Friday, February 26, 2010

The New AMD Phenom II Processors



Unbeatable multi-core value with AMD Phenom II processors. They deliver The Ultimate Visual Experience™ for high definition entertainment, advanced multitasking performance, and power-saving innovations for smaller, cooler machines that are energy efficient.

Features & Benefits
Smoother faster experience, even when running complex software application with native Multi-Core Technology

Scaled performance to conserve PC power with HyperTransport 3.0 Technology

Hear your music, not your PC with AMD PowerNow!™ Technology (Cool'n'Quiet Technology)

Prevent the spread of certain viruses and strengthen your network integrity with Enhanced Virus Protection (EVP)

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Stack Overflow

In software, a stack overflow occurs when too much memory is used on the call stack. In many programming languages, the call stack contains a limited amount of memory, usually determined at the start of the program. The size of the call stack depends on many factors, including the programming language, machine architecture, multi-threading, and amount of available memory. When too much memory is used on the call stack the stack is said to overflow, typically resulting in a program crash.[1] This class of software bug is usually caused by one of two types of programming errors.

The most common cause of stack overflows is excessively deep or infinite recursion. Languages like Scheme, which implement tail-call optimization, allow infinite recursion of a specific sort — tail recursion — to occur without stack overflow. This works because tail-recursion calls do not take up additional stack space.

How Does a CPU Work?



The CPU sits in the motherboard as the central unit. All of the other hardware components and programs installed on the system must go through the CPU before their function can be carried out. The CPU's job function is important and enormous in scale.

When a function, program or piece of data is called, the CPU pulls it from Random Access Memory (RAM) and any other hardware in order to process it. The CPU then reads the instructions associated to the task before sending it back to RAM. The instructions that the CPU receives pertains to calculations and data transportation. The system bus is the trail that the data must travel before it is executed. It is the CPU's job to make sure that the data is guided through the system bus to be processed by the CPU and then on to the next step. With every stop on the system bus, the CPU makes sure that the data gets there in the correct order.

There are two types of data that the CPU handles at a given time. One is the data that needs to be processed. The other is the program code that is connected to the data. The programming code is a list of instructions on how the data should be handled and processed in a language that the CPU can interpret. The programming code also contains the route of the system bus for the data. Since other components of the computer may not understand the programming code, it is the CPU's job to interpret the instructions to those components. The CPU continues to handle both pieces of data until it is no longer needed, which is when the program is closed or the hardware is no longer accessed.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

DPI and PPI Explained



PPI
This is the number of pixels per inch in your image. This will affect the print size of your photo and will affect the quality of the output. The way that it will affect the quality of the output is that if there are too few pixels per inch, then the pixels will be very large and you will get a very pixelated image (jagged edges, you will actually see individual pixels, not good). You'll hear various different numbers thrown around as to what an acceptable PPI for a print-out is. A lot of this will depend on the size of the print. This is because you look at large prints from a further distance than a small print, so you can get away with a lower PPI and still have the image look fine.

Anyway, all that PPI does is affect the print size of the image. There are 2 ways that you can change the print size, by resampling or by not resampling. Not resampling is what you normally want to do, this will only change the size of the print out. Using resampling will actually change the number of pixels (and thus the file size) in order to match the print size. So for instance, if you don't resample, changing the PPI setting will increase or decrease the print size (it will increase if you drop the PPI, it will decrease if you increase the PPI). With resampling, if you change the PPI, you will loose pixels (if you set the PPI to a lower value) or you will have pixels created (if you increase the PPI). Creating pixels is a bad idea, they get generated by the computer and the results aren't usually that good. Throwing away pixels is fine as long as you won't need the bigger size later (that's why it's usually a good idea to save the original large file).

DPI
DPI only refers to the printer. Every pixel output is made up of different coloured inks (usually 4 or 6 colours, depending on your printer). Because of the small number of colours, the printer needs to be able to mix these inks to make up all the colours of the image. So each pixel of the image is created by a series of tiny dots (you could think of them as sub-pixels). Generally, the higher the DPI, the better the tonality of the image, colours should look better and blends between colours should be smoother. You'll also use more ink and the print job will be slower. You might want to try setting your printer to a lower DPI to save ink and speed up the job, see if you notice any difference in quality. The lowest setting where you don't see any loss in quality should be the best one to use.

So a 1200 dpi printer uses 1200 dots of ink in every inch to make up the colours. If you were printing a 300 PPI image, then every pixel would be made up of 16 smaller ink dots (1200 DPI x 1200 DPI / 300 PPI x 300 PPI). A lower DPI would have fewer ink dots making up each pixel, which would make the colour look worse. A higher DPI would have more ink dots for each pixel and should give more accurate colour (especially under close examination).

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008



Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R2 (Microsoft RDS) provides a wide range of support to make it easy to develop robot applications. Microsoft RDS includes a programming model that makes it easy to develop asynchronous, state-driven applications. Microsoft RDS provides a common programming framework that can be applied to support a wide variety of robots, enabling code and skill transfer.

Microsoft RDS includes a lightweight asynchronous services-oriented runtime, a set of visual authoring and simulation tools, as well as templates, tutorials, and sample code to help you get started.

New Simulation Sensors and Tutorials

This release contains a completely new set of Simulation Tutorials that illustrate how to use the new simulated sensors and also how to place multiple robots into the simulation environment simultaneously. Several new sensors are available, including Compass, GPS, Brightness and Sonar. A rudimentary robot, without a 3D mesh, is used to show the basic principles of simulation. The robot can be placed into rich scenes such as the Apartment model.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Whats the difference between mp3 and mp4?

MP3 is an MPEG standard used especially for digitally transmitting music over the Internet.

A file containing a song or other audio data that is encoded using this standard: The band released its latest single as an MP3 on the Internet.

MP4 refers to: MPEG-4 Part 14 or *.mp4, is a file format (a so called container) specified as a part of the ISO/IEC MPEG-4 international standard. It is used to store media types defined by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group, and can be used to store other media types as well. It is, or will be, typically used to store data in files, though it will be used in data streams and possibly in other ways.

Maemo OS in Nokia N900



Maemo is a software platform developed by Nokia for smartphones and Internet Tablets. It is based on the Debian Linux distribution.

The platform comprises the Maemo operating system and the Maemo SDK.

Maemo is mostly based on open source code, and has been developed by Maemo Devices within Nokia in collaboration with many open source projects such as the Linux kernel, Debian, and GNOME. Maemo is based on Debian GNU/Linux and draws much of its GUI, frameworks, and libraries from the GNOME project. It uses the Matchbox window manager, and the GTK-based Hildon as its GUI and application framework.

The UI in Maemo 4 is similar to many handheld interfaces, and features a "Home" screen, which acts as a central point from which all applications and settings are accessed. The Home Screen is divided into areas for launching applications, a menu bar, and a large customisable area that can display information such as an RSS reader, Internet radio player, and Google search box.

The Maemo 5 UI is slightly different: The menu bar and info area are consolidated to the top of the display, and the four desktops can be customized with shortcuts and widgets.

At the Mobile World Congress in February 2010, it was announced that the Maemo project would be merging with Moblin to create the MeeGo mobile software platform.

Windows Phone




Windows Phone, formerly called Windows Mobile, is a compact mobile operating system developed by Microsoft, and designed for use in smartphones and mobile devices.

The current version is called 'Windows Phone Classic 6.5'. It is based on the Windows CE 5.2 kernel, and features a suite of basic applications developed using the Microsoft Windows API. It is designed to be somewhat similar to desktop versions of Windows, feature-wise and aesthetically. Additionally, third-party software development is available for Windows Phone Classic, and software can be purchased via the Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

Friday, February 19, 2010

21 SEO Tips That I Found on a Web Site

1. Commit yourself to the process.
2. Be patient.
3. Ask a lot of questions when hiring an SEO company.
4. Become a student of SEO.
5. Have web analytics in place at the start.
6. Build a great web site.
7. Include a site map page.
8. Make SEO-friendly URLs.
9. Do keyword research at the start of the project.
10. Open up a PPC account.
11. Use a unique and relevant title and meta description on every page.
12. Write for users first.
13. Create great, unique content.
14. Use your keywords as anchor text when linking internally.
15. Build links intelligently.
16. Use press releases wisely.
17. Start a blog and participate with other related blogs.
18. Use social media marketing wisely.
19. Take advantage of local search opportunities.
20. Take advantage of the tools the search engines give you.
21. Diversify your traffic sources.

What is "SOA"

In computing, a service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a flexible set of design principles used during the phases of systems development and integration. A deployed SOA-based architecture will provide a loosely-integrated suite of services that can be used within multiple business domains.

SOA also generally provides a way for consumers of services, such as web-based applications, to be aware of available SOA-based services. For example, several disparate departments within a company may develop and deploy SOA services in different implementation languages; their respective clients will benefit from a well understood, well defined interface to access them. XML is commonly used for interfacing with SOA services, though this is not required.

SOA defines how to integrate widely disparate applications for a world that is Web based and uses multiple implementation platforms. Rather than defining an API, SOA defines the interface in terms of protocols and functionality. An endpoint is the entry point for such an SOA implementation.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website



Favicon
link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico" />
And if you have an iPhone favicon:
link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/favicon.png" />

Titles And Meta Data

Cross-Browser Checks
Just when you think your design looks great, pixel perfect, you check it in IE and see that everything is broken. It’s important that your website works across browsers.

Proofread
Read everything. Even if you’ve already read it, read it again. Get someone else to read it.

Links
Don’t just assume all your links work. Click on them. You may often forget to add “http://” to links to external websites. Make sure your logo links to the home page, a common convention.

Functionality Check
Test everything thoroughly. If you have a contact form, test it and copy yourself so that you can see what comes through. Get others to test your website, and not just family and friends but the website’s target market.

Graceful Degradation
Your website should work with JavaScript turned off. Users often have JavaScript turned off for security, so you should be prepared for this. You can easily turn off JavaScript in Firefox.

Validation
You should aim for a 100% valid website. That said, it isn’t the end of the world if your website doesn’t validate, but it’s important to know the reasons why it doesn’t so that you can fix any nasty errors.

RSS Link
If your website has a blog or newsreel, you should have an RSS feed that users can subscribe to. Users should be able to easily find your RSS feed: the common convention is to put a small RSS icon in the browser’s address bar.

Put this code between your head tags.
link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Site or RSS title" href="link-to-feed" />

Analytics
Installing some sort of analytics tool is important for measuring statistics to see how your website performs and how successful your conversion rates are. Track daily unique hits, monthly page views and browser statistics, all useful data to start tracking from day 1.

Sitemap
Adding a sitemap.xml file to your root directory allows the major search engines to easily index your website. The file points crawlers to all the pages on your website. XML-Sitemaps automatically creates a sitemap.xml file for you.

Defensive Design
The most commonly overlooked defensive design element is the 404 page. If a user requests a page that doesn’t exist, your 404 page is displayed. This may happen for a variety of reasons, including another website linking to a page that doesn’t exist.

Optimize
You’ll want to configure your website for optimal performance. You should do this on an ongoing basis after launch, but you can take a few simple steps before launch, too.

Back Up
If your website runs off a database, you need a back-up strategy. Or else, the day will come when you regret not having one. If you use WordPress, install Wordpress Database Backup, which you can set up to automatically email you backups.

Print Style Sheet
If a user wants to print a page from your website, chances are she or he wants only the main content and not the navigation or extra design elements. That’s why it is a good idea to create a print-specific style sheet.
link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="print.css" media="print"

Email Newsletter Design: Guidelines And Examples



Signing Up For A Newsletter

Tell Users What They Will Get
Reward Users for Signing Up
Preview Your Newsletter
Keep Questions Short and Simple

Content Of Newsletter

Write an Attractive Subject Line
Provide Useful and Well-Written Content
Make Content Relevant to Your Readers
Offer Exclusive Deals

Newsletter Design

Keep it Simple and Straightforward
Make Good Use of Images, Numbers and Colors
Tailor the Layout to the Content
Be Creative
Be Wary of Table of Contents
Be Wary of Ads

Tools And Features

Make it easy for users to unsubscribe, but don’t remind them how to all the time. Also, tell users how they can change their email address, view the newsletter in a Web browser and quickly share the newsletter with their friends. Other useful features include: “Follow us on Twitter,” “Be Our Fan on Facebook” and “Watch Us on YouTube.”

After Sending Out The Newsletter

After sending out your newsletter, use an email marketing tool and list manager to track, monitor and measure the performance of your campaigns. Many email service providers are out there, such as MailChimp, iContact, Mailvivo, Mailing Manager and Atomic Email Tracker. The majority of them also provide templates to help you create your newsletter if you don’t want to get your hands dirty.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Liferay Portal


Liferay Portal is an enterprise web platform for building business solutions that deliver immediate results and long-term value. Get the benefits of packaged applications and an enterprise application framework in a single solution.

Liferay Portal ships with broad product capabilities to provide immediate return on investment:

Content & Document Management with Microsoft Office® integration
Web Publishing and Shared Workspaces
Enterprise Collaboration
Social Networking and Mashups
Enterprise Portals and Identity Management

Compatible with your IT

Runs on your existing application servers, databases and operating systems to eliminate new spending on infrastructure.

Flexible Scripting Support

Runs PHP, Ruby, Python, Grails and other lightweight scripting technologies within a robust Java framework

Compliant with Standards

Adheres to open standards for content, portlets, web services and front-end technologies to reduce development cost

Top 5 PHP Frameworks


Akelos

The Akelos PHP Framework is a web application development platform based on the MVC (Model View Controller) design pattern. Based on good practices, it allows you to:

Write views using Ajax easily
Control requests and responses through a controller
Manage internationalized applications
Communicate models and the database using simple conventions.

Your Akelos based applications can run on most shared hosting service providers since Akelos only requires that PHP be available at the server. This means that the Akelos PHP Framework is the ideal candidate for distributing standalone web applications as it does not require any non-standard PHP configuration to run.

ash.MVC

ash.MVC is a simple PHP programming framework proposed by Ash. The basic approach of this framework is to adopt a middle-path approach between faster development cycle, and a robust and scalable application. Moreover, the schemes proposed in the framework stick to the line of simplicity all along.

While encountering this new framework, ash.MVC, one may wonder with various questions, like:

Do we need a framework at the first place?
Why do we need another framework when there are numerous ones available?
Why do we use MVC design pattern for this framework?

All the above questions have been addressed in the FAQs page.

The framework revolves round the concept of MVC design pattern as expected. There are four elements: 1. web browser, 2. Controller, 3. Model, and 4. View. These four elements interact with one another to establish a data-flow that is initiated by HTTP Request from client browser, and is successfully terminated with the receipt of HTTP Response at the client browser.

CakePHP

CakePHP is a rapid development framework for PHP which uses commonly known design patterns like ActiveRecord, Association Data Mapping, Front Controller and MVC. Our primary goal is to provide a structured framework that enables PHP users at all levels to rapidly develop robust web applications, without any loss to flexibility.

CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter is an Application Development Framework - a toolkit - for people who build web sites using PHP. Its goal is to enable you to develop projects much faster than you could if you were writing code from scratch, by providing a rich set of libraries for commonly needed tasks, as well as a simple interface and logical structure to access these libraries. CodeIgniter lets you creatively focus on your project by minimizing the amount of code needed for a given task.

Please read the Introduction section of the User Guide to learn the broad concepts behind CodeIgniter, then read the Getting Started page.

DIY

It is an open-source lightweight web application framework based on object-oriented PHP 5, MySQL, and XSLT. It is fully object-oriented and designed following the MVC architecture and REST design principles. The idea behind it is not to reinvent the wheel but instead to combine existing and proven technologies in a convenient and effective way.

The DIY Framework is a compact class library which can be extended and included by user applications. It puts few restrictions and gives flexibility. In contrast, most of the current web application frameworks are designed inside-out: they define the general structure and only allow your application to fit within their constraints.
For the same reasons, the framework does not contain plugins, scaffolding, routing, AJAX, widgets or other buzzwords. We see them as helper applications at best, not as parts of the framework itself. No frills are included (hence the name) " just precise control over your sever-side code.
Because of the framework's nature, the following descriptions of architecture and file structure should be seen merely as guidelines for applications. They are also used in the included sample files.

Using the DIY Framework, not a single line of SQL or HTML needs to be hardcoded, constructed "by hand" or mixed with the PHP code. Almost no URL hacking or chopping is needed. The UTF-8 encoding is used exclusively.

The framework exploits PHP 5's features such as more advanced object model, type hinting and class autoloading. HTTP request, response and session data is accessed via Java servlet-style OO wrappers. The framework has been straightforwardly ported to Java.

It has been successfully used in several small to medium production solutions and is currently used to build a large community-based social website.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Rails Web Application Framework


Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Control pattern.

This pattern splits the view (also called the presentation) into "dumb" templates that are primarily responsible for inserting pre-built data in between HTML tags. The model contains the "smart" domain objects (such as Account, Product, Person, Post) that holds all the business logic and knows how to persist themselves to a database. The controller handles the incoming requests (such as Save New Account, Update Product, Show Post) by manipulating the model and directing data to the view.

In Rails, the model is handled by what‘s called an object-relational mapping layer entitled Active Record. This layer allows you to present the data from database rows as objects and embellish these data objects with business logic methods.

The controller and view are handled by the Action Pack, which handles both layers by its two parts: Action View and Action Controller. These two layers are bundled in a single package due to their heavy interdependence. This is unlike the relationship between the Active Record and Action Pack that is much more separate. Each of these packages can be used independently outside of Rails.

Visual F# at Microsoft Research


F# brings you type safe, succinct, efficient and expressive functional programming language on the .NET platform. It is a simple and pragmatic language, and has particular strengths in data-oriented programming, parallel I/O programming, parallel CPU programming, scripting and algorithmic development. It lets you access a huge .NET library and tools base and comes with a strong set of Visual Studio development tools. F# combines the advantages of typed functional programming with a high-quality, well-supported modern runtime system.

This combination has been so successful that the language is now a first class language in Visual Studio 2010, and can also be used on Mac, Linux and other platforms. F# originates from Microsoft Research, Cambridge, and the MSR F# team

Monday, February 15, 2010

DirectX 11 on Windows 7


DirectX 11, the next generation of graphics technology, arrives with Windows 7. This is great news for players as many of the newest Windows games will take full advantage of this technology to create more immersive and detailed worlds and experiences. Game developers will utilize new features to create rich worlds, realistic characters, and more fluid gameplay.

DirectX 11 features include:

Tessellation – Tessellation is implemented on the GPU to calculate a smoother curved surface resulting in more graphically detailed images, including more lifelike characters in the gaming worlds that you explore.

Multi-Threading – The ability to scale across multi-core CPUs will enable developers to take greater advantage of the power within multi-core CPUs. This results in faster framerates for games, while still supporting the increased visual detailing.

DirectCompute – Developers can utilize the power of discrete graphics cards to accelerate both gaming and non-gaming applications. This improves graphics, while also enabling players to accelerate everyday tasks, like video editing, on their Windows 7 PC.

Why SOA'ize MSMQ with WCF

Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) is an incredibly robust, time-tested messaging server that fulfills a critical role in any communications platform. What it doesn’t do however, is play well in a service oriented world. MSMQ applications and their developers must be fully aware of the queue’s they’re communicating with and hand-craft messages to be sent on the wire. In a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) world, we don’t think in terms of message in queues, we think in terms of business operations allowing developers to focus on what’s most important…business operations. Centering application development around these operations enables us to be flexible with not only with our implementations, but also our communication partners. In addition, the extensibility mechanisms provided when we integrate MSMQ with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) are extremely powerful and enable MSMQ developers to do things they never could before.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Microsoft Office 2010 Engineering Says about "Evolving the Backstage View"


One of the things we’ve been working on has been improving the navigation to and from the Backstage. Because the Backstage view covers up the document, we created the Back button mechanism to allow you to navigate back to your document. Unfortunately, this design had some issues that we’ve been working through – it led to some confusion around what the “X” (close) button in the top right corner should do, set incorrect expectations around what “Back” actually implies (does it work like in the browser?), and was not an easy target to hit.

An important change has been to keep the Ribbon tabs visible and usable while you’re in the Backstage view. This makes the Backstage work much more like any other Ribbon tab – a metaphor people are already familiar with. In addition to clicking on the document thumbnail or pressing ESC, you can simply click on any one of the other Ribbon tabs to get back to your document and use those commands, just as you would switch between other Ribbon tabs.

NHibernate For .NET

NHibernate is an Object-relational mapping (ORM) solution for the Microsoft .NET platform: it provides a framework for mapping an object-oriented domain model to a traditional relational database. Its purpose is to relieve the developer from a significant portion of relational data persistence-related programming tasks.

NHibernate is free as open source software that is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

NHibernate is a port of the popular Java O/R mapper Hibernate to .NET. Version 1.0 mirrored the feature set of Hibernate 2.1, as well as a number of features from Hibernate 3.

NHibernate 3.0 will be the first version to use .Net 3.5.

NHibernate's primary feature is mapping from .NET classes to database tables (and from CLR data types to SQL data types). NHibernate also provides data query and retrieval facilities. NHibernate generates the SQL commands and relieves the developer from manual data set handling and object conversion, keeping the application portable to most SQL databases, with database portability delivered at very little performance overhead.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Windows Azure


Azure Services Platform is an application platform in the cloud that allows applications to be hosted and run at Microsoft datacenters. It provides a cloud operating system called Windows Azure that serves as a runtime for the applications and provides a set of services that allows development, management and hosting of applications off-premises.All Azure Services and applications built using them run on top of Windows Azure.

Windows Azure has three core components: Compute, Storage and Fabric. As the names suggest, Compute provides computation environment with Web Role and Worker Role while Storage focuses on providing scalable storage (Blobs, Tables, Queue) for large scale needs.

The hosting environment of Windows Azure is called the Fabric Controller - which pools individual systems into a network that automatically manages resources, load balancing, geo-replication and application lifecycle without requiring the hosted apps to explicitly deal with those requirements. In addition, it also provides other services that most applications require — such as the Windows Azure Storage Service that provides applications with the capability to store unstructured data such as binary large objects, queues and non-relational tables. Applications can also use other services that are a part of the Azure Services Platform.

Why Did They Introducing HQL (Hibernate Query Language)

It is possible to use native SQL queries directly with a Hibernate-based persistence layer, it is more efficient to use HQL instead.

  • HQL allows representing SQL queries in object-oriented terms—by using objects and properties of objects.

  • Instead of returning plain data, HQL queries return the query result(s) in the form of object(s)/tuples of object(s) that are ready to be accessed, operated upon, and manipulated programmatically. This approach does away with the routine task of creating and populating objects from scratch with the "resultset" retrieved from database queried.

  • HQL fully supports polymorphic queries. That is, along with the object to be returned as a query result, all child objects (objects of subclasses) of the given object shall be returned.

  • HQL is easy to learn and implement, as its syntax and features are very similar to SQL.

  • HQL contains many advance features such as pagination, fetch join with dynamic profiling, and so forth, as compared to SQL.

  • HQL facilitates writing database-type independent queries that are converted to the native SQL dialect of the underlying database at runtime. This approach helps tap the extra features the native SQL query provides, without using a non-standard native SQL query.
  • LINQ to SQL


    LINQ to SQL allows .NET developers to write “queries” in their .NET language of choice to retrieve and manipulate data from a SQL Server database. In a general sense, LINQ to SQL allows us to create SQL queries in our preferred .NET language syntax and work with a strongly types collection of objects as a return result. We can make changes to these objects then save changes back to the database.


    Example Query

    HookedOnLINQ db =
    new HookedOnLINQ("Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=HookedOnLINQ");

    var q = from c in db.Contact
    where c.DateOfBirth.AddYears(35) > DateTime.Now
    orderby c.DateOfBirth descending
    select c;

    foreach(var c in q)
    Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} b.{2}",
    c.FirstName.Trim(),
    c.LastName.Trim(),c.DateOfBirth.ToString("dd-MMM-yyyy"));

    Output:
    Mack Kamph b.17-Sep-1977
    Armando Valdes b.09-Dec-1973

    The moment we entered the foreach loop (that’s important, the SQL was only executed the first time we requested data, until then the query was just kept in-memory as an expression, this is called Deferred Execution), the following SQL Statement was formulated by LINQ and executed on the server.

    SELECT [t0].[ContactId], [t0].[FirstName], [t0].[LastName], [t0].[DateOfBirth],[t0].[Phone], [t0].[Email], [t0].[State]
    FROM [Contact] AS [t0]
    WHERE DATEADD(YEAR, @p0, [t0].[DateOfBirth]) > @p1
    ORDER BY [t0].[DateOfBirth] DESC

    Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Benefits


    SharePoint 2010 is the business collaboration platform that enables you to connect and empower people through formal and informal business communities, within the enterprise and beyond, and to manage content throughout the information lifecycle. Whether deployed on-premises or as hosted services, SharePoint’s integrated capabilities are enhanced by search technologies and enable you to rapidly respond to changing business needs by making data-driven decisions and by deploying customized solutions quickly and securely. The consolidation of collaboration solutions onto SharePoint 2010 makes it possible to cut costs by lowering training and maintenance expenses and increasing IT productivity, all within a governable and compliant platform.

    Zend Framework and Products


    Increasing the Maturity of the PHP Application Lifecycle

    Zend products have already been used to develop and run thousands of PHP business-critical applications worldwide. They enable developers to deliver high-quality code faster to production; and help system administrators ensure high performance and availability. Zend products are all fully supported by Zend.


    Send Server - A Web Application Server for business-critical PHP applications deployed on a small number of servers.

    Zend Platform - A Web Application Server for business-critical PHP applications that are deployed on a large number of servers, require session clustering or job queuing.

    Zend Studio - A professional-grade development environment that includes PHP code editing, debugging, profiling, unit testing, diagnostics and more.

    Zend Guard - Source code encoding and obfuscation for protection from unlicensed use and redistribution.

    Friday, February 12, 2010

    Windows 7 Rich User Interfaces - Aero


    Aero Peek showing the desktop.Windows Aero is revised in Windows 7, with several UI changes, a more touch-friendly UI and many new visual effects and features:

    Aero Peek - hovering over a taskbar icon shows thumbnail of that program. Hovering over the thumbnail shows a preview of that program in full view. Aero Peek also refers to the "Show desktop" button to the far right of the new taskbar.

    Aero Shake - Shaking (quickly dragging back and forth) a window minimizes all other windows. Shaking it again brings them back.

    Aero Snap - Clicking and dragging a window to the right or left side of the desktop causes the window to fill the respective half of the screen. Snapping a window to the top of the desktop maximizes it. Resizing a window to touch the top or bottom edge of the screen maximizes the window to full height, whilst retaining its width; these windows will then slide horizontally if moved by the title bar, or can be pulled off, which returns the window to its original height.

    Touch UI - Windows Aero was revised to be more touch-friendly. For example, the title bar buttons are now slightly bigger.

    Maximized windows remain glass instead of becoming opaque.

    When hovering over the taskbar button for a running program, the button glows the dominant RGB color of its icon. Also, a shiny effect follows the mouse as it is moved across the icon of active programs.

    When moving windows, the CPU and GPU load is reduced by limiting the frame rate that the Aero part is rendered in order to provide better performance to applications and programs.

    The blur effect in Aero on Windows 7 now has more even blending than Aero in Windows Vista.

    It is now possible to turn off window shadows.

    Expression Blend 3 and Silverlight


    Expression Blend 3 enables your ideas from concept to completion.

    Expression Blend 3 revolutionizes the speed and efficiency with which you can take your ideas from concept to completion on the Silverlight and .NET platforms. Concepts and ideas can live through the project end-to-end, reducing redundancy, enhancing creativity and delivering compelling desktop and/or rich internet applications that exceed your client’s expectations for design, interactivity and usability.

    Using Expression Blend and industry standard .NET technologies such as Silverlight, WPF, XAML, C#, VB, developers can deliver desktop and/or rich internet applications that are stable, scalable, accessible, reliable and secure.

    The rapid end-to-end workflow available through Expression Blend, Visual Studio and the Microsoft platform enables the delivery of compelling results to your customers time after time, while still maximizing the investments you’ve already made in other tools and technologies you employ today.

    Microsoft Expression Studio 3


    Microsoft Expression Studio opens up a new world of creative possibility. Its professional design tools give you the freedom to make your vision real—whether you’re designing for standards-based Web sites, rich desktop experiences, or Silverlight. Includes Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Design and Expression Encoder.


    Microsoft Expression Studio 3 Includes:
    Expression Blend™ 3
    SketchFlow
    Expression Web 3
    Expression Design 3
    Expression Encoder 3


    Top 10 Features

    1. SketchFlow revolutionizes the speed and efficiency with which you can prototype a vision for an application
    2. Enable interactivity without writing code
    3. Accelerate the design of effective UI with design time data
    4. Streamlined design and development workflow
    5. Professional tools save time creating Web sites that deliver results
    6. Advanced visual diagnostics speed debugging
    7. Rich standards-based Web design with the essential technologies
    8. Prepare video for Silverlight
    9. Team Foundation Server Integration
    10. Adobe Photoshop Importer

    Windows Presentation Foundation

    The WPF development platform is built on a core programming system, which is extended to support a broad set of application development features, including the application model itself, resources, controls, graphics, layout, data binding, documents, and security.

    Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) supplies the following tools as part of the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK).


    isXPS Conformance Tool
    WPF Performance Suite
    XAMLPad


    WPF) provides a rich library of controls that support user interface (UI) development, document viewing, and serializing digital ink.

    Monday, February 8, 2010

    The Future With CSS3

    1. Border Radius

    -moz-border-radius-topleft: 20px;
    -moz-border-radius-topright: 20px;
    -moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 10px;
    -moz-border-radius-bottomright: 10px;
    -webkit-border-top-right-radius: 20px;
    -webkit-border-top-left-radius: 20px;
    -webkit-border-bottom-left-radius: 10px;
    -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius: 10px;


    2. Border Image

    border-bottom-right-image
    border-bottom-image
    border-bottom-left-image
    border-left-image
    border-top-left-image
    border-top-image
    border-top-right-image
    border-right-image


    3. Box Shadow and Text Shadow

    -webkit-box-shadow: 10px 10px 25px #ccc;
    -moz-box-shadow: 10px 10px 25px #ccc;
    box-shadow: 10px 10px 25px #ccc;


    4. Easy Transparency with RGBA and Opacity

    rgba(200, 54, 54, 0.5);
    /* example: */
    background: rgba(200, 54, 54, 0.5);
    /* or */
    color: rgba(200, 54, 54, 0.5);

    Principles Of Effective Web Design

    1. Don’t make users think
    2. Don’t squander users’ patience
    3. Manage to focus users’ attention
    4. Strive for feature exposure
    5. Make use of effective writing
    6. Strive for simplicity
    7. Don’t be afraid of the white space
    8. Communicate effectively with a “visible language”
    9. Conventions are our friends
    10. Test early, test often

    10 Mistakes In Logo Design

    1. Designed By An Amateur
    2. Relies On Trends
    3. Uses Raster Images
    4. Contains Stock Art
    5. Designing For Yourself Rather Than The Client
    6. Overly Complex
    7. Relies On Color For Its Effect
    8. Poor Choice Of Font
    9. Has Too Many Fonts
    10. Copies Others