Synergy/DE PSG Blog

Starting Services on Linux

For a while now I’ve been wondering about what the correct way is to start boot time services such as the Synergy License Manager, xfServer and xfServerPlus on Linux systems. A few years ago I managed to “cobble something together” that seemed to work OK, but I had a suspicion that I only had part [...]

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Hangs After Office Upgrade

Just incase you run into the same issue… This week I had to revert back to using Visual Studio 2008 while working on a customer project, and I pretty quickly found that I had a problem. I was working on an ASP.NET web project, and found that each time I opened a web page for [...]

Linux ls Color Coding

It’s always driven me CRAZY the way that RedHat, Fedora, and presumably other Linux systems apply color coding to various types of files and directories in the output of the ls command. It wouldn’t be so bad, but it seems like the default colors for various file types and protection modes are just totally unreadable [...]

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

Spain isn’t the only winner… Congratulations to Graeme Harris of G. Harris Software—the lucky winner of the Official World Cup Jabulani ball! Graeme, your name was picked in the random drawing of all PSG blog subscribers who entered to win. Your official World Cup soccer ball is already en route to your doorstep. (Let's hope [...]

Learning from Stupidity

I'll be the first to admit that I've done some really stupid things in my life. Like the time I decided to paddle a canoe across a mile-wide river even as threatening clouds loomed on the horizon. Or the time I got stuck on a hike by taking a "short-cut" which involved shimmying around an overhang, leaving me suspended [...]

“Applemania” and iPhone 4

So I finally did what I said I would never do … I set out from home, in the wee hours of the morning, to stand in line for hours in order to buy something! The venue? … my local AT&T store. The event? … the first in store availability of iPhone 4. In my [...]

Windows Live SkyDrive

Have you ever wished there was an easy way to view and edit your documents on different computers, in different locations, in fact … from anywhere, and without having to carry USB thumb drives, or log in to a VPN. Well there is, and it’s free. For some time now Microsoft have offered a free [...]

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

I’ve been writing web applications for years, but I’ve never really had to put too much thought into whether search engines such as Google and Bing were finding the sites that I have worked on, or whether they were deducing appropriate information about those sites and giving them their appropriate ranking in search results. The [...]

Another TechEd Sticky Note

The other night, I discovered the way to beat the heat while here in New Orleans. It’s a fruity little concoction known as the Hurricane, and while it doesn’t actually affect the climate around you, it sure makes feeling hot and sticky a lot more enjoyable. I’m also pretty sure how it got its namesake: [...]

Preparing for Windows Phone 7

By Steve Ives, Senior Consultant, Synergex Professional Services Group Later this year, probably, Microsoft are releasing a new version of their phone operating system, and it’s going to be a BIG change for developers who have created applications for the earlier Windows Mobile operating systems. The new O/S is called “Windows Phone 7”, and although [...]