T3CHTT

Sharepoint Webpart Scrollbars

2012-01-27T15:25:00.000-04:00

I was doing some work on a sharepoint services website and came across an interesting case where I needed to add scrollbars to a list webpart using CSS. You would think that if you specify the height in the webpart properties that scrollbars will be automatically added if the content was more than the height of the webpart but that is not the case. The webpart's height just increases to accomodate. I had to use the following CSS hack to get this sorted.

Locate the number of the webpart in question by looking at the source code from the browser

Add a content editor web part to your site so that you can add the following CSS code

And this is the result, scrollbars in your list webpart

Caribbean Open Data Conference and Code Sprint

2012-01-16T12:47:00.001-04:00

The Caribbean Open Data Conference and Code Sprint will be held on JAN 26 and 27 2012 in the following 3 islands, Trinidad, Jamaica and Dominican Republic. I was happy when I was contacted by the organisers to feature the event on my blog. According to them the event is aimed at raising awareness of the critical role that open data can play in the design and development of software solutions to address social problems indigenous to the region. The theme of the conference is "Developing the Caribbean". An integral part of the Open Data conference is the code sprint. I am happy to see more coding contests popping up in Trinidad and regionally. I had previously blogged about the Teleios Code Jam 2011, CANTO contest and Imagine Cup 2011. I myself have taken part in coding competitions during my school life. The conference is focused on bringing attention to the open data movement in the region. The goal of the open data movement is to encourage that certain data sets be made available to all for free. Similar philosophy to FOSS. The code sprint will be centred around open data APIs and teams will have 24hrs to complete their solution. I love the fact that live streaming would be a key component of this conference. One data set that I would love to gain access to is our weather data. I have complained about the deficiencies of the MET Office website before. After that rant, @jadedmoonstudio made a good point that they should provide an API that developers can build upon. I encourage you to visit the conference website and connect with them online through facebook or twitter. I will update this blog post when the event occurs. What are your thoughts? Will you be participating? Please share with us in the comments below.

Nokia Lumia 900

2012-01-12T17:35:00.003-04:00

Nokia has launched the Lumia 900 at this year's CES. My thoughts are that this has a darn good camera for a mobile, I prefer the less distracting black body and the windows phone OS is not too bad. Take a look at the following infomercial and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

Some of the specs include

4G LTE and HSPA+ capable
1.4 GHz Qualcomm APQ8055 + MDM9200 (WCDMA) processor
4.3" AMOLED ClearBlack Gorilla glass touchscreen
one-piece polycarbonate body
8 MP main camera, Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash, Auto Focus
1 MP front camera, video calling
All day battery life, up to 7 hours talk time
Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Commercial Release 2

Toshiba Excite X10

2012-01-11T18:01:00.001-04:00

More CES coverage on your best local tech blog. This time it's the Toshiba Excite X10. They are claiming it's world's thinnest and lightest 10" Android tablet. My disappointment is that it appears to be launching with Honeycomb although an update to ICS is expected later on. Take a look at the following quick look video.

Some of the specs include

0.3" thin and 1.2 lbs
10.1” AutoBrite Multi-touch Display
Scratch resistant Corning Gorilla glass
TI OMAP 4430 1.2GHz dual-core processor
1GB LPDDR2
Front 2MP and rear 5MP HD cameras
Stereo Speakers
Micro HDMI port
Micro USB port
Micro SD Card Slot

DELL XPS 13 Ultrabook

2012-01-10T21:12:00.000-04:00

More CES goodness. DELL showed off it's XPS 13 Ultrabook today. I would so buy this if I was looking for an ultrabook. The specs are as follows :

Frameless 13.3-inch 720p (1366x768) edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass display
Integrated graphics Intel HD3000
Intel Core i5 2467M or Core i7 2637M dual core
128 GB SSD or 256 GB SSD drive with Intel Rapid Start
4GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz memory
1.3MP webcam with dual microphones
6-18mm x 316mm x 205mm (H, W,D)
Weight: 2.99 lbs (1.4kg)
Machined CNC aluminum top chassis and lid
Carbon fiber lower chassis
Backlit keyboard

Starting at $999 in the U.S and available for pre-order.

AR.Drone 2.0

2012-01-10T13:10:00.001-04:00

The latest version of the AR.Drone is being demoed at CES 2012. The new toys boast of a real-time 720p HD camera, new control software (AR FreeFlight 2.0), absolute control mode, an altitude pressure sensor and better build for increased stability. AR.Drone is a 4 propeller drone that you control with your smartphone or iPad through a virtual joystick or accelerometer controls. According to their press release this gadget will be available for purchase at selected retailers in Q2-2012 in the United States for $299 MSRP. Take a look at the following infomercial.

CES 2012 Steve Ballmer/Microsoft Keynote

2012-01-09T23:45:00.000-04:00

Came from work today, ate, watched a little TV and fell asleep. Woke up at 8:30pm thinking it was early morning only to realise it was only after 8pm and thanking the tech gods that I didn't miss the keynote. Here are the key points/screenshots I gathered from the presentation. CES starting promo music was Kesha's Blow, enjoyed that, and that tweet choir in the middle was hilarious and entertaining.

The heart and soul of MS products is the new metro interface.
Windows phone is the first phone that puts people first.
WP uses facebook chat that you already use versus others with proprietary message systems.
4G LTE WP phones shown off, Nokia Lumia 900 and the HTC Titan 2.
Demo of windows 8, designed for x86 and ARM, PC and tablets.
Demo of the Windows 8 app store, semantic zoom, charms and metro style IE.
Ultrabooks shown off, HP Spectre and 15" Samsung Series 9.
Plug for DELL's ultra portable announcement tomorrow.
Windows 7 is their best selling OS ever.
40 million XBox Live subscribers.
Demo of voice commands in XBox.
Kinect coming to windows on FEB 1.
Mention of Sync for vehicles, Office 2010 and Skype acquisition.

My overall impression, not much new stuff. Probably a good idea that others will take the mantle going forward in the future.

Ubuntu TV

2012-01-09T10:20:00.000-04:00

Canonical is showing off their Ubuntu TV software at CES 2012. I know it is targeted to TV manufacturers to build into their smart TVs but it would be nice to be able to install this on my PC then pipe that to my LCD TV. If you like the look and feel of Ubuntu, you will like this UI. One feature is the ability to link your phone or tablet to what you are watching to provide related content and functionality. It supports third party apps and an app store. They expect to have this running on TVs by the end of the year. Take a look at the following preview video.

CES 2012

2012-01-07T05:23:00.000-04:00

CES stands for Consumer Electronic Show. It is a technology trade show and is held every year in January in Las Vegas. Over the years many products, gadgets and technologies have been unveiled at this show. If you are a reader of the blog and will be attending CES 2012 please contact me as I would love to get your first hand experiences. I will try my best to blog and tweet about the interesting announcements from this years CES. Take a look at the following promo video.

Broadcom 5G WIFI/802.11ac Chips

2012-01-06T20:50:00.000-04:00

This week broadcom announced that they will be unveiling their 5G WiFi chips at the upcoming CES. According to their press release 5G WiFi addresses the growing need for more robust and efficient wireless networks. Chips are 3 times faster and up to 6 times more power efficient than 802.11n solutions and will enable a greater range in the home. The BCM4360 chip supports the PCIe interface and implements 3-stream 802.11ac specifications, and reaches speeds up to 1.3 Gbps. These chips will power many of the upcoming WiFi devices through Broadcom's partners. Netgear, for example, is excited about this next generation technology. Take a look at the following video that gives an overview of 5G WiFi.

MVC Get User Input With Action

2012-01-05T15:06:00.000-04:00

I encountered an interesting situation today. When a request is rejected the user should be prompted for a reason and that reason is recorded against the request history. First thing I needed to do was modify the action to accept 2 parameters. That was easily achieved by adding a new route and changing the action function signature.

Global.asax

HomeController.cs

The next step is to get the user input. My first inclination was to add an input box to that screen but that won't help because I had defined a different action for the reject. I could have done a post back on that view but I decided to use javascript to inject the rejection reason in the url.

and the result...

I thought this was a pretty nifty way to get the job done. If you can think of a more elegant way please feel free to comment.

ASP.NET SMTP Sending Error

2012-01-04T14:12:00.000-04:00

I think I grew a few grey hairs today trying to sort this one out. I had the standard SMTP email sending code in my app but kept getting the following error even after trying many different permutations of properties and code.

Code

Error : No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 1.1.1.1:25

How was I eventually able to figure out what the problem was? I created an account in Outlook specifying the outgoing server as the SMTP server I was working with. This worked perfectly so I knew the SMTP server was accepting connections on port 25 to send email. I then tried to telnet to the server from my machine and got the following error : Could not open connection to the host, on port 25: Connect failed. This lead me to realise that either the firewall or antivirus was blocking me damn code. Disabled antivirus and code worked like a charm. Just need to figure out a way to make a proper exception in the antivirus but at least I have back my sanity.

Dynamic Data Custom FK Dropdown

2012-01-04T10:26:00.000-04:00

Filters and dropdowns are created automatically based on the foreign keys you have defined. The default behaviour is to use the first string field from the connected table. For me that meant the first name of the employee but what I wanted was the first name and last name and employee id. One way to achieve this is to overload the ToString() function of the table in a partial class as follows. I am not convinced this is the best way to do it but it works. Another way is to use the DisplayColumn property with a new column but then you have to deal with all the overheads of creating a new column e.g. when I tried that I got the following error : the sort column 'your column' specified for the table 'your table' does not exist.

Most Viewed Blog Posts In 2011

2011-12-29T18:39:00.000-04:00

I was struggling with my year in review blog post. My first attempt was to go through my tweets and highlight a few for each month but that became tedious. While looking at my stats I came up with the idea to post the most popular posts for the year and as it turns out it gives a really nice snapshot of what went down in 2011. I would like to thank all my readers and encourage you to send me feedback on what you like and what you don't like about the blog.

Position	Blog Post	Views
1	Netflix Coming to Trinidad?	990
2	iPhone Coming To Trinidad	396
3	Install Android On Netbook	354
4	Windows 8	337
5	iPhone Launches In Trinidad	279
6	Digicel Trinidad 4G Network?	234
7	iTunes Store from Trinidad	189
8	New Blackberry 7 Devices (Trinidad)	184
9	Repetitive Strain Injury	167
10	Scotiabank Blackberry App (Trinidad/Caribbean)	139

Dynamic Data Read-Only Column

2011-12-28T12:03:00.000-04:00

So I am pretty new to dynamic data websites and learning quite a few things as I build this web app. I needed one of my fields to be read only. To do this you have to define the UIHint property for that field to point to the field template that you create that makes the textbox read-only. I found a few postings that described how to do it but none of them explained it exactly how I would have explained it. So I am posting what I did here to help anyone else looking to do similar.

Copy and paste the existing field template and rename it accordingly (e.g. ROText_Edit)
Make sure and rename the class name in the control source files
Make the textbox read-only. For demo purposes I also made the background gray
Create a partial class (same name as table) under the same namespace to define your UIHint
Rebuild website and you should now have a read only field on insert or edit

Feel free to contact me if you have problems following the instructions

ASP.NET Dynamic Data GUID PK Column

2011-12-23T15:30:00.001-04:00

Was working on a dynamic data website today and some of the tables in the data model had primary keys with data type uniqueidentifier which is mapped to the guid data type in C#. The first thing I did was set the StoreGeneratedPattern property to Identity and set the default column value on the table column in SQL Server to NEWID(). This had the effect of hiding the id from the generated screens and inserting all zeroes for the id and causing a primary key contraint error on the front end. Seems like an illogical behaviour in this situation. What I eventually did to remedy the situation was to define my own insert stored procedure for the particular table. However once you define insert you have to define the rest, delete and update, as explained in this article, else you get an error like this : Cannot find the UpdateFunctionMapping for EntityType 'Department' in the mapping file.

I saw different ways of dealing with this and it appears under LINQ to SQL it's just a property change but I am using ADO.NET and this was the most elegant way to deal with my identity column. Hopefully this helps someone searching for a solution.

128Gb 20nm NAND flash

2011-12-09T09:10:00.001-04:00

Intel and Micron (through their joint venture IMTF - Intel Micron Flash Technologies) have unveiled the world's first 128Gb NAND flash die (which is double the capacity of the ones they currently produce). According to them this device is ideal for small form factor tablets, smartphones, SSDs and high-performance compute devices. The above image represents 1 terabit of data in a single fingertip-size package consisting of eight dies. They are able to do this by using innovative planar cell structure technology. Production will begin in 2012 and samples will be available in January. This new technology will enable 2.5" SSD drives to hold up to 2 TB.

XQD Compact Flash

2011-12-08T09:31:00.001-04:00

Compact flash is a removable mass storage device format used mostly in portable devices. It is a competing format to the more popular SD card format. The Compact Flash Association has adopted the new XQD format that is smaller than previous formats but still thicker than an SD card. XQD uses the PCI Express interface and is expected to have real world write speeds of 125 Mbps. The format is scalable and future cards can be faster, one of the driving forces of this new format. Some notes from their press release

The key features of the XQD format include:

Optimized form-factor
* Dimensions : 38.5 x 29.8 x 3.8mm
* Durable & Robust

Scalable High Performance Interface
* PCI Express: 2.5Gbps today and 5Gbps Future

Actual Write Speeds
* Target 125MB/sec and Higher

XQD cards will be shown at the CompactFlash Association booth at CP+ 2012, February 9-12 in Yokohama, Japan. Licensing for CFA members will start in early 2012.

My preference is the SD card format because that is what my devices support. I like interoperability. I dislike the proprietary formats and less popular formats. What's your opinion on this new CF format? Share with us in the comments below.

Elastic Data Cable

2011-12-07T17:55:00.001-04:00

Came across this interesting invention today. It's the worlds first elastic electric/data/usb cabling. It was developed by Japanese company Asahi Kasei Fibers. The target market is wearable electronics and robotics. This will help make robots more human-like. Can you think of any use case for this type of technology? Please share with us in the comments below. Now, take a look at the following video about the new product.

Kindle Fire Review

2011-12-02T17:15:00.003-04:00

I had blogged about the Kindle Fire when the new models were launched in September. When I saw that @StefanH2 was reviewing a Kindle Fire, I jumped at the opportunity to get a review out of him. Stefan is a local techie I know from Twitter, IT professional and owner of Maximum PC Solutions. He responded immediately and the following is a summary of his review.

Design

Tied to their cloud platform
Standard quality built, solid and feels comfortable in his hands
No 3G, bluetooth, expandable memory slots, camera or mic

Display

The display is an absolute joy to look at
Really good viewing angles
Vibrant, rich and not over saturated colour reproduction
Really good contrast levels
Text looks crisp and very easy to read
Buttery, smooth and fluid scrolling with no stuttering or sticking

Runs a heavily skinned version of Android
Hard to tell that it's built on Android

Multimedia

Decent browser experience
YouTube video playback was smooth and stutter free
Multiple tabs and switching between them worked well
Animations were fluid and problem free

Drawbacks and conclusion

Major content restriction based on region
No access to Amazon's Instant Video
Lack of hardware features mentioned above
Affordable and excels at what it was designed for

Fibre To The Home (TSTT)

2011-12-01T11:52:00.001-04:00

Back in 2008 during the budget debate it was mentioned that by 2013 we would be seeing fibre to the home (FTTH) from TSTT, of which the government has a major share. It's the end of 2011 and it's the first time I am hearing any progress as it relates to this, thanks to an article posted on the Tech Trini forum. This forum was recently launched by a fellow techie from twitter, @bcwint. I encourage you to sign up and join the conversation. What is fibre to the home? What areas will get this service first and what is the timeframe for rollout? What is the cost? What are the speeds? These are some of the questions that come to my mind. The article mentions speeds of 20Mbps and that fibre is more reliable [than DSL]. There are technical limits to the technology and limits they impose based on load balancing and pricing strategy. I recently discovered that Flow (Trinidad) now offers residential customers 100 Mbps. I still can't figure out what I would do with that kind of speed. Seems more applicable to businesses, organisations or large families/groups. What would be nice is if this meant a more reliable service for current DSL customers. I do see a lot of complains about the reliability of their DSL network. The pilot is taking place in Goodwood park and involved replacing the copper cables with fibre optic cables. Take a look at the following video explanation done by the FTTH Council Europe.

A lot of questions. If I am ever able to contact a TSTT rep maybe I can get some answers and do an update to this blog post. What are your thoughts? What would you do with a much greater bandwidth?

BBX

2011-11-30T07:45:00.001-04:00

Photo Credit : Research In Motion/Devcon 2011

BBX (BlackBerry + qnX as indicated by one website) is the codename for the next generation blackberry platform that combines the BB OS and QNX (which the BB Tablet (Playbook) OS is built on). I had previously blogged about QNX here. At last months devcon conference RIM unveiled it's BBX platform which will run on future devices. According the press release

BBX is the next generation platform for BlackBerry smartphones and tablets. It combines the best of BlackBerry and the best of QNX and is designed from the ground up to enable the powerful real-time mobile experiences that distinguish BlackBerry products and services.

The BBX platform will include BBX-OS, and will support BlackBerry cloud services and development environments for both HTML5 and native developers. BBX will also support applications developed using any of the tools available today for the BlackBerry PlayBook – including Native SDK, Adobe AIR/Flash and WebWorks/HTML5, as well as the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps – on future BBX-based tablets and smartphones.

BBX will also include the new BlackBerry Cascades UI Framework for advanced graphics (shown for the first time today), and bring “Super App” capabilities to enable many advanced capabilities including deep integration between apps, always-on Push services, the BBM™ Social Platform, and much more.

Will this new platform be able to propel RIM/Blackberry to new heights after recent sluggish performance? It's been so bad for RIM that many are speculating if they are on their way out. What are your thoughts? My personal opinion is that RIM has enough to keep them around for many years but I don't think that BBX alone is enough to turn them around. I think they need more than just a new platform. I believe they need to match or exceed what the others are doing added to what the customer wants.

Blackberry/Digicel Carrier Billing

2011-11-29T22:33:00.001-04:00

Digicel recently launched carrier billing for the Blackberry platform. What does this mean? Basically you can make app purchases and pay it from your monthly bill (postpaid) or available credit (prepaid). Before your only options were a credit card or paypal. As usual I like to try these things out myself. I am prepaid and had enough credit to cover the app I decided to buy, 5001 Facts for US$1.99. At the time of writing this blog post, Digicel (Trinidad) stated an exchange rate of $6.42. Their website also states that it works with prepaid and postpaid. Below is the result of my testing.

When I asked on twitter one person stated that he was able to purchase an app through Digicel (Trinidad) via carrier billing. I will try again tomorrow and see if I have better luck else I will call customer care. Then I will update this blog post. This makes blackberry app purchases more accessible and convenient. Have you tried it? Did it work for you and what are your thoughts? Please share with us in the comments below.

Blogging Advice

2011-11-27T09:36:00.001-04:00

Someone recently asked me for some blogging advice and this was my response from the top of my head. Might be useful information for someone else so I am posting it here on my blog. Feel free to add to the list by leaving a comment below.

Provide as much subscription options as possible. RSS, twitter, fb, google+, email, etc.
Engage with you readers. People prefer two way conversations. Follow back your subscribers.
Connect with others in your field. Join mailing lists, forums, subscribe to other blogs, comment on other blogs, etc.
My preference is for a clean and simple design that loads quickly. Enable a mobile version. If you are going to pile on functionality and make your blog noisy do it properly. The middle ground distracts me.
Always give credit (and get permission for) for photos/videos/other content and information and provide links where relevant but don't over do it. Linking to your favourite sites is ok but my preference is to link to the actual press releases.
Monitor the press releases, blogs and youtube channels of the brands that you want to write about. Use google alerts to keep abreast of topics that you are going to write about. Check out the press area of those brands for images, contact info, press kits, etc.
My preference is to keep blog posts short but meaningful. A photo or video adds a thousand words. Don't sacrifice quality for quantity.
Moderate comments. My procedure is to delete only obvious spam. Readers are allowed to have their say even if it goes against what I think.
Create a brand and be consistent. Add your own personality and style, something that makes you stand out against the others.
Look at what other blogs are doing and adapt it to your own blog if necessary.
Follow up on older posts and provide dated updates as necessary.
Try to provide accurate information and stay away from hearsay. If you have to, make it clear that it is hearsay.
Don't be afraid to be subjective at times as your experience and opinion does count for something and over time your readers will appreciate this. But make it clear that this is your opinion and your experience. Do not force your choices on someone else. Give them your position, encourage them to do their research and let them choose for themselves.
Pay attention to how things look e.g. If you are posting your link to fb, make sure the title and description and image looks good. If I am not happy with how fb scales my image I remove it and if the description is long or distracting I leave it out.
Because I get comments from many different sources, I manually transfer and collate the good ones to my blog comments being careful to only use initials or anonymous. This way someone finding the article will benefit from all the conversations surrounding it.
Pay attention to the technical stuff like SEO, security, accessibility, browser compatible, design principles, etc.
Don't be afraid to use third party tools. You don't have to go reinventing the wheel. Don't feel pressured into going with your own hosting and fiddling with code even if you are a coder. Your time can be better spent focusing on content and quality.
Make sure you backup your content and template and everything else.
Monetise your hard work. One way is through ads.
Try to get your own domain. Don't feel like you have to get multiple domains. One domain with many sub domains is cool.
Centralise your online presence. Some people prefer one social media network over the other. Make it easy for people to connect with you.
Don't be afraid to plug your blog wherever you can. Don't over do it and do it tastefully. When linking to your blog posts tag brands and persons that were mentioned.
Pursue persons related to your blog post to get their input. If it is an event for example, reach out to attendees to get their input.
Refer to online resources on how to create a good blog.

Samsung Mobile Live (Trincity Mall)

2011-11-25T15:19:00.001-04:00

A few days ago I received an invite via email to visit the Samsung Mobile Live booth at Trincity Mall (new food court end). Today I did exactly that and I was presented with a bag of goodies as a token of their appreciation. I really needed that big coffee mug. Thanks a lot. On display for you to demo is the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy S II and Galaxy Ace. Promoters are manning the booth to answer your questions and show you how the devices work. The booth is active from now till DEC 17, noon till 6pm, Monday to Saturday. No devices are being sold at the booth as it is strictly for promotion and you are advised to check bmobile or Digicel if you are interested in purchasing any of the Samsung Mobile devices. The one thing that impressed me the most after using all the devices was the clarity of the Galaxy Tab's screen. I tested one of my YouTube videos on it and was blown away. I liked the speed of the devices and the responsiveness of the touch screens. My advice to you is to go test them out yourself. It's Samsung and it's Android. Go see what all the fuss is about and compare it to other devices you have used.