Waleed Mohamed

Make a successful Sales Interview While Having Almost No Idea about It

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 23:40:00 +0000

For someone like me, who becomes recently a manger, it was very difficult to make an interview to choose not
a sales person, but a sales leader. This is because my experience is focused mainly on the technical aspects of my work. Also, I do not want just to market a product as much as I want to market my software team and their work, I mean the value that we can create for our customers. But as I believe there this nothing impossible, I spent 2-days searching and reading to come up with a good plan for how to conduct a successful sales interview.

Although the sales role varies from employer to employer, but the knowledge and core competencies (skills and abilities) required for success in all sales jobs are almost the same.

Knowledge Requirements

Typical knowledge requirements for a sales job include:

Sales and marketing:
- Principles.
- Techniques.
- Strategy.
- Tactics
Sales control systems.
Computer and software applications.
Administration processes
Basic business principles.

The essential sales job competencies:

The following are the core competencies that you have to ensure that they exist in your sales candidate. You will find for each competence why it is important, the question you will ask to deduce from its answer the skills level of the applicant, and the question guidelines that help you make sure of his skill.

Why Adaptability?

Sales jobs involve dealing with a wide range of people; the ability to adjust the approach used to the situation is an important job requirement.

Questions?

"Tell me about a situation where your contact person changed at a key account, how did you adjust to the new contact?"
"Give an example of when you had to change your approach to a prospect because the initial one failed."

Question Guidelines:

The answer should show you how he maintains his performance and effectiveness in different situations with different people, and how he is able to adjust his approach to match different demands and challenges.

Why Resilience?

Key to continued success in sales is the ability to handle disappointment and rejection.

Questions?

"Tell me about a time you worked hard for a sale but didn't get it in the end, how did you handle the situation?"
"Give an example of when you had to overcome strong resistance from a customer."

Question Guidelines:

You should have a description on how he has maintained enthusiasm and performance after disappointment, and how he is able to take negativity in his stride and bounce back quickly. Ask him to give examples in his answer for persistence and determination in finding solutions to obstacles or challenges.

Why Persuasiveness?

Sales interview questions will focus on the sales person ability to persuade and influence others to accept his product or service.

Questions?

"Describe a recent approach you took with a brand new prospect."
"Tell me how you developed your largest account."

Question Guidelines:

The answer has to describe how he determines customer needs and selects the most suitable approach to demonstrate, how his product or service meets those needs, deciding on the right interpersonal and communication style, and how he is able to anticipate and overcome objections, and gain commitment from the customer.

Why Motivation?

Strong senses of purpose together with the ability to maintain a high energy level are important contributors to sales success.

Questions?
"Tell me about one of the most time-consuming sales you have made."
"What goals have you set for yourself this year, how have you ensured progress towards them?"

Question Guidelines:

He has to show you how he sets for himself challenging goals and puts in high levels of effort and commitment to achieve results.

Why Negotiation?

A core sales competency is the ability to reach agreement through successful negotiation.

Questions?

"Describe a recent situation where you negotiated terms with a tough customer."
"Tell me about an important negotiation that failed, what went wrong and why?"

Question Guidelines:

The answer has to describe his ability to explore the needs and concerns of the customer, to determine areas of agreement and disagreement, to work out alternatives and solutions to reach a workable agreement for both parties.

Presentation Skills

Sales involve presenting information effectively and convincingly to potential customers.

Questions?

"Tell me about successful formal presentation you made recently."
"Give me an example of when you had to make a presentation to an unresponsive audience, how did you handle it?"

Question Guidelines :

The answer should describe in detail his research and preparation of material for a target audience, how he establishes the importance of the presentation to the audience, his ability to organize the content in a logical way, and how he reads an audience's mood and interacts effectively with them.

These are the main keys upon which you can evaluate the candidate skills in sales. I wish you find them beneficial and interesting like me.

Eng. Waleed Mohamed
Flair Systems

http://www.twitter.com/Waleed_mohamed
http://blog.waleedmohamed.net
http://www.facebook.com/waleed.mohamed
http://eg.linkedin.com/in/waleedmohamed

www.flair-systems.com
http://www.facebook.com/Flair.Systems
http://twitter.com/flair_systems
http://www.linkedin.com/company/flair-systems

Everything You Need to Know About Social Networks

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 18:25:00 +0000

I’d like to share this infographic which I found it publish in one of my Following Rss Sites it’s a grate Infographic designed to show you just how popular social network is!

Source:
Posted by Andy Crofford on January 01, 2011

Eng. Waleed Mohamed
Flair Software House
http://www.twitter.com/Waleed_mohamed
http://blog.waleedmohamed.net
http://www.facebook.com/waleed.mohamed
http://eg.linkedin.com/in/waleedmohamed

www.flair-systems.com
http://www.facebook.com/Flair.Systems
http://twitter.com/flair_systems
http://www.linkedin.com/company/flair-systems

28 Rich Data Visualization Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:32:00 +0000

28 Rich Data Visualization Tools - InsideRIA: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Scalable JavaScript Application Architecture

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:21:00 +0000

via Nicholas Zakas, who is an engineer for the Yahoo! home page.

View the slides.

Scalable JavaScript Application Architecture

View more presentations from Nicholas Zakas.

HTML5 JavaScript APIs

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:02:00 +0000

via Remy Sharp spoke at CODEBITS

Preview of Interview Success Kit Containing 9,000+ Interview Questions & Answers

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 22:22:00 +0000

Download details: Infrastructure Planning and Design

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:27:00 +0000

Download details: Infrastructure Planning and Design

ASP.NET Sprites and Image Optimization Framework « Mohamed Zaki's Blog [Sharepoint MVP]

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 22:08:00 +0000

ASP.NET Sprites and Image Optimization Framework « Mohamed Zaki's Blog [Sharepoint MVP]:

Cross-browser Development with - Microsoft Expression web 4 Super Preview

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:45:00 +0000

It was my First time with Microsoft Expression studio 4 when I found a Great Feature support the cross-browser development , later our solutions were the following:

Installed virtual machines with different browser versions and different operating systems.
Using online tools such as browsershots.org which render your pages in multiple browsers and return those renderings to you as bitmap images.
Using IE Tester Which give me very good results but Unfortunately, support all IE versions only.

Now Microsoft Do it with non-ms browsers, which mean that you can test your web pages form one environment into all web browsers (All IE versions , Firefox and Safari)

So let me give you the executive summary About MS 4 Super Preview.

Open your page using web expression and and choose Display in SuperPreview from the File menu.

File Menu

Shortcuts

You will see the expression web display the below screen and awaiting the next step “browser selection“
Fill the location address with your web address if you need to test another web site in my ex i test my company web site flair systems “www.flair-systems.com”

and choose the the browsers to test , I'll test my site and compare between internet explorer 8 and Firefox 3.6
Now I can compare the site un different browsers.

I hope you like this feature and my post. thanks

Css Tips and Tricks [4] : Web Forms Using HTML5 and Css3

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:06:00 +0000

In this tutorial I’m going to create a Great HTML5 form using latest css3 techniques.

I'm going to create a simple registration form contains :

Personal Info.
Addressing Info

Also going to use some of HTML5’s new input types and attributes:

email, for the email field
tel, for the telephone field
number, for the credit card number and security code
required, for required fields
placeholder, for the hints within some of the fields
autofocus, to put focus on the first input field when the page loads

1- Create unstyle Html From:

I grouped each section within fieldset also the Gender sub-section into a fieldset , inside each filedset i used order list to contain the lable/input pair.

Html
<body>
     
     <form id=register>
     <fieldset>
         <legend>Personal Info</legend>
         <ol>
             <li>
                 <label for=name>Name</label>
                 <input id=name name=name type=text placeholder="First and last name" required autofocus>
             </li>
             <li>
                 <label for=email>Email</label>
                 <input id=email name=email type=email placeholder="example@domain.com" required>
             </li>
             <li>
                 <label for=phone>Phone</label>
                 <input id=phone name=phone type=tel placeholder="Eg. +447500000000" required>
             </li>
             <li>
                 <fieldset>
                     <legend>Gender</legend>
                     <ol>
                         <li>
                             <input id=male name=Gender type=radio>
                             <label for=male>Male</label>
                         </li>
                         <li>
                             <input id=female name=Gender type=radio>
                             <label for=female>Female</label>
                         </li>
                     
                     </ol>
                 </fieldset>
             </li>
         </ol>
     </fieldset>
     <fieldset>
         <legend>Personal Address</legend>
         <ol>
             <li>
                 <label for=address>Address</label>
                 <textarea id=address name=address rows=5 required></textarea>
             </li>
             <li>
                 <label for=postcode>Post code</label>
                 <input id=postcode name=postcode type=text required>
             </li>
             <li>
                 <label for=country>Country</label>
                 <input id=country name=country type=text required>
             </li>
         </ol>
     </fieldset>
 
     <fieldset>
         <button type=submit>Register</button>
     </fieldset>
 </form>
    
     
 </body>

It will be like that:

2- Style the body Element and Resetting some Css attributes :

Body Css
 
 html, body, h1, form, fieldset, legend, ol, li {
     margin: 0;
     padding: 0; }
  
 body
 {
     background-position: #F0F0F0;
     background: #F0F0F0;
     color: #FFFFFF;
     font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman" , Times, serif;
     padding: 20px;
 }

3- Style the form , fieldset , legends Elements :

a) I removed the border from the fieldset and apply some bottom margin to it. Using the :last-of-type pseudo-class, removed the bottom margin of the last fieldset.
b) Make the legends big and bold, and we will also apply a light-green text-shadow
c) Adding a clear indication of how many steps our form has? Instead of adding that manually to every legend, we can use automatically generated counters.using either the :before or :after pseudo-elements to add content via CSS.
d) Change the style of the legend that is part of the radio buttons group, to make it look like a label:

Note: Creating Counter steps:

create a counter using the counter-reset property on the form element
call the counter with the content property (using the same name we’ve created before)
with the counter-incremet property, indicate that for each element that matches our selector, that counter will be increased by 1

Form Css
form#register
 {
     background-position: #3366FF;
     background: #3366FF;
     -moz-border-radius: 5px;
     -webkit-border-radius: 5px;
     border-radius: 5px;
     padding: 20px;
     width: 400px;
     color: #FFFFFF;
 }
  
     form#register fieldset {
         border: none;
         margin-bottom: 10px; }
  
         form#register fieldset:last-of-type { margin-bottom: 0; }
  
     form#register legend
 {
     color: #000099;
     font-size: 16px;
     font-weight: bold;
     padding-bottom: 10px;
     text-shadow: 0 1px 1px #c0d576;
 }
  
     form#register > fieldset > legend:before {
         content: "step " counter(fieldset) ": ";
         counter-increment: fieldset; }
  
     form#register fieldset fieldset legend
 {
     color: #FFFFFF;
     font-size: 13px;
     font-weight: normal;
     padding-bottom: 0;
 }

3- Styling the List and content :

a) Adding some nice rounded corners and semi-transparent border and background. Because we are using RGBa colors, we should provide a fallback for browsers that don’t support them (that comes before the RBGa color). For the nested lists, we will remove these properties because they would be overlapping:
b) We will float labels to the left and give them a width.
c) Add an extra user-friendly detail, we’ll add a cursor: pointer to the radio button labels on the :hover state, so the user knows that he can simply click them to select that option.
Now onto the input elements. Here we want to match all inputs, except for the radio ones, and the textarea. For that we will use the negation pseudo-class (:not()). With it we can target all input elements except for the ones with type of radio.
We will also make sure to add some :focus styles and add the appropriate styling for the radio inputs.
Finally we come to our submit button. To it, we will just add some nice typography and text-shadow, align it to the center of the form and give it some background colors for its different states.

List and Content Css

     form#register ol li {
         background: #b9cf6a;
         background: rgba(250,250,250,.3);
         border-color: #e3ebc3;
         border-color: rgba(250,250,250,.6);
         border-style: solid;
         border-width: 2px;
         -moz-border-radius: 5px;
         -webkit-border-radius: 5px;
         border-radius: 5px;
         line-height: 30px;
         list-style: none;
         padding: 5px 10px;
         margin-bottom: 2px; }
  
     form#register ol ol li {
         background: none;
         border: none;
         float: left; }
  
     form#register label {
         float: left;
         font-size: 13px;
         width: 110px; }
  
     form#register fieldset fieldset label {
         background: none no-repeat left 50%;
         line-height: 20px;
         padding: 0 0 0 30px;
         width: auto; }
  
     form#register label[for=male] { background-image: url(male.png); }
  
     form#register label[for=female] { background-image: url(female.png); }
  
 
  
     form#register fieldset fieldset label:hover { cursor: pointer; }
  
     form#register input:not([type=radio]),
    form#register textarea {
         background: #ffffff;
         border: none;
         -moz-border-radius: 3px;
         -webkit-border-radius: 3px;
         -khtml-border-radius: 3px;
         border-radius: 3px;
         font: italic 13px Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
         outline: none;
         padding: 5px;
         width: 200px; }
  
     form#register input:not([type=submit]):focus,
    form#register textarea:focus { background: #eaeaea; }
  
     form#register input[type=radio] {
         float: left;
         margin-right: 5px; }
  
     form#register button
 {
     background-position: #3399FF;
     background: #3399FF;
     border: none;
     -moz-border-radius: 20px;
     -webkit-border-radius: 20px;
     -khtml-border-radius: 20px;
     border-radius: 20px;
     color: #000000;
     display: block;
     font: 18px Georgia, "Times New Roman" , Times, serif;
     letter-spacing: 1px;
     margin: auto;
     padding: 7px 25px;
     text-shadow: 0 1px 1px #000000;
     text-transform: uppercase;
 }
  
         form#register button:hover
 {
     background-position: #3333FF;
     background: #3333FF;
     cursor: pointer;
     color: #FFFFFF;
 }

I got the male and female img form Icon Finder

http://www.iconfinder.com/icondetails/36041/32/female_gender_icon

http://www.iconfinder.com/icondetails/36181/32/gender_male_icon

Here’s what we created :

Ref. “New input types and form attributes on HTML5 what’s new on the W3C website.”

Download this ex :

Css tips and tricks [3] : Enable body background scaling

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 11:55:00 +0000

image (1)

Window width: 800px Window height: 600px

Viewport width: 784px Viewport height: 375px

image (2)

Window width: 1296px Window height: 786px

Viewport width: 1280px Viewport height: 561px

You can enable background scaling by adding the following declarations to your style sheet:

Css
body {
   background: #000 url(finalbg.jpg) center center fixed no-repeat;
   -moz-background-size: cover;
   background-size: cover;
 }

Css tips and tricks [1] : Set [ Div – box ] Shadows.

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:45:00 +0000

look to get show like the inner image you have to use these three lines to set the shadow and to avoid the cross browsing problems.

Css Script
 .box{
    -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 10px #333;
    -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 10px #333;
    box-shadow:0px 0px 10px #333;
}
 

Css tips and tricks [2] : Multiple Borders with Simple CSS

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 20:03:00 +0000

One of the wonderful CSS tips i learned this week is how to set multiple borders with css using “:after amd :before psuedo-classes” without images in a few minutes.

here’s the Html code :

html
<div id="Box"> </div>

here’s the CSS code :

css
body
 {
     background-color: #F0F0F0;
 }
 #Box
 {
     border: 1px solid #bbbbbb;
     width: 200px;
     height: 200px;
     margin: 60px auto;
     background-color: #ffffff;
     position:relative;
 }
 #Box:before
 {
     border: 1px solid #ffffff;
     width:198px;
     height:198px;
     position:absolute;
     content:'';
 }
 #Box:after
 {
     border: 1px solid #bbbbbb;
     width:196px;
     height:196px;
     position:absolute;
     content:'';
     left:1px; top:1px;
 }

Disabling Right Click (context menu) with jQuery

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 11:43:00 +0000

        1: $(document).ready(function()

       2: {

       3:        $(document).bind("contextmenu",function(e){

       4:               return false;

       5:        });

       6: });

SharePoint in Plain English

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Mon, 31 May 2010 21:10:00 +0000

A short, fun, animated approach, showing you what SharePoint is all about.

Why we should move to visual studio 2010 ?

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:26:00 +0000

This post lists the new and enhanced features available in Visual Basic 2010.

Visual Basic Compiler and Language

Auto-Implemented Properties

Auto-implemented properties provide a shortened syntax that enables you to quickly specify a property of a class without having to write code to Get and Set the property. For more information, see Auto-Implemented Properties (Visual Basic).

Collection Initializers

Collection initializers provide a shortened syntax that enables you to create a collection and populate it with an initial set of values. Collection initializers are useful when you are creating a collection from a set of known values, for example, a list of menu options or categories. For more information, see Collection Initializers Overview (Visual Basic).

Implicit Line Continuation

In many cases, implicit line continuation enables you to continue a statement on the next consecutive line without using the underscore character (_). For a list of all the cases in which you can omit an underscore character, see Statements in Visual Basic.

Multiline Lambda Expressions and Subroutines

Lambda expression support has been expanded to support subroutines in addition to multiline lambda functions and subroutines. For more information, see Lambda Expressions.

New Command-Line Option for Specifying a Language Version

The /langversion command-line option causes the compiler to accept only syntax that is valid in the specified version of Visual Basic.

Type Equivalence Support

You can now deploy an application that has embedded type information instead of type information that is imported from a Primary Interop Assembly (PIA). With embedded type information, your application can use types in a runtime without requiring a reference to the runtime assembly. If various versions of the runtime assembly are published, the application that contains the embedded type information can work with the various versions without having to be recompiled. For more information, see /link (Visual Basic). For an example, see Walkthrough: Embedding Types from Managed Assemblies (C# and Visual Basic).

Dynamic Support

Visual Basic binds to objects from dynamic languages such as IronPython and IronRuby. For more information, see Working with Dynamic Objects (Visual Basic) and Walkthrough: Creating and Using Dynamic Objects (C# and Visual Basic).

Covariance and Contravariance

Covariance enables you to use a more derived type than that specified by the generic parameter, whereas contravariance enables you to use a less derived type. This allows for implicit conversion of classes that implement variant interfaces and provides more flexibility for matching method signatures with variant delegate types. You can create variant interfaces and delegates by using the new In and Out language keywords. The .NET Framework also introduces variance support for several existing generic interfaces and delegates, including the IEnumerable(Of T) interface and the Func(Of TResult) and Action(Of T) delegates. For more information, see Covariance and Contravariance (C# and Visual Basic).

Integrated Development Environment

Navigate To

You can use the Navigate To feature to search for a symbol or file in source code. You can search for keywords that are contained in a symbol by using Camel casing and underscore characters to divide the symbol into keywords.

For more information, see How to: Search for Objects, Definitions, and References (Symbols).

Highlighting References

When you click a symbol in source code, all instances of that symbol are highlighted in the document.

For many control structures, when you click a keyword, all of the keywords in the structure are highlighted. For instance, when you click If in an If...Then...Else construction, all instances of If, Then, ElseIf, Else, and End If in the construction are highlighted.

To move to the next or previous highlighted symbol, you can use CTRL+SHIFT+DOWN ARROW or CTRL+SHIFT+UP ARROW. For more information, see How to: Use Reference Highlighting.

Generate From Usage

The Generate From Usage feature enables you to use classes and members before you define them. You can generate a stub for any class, constructor, method, property, field, or enum that you want to use but have not yet defined. You can generate new types and members without leaving your current location in code. This minimizes interruption to your workflow.

Generate From Usage supports programming styles such as test-first development. For more information, see Generate From Usage.

IntelliSense Suggestion Mode

IntelliSense now provides two alternatives for IntelliSense statement completion: completion mode and suggestion mode. Suggestion mode is used when classes and members are used before they are defined. For more information, see List Members.

Why IT Projects Fail ?

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:42:00 +0000

I read This White Paper Yesterday and its very good to share ,

Read and discuss it with me why do you think our It project fail ?

View more documents from Flair Systems.

Waleed Mohamed
Software Development Director
http://blog.waleedmohamed.net
http://blog.flair-systems.com

5 Top jQuery Plugins to improve Your HTML

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Sat, 22 May 2010 06:19:00 +0000

Jquery.Timepickr

jquery.timepickr was created in a attempt to make the process of inputing time in a form as easy and natural as possible.

Demo: http://haineault.com/media/jquery/ui-timepickr/page/#s-intro

AutoSprites - A jQuery Menu Plugin

Demo: http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/autosprites-jquery-menu-plugin

In-Field Labels jQuery Plugin

This is a simple plugin that turns properly formatted HTML forms into forms with in-field label support.
Demo: http://fuelyourcoding.com/scripts/infield/

AutoSuggest jQuery Plugin

This one is really awesome. Just 7kb minified. AutoSuggest is a very lightweight jQuery plugin that makes auto-completing extremely easy.

Demo: http://code.drewwilson.com/entry/autosuggest-jquery-plugin

Password Strength

Password Strength tries to calculate how many possibilities the hacker needs to try to guess your password.
Demo: http://www.unwrongest.com/projects/password-strength/

HTML 5 new Tags

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Sun, 09 May 2010 18:59:00 +0000

Here I will try to pass quickly in a series of posts to explain the new html5 tags , Let's attract the eye of reading with two important tags :

1- HTML 5 <audio> Tag

Ex:

<audio src="test.wav" controls="controls">
Your browser does not support the audio element.
</audio>

attributes:

autoplay
If present, the audio will start playing as soon as it is ready.

controls
If present, controls will be displayed, such as a play button.

preload
If present, the audio will be loaded at page load, and ready to run. Ignored if autoplay is present.
url
Defines the URL of the audio to play

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2- HTML 5 <video> Tag

Ex:

<video src="test.avi" controls="controls">
your browser does not support the video tag
</video>

attributes:

autoplay
If present, then the video will start playing as soon as it is ready
controls
If present, controls will be displayed, such as a play button.

pixels
Sets the height of the video player

loop
If present, the media file will start over again, every time it is finished.

preload
If present, the video will be loaded at page load, and ready to run. Ignored if "autoplay" is present.
url
The URL of the video to play

pixels
Sets the width of the video player

more details form the main reference http://www.w3schools.com/html5/html5_reference.asp

Day In A Life ( software as services )

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Sun, 09 May 2010 13:51:00 +0000

Software as Services Video form 2 years ago form Microsoft Riyadh Conference @ KSA , www.flair-systems.com ,this video about software as services and Microsoft vision.

IE6: The Kryptonite of web developers :)

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:16:00 +0000

I was Reading an excellent article @smashingmagazine called “How To Successfully Educate Your Clients On Web Development “ and I like paragraph speak about IE6 compatibility so i moved it here in my blog as i faced the same problem with my customers :)

Client: We want IE6 support through the website. The website will have a lot of JavaScript, dynamic elements, PNG graphics, etc.

You: [Jotting down a reminder to send hate mail to the IE6 team at Microsoft,] IE6 is actually an outdated browser that has security flaws, a very poor rendering engine and very few users out there. I recommend we don’t accommodate it (even Mailchimp doesn’t!), and we tell those suckers to go to hell.

Client: Did I mention that we service a large restaurant industry, and a lot of the terminals in restaurants still run Windows XP with IE6?

You: [Updates reminder to hunt down IE6's creators.]

Really i need to send hate mail to the IE6 team at Microsoft :(

Convert AVI video to jpg images , capture rendered frames from a video

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:55:00 +0000

One of the most exciting tasks this week to convert and render images frame from avi video file, i start searching for the solution or for library helping me to enhance the task time , Mohamed Zaki advice me to search into DirectShow and sending me this http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms785880 , after a bit of sec i found Splicer its a little video and audio composition library that leverages DirectShow.

so how to use Splicer to achieve this task :

1- Add the library ref.

Download it form my SkyDrive

2- Add these lines of code to your console app.

static void Main(string[] args)
{

           using (DefaultTimeline timeline = new DefaultTimeline())
           {
                timeline.AddVideoGroup(16, 664, 246).AddTrack(); // we want 320x240 24bpp sized images
               timeline.AddVideo("Test.avi"); // 8 second video clip
               List<double>thresholds = new List<double>() ;
               for (double i = 0; i < 5000; i++)
               {
                   thresholds.Add(i);
               }
               ImagesToDiskParticipant participant = new ImagesToDiskParticipant(16, 664, 246, Environment.CurrentDirectory, thresholds.ToArray());
               using (NullRenderer render = new NullRenderer(timeline, null, new ICallbackParticipant[] { participant }))
               {
                   render.Render();
               }
           }
       }

Here we add a video group (we don’t need any audio, we’re not capturing sound samples) and then create an ImageToDiskParticipant (this is just an example class, you would probably want to implement your own derived from the AbstractProgressParticipant class). In this case the format for the video group will be what you end up with, our ImagesToDiskParticipant implements a simple queue where it picks out the nearest frame to the specified times.. so in this case transitions.wmv is an 8 second video clip, and we will take frame "snapshots" at 0,1,2,3,…….. and 4999 seconds aproximately.
To make use of our participant we use one of the overloads of NullRenderer, and supply it a single-element array containing the image to disk participant.
The end result is 4999 jpeg images on disk (frame0.jpg -> frame4999.jpg)

thx and hope this post be useful for you :)

Silverlight Customers Light Up the Web

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:08:00 +0000

This highlight reel features customer solutions powered by Microsoft Silverlight.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/silverlight/videoGallery.aspx?contentID=highlights_mix10_clip1

Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4 Release Date Set

noreply@blogger.com (Waleed Mohamed) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:56:00 +0000

The release date for Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 has been set as April 12 according to a one-line post on a Developer Division’s Marketing and Communications Manager Rob Caron’s blog.

Visual Studio 2010 features built-in tools for Windows 7 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010, new drag-and-drop bindings for Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and interoperability with technologies such as the database, ASP.NET model view controller, Unified Modeling Language (UML), Microsoft Expression and multicore.

You can find out more about Visual Studio 2010 and download the beta from Now you can with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.

from : http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/archive/2010/01/18/visual-studio-2010-net-4-release-date-set.aspx

Waleed Mohamed

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Convert AVI video to jpg images , capture rendered frames from a video

Silverlight Customers Light Up the Web

Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4 Release Date Set

The release date for Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 has been set as April 12 according to a one-line post on a Developer Division’s Marketing and Communications Manager Rob Caron’s blog.