Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Have a look at the following investigation by Sam Allen.....
"The author developed a program to snapshot memory usage per process every 3 seconds on Windows. Using this he recorded 3 hours of memory usage for five different browsers under real-world usage scenarios: Safari 3.1, Firefox 3, Flock 1.2 (a browser based on Firefox 2), Opera 9.5, and Internet Explorer 8. A million data points indicate that Firefox 3 has a surprising advantage over the other browsers tested. These are real-world tests and not contrived benchmarks."
Technorati Tags:
Firefox,
IE,
Opera,
Flock
Friday, June 13, 2008
SlickEdit is one of the old school editors that has survived the wonder world of the new IDE. Version 13 has just been released and it continues to blur the boundaries between a simple text editor and a fullblown IDE. While there are no visual form designers and other such wizbang graphics, what you get is an editor that you can use for many development tasks, including building, running, and debugging complete applications.
Ten versions down the road, and we now have almost too many features to list, but let's hit a few of the highlights. You get multiple windows and configurable everything, with colour-coding for all the languages your heart could desire. There is also a variety of language-specific indentation, auto-completion, and code prettification functions designed to save you typing while making your code look right. Add in a slick diff and merge tool, integration with loads of source code control systems (Subversion support is new in this release), searching that lets you use regular expressions or skip strings or comments (or limit your searching to strings or comments, for that matter) or what ever. You get a C-based macro language and just about any keyboard shortcut man (or woman) can imagine. And then there is built-in class and definition browsers making it super-easy and super-fast to jump to parts of your code. So overall SlickEdit is very fast; if you're used to waiting for an IDE to churn, you'll be pleasantly surprised with the responsiveness here.
From there, move on to the actual coding stuff. For example, you can open up a Visual Studio .NET solution directly in SlickEdit v13, build or rebuilt it, run it, even debug it with a full selection of watches, single-stepping, and other advanced debugging features. If you're working in C++ you also get a whole mess of refactoring features in the editor. Java developers get new support for Java Live Errors and the Hot-Swap Debugger (essentially edit and continue for Java), plus the ability to run JUnit tests from within the editor. The user interface has also been modernized from previous versions, with slicker icons and dockable windows for a more modern feel.
If you want to take the program for a spin, there's a trial available for download.
Find it here....
SlickEdit is one of the old school editors that has survived the wonder world of the new IDE. Version 10 has just been released and it continues to blur the boundaries between a simple text editor and a fullblown IDE. While there are no visual form designers and other such wizbang graphics, what you get is an editor that you can use for many development tasks, including building, running, and debugging complete applications.
Ten versions down the road, and we now have almost too many features to list, but let's hit a few of the highlights. You get multiple windows and configurable everything, with colour-coding for all the languages your heart could desire. There is also a variety of language-specific indentation, auto-completion, and code prettification functions designed to save you typing while making your code look right. Add in a slick diff and merge tool, integration with loads of source code control systems (Subversion support is new in this release), searching that lets you use regular expressions or skip strings or comments (or limit your searching to strings or comments, for that matter) or what ever. You get a C-based macro language and just about any keyboard shortcut man (or woman) can imagine. And then there is built-in class and definition browsers making it super-easy and super-fast to jump to parts of your code. So overall SlickEdit is very fast; if you're used to waiting for an IDE to churn, you'll be pleasantly surprised with the responsiveness here.
From there, move on to the actual coding stuff. For example, you can open up a Visual Studio .NET solution directly in SlickEdit v10, build or rebuilt it, run it, even debug it with a full selection of watches, single-stepping, and other advanced debugging features. If you're working in C++ you also get a whole mess of refactoring features in the editor. Java developers get new support for Java Live Errors and the Hot-Swap Debugger (essentially edit and continue for Java), plus the ability to run JUnit tests from within the editor. The user interface has also been modernized from v9, with slicker icons and dockable windows for a more modern feel.
If you want to take the program for a spin, there's a 15-day trial available for download.
Find it here....
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
If you keep getting nagged for log ons when using sharepoint this will solve the problem almost 100% of the time. The trick is to use the Windows managed Stored username and password feature. To access this,
1. Simply go into Control Panel
2. Click User Accounts
3. Go into Managed Passwords and click Add
4. Type the URL of the server (without HTTP), for example portal.us.com
5. Enter your credentials and click Ok
Now anytime Windows attempts to access ANYTHING on this server it will use the use those credentials and your prompting issue should go away.
The downside to this is if you change your password, you need to remember to come change it here.
O2 remains the exclusive carrier of the iPhone in the UK for iPhone 3G. In keeping with Steve Jobs announcement the cost has been kept right as well.
O2 offers the following four tariffs for iPhone 3G:
- £30/month - 8GB iPhone £99 - 16GB iPhone £159 - 75 Minutes - 125 Texts - Unlimited Data & WiFi - 18 month contract
- £35/month - 8GB iPhone £99 - 16GB iPhone £159 - 600 Minutes - 500 Texts - Unlimited Data & WiFi - 18 month contract
- £45/month - 8GB iPhone Free - 16GB iPhone £59 - 1200 Minutes - 500 Texts - Unlimited Data & WiFi - 18 month contract
- £75/month - 8GB iPhone Free - 16GB iPhone Free - 3000 Minutes - 500 Texts - Unlimited Data & WiFi - 18 month contract
O2 is also offering existing iPhone customers the chance to simply renew their contract rather than having to pay it off coupled with a chance to upgrade their phone...
Finally O2 have announced a Pay and Go option as well!!!
Technorati Tags:
Apple,
iPhone
As we use more and more virtual machines, particularly for development, there is a risk because they don't get updated by pushing critical security or virus updates and then they are fired up six months later we can have a security problem.
Microsoft has a solution for their virtual machine environment adding to the virtual machine management tooling - the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool. This turns on your VMs, updates them and shuts them down automatically. You can find information about getting on the Beta at the link below.
Get it here
Monday, June 09, 2008
Steve Jobs announces the following:
IPhone 3G
IPhone price cut
IPhone 2 software (also for Ipod Toch)
mobileMe
ans 'snow leopard' OSX
Just for starters.....
Sunday, June 08, 2008
After a period of being 'free' BBC content has joined Channel 4 as part of the BT Replay package. Not unexpected and whilst the content is free on iPlayer the quality is much better. Now all we need is to add in ITV.
Technorati Tags:
BT Replay,
BBC,
iPLayer
Saturday, June 07, 2008
This question has vexed the forums but the answer is very simple:
1. Make sure you have joined BT's on-line billing with your main phone/broadband account
2. Look up the direct debit reference number at your bank for your new BT Mobile account (starts GB********)
3. Go to you BT account and add account
4. Use the reference number and your Mobile number and there you have it -usage monitoring
Note: the monitoring lags by about 24 hours so beware!
Sunday, June 01, 2008
This is the User Guide, Samples and Walkthroughs for the tools for developing custom SharePoint applications with the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, version 1.1 (VSeWSS 1.1). The user guide has sections:
- Starting out in SharePoint Development
- Walkthrough of the VSeWSS User Interface including the WSP View
- The Team Site Project
- The Blank Site Project
- The List Definition Project
- The Web Part Project
- The Workflow Projects
- Project Item Templates
- Best Practices with VSeWSS
- Changes from 1.0 to 1.1
Get it here!!!
If you are a developer for SharePoint your best friend has been Virtual PC or VMWare. It’s now time to introduce a new friend, Bamboo Nation's SharePointOnVista go here for more info
Learn ten tips to improve your use of SharePoint Server 2007 with Excel Services from the SharePoint - Excel Services forum.
Go here to download
Thanks to Mike Breeze for this one.
Friday, May 23, 2008
In the main UAC has provided a more secure Windows Desktop OS but there are times when this can be very annoying. On of those times is when attempting to run commands from our old friend the DOS prompt. What invariably happens, even though we logged on as an administrator, we get the UAC nag prompt! What need to do is run what is called an Elevated Command Prompt. The following allows you to set on up for future use!
To create an ECP as a shortcut on the desktop:
1. Right-click the desktop, and select New > Shortcut.
2. In the text box of the Create Shortcut dialogue box that appears, type cmd and then click Next.
3. On the following screen, type a name for your shortcut -- I use Elevated Command Prompt. Then click Finish.
4. Right-click on the shortcut you have just created and select Properties.
5. Select the Shortcut tab and click the Advanced button.
6. Check the box titled Run as administrator. (see below) Click OK and then OK again.
We now have our Elevated Command Prompt....
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Having blogged about these 'bandits' already I was interested to note that the BBC's Watch Dog have reported on them already!!!
Read more here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/tv_and_radio/watchdog/reports/consumer_goods/consumer_20080512_2.shtml
Thursday, May 15, 2008
BT has announced that Pace Group will build its next generation of BT Vision digiboxes featuring a more powerful processor, better energy efficiency, and hard drive capacity able to store around 80 hours of standard definition video content. It will continue to offer IPTV functionality, for delivering Video on Demand and interactive functions, and could also offer high definition video, hence the more powerful processor. The new boxes likely won't be available until some time next year...
Information care of InfoTech
As anyone will know who has followed my various blogs last June I shifted from Sky to BT Vision and all has been well!
I moved for a number of reasons:
- Cost - £40 is just too much
- Content - what was I watching: well it wasn't on Satellite only
- Picture Quaintly - one of the main issues (Sky told me to upgrade to HD!!!) in fact it is caused by a large tree just off my drive that has a preservation order on it! Sky guys took 4 visits to work this one out. Solution - move to HD and double the size of the dish (only £400).
So we (I) made the choice and cancelled (story in its own right!!) and sold off the kit.
Now to the meat of the blog: I had a repair insurance with Satellite Direct UK of Arundel (www.satellitedirectuk.com). So emailed them to cancel, phoned them to confirm after no reply. Was informed no rebate like real insurance copies give but all was cancelled. Waited for letter, never came and of course forgot all about it!
April 2008 credit card statement arrived with a new entry - Satellite Direct UK - and to add insult to injury for more money than the previous time. So I phoned them up and asked why. You know what's coming....you never cancelled!
Now to the really nice bit - they should have advised me of the increase, but didn't, of course they said the sent me a letter so I must have known, but they didn't - when I asked the customer services bod for the date of the letter he explained it wasn't policy to send them!!
Because I didn't know I was about to be charged I missed the chance to cancel (a second time). Phoned a number of times but no joy not even a 50% refund. And today received a letter telling me my equipment will be covered for another 12 months even though they know I don't have any equipment!!!