Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day: 01/01/2012

Saturday, January 07, 2012

Windows Phone 7 Info Hub - All the phone info, one helpful hub [#wpdev]

Jerry Nixon @work - Mango Sample: Introducing the Info Hub

"...

Seriously, for Windows Phone developers there’s a lot of information (about the device, OS , sensors, and more) – it is scattered all over the freaking place!

Developers need an Info Hub!

Introducing the Info Hub

This is awesome!

A Windows Phone Hub is where different things come together in a single, digestible location. The Info Hub is where developer info (across classes and namespaces) is brought together.

Yes, I wrote the Info Hub – this is NOT a Microsoft product. Lots of hard lessons, MSDN, Stack Overflow, and so much more get credit for the Info Hub. Today, I am giving Info Hub to you, yes you!

Why the Info Hub?

Which OS Version is running?

How much RAM your app is using?

Which physical Phone are you on?

Is the Gyro is supported?

Is WIFI connected?

Is the theme Light or Dark?

These are all available to developers. Everything. However, knowing them, getting to them, and parsing their result can be tricky.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a single place to go for all this information? Now you see why Info Hub is handy.

...

..."

This looks like an awesome class for getting WP7 system information. The source is shared "interestingly", via codepaste.net, Windows Phone Info Hub

[Command Line Fun] Hangman as you may have never seen it...

secretGeek - Mind-boggling Demo of New Gaming Genre, aka Folder-Based Hangman, aka Fun with Recursion

"I had a crazy idea recently for a new game - a game that defines an entire new *genre* of computer game, and a new style of programming computer games. Whether or not this idea will go on to change the way all computer games are written, I will let history decide.

It's such a simple idea that I don't know how it couldn't have possibly existed earlier. It doesn't require massive graphic capabilities, no CUDA NUMA GPGPGPU and the like -- it's an idea so profoundly simple that you'll be scraping your jaw off the floor with a spoon before you finish reading this blog post.

You run the 'game' and it sets up a directory structure to represent every possible state of the game. To play the game, you inspect the current folder, look at the currently available sub folders, and choose which one to navigate into. Each sub folder you see represents the next possible state of the game.

There is no executable program running when you are playing. The game is just your act of navigating the folder structure. It's a clever form of madness!

Here's some screenshots that show me playing the game, in a command prompt.

...

..."

Folder-Based Hangman

Caution -- clicking 'GO!' puts text in the textarea which is a 32 megabyte DOS batch script. Running it creates several thousand files and folders. Knock yourself out.

(View-source may be more fun than actually running it. Though I recommend both.)

Yeah, a 32MB BATCH file! This is so old school it's new school...

The officially easiest way to play with SQL Server 2012... The SQL Server Virtual Labs

SQL Server Virtual Labs

Virtual Labs enable you to quickly evaluate and test Microsoft's newest products and technologies through a series of guided, hands-on labs that you can complete in 90 minutes or less. There is no complex setup or installation required, and you can use Virtual Labs online immediately, free.

Here's a snap of Lab "SQL Server 2012 - What's new in Manageability (SQL 147)

In this hands-on-lab you will learn about new manageability features in SQL Server 2012. You will learn how to take advantage of new features in SQL Server Management Tools, PowerShell, and features that will increase your productivity.

It's really kind of cool, you get three machines, a Domain Controller and two SQL boxes

(Note I had to change the resolution to 800x600 so I could see it on my notebook...Also note that that at the time of my writing this, the HOL guide/document is still a placeholder)

Getting these three machines to play with, all setup and configured literally only took me less than 2 minutes. Sure at the end of the lab it goes away, but if you just want to play with SQL Server 2012 a little, to kick its tires and check out some of its cool new features, there's really no easier or cheaper way to do it...

(via SQL BI - SQL Server 2012 Virtual Labs)

Microsoft Free Virtual Private Cloud Event, Jan 17th

Redmond Developer News - Microsoft To Host Private Cloud Event

"Microsoft is hosting a "private cloud" event later this month. The virtual event, Transforming IT With Microsoft Private Cloud, is slated for Tuesday, Jan.17, and is open to the public.

By "private cloud," Microsoft means datacenter infrastructure built around its Server and Tools software products, which include Windows Server, SQL Server and Windows Azure. Of course, Windows Azure is Microsoft's platform-as-a-service offering, typically thought of as a "public cloud" because of its multitenant approach of using shared infrastructure for multiple customers. However, Windows Azure is also available under a dedicated subscription plan for some Microsoft customers.

The virtual event, which requires registration, will feature speakers such as Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, Brad Anderson, corporate vice president at Microsoft's Management and Security Division, Jacky Wright, vice president for Microsoft's IT Strategic Services, and Rand Morimoto, CEO at Convergent Computing.

..."

Transforming IT with Microsoft Private Cloud

"Register Now for the virtual event
Tuesday, January 17th
8:30 AM PST | 16:30 UTC
Hear from other senior IT professionals about how cloud computing can help you gain maximum competitive advantage with minimal risk.
Learn about Microsoft cloud offerings, including private, public, and hybrid cloud models.
Experience Microsoft private cloud solutions through the Microsoft Technology Center.

...

The definition, business value, and technology benefits of the “the cloud” have been hotly debated in recent months. Most agree that cloud computing can accelerate innovation, reduce costs, and increase business agility in the market. In 2012, cloud computing will transition from hype and discussion, to part of every enterprise’s reality, and IT is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation and help business reap the benefits of cloud computing.

Join us for a virtual event designed to help you explore your cloud options. It’s your chance to interact with Microsoft experts and with IT leaders like yourself, who have been putting cloud technology to work in their own organizations. You’ll be among the first to hear the latest private cloud news from Microsoft.

...

..."

Free and virtual, so hard to beat if your interested in Private Cloud's. I'm betting we're going to be hearing allot about "Private Cloud" this year, with the coming Windows Server 8 and constant Windows Azure improvements (and how the two are meeting in the middle)...

Friday, January 06, 2012

Official Xbox Magazine Subscriber? Read this! (The DVD's are no more and how to get your three free months in recompense)

Kurt Shintaku's Blog - NEWS: 3 FREE issues for Official Xbox Magazine Subscribers… plus access to digital versions of past issues!

Are you an Official Xbox Magazine subscriber? Then you may have noticed that this month’s issue (February 2012) has something conspicuously missing.

The DemoDVD is GONE.

At first I thought that someone had ripped off my disc as my copies always came in plastic with a DVD along side the magazine inside. But alas, Future, the publisher, has the decided to stop shipping the DemoDVD. After 131 discs, that’s all she wrote. SOB!

WAIT A SECOND. I PAID TOP DOLLAR FOR THOSE DVDS.
Yeah, they know that. As a result, they are providing all subscribers with 3 extra issues of the magazine to compensate for not having DVD’s any more. Yeah, I know. Kinda weak sauce. But at least it’s something. And they’ve spent the money in another way

HOW TO GET YOUR 3 COMPLIMENTARY ISSUES OF OXM
To get your 3 complimentary issues of Official Xbox Magazine – IF YOU’RE AN EXISTING MAGAZINE SUBSCRIBER:

...

..."

If you're a XBox Mag subscriber, like I am, you'll want to read this post. In short, there's no more Demo DVD's and to recompense use, they are offering to extend our subscriptions for three months if you ask for it! It's not automatic, you have to take some steps, simple ones, but still, steps to extend your subscription.

<vent> Loosing the DVD's is okay'ish in my mind as I'm not sure we've open many in the last few months, but it does bug me that they are taking something away, something I paid extra for, and yet not automatically even throwing me a bone at least. IMHO that just smells bad and doesn't feel like great customer service. Great customer service would have been reaching out to us (they have my email) and tell us about this change and that they've automatically extended our subscriptions, that no action is required on our part. But no, it's up to us to even know about this, and then up to us to take action... hum... </vent>

Update:

Well I think I have to eat my own words, a few at least. The mag just came in the mail and in there they do make it pretty clear that this change is coming and how to get the free three months. And I'm sure it will be made clear in future editions too... Still I don't like having to know we have to redeem this offer, that we have to take this action ourselves or lose out. whine... whine... whine... :P

code.NASA - Coding opportunities for wanna-be space cowboys and girls. NASA says "We've got our OSS space app's right here..."

Wired - Webmonkey - Help NASA Code Its Way Through Space

"If you’d like to work on software projects that might one day send your code to Mars or on a deep space mission, NASA has some code for you to hack on. The Space Agency recently unveiled a new website, code.nasa.gov, to provide a home for NASA’s various open source software projects.

The new website isn’t the first open source effort from NASA, in fact the increasingly popular OpenStack cloud software stack grew out of a NASA project. If you go further back into history the Beowulf cluster — forerunner of most of today’s Linux clusters — was also a NASA project.

Unfortunately for outside developers NASA’s past open source efforts have not been very well organized, nor has there been an easy way to contribute code to the various projects. The new code website is designed to change that. According to its homepage the site’s mission is to “surface existing projects, provide a forum for discussing projects and processes, and guide internal and external groups in open development, release, and contribution.”

For the initial release the focus seems to be primarily on the first item in the list, while the forums and discussion aspects are still listed as “coming soon.”

..."

code.NASA

The Plan for Code

Today we are launching code.nasa.gov, the latest member of the open NASA web family. Through this website, we will continue, unify, and expand NASA’s open source activities. The site will serve to surface existing projects, provide a forum for discussing projects and processes, and guide internal and external groups in open development, release, and contribution.

code.NASA - Projects

That's just cool... While the cynical might say this is just our gov looking for some free help, I say it's our gov reaching out and giving us a chance to help and be part of something special, something that normally we might not have access too.

Burn a folder to CD with the free BurnDisk.exe command line utility from IntelliAdmin

IntelliAdmin - Burn a folder to a DVD from the command line

"This week we have a question from Melissa:

“Hi Steve. Got a really quick question. Previously you had an article that showed how to burn an ISO from the command line. My question is, what about a folder? I want to simply burn a folders contents to a DVD once a week. Any simple way to do this?”

Good question Melissa. I too have been looking for something like this.

Most of the DVD/CD burning software is not free.

That is not a big problem…but I would think that the simple process of copying a folder to a DVD or CD shouldn’t cost me $49!

So what to do? Have the IntelliAdmin team make one for you!

This first version we wanted to be as simple as possible, so it only does one thing: Burn a folder to a disk.

..."

I can see where something like those could come in handy, for those organizations that still have to burn CD/DVD's for internal distribution/promotion/etc (cough... not that I know of one... cough... ;)

BTW, while you're there on the download page, check out all the other utilities, free and pay, from IntelliAdmin...

SharePoint on the Internet, tips and tricks links round-up

Fear and Loathing - The Big Dummies Guide to Building a SharePoint Internet Site

"I'm about to embark on a new project, building a SharePoint based Internet site. This is new for me as all the SharePoint work I've done has been Intranet facing and I know there are some challenges with SharePoint and outward facing sites. So I called on a few MVP friends and people that have some real world experience configuring SharePoint for Internet to see if I could come up with a list of tips, tricks, and things to watch out for.

...

..."

Seems that each version of SharePoint makes it easier and more realistic for using SharePoint as an external web site. While there's a number of public sites that do, I've not seen this kind of dummy's guide for doing it before. And while I don't think this is something I'll be doing myself in the future, I did think it was interesting. Also I thought there were a number of items that would come in handy for internal deployments too...

Thursday, January 05, 2012

I'll see your PPTX and raise you an HTML5! Tips and tools for presenting with HTML5

thebeebs - HTML5 and Presentations

"If you have been to a HTML5 presentation in the last 2 years then there is no doubt that you will have seen presenters opting to use their browser as a slide deck rather than PowerPoint or KeyNote. Personally I use PowerPoint for all my talks because I’m heavily reliant on the timing and note functionality that are built into presentation mode, I prefer to Windows Key + Tab between PowerPoint and my browser if I need to show a demo (or use a dedicated switcher and two machines if the venue permits).

There are however, a number of instances where HTML5 slide decks are useful, particularly if you have lots of little HTML5 demos you want to show.

If you want to go down the HTML5 route there are a few interesting projects that might give you a quick start.

..."

Deck.js looks pretty pretty awesome. Both in what it can do and in its project site itself. If you've thought about using HTML5 to present, you might want to check Deck.js out.

The Cimbalino Windows Phone Toolkit

PedroLamas / Cimbalino-Phone-Toolkit

"Official Site/Blog - @pedrolamas

Cimbalino Windows Phone Toolkit is a set of useful and powerful items that will help you build your Silverlight applications for Windows Phone.

The Toolkit is divided in projects, regarding different Windows Phone application required capabilities:

Cimbalino.Phone.Toolkit - the base project of the toolkit, containing base MVVM services, some very usefull converters, helper classes and extension methods, and the bindable Application Bar behavior

Cimbalino.Phone.Toolkit.Camera - MVVM compatible services for camera access

Cimbalino.Phone.Toolkit.DeviceInfo - MVVM compatible services for device information access

Cimbalino.Phone.Toolkit.PhoneDialer - MVVM compatible services for phone dialer access

Cimbalino.Phone.Toolkit.UserInfo - MVVM compatible services for user information access

Note: this toolkit is only compatible with the Windows Phone SDK 7.1!

Nuget

The packages are available thru NuGet here, with the same handles as the project names (e.g., the main package is "Cimbalino.Phone.Toolkit")

..."

I hadn't seen this toolkit before seeing it mentioned today on Windows Phone Geek, Cimbalino Windows Phone Toolkit. Looks interesting...

(via Windows Phone Geek - Cimbalino Windows Phone Toolkit)

Windows 8 on a stick... A look at the "Windows To Go" feature coming with Windows 8

HP Input Output - How Windows 8 on a Portable USB Drive Simplifies Your IT Processes

Live CDs” or “Live USB Keys” are a common practice of any IT pro and admin for testing and troubleshooting purposes. Now Microsoft takes the concept of a live operating system to a whole other level. The upcoming Windows 8, slated for a mid-2012 release, lets you run a managed Windows 8 corporate image off of a USB key, which doesn’t just include your line of business (LoB) applications but also corporate data, settings, and group policy. “Windows To Go” is a PC in your pocket.

The goal is to use a provisioned Windows 8 image on unsafe PCs or hand them out to contractor’s PCs, who are required to work in a safe environment.

Will it fit your IT shop? I dug a bit deeper and tested on various machines. In this article, I give you the Why, the How, and a bit of background on this feature, so you can plan ahead.

...

Deploying Windows To Go

Setting up Windows To Go is fairly straightforward. Admins provision a USB key as they would provision a laptop or desktop by applying the customized Windows image (“wim”) to the drive. All their tools and scripts (e.g. imagex) work fine; the USB drives could then be mass produced by using a USB duplicator such as this one.

...

The Experience

Your staff will have a near seamless experience when using the portable Windows 8 USB key. There’s no special boot menu or steps end users need to perform. They use it like they would use their regular desktop, except for setting up USB boot on their home PCs (which may require additional training). All changes, such as settings, installed programs or saved files, are all saved to the USB key and even synced to the cloud (if you opt in to Windows Live syncing for Windows 8).

To prevent data leakage (i.e. accidentally saving your corporate data on the host PC that your Windows 8 To Go Stick is plugged into), the OS actually hides the host’s drive. These drives are still visible through Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc), but they don’t show up in Windows Explorer. To be on the safe side, there’s also an option to encrypt the drive using BitLocker.

While testing this feature, it surprised me that Windows 8 doesn’t go crazy installing and messing with drivers when roaming between multiple machines. I seamlessly switched between a 2007 Core 2 Duo desktop and a 2011 Core i7 laptop with just a bit of driver reinstalls at the first use – no blue screens or errors whatsoever, which definitely would have been the case with previous versions. Digging a bit deeper into Windows To Go, I learned that Windows 8 creates a unique ID specific to a machine and only loads the necessary drivers based on this ID, so you only have to go through a few seconds of driver installation when first using the portable Windows 8 workspace.

...

..."

I'm waiting for the beta of Win8 before I check this feature out, but at first glance, it looks kind of cool. I kind of dig the idea of my OS on a stick, for local data married with profiles/roaming data in the cloud. But I'll need to see it for real. Will this be a cool feature or become a "SideShow?" Only time will tell...

(via http://www.reddit.com/r/microsoft - "How Windows 8 on a Portable USB Drive Simplifies Your IT Processes": another insightful article from Sandro Villiger, this time on "Windows To Go")

What's old is new again? Building a RSS Reader for Windows 8

Visual Studio Magazine - Building a Windows 8 RSS Reader

"Back in October I covered the basics of the Windows Runtime and how to access it from .NET. Since readers have asked for more, I've decided to revisit the Windows Runtime, leveraging it to create a Windows 8 Metro-Style application.

The application is an RSS reader that utilizes WinRT. I'll go in depth on how to build the application from scratch. Along the way, you'll learn how to bind data to a form using XAML and consume an RSS feed using WinRT.

The first order of business is to download the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview. Next is the project structure setup. I opened Visual Studio 11, seen in Figure 1, and created a new C# Metro app through File-> New Project. I've named my project VSMWinRTDemo.UI.

...

..."

Remember when writing a RSS reader was the old "Hello World/Demo app?" Given then nature of Windows 8 Metro Style Apps (i.e. all network, all the time, limited local store, connected apps, etc), we might be seeing more RSS Hello's in the coming months...

Windows 8 Storage Spaces... The end to our data drive upgrade nightmares? (Or "This is not your father's Drive Extender...")

Building Windows 8 - Virtualizing storage for scale, resiliency, and efficiency

In this post, we are going to dive into a feature in the Windows 8 Developer Preview. Storage Spaces are going to dramatically improve how you manage large volumes of storage at home (and work). We’ve all tried the gamut of storage solutions—from JBOD arrays, to RAID boxes, or NAS boxes. Many of us have been using Windows Home Server Drive Extender and have been hoping for an approach architected more closely as part of NTFS and integrated with Windows more directly. In building the Windows 8 storage improvements, we set out to do just that and developed Storage Spaces. Of course, the existing solutions you already use will continue to work fine in Windows 8, but we think you will appreciate this new feature and the flexible architecture. As we talk all about consumer electronics next week, thinking about all the media we all have in photos (especially huge digital negatives) and videos, this feature is sure to come in handy. In this post, Rajeev Nagar, a group program manager on our Storage and File System team, details this new feature.

In previous posts we’ve seen folks jump to try to identify edge cases or debug the designs. We’re trying an FAQ approach at the end of this post to see if we can focus the dialog a bit :-) The FAQ also talks about the numerous opportunities to use PowerShell as a management tool for Storage Spaces.

--Steven

By my own admission, I am a digital packrat. My data collection continues to expand and includes some of my most precious memories, including irreplaceable photos and home videos of my children since their birth. For quite some time now, I have sought a dependable, expandable, and easy to use solution that maximizes utilization of my ever-growing collection of USB drives. Further, I want guarantees that my data will always be protected despite the occasional hardware failure.

Windows 8 provides a new capability called Storage Spaces enabling just that. In a nutshell, Storage Spaces allow:

Organization of physical disks into storage pools, which can be easily expanded by simply adding disks. These disks can be connected either through USB, SATA (Serial ATA), or SAS (Serial Attached SCSI). A storage pool can be composed of heterogeneous physical disks – different sized physical disks accessible via different storage interconnects.

Usage of virtual disks (also known as spaces), which behave just like physical disks for all purposes. However, spaces also have powerful new capabilities associated with them such as thin provisioning (more about that later), as well as resiliency to failures of underlying physical media.

Before we start exploring Storage Spaces in more detail, I will digress briefly to give you a little more context: some of us have used (or are still using), the Windows Home Server Drive Extender technology which was deprecated. Storage Spaces is not intended to be a feature-by-feature replacement for that specialized solution, but it does deliver on many of its core requirements. It is also a fundamental enhancement to the Windows storage platform, which starts with NTFS. Storage Spaces delivers on diverse requirements that can span deployments ranging from a single PC in the home, up to a very large-scale enterprise datacenter.

...

..."

Sounds promising. Maybe this is the "drive extender" we've been looking for... :P And it comes in every Win8 box! (I hope). I also like that it's meant to be used in the lone home PC all the way to Enterprise storage... While I'm not really sure this would be of much use on a notebook, for a desktop or home server this would be awesome. Just add a SATA drive, add it to a pool and done, more drive space auto-magically (with optional mirroring/parity features too)

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Three fun Windows Phone app's from Microsoft Research, Face Swap, Face Mask, and Sketch Match

My Kind of Phone - A Trio of Fun Apps from Microsoft Research

There are three fun Windows Phone 7 apps that have been floating around from Microsoft Research, all of these are the fantastic price of free! So lets take a look and give your new WP7 something fun to do today!

Face Swap

Have you ever thought of swapping your face with someone else’s? Face Swap provides a simple and quick way to swap the faces of people using a photo taken with others.

All you need to do is to take a photo facing the camera or select one you already have, and then shake your phone. Then let Face Swap do its magic! You’ll see the faces are automatically swapped.

...

Face Mask

Want a fun way to play with photos? Or for reasons like privacy, would you like an easy way to hide a person’s face before sharing a photo? Then Face Mask is the right app for you.

It offers a wide selection of masks/stickers to apply to your favorite photos. Face Mask is a magic tool that enhances your pictures with cool effects. Just take a picture, and add a mask either by a tap or through a shaking gesture.

...

Sketch Match

Do you want to try and practice sketching in a fun way? Do you want to search images by sketching what you’re looking for? Then Sketch Match is a great entertainment app for you!

Here are the main features: -

Get rated on your sketches of given images – Search similar images using a sketch – Keep your sketch history in the gallery – See your sketching rank in the global leaderboard

We've all heard the recent buzz around Face Swap (right?), but what about these other two, Face Mask, Sketch Match?

Face Mask

Sketch Match

Other Microsoft Research Apps (US) in the Marketplace

Onetastic way to crop images in OneNote...

Onetastic

"Have you ever clipped something from the web or pasted some image in OneNote and realized that it is not quite right? Word, PowerPoint and even Excel enjoys rich picture formatting features, while OneNote is about quickly capturing information and not much about fine detailed presentation of it. Still it wouldn't hurt to be able to crop an image you just captured to reduce the clutter and unwanted content.

Well, Onetastic now supports a new context menu item for images: Crop. Just right click on an image and select Crop at the bottom and you will be able to cut it the way you want.

..."

Onetastic - What is Onetastic?

"Onetastic is an add-in for Microsoft OneNote. It provides additional functionality that is commonly requested. I am developing it at my free time as a hobby. I love OneNote and I work as a developer at Microsoft OneNote team. Although OneNote is fantastic software, we cannot include every piece of functionality in it. In some sense, Onetastic is a way for me to prototype and play with the things that are possible with OneNote. So enjoy additional features and if you want to provide feedback, scroll to the bottom for the comment form or visit the contact page and drop me an e-mail. Check out FAQ page for some troubleshooting help.

Features
Onetastic currently has the following features:

Rotate/flip printout pages
When you print a document to OneNote, sometimes one of the pages needs to be in landscape orientation or you may have forgotten to select "Landscape" for the whole document when to printing. OneNote has a rotate/flip option on images but the same feature was left out for printout pages. Install Onetastic and you can now right click any printout page and rotate or flip it.

Cleanup printout files
When you delete a page of a multi-page printout, OneNote will display a message at the top of the page that reads: "One or more pages of the Printout below are hidden. To remove this message, delete all pages of the Printout below". This message tries to tell you that the file that backs the printout still contains the pages you deleted, so if you were to share the OneNote page with someone else, they can still extract those pages. However many users including me found the message confusing and there is no way to get rid of it even if you fully understand what it is trying to say. Onetastic provides a button on the ribbon to clean up the backing document for the printout by removing the pages you deleted from the file and remove the message.

OneCalendar
OneCalendar is a standalone tool that provides a calendar view for OneNote. It displays the pages on the date you created or last modified them. Find more info on the OneCalendar page.

..."

I'm starting to become a pretty heavy OneNote user (it's how I organize the posts/notes for the C4F blog, Kinect Gallery, TWC9, RadioTFS, family dates, house to-do's, etc., etc.) have have found many thing I love about it and a few holes. Like the image handling. While I don't currently include many images in my OneNote notebook, when I do I usually have to run them through a third party utility first, to trim/crop/etc. Looks like this extension might save me a couple steps... :)

(via OneNote Testing - Cropping screenshots in OneNote 2010)

No more Coffee Thieves with the RFID secured Keurig

Hack A Day - Securing your Keurig with RFID

"[Andrew Robinson] and his co-workers are lucky enough to have a Keurig coffee maker in their office, though they have a hard time keeping track of who owes what to the community coffee fund. Since K-Cups are more expensive than bulk coffee, [Andrew] decided that they needed a better way to log everyone’s drinking habits in order to know who needs to cough up the most cash at the end of the month.

He started by tearing down the Keurig B40, making note of the various PCBs inside while identifying the best way to go about hacking the device. The coffee maker is controlled by a PIC, and rather than try to re-engineer things from the bottom up, he left the core of the machine intact and focused on the control panel instead.

He disconnected all of the unit’s buttons from the control board, routing them through an Arduino before reconnecting them to the machine. This essentially rendered the machine inoperable unless triggered by the Arduino, giving [Andrew] control over the brewing process. He wired in an RFID reader from SparkFun, then got busy coding his security/inventory system. Now, when someone wants coffee, they merely need to swipe their office access card over the machine, which enables the use of its control panel.

...

..."

You've got to love hardware hackers. Now what he needs to do is hook up a Kinect w/ Kinect SDK to get positions and a picture (for verification purposes of course) and... and... and... LOL

You're my FavorIt code file... FavorIt adds favorites to your Visual Studio Solution

Visual Studio Gallery - FavorIt

After installing the extension, to open a FavorIt window to select "FavorIt" in "View" menu of the main Visual Studio menu

FavorIt stores a list of these files in the root directory of the current solution in a file with extension "*.favorit".

..."

Nice! This is one of those things where when you see if you think, "Where have you been my whole life..."

I know you're thinking, "Greg, didn't you blog about something like this before?" Yep, This is my Favorite… VS 2010 Favorites Menu Extension, but this is a different implementation and seeming slimmer and simpler. Not that the other isn't cool too, but having a couple choices isn't bad either. :)

Related Past Post XRef:
This is my Favorite… VS 2010 Favorites Menu Extension

Microsoft Flight, coming as a free game in Spring 2012

January 4th, 2012 – Microsoft Flight Takes to the Skies

Today, Microsoft Studios premiered Microsoft Flight, a PC game that lets players jump into the challenge, fun, and freedom of flight. Microsoft Flight will be available as a free download this spring, giving players the freedom to fly the skies over the beautiful Big Island of Hawaii, complete a variety of exciting missions, test their skills in flying challenges, or find hidden aerocaches on the island.

In Microsoft Flight, players view the world from above in a visually stunning and realistic representation of the earth, complete with region-specific weather patterns, foliage, terrain and landmarks. Players can choose to take the helm using highly rendered, accurate cockpits and authentic piloting procedures, or simply use their mouse and keyboard to control the plane in an exterior view. More experienced players can tailor the flight controls to match their skill level, making Microsoft Flight easy for beginners while still challenging for the most accomplished PC pilots.

“Many people dream of flying, but few have the chance to experience the fun of exploring the world from above. Microsoft Flight provides players the opportunity to explore that curiosity and interest,” said Joshua Howard, executive producer of Microsoft Flight. “Aviation can be incredibly technical, but we’ve taken great care to build an experience that makes taking to the skies thrilling and accessible for everyone.”

Start Exploring For Free

After downloading Microsoft Flight for free, players can jump into hours of exciting gameplay on the Big Island of Hawaii.

In addition, players who sign in to their Games for Windows – LIVE account automatically receive additional free content, including the legendary Boeing Stearman plane, supplementary missions, and access to Achievements and an Online Pilot Profile. Those looking to deepen their experience can purchase and download additional content that adds new aircraft, regions and customization options. The frequently released new content for Microsoft Flight includes daily aerocache challenges and updates that make every flight unique and fun.

...

Be the First to Experience Microsoft Flight

Today the team behind Microsoft Flight released an exclusive video that features all-new footage of Microsoft Flight. To view it, click on the 'Video' tab.

Additionally, sign-ups for beta are still open! Be among the first to try Microsoft Flight by applying for the closed beta at:
https://connect.microsoft.com/site1134/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=6087&InvitationID=FLY-BRQX-BXTB.

The voyage continues at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas from January 10 – 13. Those that attend will have the chance to play Microsoft Flight before it releases this spring at the Microsoft booth, located in the Central Hall. "

Nice! I wonder if they are going to use an in game ad model to fund it (since nothing is really free, and I'd like to see future versions/features which again are not free to build/support). And best of all, I finally have a notebook where I'll be able to play this fairly well! (WEI is 5.9 so not 7.9 but still not bad... :)

(via Microsoft News - Microsoft Flight Looks Impressive, Will Be Available For Free This Spring)

SocialCounter.Net, a .Net Library to get all those Social counts

Midnight Programmer - SocialCounter.NET - .NET Library To Get Social Stats

Few months back I have shared a code snippet on my blog which will get Twitter followers count, Facebook page like counts and Feed readers count. Now I have release a complete set of functions including Google plus counts, Facebook friends count and there will be more to come as I explore more.

You can read in more detail about the library here.

SocialCounter.Net

What is SocialCounter.NET?

SocialCounter.NET is a handy .NET library consist of bunch of functions which will let you get the social stats of most of the frequently used social sites. For example, if you want to show Twitter followers, facebook fans count of your page or feed readers count. SocialCounter.NET makes use of the freely available APIs by various social networking sites. SocialCounter.NET will makes it easy for you to get your stats with one single line of code.

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14k DLL, Tons of Stats... :)

He really makes this, the getting of these Stats, simple doesn't he?

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Mirror, mirror on the SourceForge... Announcing the SourceForge Open Source Mirror Directory

SourceForge - Introducing the SourceForge Open Source Mirror Directory

"SourceForge is proud to announce a new neighborhood on our site - the Open Source Mirror Directory. This is an extension to our existing software directory, where we’ll be mirroring projects that are not hosted on SourceForge.

Why are we doing this?

We want the SourceForge software directory to be as useful as possible. When you come here to search for a piece of software, we want you to be able to find it. And if that software isn’t hosted on SourceForge, we still want you to be able to find it. Millions of people use SourceForge every day to search for Open Source software, and we want to give them the best experience possible, even if the best answer to their search is a project hosted elsewhere.

By mirroring these projects here, we come a step closer to that reality. And, in the process, we do those projects a small favor in return, providing another way to get to their website, and being part of their software distribution mirroring network. We’re putting your software in front of more than 40 million additional potential users a month.

Yes, there are a few other places that list free software products, but a number of them offer downloads that include unwanted addons like browser toolbars, install wrappers, and various other malware. This, in turn, undermines the trust and openness that should be at the core of free software, and that hurts everyone that cares about Open Source. We want to provide a place where you can trust that you’re only getting the exact product that was provided by the original packager.

SourceForge has always been about promoting Open Source, whether those projects are developed at SourceForge or elsewhere. Obviously, we prefer that projects are hosted on SourceForge, but mostly we love Open Source, and want to be part of promoting it in whatever ways we can.

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Given a certain "download" site's recent bundling move, I find this interesting. I really would like a trusted place where I can download app's and not have to worry about a third party adding anything to the mix.

Five Online Education Resources (from colleges you may recognize)

amazedsaint's #tech journal - 5 Awesome Learning Resources For Programmers (To help you and your kids to grow the geek neurons)

Happy New Year, this is my first post in 2012. I’ll be sharing few awesome learning resources I’ve bookmarked, and will be pointing out some specific computer/programming related courses I've found interesting from these resources.

Also, thought about saving this blog post for my kids as well - instead of investing in these Child education schemes (though they are too small as of today, 2 years and 60 days respectively). Anyway, personally my new year resolution is to see as much videos from this course collections (assuming I can find some free time in between my regular job && changing my babies diapers).

1 – Khan Academy

2 – MIT Open Courseware and Videos

3 – Stanford Engineering Courses

4 – Stanford Free Online Courses

5 – University of California

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If learning something new is your resolution then these five sites might help remove one barrier to entry...

HealthVault for Windows Phone

Dr. Z's Blog - Windows Phone Apps for Microsoft HealthVault Personal Health Record Platform

Sean Nolan reported that HealthVault for Windows Phone is available to Windows Phone users. The app provides mobile access to the health information in your HealthVault account. Use it to track and manage chronic conditions, enter health data on the fly, and keep family emergency information handy. You can also check out a few special apps on Windows Phone, for example, Livescape for keeping track of nutrition, exercise and more, SkinScan for tracking moles, and Weight4Me for watching your weight.

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I'm not sure if this is the eRecord year or not, but I still think, as someone who does track some health stats manually in an XLS, pretty cool and smart. It makes it easy enough to keep up and so you do... Over time that makes a bug difference.

Getting VS/TFS up to speed with all the latest SP's and hotfixes (Think, "Fresh system, install what in what order" list)

Grant Holliday's Blog - TFS 2010: What Service Packs and Hotfixes Should I Install?

"Team Foundation Server 2010 was released in April 2010. Since then, there have been a number of important Service Packs, Cumulative Updates and hotfixes that have been made available based upon internal usage at Microsoft and customer feedback via the support organization. This blog post is an attempt at bringing together all the updates that are currently available.

Installation Guide

For a new install, you should always start with the latest version of the Installation Guide. The version on the web is newer than the version that's included on the DVD/ISO.

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I thought this a great round-up and one that I could have used a bit ago and I know I'll need in the future...

Monday, January 02, 2012

A magic means to exit Windows Explorer without using Task Manager (or command line)

Windows 7 Hacker - How To Restart Windows Explorer The Proper Way

"Often times you will run into trouble when Windows Explorer doesn’t respond or stuck for a long time. Windows Explorer should in theory automatically restart itself if it crashes. In the case when it doesn’t there are couples ways you can restart Windows Explorer properly.

The GUI User Friendly Way

Use this method assuming when you can still access the Windows menu.

Press and hold Control + Shift + Right Click on any empty area on the Windows menu, you will see this option to let you “Exit Explorer”

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Funny the stuff you learn... Not sure how useful this is since if Explorer is dead/locked up/etc I don't think it would work, but still "magic" commands like these are always cool to so off at parties... (well... um... aren't they? :P )

And darned if it didn't work as advertised! I help Shift-Control Right-Clicked on a "empty" space in the opened Start Menu on got the "Exit Explorer" option.

I know I don't have to tell you all this, but... Remember this just exits the Windows Explorer shell. Not Windows. Make sure you know how to restart Explorer before you exit it... :|

Using OpenXML SDK to generate Word documents via templates (and without Word being installed)

Application design and programming in .NET - Utility to generate Word documents from templates using Visual Studio 2010 and Open Xml 2.0 SDK

This utility generates Word documents from templates using Content controls. The utility will be enhanced later as per feedback and source code is available for download at http://worddocgenerator.codeplex.com/. It has been created in Visual Studio 2010 and uses Open Xml 2.0 SDK which can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5124.

The purpose of creating this utility was to use the Open Xml 2.0 SDK to generate Word documents based on predefined templates using minimum code changes. These documents can either be refreshable or non- refreshable. I’ll explain this difference later. Also there is no dependency that Word should be installed.

A few samples for generating Word 2010 documents have been provided. More samples can be added later as per feedback. The screenshots below display the sample template and the document generated out of this template using this utility.

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In short, generate Word documents on servers, in automated processes, etc, without Word being installed. [Insert lame "Friends don't let Friends use the Word Automation on Servers" statement here]

ESE C#/C++ Toolkit v1.2 for Microsoft Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) (ESE is the database engine that's been in the box since Windows 2000)

iiobo - ESE C#/C++ toolkit 1.2 for Microsoft Extensible Storage Engine

Introduction

Many developers are unaware that one of the most high performance, innovative and rich database engines available is built in as standard to all copies of Microsoft Windows. Microsoft have recently published the APIs and it is now available to use for free.

Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) is part of a special subset of Windows technologies known as the Trusted Computing Base (TCB). The technology is used as the primary database in such notable applications as Windows Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange, and Windows Vista.

The database technology offers very high performance, scalability to 16 terabytes of data per database file, enterprise features such as hot backup and a high degree of flexibility supporting for example transactions nested up to 7 levels.

ESE can be used to add lightweight data storage features to Windows applications and is also provides a very attractive foundation for custom database server applications where peformance is especially important.

Numerous innovative features supported by the database include:

Tagged columns
A tagged column can store multiple values. For example, you could store all the tags associated with a row of data (such as a forum post) in a single row. This denormalization can massively increase performance when the column is indexed, as it effectively removes joins from lookup operations.

Reference counted long columns
Long column values can be copied between rows in such a way that no data is actually copied, and instead the underlying data becomes shared and reference counted. This makes it possible to add a large video file, say, to multiple rows efficiently, again eliminating join requirements.

Conditional columns
A conditional column controls whether a row appears within specified indexes. This makes it possible to remove and re-surface rows in indexes on demand - for example to implement temporary delete or archival features, or as the basis for high performance garbage collection strategies.

Version and Escrow columns
A version column is incremented each time its row is modified, and escrow columns contain counts that may be safely updated outside of a transaction to improve performance (rather like interlocked memory values).

See Microsoft's low-level API reference to find out more.

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Free C++ and C# Downloads

We have made a packages of files available as a free download, which can assist with new ESE projects. Please come back and visit often as we plan to make an increasing number of files available, and hopefully eventually start an open source development effort. They are licensed using The BSD License below.

Please contact us if you are interested in licensing the full library, toolkit and sample application.

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