebook to include a particular game you like to play within your account with a section pertaining to account administration. The game link would be completely out of place and really confuse the users experience because the groupings where not logically grouped. In addition I think that Facebook users would benefit if Facebook allowed its users to specify what they want on the general navigation from within their site or at least create a section to show frequently accessed pages or favorite sections. Finally regarding additional navigation, I think blockbuster users really benefit from the submenu system of categorizing data, and if fact Blockbuster even allows them to refine the information they are looking for through the use of secondary submenu systems allowing users to really drill down in to what they are looking for to learn more on. I do not think that having more than one navigation bar on a web page is not confusing for the user. For example if you have a navigation bar at the top of your page and at the bottom will allow users to move around the website easier because they can utilize the navigation closest to where their cursor is on the page. In regards to designers forcing all the navigation in to one navigation bar, I think it would be hard for the user to fully understand what is going on based on the size and complexity of the site they are dealing with. For example Blockbuster has a ton of content that could not easily be put in to one navigation bar. From my experience with both Facebook and Blockbuster, they both do a good job with cross browser compatibility. I have had no issues with either site in IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari over the years. In addition, I do not believe that either Facebook or Blockbuster require any additional plug-in to utilize their navigation bars.

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• Attachments in Oracle BPM 11g – Create a BPM Process Instance by passing an Attachment

  - by Venugopal Mangipudi

  Problem Statement: On a recent engagement I had  a requirement where we needed to create BPM instances using a message start event. The challenge was that the instance needed to be created after polling a file location and attaching the picked up file (pdf) as an attachment to the instance. Proposed Solution: I was contemplating using process API to accomplish this,but came up with a solution which involves a BPEL process to pickup the file and send a notification to the BPM process by passing the attachment as a payload. The following are some of the brief steps that were used to build the solution: BPM Process to receive an attachment as part of the payload: The BPM Process is a very simple process which has a Message Start event that accepts the attachment as an argument and a Simple User Task that the user can use to view the attachment (as part of the OOTB attachment panel). The Input payload is based on AttachmentPayload.xsd.  The 3 key elements of the the payload are: <xsd:element name="filename" type="xsd:string"/> <xsd:element name="mimetype" type="xsd:string"/> <xsd:element name="content" type="xsd:base64Binary"/> A screenshot of the Human task data assignment that need to performed to attach the file is provided here. Once the process and the UI project (default generated UI) are deployed to the SOA server, copy the wsdl location of the process service (from EM). This WSDL would be used in the BPEL project to create the Instances in the BPM process after a file is polled. BPEL Process to Poll for File and create instances in the BPM process: For the BPEL process a File adapter was configured as a Read service (File Streaming option and keeping the Schema as Opaque). Once a location and the file pattern to poll are provided the Readservice Partner Link was wired to Invoke the BPEL Process. Also, using the BPM Process WSDL, we can create the Webservice reference and can invoke the start operation. Before we do the assignment for the Invoke operation, a global variable should be created to hold the value of the fileName of the file. The mapping to the global variable can be done on the Receive activity properties (jca.file.FileName).  So for the assign operation before we invoke the BPM process service, we can get the content of the file from the receive input variable and the fileName from the jca.file.FileName property. The mimetype needs to be hard coded to the mime-type of the file: application/pdf (I am still researching ways to derive the mime type as it is not available as part of the jca.file properties).  The screenshot of the BPEL process can be found here and the Assign activity can be found here. The project source can be found at the following location. A sample pdf file to test the project and a screenshot of the BPM Human task screen after the successful creation of the instance can be found here. References: [1] https://blogs.oracle.com/fmwinaction/entry/oracle_bpm_adding_an_attachment

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• emo-framework in android move on collision of sprites with physics

  - by KaHeL

  I'm developing my first ever game for Android where I'm still learning about using of framework. To begin I made two sprites of ball where one ball is movable by dragging and another one is just standing on it's place on load. Now I've already added the collision listener for both sprites and as tested it's working properly. Now what I need to learn is on how can I add physics on both sprites where when they collide the standing sprite will move based on the physics and bounce around the screen. It would be best if you teach it to me step by step since I'm a little slow on this. Here's my nut so far: local stage = emo.Stage(); class Okay_1 { sprite = null; spriteok = null; dragStart = false; angle = 0; // Called when the stage is loaded function onLoad() { print("Level_1 is loaded!"); // Create new sprite and load 'f1.png' sprite = emo.Sprite("f1.png"); sprite.moveCenter(stage.getWindowWidth() * 0.5, stage.getWindowHeight() * 0.5); sprite.load(); spriteok = emo.Sprite("okay.png") spriteok.setWidth(100); spriteok.setHeight(100); spriteok.load(); // Check if the coordinate (X=100, Y=100) is inside the sprite if (spriteok.contains(100, 100)) { print("contains!"); } // Does the sprite collides with the other sprite? if (spriteok.collidesWith(sprite)) { print("collides!"); } } function onMotionEvent(ev) { if (ev.getAction() == MOTION_EVENT_ACTION_DOWN) { // Moves the sprite at the position of motion event angle = sprite.getAngle(); sprite.remove(); sprite = emo.Sprite("f2.png"); sprite.load(); sprite.rotate(angle); sprite.moveCenter(ev.getX(), ev.getY()); sprite.rotate(sprite.getAngle()+10); // Check if the coordinate (X=100, Y=100) is inside the sprite if (sprite.contains(sprite.getWidth(), sprite.getHeight())) { print("contains!"); } // Does the sprite collides with the other sprite? if (sprite.collidesWith(spriteok)) { print("collides!"); } dragStart = true; }else if (ev.getAction() == MOTION_EVENT_ACTION_MOVE) { if (dragStart) { // Moves the sprite at the position of motion event sprite.moveCenter(ev.getX(), ev.getY()); sprite.rotate(sprite.getAngle()+10); // Check if the coordinate (X=100, Y=100) is inside the sprite if (sprite.contains(sprite.getWidth(), sprite.getHeight())) { print("contains!"); } // Does the sprite collides with the other sprite? if (sprite.collidesWith(spriteok)) { print("collides!"); } } }else if (ev.getAction() == MOTION_EVENT_ACTION_UP || ev.getAction() == MOTION_EVENT_ACTION_CANCEL) { if (dragStart) { // change block color to red dragStart = false; angle = sprite.getAngle(); sprite.remove(); sprite = emo.Sprite("f1.png"); sprite.load(); sprite.moveCenter(ev.getX(), ev.getY()); sprite.rotate(angle); // Check if the coordinate (X=100, Y=100) is inside the sprite if (sprite.contains(sprite.getWidth(), sprite.getHeight())) { print("contains!"); } // Does the sprite collides with the other sprite? if (sprite.collidesWith(spriteok)) { print("collides!"); } } } } // Called when the stage is disposed function onDispose() { sprite.remove(); // Remove the sprite print("Level_1 is disposed!"); } } function emo::onLoad() { emo.Stage().load(Okay_1()); }

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• What Counts For a DBA – Decisions

  - by Louis Davidson

  It’s Friday afternoon, and the lead DBA, a very talented guy, is getting ready to head out for two well-earned weeks of vacation, with his family, when this error message pops up in his inbox: Msg 211, Level 23, State 51, Line 1. Possible schema corruption. Run DBCC CHECKCATALOG. His heart sinks. It’s ten…no eight…minutes till it’s time to walk out the door. He glances around at his coworkers, competent to handle many problems, but probably not up to the challenge of fixing possible database corruption. What does he do? After a few agonizing moments of indecision, he clicks shut his laptop. He’ll just wait and see. It was unlikely to come to anything; after all, it did say “possible” schema corruption, not definite. In that moment, his fate was sealed. The start of the solution to the problem (run DBCC CHECKCATALOG) had been right there in the error message. Had he done this, or at least took two of those eight minutes to delegate the task to a coworker, then he wouldn’t have ended up spending two-thirds of an idyllic vacation (for the rest of the family, at least) dealing with a problem that got consistently worse as the weekend progressed until the entire system was down. When I told this story to a friend of mine, an opera fan, he smiled and said it described the basic plotline of almost every opera or ‘Greek Tragedy’ ever written. The particular joy in opera, he told me, isn’t the warbly voiced leading ladies, or the plump middle-aged romantic leads, or even the music. No, what packs the opera houses in Italy is the drama of characters who, by the very nature of their life-experiences and emotional baggage, make all sorts of bad choices when faced with ordinary decisions, and so move inexorably to their fate. The audience is gripped by the spectacle of exotic characters doomed by their inability to see the obvious. I confess, my personal experience with opera is limited to Bugs Bunny in “What’s Opera, Doc?” (Elmer Fudd is a great example of a bad decision maker, if ever one existed), but I was struck by my friend’s analogy. If all the DBA cubicles were a stage, I think we would hear many similarly tragic tales, played out to music: “Error handling? We write our code to never experience errors, so nah…“ “Backups failed today, but it’s okay, we’ll back up tomorrow (we’ll back up tomorrow)“ And similarly, they would leave their audience gasping, not necessarily at the beauty of the music, or poetry of the lyrics, but at the inevitable, grisly fate of the protagonists. If you choose not to use proper error handling, or if you choose to skip a backup because, hey, you haven’t had a server crash in 10 years, then inevitably, in that moment you expected to be enjoying a vacation, or a football game, with your family and friends, you will instead be sitting in front of a computer screen, paying for your poor choices. Tragedies are very much part of IT. Most of a DBA’s day to day work has limited potential to wreak havoc; paperwork, timesheets, random anonymous threats to developers, routine maintenance and whatnot. However, just occasionally, you, as a DBA, will face one of those decisions that really matter, and which has the possibility to greatly affect your future and the future of your user’s data. Make those decisions count, and you’ll avoid the tragic fate of many an operatic hero or villain.

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