How to: Play or Stream a Video File for Windows Phone

Posted by jasper22 at 14:48 | Saturday, November 6, 2010

You can play media files on a Windows Phone using the MediaPlayerLauncher, or for a more customized experience, you can use the MediaElement API

Playing a video file using the MediaElement API
Before using the MediaElement API, learn about differences between the desktop version here: Media for Silverlight for Windows Phone.

To play a local video file using the MediaElement API

Open a new or existing solution in Visual Studio.
Right-click the name of your project in the Solution Explorer, click Add, and then click Existing Item.
Navigate to an existing video file and add it as Build Action type Content, in the Properties window.

The video must be encoded with a codec listed in Supported Media Codecs for Windows Phone.

In the ContentGrid section of the .xaml code, add the following line:

<MediaElement Source="test.wmv" AutoPlay="True"/>

To play a remote video file using the MediaElement API

ClearMyInbox Adds A Comprehensive Task Manager To Gmail (Invites)

Posted by jasper22 at 14:44 |

Gmail is a great communications platform for personal and professional use but its task manager is fairly simple. Google recently launched Priority Inbox, which does help prioritize email, but tasks are can be a separate tool that people use for organization. Today, the folks at Wizehive are launching ClearMyInbox, a plug-in that adds a comprehensive task manager (like Producteev) to any Gmail account. The app is in private beta but we have 1000 invites for TechCrunch readers; just use the code “tcrunch” here.

Find Photos For Your Blog In Three Easy Steps

Posted by jasper22 at 14:42 |

Let’s say you’re a cat blogger who has just come across some breaking cat news, and you’re racing against the clock to beat the other cat publications to it but need a photo. By the time you search Flickr Creative Commons for something copyright friendly, resize it in Photoshop and attribute back to the original photographer, you’ve been beaten to the the post.

Wylio, a startup out of Dayton, Tennessee, has a solution for you. Wylio basically boils down the 20 or so steps it takes to find suitable blog photos into 1) Search Flickr Creative Commons through Wylio 2) Resize/position and 3) Copy and paste the Wylio code, which includes an attribution to the original photographer, into the post.

Kinect Hardware Reviews

Posted by jasper22 at 14:41 |

The first reviews of the Kinect hardware are online, confirming what most people have suspected -- that it doesn't work very well ;-)

Kotaku:
We're going to come out and say it: Microsoft is going to release a Move-style controller for the Kinect within a year or so. We had fun with the games and the hardware, but $150 for the camera and $50 per game? Not yet. Close, but not yet.

The Good * The hardware is easy to set up, with good instructions
* The games are simple to jump in and play
* Using your hand as a cursor can be fun
* The games make you move, and tend to be a good workout
* Voice commands are useful in some circumstances
* The camera can adjust itself to put you in frame
* Games still work in low light conditions
* It knows who is playing, and uses that account
* The effect is uncanny when everything works right

The Bad
* The menu system takes much longer than just using buttons
* The hardware sometimes has issues hearing you or seeing your movement
* The games are very similar
* Without buttons, you lose control in certain parts of certain games
* It starts at $150, which feels expensive
* There is lag. It's not terrible, but it's there
* The Kinect Hub doesn't do everything, or even most things

The Ugly
* Too many games used the "take pictures during gameplay" gimmick. We get it—playing games on the Kinect makes us look stupid. It almost feels like you're playing a game so the 360 can laugh at you

ShackNews::
Sized room there's going to be some furniture rearranging. In my small apartment this translated to the rather extreme measure of turning the layout of everything in the room 90 degrees to get enough distance from the screen. But even at a friend's house we had to move chairs, sofa, and table and even then in a decent size den only just had enough space to play.

MTV:

Fedora14 'Laughlin' screenshots tour

Posted by jasper22 at 17:00 | Friday, November 5, 2010

Fedora 14 linux distribution code named 'Laughlin' is out. This new release comes with many new features and improvements for developers, system administrators and open source enthusiasts. if you are already a fedora user and you want to upgrade to this new release, please check our previous post. Find in this post screenshots for Fedora14, also installation steps for newbies(screenshots).

Styles In Silverlight: Manipulating At Runtime

Posted by jasper22 at 16:59 |

This article is part 4 of 4 in a series covering everything that I think is worth knowing about styles in Silverlight. The previous parts of the series are Styles in Silverlight: an Introduction and Styles in Silverlight – Inheritance, Precedence and Other Advanced Topics and Styles in Silverlight – Further Advanced Topics.
This part of the series explores manipulating, merging and modifying Styles at runtime. Manipulation of Styles runtime is quite an uncommon scenario and is not really documented, this article tries to cover all important aspects of it.

Modifying Styles Runtime: The IsSealed Property

Modifying the Setters of a Style can only be done if the IsSealed property is set to false. This property is false when the Style is created and is set to true once the Style is applied to any element in the visual tree. Thus it’s safe to say that Styles are a immutable in a special way: they can only be modified until applied to any element in a visual tree.

Trying to modify a Style that is sealed (IsSealed property set to true) can result in multiple errors:

If trying to modify the value of a Setter in the Style, an UnauthorizedAccessException to be thrown with the error message Attempted to perform an unauthorized operation.
If trying to add another Setter to the Style, an Exception will be thrown with the (not so informative) error message Error HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a call to a COM component.
When removing a Setter from the Style’s Setters, no exception is thrown, but the operation will have no result.

Профессиональные PSD макеты сайтов

Posted by jasper22 at 16:58 |

35 свежих профессиональных PSD макетов сайтов различной тематики. Все шаблоны вы сможете бесплатно скачать и использовать как при освоении программы Photoshop, так и в своих проектах.

Внимание: по возможности, я пытался поставить прямую ссылку для скачивания шаблона, но, в некоторых случаях, всеже необходима регистрация. При регистрации даже не потребуется проверять почтовый ящик для получения кода подтверждения. Главное — это указать, что вы будете скачивать только бесплатные шаблоны (кнопка оранжевого цвета), тогда регистрация будет бесплатной.

При скачивании некоторых шаблонов придется подождать пару секунд до начала загрузки, поэтому не спешите закрывать окно.

1. Макет сайта в формате Photoshop

Native VHD Boot: A Walkthrough of Common Scenarios

Posted by jasper22 at 16:57 |

Overview
This guide describes the functionality and usability of native VHD boot, which is a feature in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Native VHD boot enables IT professionals to use a single disk format to service virtual machines and physical client computers. This guide presents three scenarios of varying levels of complexity, and each scenario includes a series of step-by-step instructions. Collectively, these scenarios introduce you to the techniques and supporting deployment tools so that you will be able to apply native VHD boot in a useful and productive manner within your organization.

Read more: MS Download

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DocMounter, visual tool to document .NET libraries using Sandcastle

Posted by jasper22 at 16:56 |

Quick introduction
From the first versions of Visual Studio .NET, it has been possible to document your classes directly in code and create the standard documentation sections (such as the summary, remarks, parameter descriptions etc) which contain the standard tags. But for us, developers, it was quite inconvenient to fully document our classes and create such long sections as remarks directly in code. The situation is worse in the case when the documentation is created by a technical writer and the code is created by a developer; it is not quite appropriate for them to work with the same source files simultaneously.

Our company, 10Tec (http://www.10Tec.com), also encountered all these problems while working on our first .NET component, iGrid grid control that acts like a fast and easy replacement for the standard .NET DataGrid control. We decided to solve them by creating our own tool and gave it a name "DocMounter". DocMounter became a tool to separate the code from the documentation without loss of the conveniences provided by Visual Studio, and even more. Step by step the tool was being improved, and finally it has become an easy-to-use application that can be useful for other developers. The actual version implements many useful features you cannot get from the standard VS XML documentation technique.

Read more: Codeplex

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HTML5 Series: Part 6: WebSockets

Posted by jasper22 at 16:56 |

What are we going to talk about in this blog?

In this blog, I shall introduce you to the power of WebSockets – a new technology providing bidirectional, full-duplex communication channels over a single TCP socket, solving most of the issues faced in real time communication.

What’s in it for me?

I have heard a lot of people assuming that HTML5 just deals with UI components and has nothing for programmers. This article puts this apprehension to rest.

Is it really worth it?

Real-time applications such as stock trading, banking, financial applications, online gaming, gambling, etc. need very reliable and high performance systems. Imagine you playing an online poker game on Facebook and waiting for the other player to finish their turn. It is, at times, frustrating just to wait for your turn as the communication is not fast enough and even though it is nearly happening in real time, you can still feel the delay. The above example is not that critical, but imagine the delay in stock trading, banking, financial applications, currency exchanges, etc. To cite another example, the Indian currency exchange rate changes 10 to 15 times in a minute. Even a small delay could be crucial.

Anatomy of HTTP

HTTP, which is widely used, is only half duplex, i.e., the data can flow only in one direction at a given time, thereby making real time communication difficult. Also, each request and response has header information which adds to the network traffic. To find out the HTTP request and response headers, you can use an application like the Live HTTP Headers add-on in the Firefox browser and then see the results. There is a lot of unnecessary HTTP request and response header information overhead, at times, as much as 2000 bytes.

Who Choose CUBRID over MySQL

Posted by jasper22 at 16:55 |

I like to announce this kind of news! Feel happy afterwards!

This week was very busy for both CUBRID support team and CUBRID users. Before we announced that Famous Online Game and Online Word Processor in Korea started to use CUBRID a as back-end database. This week we have two more businesses that chose CUBRID over MySQL, and decided to power their entire Web sites by CUBRID. These are:

XpressEngine CMS Provider
Naver Social Apps

The Five Best Linux Live CDs

Posted by jasper22 at 16:53 |

Linux is so useful, you don't even need to install it before it gets to work. One of the popular uses of Linux is to create live media that can be used to run desktop systems or to create utility discs for all kinds of administration. Confused about the live CD that's right for you? No worries, we've got the top five live Linux CDs to get you started.

The popularity of live CDs has waned a little bit over the years, for a couple of reasons. One of the big reasons a lot of users chose a live CD, initially, was the difficulty of installation. Back in the day, Linux just wasn't as easy to install as it is now. And many users liked to use Linux on a live CD to get the hang of it before trying to dual-boot with Windows or replacing Windows altogether.

By the way, while we're talking about live CDs here, you're not restricted to CDs for most Linux live distros. Some ship full DVDs of software, and most are bootable from USB as well in case you have a netbook or other machine without a optical drive — or just happen to prefer carrying a USB key over a CD or DVD.

Selection criteria: So how were the distros chosen? You'll notice that none of the major Linux distros (a.k.a. Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Slackware, etc.) appear in the list, though most of the picks are derived from one of the major distros. Though Ubuntu, Linux Mint, et al. have perfectly serviceable live CDs or DVDs, they're not really designed for long-term use as a live distro. I'm sure some folks do use them that way, but they're the cream of the crop for installing to a hard drive — not for live media.

When choosing the best of the many live media Linux distros out there, I looked for distributions that are actively being developed, that serve a specific and useful purpose, and should be useful to a fairly wide audience. To that end, I picked from end user distros as well as utility distributions that are used for specific tasks.

A Brute Force Way to Compress a Database

Posted by jasper22 at 16:52 |

There are a handful of scripts out there to compress all of of the objects in your SQL 2008 database using Row, Page or a smart combination of both compression types. This is not one of those scripts.

This script is written to compress all tables in a database without wasting any time on analysis. I have implemented the script as a stored procedure that takes 2 paramaters. The first is whether to use row or page compression and the second is how long to run for in minutes. The intent would be to call the stored procedure from a job on a regular basis to run for x minutes compressing everything it can then shut down and wait for the next run time and do the same. Eventually all objects in the database will be compressed.

I would recommend against running this without any analysis against any database. That said, it can be a handy tool for compressing an ODS or even an EDW. It would also be a great way to pick up “the rest of the tables” in a database where proper analysis has been done and a particular compression type has been applied to a small set of tables.

Here is the script:

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.sp_dba_compress_user_objects @compression_type nvarchar(20) = 'PAGE', @minutes_to_run int = 1440

DECLARE @schema_name sysname,
@object_name sysname,
@sql_string nvarchar(max),
@row_count int,
@start_time datetime,
@index_type_desc nvarchar(60)

SELECT @row_count = 1,
@start_time = GETDATE(),
@compression_type = UPPER(@compression_type)

IF @compression_type NOT IN ('ROW', 'PAGE')
RAISERROR('@compression_type must be ''ROW'' or ''PAGE''', 16, 1)

WHILE @row_count > 0 AND DATEADD(mi, @minutes_to_run, @start_time) > GETDATE()
BEGIN
SELECT TOP 1
@schema_name = OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(p.object_id, DB_ID()),
@object_name = OBJECT_NAME(p.object_id, DB_ID()),
@index_type_desc = ips.index_type_desc
FROM sys.partitions p
INNER JOIN sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, 'LIMITED') ips
ON p.object_id = ips.object_id
AND p.index_id = ips.index_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.columns c
ON p.object_id = c.object_id
AND c.is_sparse = 1
WHERE p.data_compression_desc = 'NONE'
AND OBJECTPROPERTY(p.object_id, 'IsUserTable') = 1
AND OBJECTPROPERTY(c.object_id, 'IsMSShipped') = 0
AND c.object_id IS NULL
ORDER BY ips.page_count

SELECT @row_count = @@ROWCOUNT

Understanding Browser-Based Silverlight Project Architecture

Posted by jasper22 at 16:51 |

In the unlikely event that you don’t know about Silverlight, it’s a web-based technology that allows designers and developers to deliver Rich Internet Applications (RIA) embedded in web pages. It is a cross-browser, cross-platform RIA framework, which provides a consistent user experience everywhere it runs. The architecture of Silverlight projects, and the deployment of a stripped-down version of the .NET CLR, are what make this possible, and what I’ll be look at here.

In this article, I will give you an overview of how web browsers render Silverlight applications, and identify which are the main components involved in the execution of said Silverlight applications. Armed with this information, you’ll have a much better sense of what’s going on inside your Silverlight projects, and will better able to troubleshoot basic rendering problems.

To start, let’s create a sample Silverlight application; open the Visual Studio 2010 IDE, go to the File > New Project menu item, and pick the Silverlight Application template from the available options.

A Potentially Informative Article about the WPF Engine

Posted by jasper22 at 16:50 |

Preface

This article overviews WPF's graphics capabilities, including two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes, fonts, and animations. The writer would like to stress that this article is for beginners. The reason why I am writing this article is because WPF integrates drawing and animation features that were previously available only in special libraries (such as Microsoft GDI+ and DirectX). The graphics system in WPF is designed for your computer graphics hardware to reduce the load on the CPU, and in many cases, speeds up graphics rendering. So taking WPF for what it is, it is actually a remarkable technology that, apparently, can read and assess what your machine's graphics capabilities are via the machine's video interface card. Moreover, WPF graphics uses a resolution-independent measurement in units to make applications more uniform and portable across devices. For instance, the size properties of elements in WPF are measured in resolution-independent pixels, where one pixel represents 1/96 of an inch--but this depends on the computer's DPI (dots per inch) setting. The graphics engine determines the correct pixel count so that all users see elements of the same size on all devices. To emphasize the importance of graphics sketching, I also introduce the Microsoft Blend SDK version 4.

Graphic elements are rendered on screen using a vector-based system in which calculations determine how to size and scale each element in order to prevent an oversized element against a regular-size foreground. The basic 2-D shapes are Lines, Rectangles, and Ellipses. WPF, as we all know, has controls that can be used to create custom shapes or curves. Brushes can be used to fill an element with solid colors, complex patterns, images, and even videos.

Tell Me What XAML is

In Windows Presentation Foundation, the screens are built with a dialect of XML called Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML). XML is data centric and is viewed as a technology in its own right. Data on certain web pages or a Web Service request (response message) is in the form of an XML document. Any data (any alphanumeric character) is tagged, as the rules for XML are very strict. That is, controls, images, or any item that is marked up on a page via HTML comprises the presentation content. Alphabetic letters or numbers are separately tagged via XML. The idea is to separate the presentation content on a web page from the data. This outputs a more dazzling-looking page. XAML is more declarative than imperative.

CodeRush Templates – Creation Basics

Posted by jasper22 at 16:50 |

Even the simplest of CodeRush Templates (one without any TextCommands or StringProviders) can be really useful. Such a template expands exactly the same every time it’s used.

In this post we’re going to create one such simple template.

Our scenario is one in which you are building a web page and you’d like to quickly generate some simple but authentic looking text to flesh the page out with.

This scenario is typically dealt with using lorem ipsum text. This text is typically generated by a computer to the specification of a user. It has similar flow to most Latin based languages and makes for realistic looking content, when mocking out a page.

We’re going to make a template which delivers the same paragraph of Lorem Ipsum each time it’s invoked. You’ll be able to type “lorem<space>” and have it expand to the pre-calculated piece of text.

So let’s not hold back any more… let’s get on with it.

Which language?

Open up the Templates options page and change the language dropdown to HTML (Details here).
We’re doing this because it’s rarely useful to inject quantities of “lorem Ipsum” text into VB or C# code. Instead we restrict the template to only expand into files understood to contain html.

Create a Custom folder

Right click in the template tree and choose “New Root Category”
Name the Folder “Custom”
We always recommend creating your new templates within a top-level folder of your own (typically called ‘Custom’). The main reason for doing this is for organisational purposes. By placing your templates under a single top level folder, you can export them as a group.

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How to modify NHibernate mappings at Runtime

Posted by jasper22 at 16:49 |

When you have the need to modify or change your NHibernate mappings at runtime the obvious choice would be to go for one of a new generation mapping engine (like ConfORM, Fluent NHibernate, or anything else), but what about you plain good old XML mapping files you still use?

Changing them was a nightmare before NHibernate 3...I gave up on the task when I thought I had to pre-load the XML files, parse them, modify them in memory and the feed them to NHibernate; these operations seemed too long and too ‘hacky’ for a task that should have been simple.

NHibernate 3 comes to the rescue and offers a nice couple of events you can use to inspect and change your mapping before and after they are accepted and bound to be used by the configuration object:

BeforeBindMapping(object sender, BindMappingEventArgs) - this event is raised before the mapping is actually tied to the configuration object, you can inspect the mapping properties and change their values. Once the mapping is bound it becomes immutable.
AfterBindMapping(object sender, BindMappingEventArgs) - this event is raised after the mapping is bound to the configuration object, you can use it to inspect the metadata and get some information.
Using these events you have a chance to alter the mapping (acting directly with the NHibernate metadata structures) at runtime, whatever is the mapping method you chosen; in fact these events will be fired when you add the mappings to the NHibernate Configuration object via configuration.AddAssembly(), configuration.AddDeserializedMapping() and so on...

All the information are encapsulated in the BindMappingEventArgs class, which is something like this:

public class BindMappingEventArgs : EventArgs
{

public NHibernate.Dialect.Dialect Dialect { get; private set; }
public string FileName { get; private set; }
public HbmMapping Mapping { get; private set; }

}

Jurassic

Posted by jasper22 at 10:10 |

What is Jurassic?

Jurassic is an implementation of the ECMAScript language and runtime. It aims to provide the best performing and most standards-compliant implementation of JavaScript for .NET. Jurassic is not intended for end-users; instead it is intended to be integrated into .NET programs. If you are the author of a .NET program, you can use Jurassic to compile and execute JavaScript code.

Features

Supports all ECMAScript 3 and ECMAScript 5 functionality
Simple yet powerful API
Compiles JavaScript into .NET bytecode (CIL); not an interpreter
Deployed as a single .NET assembly (no native code)
Basic support for integrated debugging within Visual Studio
Uses light-weight code generation, so generated code is fully garbage collected

Read more: Codeplex

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2GB free disk space for all development projects

Posted by jasper22 at 09:39 |

We are happy to announce that we are able to increase the free disk space for all development projects up to 2 GB. We believe that free code hosting based on GIT and SVN is a center piece of the further development of bettercodes.org. This should be the foundation for a new range of services. Our goal is to offer a comprehensive software development environment which is open, integrated, technology-neutral, and free of charge.

All repositories are hosted with Amazon Web Service . They provide very high durability of your data and nothing will get lost. We connected this hosting solution with our community web server so you can login into your repositories with your credentials. Your changes are handed over to the S3 on a secure connection. We are also working on a ssh key based authentication for svn and git.

Man-in-the-Middle – how it works

Posted by jasper22 at 09:34 |

Hi everyone, a few instructors here at InfoSec Institute have put together a short presentation and video tutorial on how to perform a Man-In-The-Middle (MitM) attack. You can view the presentation that diagrams out how a MitM attack works:

http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/man-in-the-middle-demystified/

You can also view a how-to video tutorial that you can follow along with if you have a few virtual machines to play with on your local network:

http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/video-man-in-the-middle-howto/

In a pen test, it is important to learn how to do these attacks to intercept server to server communication, server to client communication, etc.

Coming soon we will demonstrate how to perform a MitM attack against SSL encrypted sessions.

Red more: InfoSec

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How to Crash Any Version of Internet Explorer with Simple HTML

Posted by jasper22 at 11:55 | Thursday, November 4, 2010

We’ve already shown you why so many geeks hate Internet Explorer, and since it’s almost Halloween we figured we’d show you something really scary—how to crash any version of Internet Explorer with nothing more than HTML and CSS.

Note: we’re really not trying to bash on Internet Explorer—in fact, the latest beta version is really quite nice, but we figured we’d have some fun with this bug, and maybe somebody at Microsoft will fix this problem before the final release.

How to Crash Internet Explorer with HTML
Simply open up notepad or another text editor, paste in the following, and save it as SomeFilename.html.

<html><head>
<style type="text/css">
#a {
margin:0 10px 10px;
}

#b {
width:100%;
}

</style>
<title>IE Crasher</title>
</head>
<body>
<table><tr><td>
<div id="a">
<form id="b">
<input type="text" name="test"/>
</div>
</td><td width="1"></td></tr></table>
</body></html>

Do You Know About These Windows Calculator Easter Eggs?

Posted by jasper22 at 11:13 |

Everybody loves a good Easter egg, and here’s a couple of oddities we found in the Windows calculator that we thought we’d share. How many of them did you already know about?

You’ll probably notice that some of these aren’t technically Easter eggs—in fact, one of them is a bug. But since they are indeed unexpected behavior, keep reading for the fun.

Grab a Slice of Windows Calculator Pie
Copy this word to the clipboard, and then paste it into the Calculator window (with Ctrl+V).

Fun!

Of course, this really doesn’t work the way you’d think—in fact, if you just hit the “p” key it’ll do the same thing, since that’s the accelerator key for the pi symbol.

Calculate Equations with the Clipboard
You can also use the clipboard trick to copy an equation into the calculator and process it. For instance, copy this to the clipboard:

328 * 4 + 25 =

Then paste it in with Ctrl+V.

Decode a Laptop BIOS Password Using a Simple Checksum Script

Posted by jasper22 at 10:41 |

Whether you bought it on eBay and it came pre-locked or you set your BIOS password so long ago you can't remember it, for most laptop manufacturers resetting your BIOS password is as easy as decoding the checksum error code.

The photograph above is a snapshot of a laptop BIOS error screen. On most laptops you get an error to the effect of "System Disabled" or a variation, and a checksum error. This alpha-numeric error can be decoded into the BIOS password. For example if the error code above belonged to a Hewlett Packard or Compaq laptop running a Phoenix BIOS, the error code 07437 is actually a checksum for BIOS password tpr. All you need is the checksum code and a simple script to translate it from a checksum error into the actual BIOS password.

Build a Killer Customized Arch Linux Installation (and Learn All About Linux in the Process)

Posted by jasper22 at 10:38 |

Popular Linux distributions like Ubuntu are great, but they don't always provide the power and customizability you're looking for after you've gotten comfortable with Linux. That's where Arch Linux comes in, helping you create a personal, killer Linux distro.

Here's why you may want to use Arch Linux, followed by how to set it up.

Who's Arch Linux Good For?
Linux is popular for a number of reasons, but high on that list is the fact that, with Linux, you have a lot more power to tweak your OS to your liking. You also have the opportunity to learn more about the way computers and operating systems work. While Ubuntu certainly fits this bill (when compared with Windows or Mac OS), intermediate Linux users may be itching to try something new. Arch Linux is a great distribution for intermediate users looking to dig into Linux a bit more and essentially roll your own fast, stable, super-personalized distro.

The Linux credit card -- with Tux on the front and everything

Posted by jasper22 at 10:38 |

I couldn't make this up if I tried: The Linux Foundation is offering a platinum rewards Visa credit card. There is no annual fee, a low introductory APR -- in fact, it's a normal credit card with Tux on the front.

Every purchase you make with the Linux credit card will kick back a percentage to the Linux Foundation. The Foundation also gets $50 for every activation! In the words of the Foundation, this card is for "those who want to support the Linux Foundation's activities while expressing their commitment to Linux. The Linux credit card is an easy way for anyone to contribute to the growth of Linux and identify themselves as supporters of the community by carrying Tux in their pocket."

Read more: DownloadSquad

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Google Web Clipboard feeds Chrome freshly synced copypasta

Posted by jasper22 at 23:03 | Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Google's newest official Chrome extension is sure to get a lot of use in the coming months. Assuming you've got extension-syncing enabled in a capable version of the browser, Web Clipboard brings a fully synced clipboard to Chrome, and it's pretty nice for an initial -- though somewhat buggy -- release. It copies both plain text and HTML within any Chrome tab, and secures the data on Google servers. Each item copied remains saved for 30 days, or until you clear the clipboard contents through the extension's drop-down menu.

The extension just released today, but Google warns of two major known issues: Gmail isn't yet supported, and neither are pages which contain frames. I've also run into a spot of trouble in getting items copied with the extension to paste inside Google Docs.

Read more: DownloadSquad

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The Linux distro timeline is an extensive family tree of all things Linux

Posted by jasper22 at 23:00 |

Most commercial products run a fairly set course; you get Microsoft Office 1.5, then 1.6, 3.0, 4.0, all the way up to office 2010 (For Windows, at least). It's a fairly orderly progression, with version numbers rising over time – pretty easy to follow.

Open-source projects are a different beast, however. When enough developers don't like the direction a project is going, they sometimes just create a fork and go on developing their own product. Sometimes projects have to fork for legal reasons, and sometimes it's a business decision, too.

Read more: DownloadSquad

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15+ Google Chrome extensions for better privacy control

Posted by jasper22 at 22:59 |

If there's one thing all the recent Firesheep shenanigans have taught us, it's that we all need to take Web security and privacy a bit more seriously. Though you might not be aware, Google Chrome includes a number of privacy-minded features out-of-the-box. From blocking plug-ins, JavaScript, and the transmission of your location via its content settings to disabling prefetching, custom error messages, and usage statistics.

But for the truly privacy-minded, those features may not go far enough. Fortunately, there's no shortage of excellent options in the Chrome Extensions Gallery that can help provide you with better control over your browsing privacy.

Now, on to the extensions -- we'll get the big two out of the way first.

Read more: DownloadSquad

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ISPConfig - Hosting Control Panel Software (Open Source)

Posted by jasper22 at 10:23 |

ISPConfig 3

Manage multiple servers from one controlpanel
Web server management
Mail server management (with virtual mail users)
DNS server management (BIND and MyDNS)
Administrator, reseller and client login
Configuration mirroring and clusters
Open Source software (BSD license)

Silverlight: Lighting up the client

Posted by jasper22 at 10:01 | Tuesday, November 2, 2010

At PDC last week, Scott Guthrie showed some of the great apps developers have already built for Windows Phone 7 using Silverlight, as well as the rich set of development tools we have just delivered for building applications with it. If you missed PDC, you can view the keynote and other sessions at microsoftpdc.com (in Silverlight of course!).

Following PDC there have been questions surrounding Silverlight's future, and I wanted to apologize for our role in causing some confusion around that. Earlier today, Bob Muglia posted some clarifications about this topic and the very important strategic role Silverlight has going forward.

Silverlight enables developers to build fantastic media experiences and business applications for the client, and applications for phone and embedded devices. Organizations are already using Silverlight 4 as an incredibly powerful enterprise business application platform (complete with powerful data-binding support, networking, WCF, printing, MVVM pattern separation, and more), which together with the tooling improvements we've made in Visual Studio and Expression Blend, enables developers to build great enterprise applications with high productivity and results.

Inserting images into MS Access file using OLEDB

Posted by jasper22 at 10:00 |

Design the form as above with a OpenFileDialog contol, 3 Labels, 3 TextBoxes, 11 buttons.

PictureBox1 Properties:

BorderStyle=Fixed3D; SizeMode=StrechImage

Note that OpenFileDialog control appears below the form(not on the form), which can be used for browsing an image.

Introduction:

Inorder to use OleDb Connection include the namespace: 'using System.Data.OleDb'

For accesing records from M.S.Access-2003 file we use 'Jet' driver,

And for accesing records from M.S.Access-2007 file we use 'Ace' driver.

As we want to insert images into the msaccess, first we have to create a table in the m.s.access file, we can use the data type 'ole object' for storing the image.

In this application, we will search a record by taking input from the InputBox. For this we have to add reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic.

Adding a Reference:

Goto Project Menu->Add Reference -> select 'Microsoft.VisualBasic' from .NET tab.

Inorder to use this we have to include the namespace: 'using Microsoft.VisualBasic'

Converting image into binary data:

We can't store an image directly into the database. For this we have two solutions:
To store the location of the image in the database
Converting the image into binary data and insert that binary data into database and convert that back to image while retrieving the records.
If we store the location of an image in the database, and suppose if that image is deleted or moved from that location, we will face problems while retrieving the records. So it is better to convert image into binary data and insert that binary data into database and convert that back to image while retrieving records.

We can convert an image into binary data using 1. FileStream (or) 2. MemoryStream

1. FileStream uses file location to convert an image into binary data which we may/may not provide during updation of a record.

Ex:

FileStream fs = new FileStream(openFileDialog1.FileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
byte[] photo_aray = new byte[fs.Length];
fs.Read(photo_aray, 0, photo_aray.Length);

How to localize The Title in a WP7 Silverlight application

Posted by jasper22 at 09:59 |

If you’re working on a Silverlight application for WP7 and you want to localize non only the resources inside the application, but also the Title name of your application you could find some useful information on this post that make your app easily uploaded and certified on the App Hub (the marketplace).

The result of you localization process will be as the following, in the emulator (you can test this on it) you’ll see the same app using different names for English, Italian, French, Spanish and German.

How to localize

Basically to localize the Title you have to create a resource-only project for the following languages in C++, build and add the assemblies to the root of you Silverlight project. To do this you have to use Visual C++ compiler (unfortunately the Visual C++ Express can’t be used, but if haven’t a full copy of Visual Studio 2010 you can download a trial).

I’ve create a simple Silverlight project and the resource-only C++ projects that you can download and easily personalize.

You can see in following picture how it looks like:

The WP7SilverlightLocalizedSample depends on some C++ projects. You hadn’t to rename the C++, projects, they must be named exactly as they are, instead you can add you personal Silverlight project to the Solution.

Every C++ project have some post-built rules that copy the resource assemblies in the root of the solution. In the Silverlight project I have “add a link” to the generated assemblies and I’ve set the properties for these seven files as “Content” in the Build Actions.

If you now want to localize the names of your application in different languages, first start from the AppResLib, and right-click on the AppResLib.rc file , than view code, and you’ll enter in the resource file.

The AppResLib is the assembly for the language-neutral.

WCF WebHttp Service returns HTTP 415 “Unsupported Media Type”

Posted by jasper22 at 09:57 |

When I was developing my demos for PDC10 I ran into a problem. I was using some new HTTP activities for the next release of WF and invoking a simple console application with an HTTP POST. For some strange reason I ran into the following error

Request
POST http://127.0.0.1:8080/Marketing HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/xml
Host: 127.0.0.1:8080
Content-Length: 91
Expect: 100-continue
Connection: Keep-Alive

<string xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/
">Phyllis Harris</string>
Response
HTTP/1.1 415 Cannot process the message because the content type
'application/xml' was not the expected type 'text/xml; charset=utf-8'.
Content-Length: 0
Server: Microsoft-HTTPAPI/2.0
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2010 20:00:06 GMT
I have done a fair bit of development with WCF but I had never seen this error message before. I was so sure that my code was correct I immediately assumed it must be a problem with our new HttpPost activity so first I decided to check with our test team to see if they had a working test. When I found out they did we began looking more closely and I found… a copy paste bug.

That’s right, in my hosting code it turned out that I was using ServiceHost instead of WebServiceHost to host my WCF WebHttp service. In most cases when service host detects that your service (or it’s configuration) is somehow invalid it throws an exception when you try to open the host. For some strange reason (bug?) in this case it does not throw an exception but happily starts accepting requests and throwing 415 when you invoke it.

XHTML in IE9

Posted by jasper22 at 09:57 |

IE9 is the first version of Internet Explorer to natively support XHTML. For those not familiar, XHTML is the XML serialization of HTML. Among other benefits, XHTML can help maintain cleaner markup due to its fail-fast nature in the face of parsing errors. You can see IE9 running XHTML for yourself by visiting examples on the Internet Explorer Test Drive site like SVG Helicopter, IE Beatz, and SVG-oids. In this post I’ll share a few details about XHTML and IE9's support for it.

What version of XHTML does IE9 support?

The short answer is XHTML5 (defined by the HTML5 specification). This means that new HTML5 elements such as <canvas>, <audio>, and <video> are all supported by XHTML in IE9. In fact, all of the same HTML (and SVG) elements and attributes that can be used in HTML in IE9 can also be used in XHTML in IE9. Moreover IE9 continues to follow "Same Markup" principles with XHTML just like with other parts of the platform, meaning most of the same XHTML markup should "just work" in the same way across IE9, Firefox, Chrome, etc.

How do I use XHTML in IE9?

Adding a <!DOCTYPE> pointing to an XHTML DTD does NOT influence whether a page is treated as HTML or XHTML. XHTML support for files on the web can only be triggered by the MIME type of the response from the web server. This is true both in IE9 and other browsers. This MIME type should be "application/xhtml+xml" (though you can technically use any supported XML mime type). Local files with ".xht" or ".xhtml" extensions will also be opened as XHTML.

Silverlight HTML Frame

Posted by jasper22 at 09:41 |

Project Description
This project contains a Silverlight component to show Html Content in a Silverlight Application hosting in Browser.

**Delete the following note before publishing **

This project is currently in setup mode and only available to project coordinators and developers. Once you have finished setting up your project you can publish it to make it available to all CodePlex visitors.

There are three requirements before you publish:

- Edit this page to provide information about your project
- Upload the initial source code for your project
- Add your project license

Read more: Codeplex

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C# Language Specification for Asynchronous Functions

Posted by jasper22 at 14:10 | Monday, November 1, 2010

The C# Language Specification for Asynchronous Functions provides a complete description of the new C# language features for asynchronous development, which are available in the Visual Studio Async CTP.

Read more: MS Download

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Whitepaper: Asynchrony in .NET

Posted by jasper22 at 14:09 |

Overview
Get an overview of the new asynchronous features being developed for C#, Visual Basic and the .NET Framework.

Read more: MS Download

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Automatic postback does not fire for TextBox control

Posted by jasper22 at 14:09 |

I recently come across an interesting request which read like this:

A simple webapplication with one Textbox and one label. The Textbox has Autopostback=”true” and has an event listener attached to the TextChanged event. In the TextChanged event the label’s text is set to the text in the textbox. A javascript function “formats” the value of the textbox on the keyUp event. The ”problem” The postback is not fired for a textbox if a javascript function sets the value of the textbox in the keyDown or keyUp event. This only occurs in IE (IE 8, IE 7, FF 3.6.8, Opera 10.6 and Chrome 5 has been tested). No javascript errors or any kind of error message, the postback is just not being fired.

And here’s a sample page to reproduce the problem:

<%@ Page Language="vb" AutoEventWireup="false" ValidateRequest="false" EnableEventValidation="false" EnableViewStateMac="false" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
<title></title>

if (value.length > 0 && value.charAt(0) != '$')
value = '$' + value;

obj.value = value; // This line causes the autopostback not to fire. This only happens if the value of the input
// is set in the keyup or keydown event and only in IE.
}
</script>

</head>
<body>

IronPythonIDE

Posted by jasper22 at 14:08 |

Project Description
Iron Python Ide that you can embed in your project to enable scripting support

The primary objective of this project is to provide a minimal basic functional IronPython integration for scripting extensibility into your projects.
Most projects that enable scripting would simply suffice with just access to:
A syntax highlighter.
An API for common types of dialogs
An Intellisense Provider
A debugger:
Console Access to the debugged code.
A Variable Watcher.
A Call Stack.
A Visual Designer. Very low priority for me but still.

These things will be implemented in the same order.
Basically it aims to be same as VBA for your applications except that it is going to use IronPython!

The reason the project is LGPL is because this depends highly on code written for SharpDevelop (The BEST ide for IronPython development). Also I can use other cool OSI Libraries as well. If you believe that this project can be MIT even if it uses GPLed Libraries be sure to guide me :)

Read more: Codeplex

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MSDN URL Cheatsheet

Posted by jasper22 at 14:08 |

This cheatsheet covers MSDN URL conventions as of September 2010. The general form of an MSDN URL is:

Locales
Locales are specified in the URL as “/xx-yy/”. Currently supported locales:

Locale	Language (Region/Country)
ar-sa	Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
cs-cz	Czech (Czech Republic)
de-de	German (Germany)
en-us	English (United States)
es-es	Spanish (Spain)
fr-fr	French (France)
it-it	Italian (Italy)
ja-jp	Japanese (Japan)
ko-kr	Korean (Korea)
pt-br	Portuguese (Brazil)
ru-ru	Russian (Russia)
tr-tr	Turkish (Turkey)
zh-cn	Chinese (People’s Republic of China)
zh-tw	Chinese (Taiwan)

Product Families / Product Family Versions
Product Family Versions are specified in the URL as “(v=family.version)”, for example “(v=exchg.65)”. Some common Product Families include:

Family	Product Family Name	Versions Available
vs

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Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

Posted by jasper22 at 14:06 |

Overview
Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 will install new assemblies that contain the ASP.NET and Windows Forms Chart Controls.

Distribution of MSChart.exe: Use of MSChart.exe is subject to the license terms included in the “MSChart.exe” download file. Those terms do not include rights to distribute MSChart.exe. If you wish to distribute MSChart.exe with your programs, you must:

Download the above “MSChart.exe Supplemental Redist License.rtf” and review the enclosed Microsoft Software Supplemental License Terms for Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 with additional use terms for Distributable Code (Supplemental Terms)
Print and retain a copy of the Supplemental Terms for your records
By Downloading and Printing the Supplemental Terms located in the MSChart.exe Redist License.rtf, you (i) acknowledge you have read the Supplemental Terms, and (ii) agree to the terms as stated in the Supplemental Terms. If you do not accept them, you do not have any rights under these Supplemental Terms.

Read more: MS Download

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Execute T-SQL Code Only on Certain Days

Posted by jasper22 at 14:05 |

I always clean up my databases manually on Sundays. But at times, if need be, I clean it up on other days as well. However I never do it on Saturdays, since the traffic is usually the most on that day.

So here’s a simple tip using IF-ELSE to prevent my T-SQL code from running on Saturday’s, even if I run the code manually

IF DATEPART(dw,GETDATE())<> 7 -- 7 is Saturday, 1 is Sunday
BEGIN
-- YOUR T-SQL Code Comes Here
SELECT GETDATE()
RETURN
END
ELSE
BEGIN
PRINT '*** Sorry This Code will Not Execute on Saturdays'
END
OUTPUT

SQL SERVER – Minimum Maximum Memory – Server Memory Options

Posted by jasper22 at 14:04 |

I was recently reading about SQL Server Memory Options over here. While reading this one line really caught my attention is minimum value allowed for maximum memory options.

The default setting for min server memory is 0, and the default setting for max server memory is 2147483647. The minimum amount of memory you can specify for max server memory is 16 megabytes (MB).

This was very interesting to me as I was not familiar with this details. This was one interesting detail for me. In reality I will never set up my max server memory to 16 MB, it will be right out suicide for the server looking at current systems capabilities.

Read more: Journey to SQL Authority with Pinal Dave

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Subclassing Silverlight Controls

Posted by jasper22 at 14:04 |

While I think everyone understands that fact that you can subclass Silverlight controls in code, I think the concept of subclassing code + xaml is less well understood.

First off, why would you want to subclass code + xaml? In most cases, you don’t need to. This is really more of an edge case scenerio. I have a control which is a Subclassed treeview. These treeview needs a number of Hierarchical data templates that work together to make the tree work. These are defined in xaml and I would like to re-use them, not to mention some Code-Behind that makes the tree do things like drag and drop.

Now, I could of course do the same thing in code but I also have some binding and other things in the xaml that already works and I would like to re-use the same binding and everything else. So what do I do?

Here is the trick: Create a new UserControl. Then change the base type from Usercontrol to whatever the type is that you want to subclass. Change the subclass in the codebehind as well. You can now drop this into other pages or UserControls multiple times. Suddenly you have reused your XAML!

Why is Microsoft suddenly so hot for HTML5?

Posted by jasper22 at 14:02 |

Microsoft has quite aggressively touted HTML5 during PDC 2010, which wraps up today. It's seemingly inconsistent with Microsoft's revamped cloud strategy, which is very much about taking propriety software to the cloud. How then does Microsoft's platform-independent HTML5 approach reconcile with extending the proprietary Office-Windows-Windows Server applications stack into the cloud ?

Microsoft product managers talk about customer benefits, and perhaps some of them truly believe that's the reason for supporting HTML5. But there is a more fundamental reason: Apple. Some readers will cock back their heads and ask: "WTF?" Apple also is a big HTML5 supporter. Maybe, but the two companies have very different reasons, with similar objective: Gaining developer and user momentum for their mobile platforms.

For Apple, Adobe's Flash is a competitive threat. If Apple allows Flash free reign on the iOS app store, some developers would use Adobe's technology to create applications. Flash already is used to develop Web applications and has a huge developer following. As such, giving a centimeter to Flash would give it a kilometer. Apple doesn't want a competing development platform on iOS. HTML5 is a better choice, allowing Apple to support standards and its own platforms while beating back a potential competitor.

HANDY DEBUGGING TOOLS

Posted by jasper22 at 11:01 |

…so I’m reading Windows Internals book by Mark Russonovich on the Kindle on a plane coming back from Dallas (and now out in the parking lot at the office waiting for the carpeting to be laid down) and there’s a grid of tools that are handy in debugging and other technical tasks.

Tool

Image name

Origin

Startup Program viewer

Autoruns

Sysinternals

Access Check

Accesschk

Sysinternals

Dependency Walker

Depends

DLL List