Stay up to date with your favorite topic on social platforms

Stay up to date with your favorite topic on social platforms

Having written Notiflux and AUDE (Automatic Updates Distribution Engine) some time last year, I thought I would play around with the Facebook and Twitter APIs and keep posting links to some fresh news and articles in real time. So depending on the kind of things you like, you might want to join or follow some of those pages:...

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Useful Job Search Websites For Programmers In The UK

Useful Job Search Websites For Programmers In The UK

Job boards are websites that facilitate job hunting. There are many career websites designed to allow employers to post job requirements for a position to be filled; prospective employees can locate and fill out job applications and/or submit digital resumes for the advertised positions. Those sites may also offer employer reviews, career and job-search advice, and describe different job descriptions or employers. As a technology specialist in the UK, here are some of the websites I found helpful in the past few years....

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Furtivue (Or How To Send Furtive Messages Like A Ninja)

Furtivue (Or How To Send Furtive Messages Like A Ninja)

Furtivue : a furtive view over your messages. (www.furtivue.com) Furtivue is a web service that allows you to send temporary (self-destructing) emails, as in, you can control how long the message is going to stay with the recipient. When they open your Furtivue message, it appears for a specified number of seconds, then self-destroys. The duration will depends upon the length of the message (Or you can choose how long you want the message to be displayed)....

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Business at the speed of game production: OpenGL or XNA?

Business at the speed of game production: OpenGL or XNA?

A common start ups question in the gaming industry is : Which graphical environment should we use ? As time is money, a crucial factor in a choice is time: not only the time it takes to build complete games with each API but also a fluid timing during the gaming experience to make it enjoyable. In this analysis, we compare the OpenGL industry standard to the Microsoft XNA game framework on the speed factor. The study includes learning curve, programming, modeling and rendering speeds on both sides....

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Phidgets: First Steps In Robotics?

Phidgets: First Steps In Robotics?

Phidgets are a set of "plug and play" building blocks, some low-cost electronic components that you can control from your personal computer via USB. They provide you with some extra input/output methods beyond the classic mouse + keyboard + screen. As Harold Thimbleby mentioned in his book Press On, phidgets are a very nice way to get into hardware programming, as you may want to build real systems, not on screen or web browser simulations : phidgets are so-called because they are the physical equivalent of on-screen widgets (Windows Gadgets). Phidgets = Physical + Widgets (Widgets = Windows + Gadgets) Where to find them ?...

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How to Debug a Windows Service in Visual Studio

How to Debug a Windows Service in Visual Studio

When you create a Windows Service project under Visual Studio, you may have noticed that the following dialog box appears when you try to run the service. In summary, it is simply impossible to run a windows service in Visual Studio, you must necessarily go through the NET START command to start the service after having previously installed it with the command INSTALLUTIL. Except that this method prevents us from easily debugging the Windows Service. As a matter of fact, to debug our code, we must install the service, start it, then link the debugger to the relevant service process from Visual Studio. And by the way, let's keep in mind that we will also have to stop, recompile and restart the windows service in order to load up any change we make to the code. In short, it's kinda annoying. There is a simpler solution though....

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On reading books and self-education: My Essentials

There are a lot of great skills you get from school/university lectures, no doubt. But on the other hand, for some specific and practical "super powers" you want to acquire or enhance, you have no other choice but teach yourself. The potential reasons are legion. That could happen by mere interest or if you want to deepen your knowledge in one of your subjects. Or maybe for the sake of personal projects, say learning some essential life skill they don't teach you in class. So yes, when college doesn't prepare you for life battles, you have to coach yourself. Anyway, I am not here to complain about any education system. I am writing this post because I would like to share the best and most useful books I went through, as I have been reading a lot lately. I read on a variety of fields and for each of them I am suggesting the top books (according to my humble opinion). Here we go:...

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Because your projects need a symphonic soul: Some Motivational Songs

Music is like magic... They say music can alter moods and talk to you (Eminem said.) In those tough times when you go so tired/hopeless about your goals as they seem so far/unreachable, music is definitely one of the weapons at your disposal (beyond the fact that loud music helps stay awake when you write code at night) ; Motivational music helps you to keep going and to pick yourself up whn you are at your lowest. Well, I just thought I would share some songs that I find particulary helpful and motivating. I hope you would find among these soem that would help you too. I am not claiming that they are the best motivational songs ever or anything like that, these are just what I listen to. So without further ado, here is my top 10 :...

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6. Communication Techniques (on marketing for programmers)

The promotional mix, which is the overall range of techniques available to the marketer, comprises many elements but I am going to focus here on Internet marketing: the distribution of products, information and promotional benefits to consumers and businesses through internet technologies. Internet promotion is very convenient for a developer on a low budget (global reach at relatively low cost, metrics, dialogue with users, avoiding the necessity for intermediary salespeople...). The main ways to go about it include:...

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5. Branding (on marketing for programmers)

What's the difference between products and brands? A product can be anything that has the capacity to satisfy customer needs whereas branding is the process in which companies distinguish their product offerings from the competition. the benefits of brands: Company value, because the financial value of companies can be greatly enhanced by the possession of strong brands. Consumer preference and loyalty: strong brand names can surely have positive effects on consumer perceptions and preferences. If we consider fan boys, like the Apple fan boys, who purchase nothing but what comes from Apple (Mac, Ipod, Iphone, Ipad, etc). Most of the time, their choice depends more on the brand than on the actual devices quality. Barrier to competition: the impact of the strong, positive perceptions held by consumers about top brands means it's difficult for new brands to compute. For example, Google has become very notorious as the best search engine on the Internet. Even if a competitor like DuckDuckGo, Microsoft Bing or Yahoo (or you) come up with better algorithms, most of the online users would probably still use Google, as they got the Google brand on their mind. High profits: Strong, marketing-leading brands are rarely the cheapest (Here again, think different, I mean, think Apple). A good brand name should...

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Monthly Archives

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