11-11-11-11 Contest
First Place
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2 x Second Place
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The rules of the contest are simple:
- Write here (as a comment) or on another site (with link to this post) the most unusual way in which you could lose your data.
- The text must be written in English.
Contest period:
- Starts on October 27th, 2009 at 11:11 AM GMT
- Ends on November 11th, 2009 at 11:11 AM GMT
Why 11-11-11-11?
- Because the contest ends on 11/11 at 11:11.
Prizes:
- Handy Backup Professional license
- 2 x Handy Backup Standard license
Winning conditions:
- The best 3 texts win.
Winners will be announced on November 12th.
Reviews of Handy Backup:
Remarks:
- If you post as comment make sure you enter a valid e-mail address so I can contact you in case of winning.
- If you post on another site make sure there are some contact details there.
Handy Backup Review
The worst thing can happen is to loose all you the pictures you made in the last 2 years or all the customer information you gathered in the last 5 days. These kind of scenarios can happen to anyone and unless you create a duplicate of your data (a backup) you cannot recover it. There are many ways in which data can be accidentally destroyed:
- Hardware failure
- Software failure
- Accidents (fire, water, earth quake)
- Theft
Handy Backup from Novosoft is a solution that can help in this unfortunate situations (if is used prior to those events :) ). Unlike most other backup software out there, Handy Backup doesn’t treat your data like faceless chunks of memory. It features a complete, extensible plug-in-based system and a variety of plug-ins designed to back up settings, playlists, tweaks and preferences. New plugins care be created with basic XML knowledge.
Tip #7: VMWare Unity View
I just found a really cool feature in VMWare Workstation 6.5.3. It is called “Unity View” and basically allows windows from a virtual machine to appear as windows in the host machine.
In the example pictures you can see that I have a host running Windows 7, a unity windows from a Windows Xp guest and two windows from a Fedora guest (Picture 1). The best part is that you can actually see those windows in your taskbar and manipulate them as regular windows – you can use the Aero switch to switch between applications (Picture 2 & 3). However I found a minor bug, the Aero Peek feature in Windows 7 is not working with the unity windows.
Least but not last you get access to the start menu of the guests (Picture 4).
Spell check MSDN fail
Check out this fail:
Don’t worry if you can’t understand it. Is just that you are not geek enough. :)
1, 2, 3, 7!
Today is a big day for Windows fans. The final milestone in Windows 7 development process has been reached and the new operating system is general available.
Just two years passed since the release of Vista and many say that Windows 7 should be just a “super-service pack” for Vista.
If you are not a MS Partner and you don’t have a MSDN/TechNet Subscription then this is the first time you can get Windows 7 non-trial. Many shops already started to sale and deliver copies of W7 – got few mail in the morning with special offers.
The prices on Amazon are:
- Windows 7 Home Premium (Retail/Upgrade): $199.99/$119.99
- Windows 7 Professional (Retail/Upgrade): $299.99/$199.99
- Windows 7 Ultimate (Retail/Upgrade): $319.99/$219.99
And now two funny things: on Amazon you have “2 Used and new” copies of Windows 7. I wonder who has a used copy of W7 that has just been released :)
The image on the right I found it on Larry Osterman’s blog.
Ads on blog
Dear visitor,
This blog is non profit and will remain so. The reason why you may see some Google Ads (if you didn’t block them) is that I want to cover the hosting expenses (~$100/year).
So from now on the following fair policy applies:
- revenue of up to $100/year goes for hosting
- revenue >$100/year goes for charity, prizes (please give suggestions)
There are four ad places on this domain:
- One the main page after the first post
- At the end of every single post
- On the Books page
- On the SkypeGadget page
Hope that this ads fit well in the design of the site and do not disturb your visit.
Best regards
Panorama 1
Some panorama pictures made by me.
Delft, The Netherlands:
- left: TUDelft EWI (Elektrotechniek, Wiskunde en Informatica) building
- right: sport fields from Sport Centrum
Park in Rotterdam:
Office 2010 Web Apps
Most of you know Google Docs (GD) - the web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and form application offered by Google. Probably in the attempt to remove GD’s supremacy and to promote their new Office 2010, Microsoft is preparing a free online version of Office called Office Web Apps.
For the Technical Preview four application are available: Excel, PowerPoint, Word and OneNote. Each of them tries to reproduce the aspect and the functionally of their offline big brother. For Office 2007 users, the interface is well known. In the top side we have a Ribbon bar, the middle part is dominated by the working area and to bottom is reserved for an optional status bar.
In order to use Office Live Apps you need to have a Live ID and a Skydrive account. All these applications integrate with Skydrive and this is a curious fact because I would expect to be part of Office Live [very strange decision!].
The interaction with the live apps is not really fluid because it has a delay, especially in Excel, when you work with formulas – it takes 3-4 seconds to see the result. I understand Microsoft’s wish for adoption and interoperability with any browser without any addon, of the new product, but I think that a Silverlight interface would improve the usability or at least some drag/drop support and a right click menu.
Excel Live
Spreadsheets – this is Excel all about. The little brother of the offline version is, for the moment, limited to some basic spreadsheet operations. The are no more and no less then 3 sheets [does anyone know how to add/remove them?] on which you can put your data.
The simple tools available are: text format (color, font, size) and cell format (color, text alignment, data type). There is support for part of the formulas in Excel and one can use cell references to add dynamic data. There is some support for external data sources but it seems that data can only be refreshed if already exists – one cannot add/modify a data source.
Unfortunately there is no support for locked sheets, hidden sheets and data validation. If you try to open an uploaded document containing some of the previous you will get and error message for edit.
Excel Web Apps gets another minus because there is no support for diagrams/charts. It would be nice to have at least support for charts in a new sheet. Maybe in the next version?
I am thinking to migrate my expenses Excel document in Skydrive (Office Live Apps) even though it is quite limited.
Tip #6: The importance of the default case
It is said that “is good to catch an exception as soon as possible”. This is the motto of the post.
You never wrote perfect code! Neither do I and probably no mortal will do this. You must accept it and try to make your code as best as possible. There are many ways to do this but today will focus the attention on the ‘default’ case.
How many times you wrote?
select variable
case 1: ...
case 2: ...
...
case n:
end |
I did this a lot of times. Why do we do it? Because we assume we are bullet proof and out code is perfect. One might say that the previous snippet is not wrong but take a closer look. What if variable is not 1 and not 2 and … and not n? What happens?
Tip #5: Get 25GB Online Free Storage
Do you want 25 GB of free storage that can be accessed from anywhere you have Internet connection?
Microsoft is offering 25 GB free online storage through SkyDrive. The drawback of this service is that you can only access files through a browser and if you want drag/drop facilities you must use Internet Explorer.
Gladinet is developing a tool for mapping online drives as network drives. Using it you can map SkyDrive (and other services like GoogleDocs, Amazon S3, etc) in Windows Explorer. It is not the fastest or easy most solution but there is no other to map SkyDrive.
After you install Gladinet Cloud Desktop and configure it (it has an easy to use wizard) you get one more drive in My Computer that will contain subfolders for each online service you use. You can move files there just like they were local. Must mention that the sync is not instant. There is a tasks queue so each file is put in this queue and uploaded only after the previous has finished. Each operation works like this so you might no see online changes immediately.
Gladinet Cloud Desktop is available in two versions: free and pro. The free version has a file limit of 1000 files/batch which, I think, should be enough for most users.
Register for SkyDrive and download Gladinet Cloud Desktop.