8 things your webcam can do, that you dont know

8 things your webcam can do, that you dont know:

HOME
SECURITY SYSTEM



THERE
ARE PLENTY
of free programs you can use to turn a webcam into a remote security system.
Simply install Yawcam (Windows only) from www.yawcam. com or Vitamin D (Windows
and MAC) from www. vitamindinc.com. Both are free and once installed, you can
configure them to live stream video and monitor the feed remotely. The software
can also be set to alert you or start recording when motion is detected in the frame
of view — this is great because you obviously cannot monitor the feed from the
camera all the time. For general surveillance, you can setup the software to
take snapshots at set intervals and upload them to a remote FTP server. For
Linux users, Motion (www.lavrsen.dk) does the same thing.





FUN & GAMING



A WEBCAM
can literally put you into the action while playing a game. At www.newgrounds.
com, you will find a collection of short, quick online games and Adobe Flash
applets that use your webcam. Just head to the games section and webcam games
subsection on the website. You will need to allow Flash Player to access your
webcam when it prompts you — this has to be done for each game. There are
plenty of games available on the site that you can play using your webcam and
each of them has a different theme. Our favourites are the 3D Target Shooting
(the game uses the webcam to detect your location and displays a 3D effect,
relative to your position), Night of the Ninja (fend off angry ninjas by
hitting them), Bunny Zap (zap bunnies before they hit the ground) and Dress Up
Yourself (add spectacles, thought/speech bubbles, facial hair, accessories to
your face).





LOGIN VIA FACE
RECOGNITION



SOME
COMPUTERS
may have this feature built in, but if you have a PC running Windows and a
webcam, you can enable login via face recognition easily. Head to www.
luxand.com/blink or http://bananascreen.en.softonic.com and download the
free software. In the initial configuration register your face with the
software and set an auto-lock for Windows. Once active, the software will
recognise your face and automatically log you in to Windows without the need
for a password. Since the software recognises certain points on your face, it
doesn’t matter if you have a different hairstyle or if you’re wearing
spectacles one day. There is an easy way to break in though – if anyone just
holds up a photo of yours to the webcam, the software may log in because it
can’t recognise 2D or 3D shapes.









OPTICAL CHARACTER
RECOGNITION



OCR OR Optical character recognition
using a webcam is a bit tricky as the image quality of most webcams is average.
However, your webcam can double up as an OCR reader in a pinch. You can take an
image using the webcam and then use software like Microsoft Document imaging,
Google Docs and Abbyy FineReader Online to convert images to text. You can also
try Evernote (free from www.evernote. com). Evernote is recommended software
for OCR since it reads the image from the webcam and converts it into
searchable text in real-time. You can use it to save notes, book pages, reports
and business cards. Accuracy of converted text varies between 70-90% depending
on the image quality and software used for OCR conversion.





PHOTOS WITH FUNNY
EFFECTS



IF
YOU go
to www.cameroid.com, you can use any webcam to take funny photos — either with
various filters, distortion effects, scenes or frames. You don’t need to
install anything or even sign up — just give the site permission to access your
webcam through Adobe Flash when prompted. Once you take a photo, you can either
save it to the Cameroid public gallery or download the JPG file to your
computer. You can also try out similar effects at www.seenly.com. You can also
get software to create realtime effects while you video chat with someone using
Skype or Google Talk. Videoskin.net offers some freeware while
www.webcammax.com and www.shiningmorning. com offer trial versions of
their software with thousands of different effects.





BAR
CODE READER




READING BAR
codes and QR codes is easy with a smartphone and a free app. But you can do the
same thing on a PC with a webcam (doesn't matter if the webcam is built in or
external, although external is probably better for this purpose). Download and
install bcWebCam (get it free from www.bcwebcam. de) and it will automatically
connect to your webcam to show the feed. Now just place the barcode or QR code
in front of the webcam, the software will take a few seconds to recognise the
embedded content and show you the text/link it contains. Mac users who need
similar functionality can use Evobarcode (15day trial & US$30 post that)
from www.evological.com or QuickMark (US$ 3.99) from the Mac App store.





TIME LAPSE VIDEOS



TIME LAPSE
is a photography technique wherein multiple photographs, taken at the same
location over a period of time are stitched together to form a video. The
resulting effect is of time passing by very quickly, hence the name. Free
software called Tilaphos (http://sourceforge.net/ projects/tilaphos) or
Webcam TimerShot (available on http:// download.cnet.com) can do this for you
without hassling you with too many technical details. An external webcam is
recommended for time lapse videos because it is easier to keep it still. Also,
it is much easier to place it at a location from where a wider frame can be
captured — larger coverage would result in capturing of more movements, which
in turn will make the video look good. It’s important that the laptop (or
webcam) is kept perfectly still and that it receives constant power. After
that, it’s just a matter of setting the time interval and recording the time
lapse.





MAKE YOUR OWN FONT




YOU
CAN
use your webcam to create a font from your own handwriting. This font can be
used to send emails or create documents with a personal touch. Head over to
www.pilothandwriting.com, download and print the template provided. Now fill
out the boxes in the printed form with the corresponding alphabets — using your
handwriting. Once done, use your webcam to take an image of the form and upload
it to the website. After upload, the site will show you the template and you
can edit it to make the alphabets look better. Next, the website will generate
a font based on your handwriting and then you can download the font to your
computer and use it with any software of your choice.

Unescaping unicode characters in C#, encoded in JavaScript

Recently I came across a problem where I need to post HTML content (through JSON) in AJAX call and was end up getting "A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected from the client"


This problem lead me to learn a new thing which I thought may helpful programmers in many cases.


The problem:


I used java script escape funnction to encode html contents which I need to decode on the server side.
JavaScript escape and unescape are very powerful functions, but they do have its various idiosyncrasies that do not work appropriately with the standard escaping methods in the serverside C# code.


The regualr methods we have on C# to handle escaping/unescaping are:

• Uri.EscapeDataString
• Uri.EscapeUriString
• HttpUtility.UrlEncode
• HttpUtility.URLPathEncode

but none of these return a properly unescaped string as escaped by the JavaScript conterpart. 

The solution:

Fortunately for us, Microsoft's own JScript libary has it's own, serverside implementation of the JavaScript encode/unencode methods, that do the job exactly as expected. They are exact equivalents.

• Microsoft.JScript.GlobalObject.unescape(string escapedString) 
• Server.UrlDecode(Microsoft.JScript.GlobalObject.unescape(string escapedString))

To use it in your code: Reference Micrtosoft.JScript.dll in your project.
Use the static methods in GlobalObject to do the escape/unescape


Thanks for Reading..

Silverlight goes to version 5, Microsoft almost embarassed to announce it

Microsoft has announced the next generation of Silverlight, version 5, is now available for clients and developers.
While they made their target (just – they originally said “by the end of 2011”), Microsoft’s growing move towards modern web technologies such as HTML 5 and CSS 3 and away from Silverlight is becoming clear. For example, the release was publicised by a single blog post on MSDN, and made public at 9pm on a Friday – probably the second worst time you could possibly choose (after 3am on a Sunday) to make an announcement you actually want people to hear about.
It’s not as if Silverlight 5 doesn’t come with a bunch of features SL devs won’t like – it’s packed with new features that enrich the platform (even if it is dying). There’s a whole 3D stack included in an XNA 3D API, with built in effects and a full XNA content pipeline. H.264 (unprotected) is decoded in hardware, XNA boosts low-latency sound, P/Invoke, multiple windows, 64-bit support in Windows, Full Trust mode for enterprise with unrestricted filesystem access, and all kinds of other features.
However it seems Silverlight’s days are numbered, as Microsoft moves to HTML 5 for its Windows 8 tile apps and improves its support in IE 10. If you’re still interested, you can get it from Silverlight.net.

SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate arrives

Late last week Microsoft made available the first Release Candidate of SQL Server 2012 (previously codenamed Denali).
According to Microsoft, over 100,000 people downloaded the CTPs (Community Technology Previews) leading up to the release, the feedback from which has been put into the release candidate.
“SQL Server 2012 RC is the first release which is feature complete and represents an exciting milestone for customers and partners looking to experience the full value of SQL Server 2012” said the team. “As the foundation of the cloud-ready information platform, SQL Server 2012 will help organizations unlock breakthrough insights across the organization as well quickly build solutions and extend data across on-premises and public cloud backed by mission critical confidence.”
There are a number of improvements in SQL Server 2012 that enterprises and developers alike will be interested in. It includes “AlwaysOn” technology, which permits multiple readable database secondary servers for reporting and backup workloads as well as support for high availability in complex data types. It also has some significant speed boosts, CPU usage controls, Resource Governor for multi-tenancy environments and predictable resource allocation for these scenarios.
The RC is available today for anyone looking to have a go with all of the headline features in a production-ready package.

Google BigQuery helps companies of any size analyse their datasets

So-called “big data” – the concept of us all creating an ever-increasing amount of data and requiring it processed and analysed – is a hot topic at the moment, both among big companies and startups looking to get an edge in the sector.
Google have announced the availability of BigQuery, a web service designed for everyone from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies to help them analyse their massive datasets. A preview of the service was made available at the Google IO conference in 2010, and now anyone can get involved with its new UI and REST APIs. Other new functionality includes JOIN statement and support for Google Cloud Storage data export.
“We’re looking forward to helping businesses innovate faster by harnessing their own large data sets” writes BigQuery’s product manager, Ju-kay Kwek. “[We’re] putting one of Google's most powerful data analysis systems into the hands of more companies of all sizes.”
Use cases for the service vary from quick analysis of a dataset in a one-off case through to heavy API-based usage. The service is currently free (with 30 days’ notice before any charges are brought into effect), and developers can get involved on the Google Code site.

The null-coalescing Operator (??) Operatorin C#.net

?? Operator (C# Reference)

 

The ?? operator is called the null-coalescing operator and is used to define a default value for nullable value types or reference types. It returns the left-hand operand if the operand is not null; otherwise it returns the right operand. 

A nullable type can contain a value, or it can be undefined. The ?? operator defines the default value to be returned when a nullable type is assigned to a non-nullable type. If you try to assign a nullable value type to a non-nullable value type without using the ?? operator, you will generate a compile-time error. If you use a cast, and the nullable value type is currently undefined, an InvalidOperationException exception will be thrown.

 Example:

class NullCoalesce
{
    static int? GetNullableInt()
    {
        return null;
    }

    static string GetStringValue()
    {
        return null;
    }

    static void Main()
    {
        // ?? operator example.
        int? x = null;

        // y = x, unless x is null, in which case y = -1.
        int y = x ?? -1;

        // Assign i to return value of method, unless
        // return value is null, in which case assign
        // default value of int to i.
        int i = GetNullableInt() ?? default(int);

        string s = GetStringValue();
        // ?? also works with reference types. 
        // Display contents of s, unless s is null, 
        // in which case display "Unspecified".
        Console.WriteLine(s ?? "Unspecified");
    }
}

  

For more information, see Nullable Types (C# Programming Guide) and ?? Operator (C# Reference)

New HTML 5 input types in ASP.Net 4.5 Developer Preview

Microsoft has released developer previews for Visual Studio 2011 and .Net framework 4.5. There are lots of new features available in the developer preview. One of the most interested things for web developers is the support introduced for new HTML 5 form controls.
The following are the list of new controls available in HTML 5

• email
• url
• number
• range
• Date pickers (date, month, week, time, datetime, datetime-local)
• search
• color

Describing the functionality for these controls is not in the scope of this article. If you want to know about these controls, refer the below URLs

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh547102.aspx
http://www.w3schools.com/html5/html5_form_input_types.asp

ASP.Net 4.5 introduced more possible values to the Text Mode attribute to cater the above requirements. Let us evaluate these. I have created a project in Visual Studio 2011 developer preview, and created a page named “controls.aspx”. In the page I placed on Text box control from the toolbox

Now select the control and go to the properties pane, look at the TextMode attribute.

Now you can see more options are added here than prior versions of ASP.Net. I just selected Email as TextMode. I added one button to submit my page. The screen shot of the page in Visual Studio 2011 designer is as follows

See the corresponding markup

<form id="form1" runat="server">
    <div>
        Enter your email:
        <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" TextMode="Email"></asp:TextBox
    </div>
    <asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" Text="Submit" />
</form>

Now let me run this page, IE 9 do not have the support for new form fields. I browsed the page using Firefox and the page appears as below.

From the source of the rendered page, I saw the below markup for my email textbox

<input name="TextBox1" type="email" id="TextBox1" />

Try to enter an invalid email and you will see the browser will ask you to enter a valid one by default.

When rendered in non-supported browsers, these fields are behaving just as normal text boxes. So make sure you are using validation controls with these fields.
See the browser support compatability matrix with these controls with various browser vendors.

ASP.Net 4.5 introduced the support for these new form controls. You can build interactive forms using the newly added controls, keeping in mind that you need to validate the data for non-supported browsers.


Updates:
Some more features in ASP.NET 4.5. Check out here.

Safety Tips For Phone Users

Safety Tips For Phone Users

Dial *#06# from your mobile. A unique 15 digit IMEI number will be displayed. Save the number anywhere except your mobile as it is this number which will help trace your mobile in case of loss/theft.

If your mobile has been stolen, email the 15 digit IMEI number to cop@vsnl.net along with the following details: Name, address, phone model, its make, last used number, email for communication and date it went missing.

How to Bid for Software Projects

People who work as a software freelancers need to bid on projects as requested by the client. People bid on projects to show their abilities to get the software project done in time in an effective and professional manner. But winning a software project is difficult, as there can be hundreds of bids placed on a single software project. You need to create a bid that stands out from the rest.

1

Write a profile about you as a software developer. This is where you sell yourself as a qualified and well-educated software worker. Include technical degrees, designing diplomas, programming certifications, software relevant work experience, a full resume outlining your software experience and any other major achievements you have completed within the software industry. Include industry and field lingo, such as HTML, CSS and XHTML.

2

Collect your best software work in a portfolio. You need to supply your portfolio when you bid on a software project, so the client can see your abilities and previous work. Examples of software work to include in your portfolio are programming projects, website designs, software reporting and software troubleshooting. Show different aspects of your abilities, so the client does not get the impression you can only do one or two things.

3

Include any letters of recommendations and achievements that have come with the projects used in the portfolio. If possible, ask previous clients to place emphasis on specific software abilities, such as troubleshooting, programming or overall designing.

4

Make a realistic bid for the given software project. While some clients already have an hourly price set, others ask for the software freelancer to set the price. If the price is set, you are asked to choose the amount of hours you can do the project. Make a realistic guess, but do not undersell yourself.

5

If the client asks bidders to set the price, Make an estimate of how many hours it will take you, how much it will cost you and how much of a profit you would want. If in doubt, give yourself approximately 15 percent in profits. You need to include hours of planning, designing, programming and testing, if applicable. Outline your list of duties when suggesting the price for the client, so he is aware of how the money and time is spent.

6

Create a sample software project for this particular project to show what you can do. For example, if the project is for a website design with HTML and CSS programming, show various examples of the overall website design and include screen prints of the coding to show the client how you have completed the look.

7

Submit your bid for the software project and await an answer. When submitting, include all of the relevant information gathered in the previous steps and include a list of places or methods that the client can reach you, should you be chosen for an interview. This can be email, instant messenger, chat, phone number or other types of messengers. Provide the client with several options.


Thanks  all the readers to visit my blog regularly,
@VHNG

Sabeer Bhatia launches free SMS app Jaxtr

Sabeer Bhatia, the founder of Hotmail.com, on Tuesday launched JaxtrSMS, a mobile application that lets users send unlimited free text messages to any other phone anywhere in the world.

He claimed JaxtrSMS is the world's first mobile-based application for sending SMS that is completely open as the recipients do not need to have the app installed.

It is already available as a free download for all major mobile operating systems - iOS, Android, Blackberry and J2ME. In fact, users in 197 countries have already downloaded the app within a few weeks since the soft launch, said Bhatia, who is CEO & co-founded Jaxtr with Yogesh Patel in US.

JaxtrSMS is unique in that a mobile user can send a text SMS to any mobile phone in the world without requiring the receiver to have the JaxtrSMS application installed on her phone. This "open" facet of JaxtrSMS distinguishes it from other free mobile messaging applications such as Whatsapp where messages can only be sent within a closed network to people who also have the same app installed. JaxtrSMS retains the number of the user and no new number is required while signing up for the JaxtrSMS service.

"15 years ago, we gave you Hotmail.com, the world's first webmail service that freed up e-mail from the confines of the desktop and aided the creation of a global communications network which was completely open and free for users. Today, we present JaxtrSMS which does to SMS what Hotmail did for e-mail.
Now, mobile users can leverage our free and open application to send messages to their contacts anywhere across the world without having to pay anything," said Bhatia.

"JaxtrSMS was completely developed in India. I am proud to showcase this as an example of Indian innovation and ingenuity," said Yogesh Patel, president & co-founder.

SQL Server 2012 RC0 - SQL Server 2012 Programmability and Cloud Enabled

Programmability

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 enables developers to be more productive and easily create the next generation of robust database solutions using the powerful SQL Server T-SQL programming language and rich data types that manage virtually any type of data all through a new unified developer experience that enables build once, deploy anywhere across on-premises and cloud.

Key Capabilities

• New unified development experience across database, BI and web.
• Choice in data storage with FileTable and Remote Blog Storage.
• Improvements for blazing-fast Full-Text Search.
• Expanded spatial support.

Powerful Tools

Create next generation database applications that support the most demanding end-user requirements.

New Unified Development Experience

• SQL Server Data Tools unifies the development experience for database development.
• A single integrated environment for database development across database, BI, and web for any SQL Server platform on and off premises within Visual Studio.

New Frameworks

• Support for the Data-Tier Application Framework dramatically simplifies the development, deployment and management of database applications across on-premises and cloud.

SQL Language Improvements

• SQL Server 2012 supports new Transact-SQL language improvements.
• Simplify complex programming tasks and ease database migrations with improved support for ANSI SQL standards.

 

Rich Support for Content

Leverage SQL Server’s built-in data type support to easily manage relational and non-relational data as part of the database.

Choice in Data Storage

• FileTable permits organizations to store unstructured files directly in the database table.
• Remote Blog Storage allows management simplicity or externally on separate hardware for scalability.

Expanded Spatial Support

• Spatial enhancements include:
• Circular arcs on the ellipsoid (an industry first for relational database systems).
• Support for full globe spatial objects.
• Functional parity of geography and geometry data types.
• Added spatial indexing performance.

FILESTREAM Improvements

• Manages files and documents efficiently while leveraging SQL Server security and transaction support.
• Improvements in SQL Server 2012 yield improved performance, manageability and availability.

New Statistical Semantic Search

• Enables T-SQL developers to bring deep insight to the organization within non-structured data files stored in the SQL Server database.
• Reveal previously undiscovered relationships across stored data.

 

New Delivery Options

Choose from an array of delivery options that best suits customer needs.

New Support For Desktops

• SQL Server 2012 Express offers a new Local Database Runtime (LocalDb) deployment option.
• Ideal for developers who need to redistribute an embedded database within their desktop application or tool.

Cloud On Your Terms

• Build applications exclusively for the cloud, or hybrid applications that consume both on-premise and cloud services.
• Windows Azure Platform offers powerful database and BI functionality delivered as a service.

New SQL Server Appliances

• Microsoft is partnering with some of the industry’s most well-known and respected hardware OEM’s to offer a line of SQL Server appliances.
• Targeting a variety of enterprise scenarios.

Better with Windows Server

• SQL Server 2012 is designed to be the best database server for Windows Server.
• Offering several points where capabilities are tightly woven.

For More Info Visit Here..

The Cloud-Ready Information and Intelligence Platform

SQL Server 2012 is a cloud-ready information platform that will offer organizations the agility to create and scale solutions quickly from server to private or public cloud.

Key Capabilities

• Reduces complexity and accelerates time to solution through appliance and private or public cloud offerings.
• Flexible deployment options on your terms – server to cloud.
• Optimize IT and developer productivity across server and cloud with common tools.
• Extend Data Anywhere across server and/or cloud with expansive developer technologies.

Developer Productivity

Take database development to the next level with SQL Server Data Tools.

Developer Productivity

• An integrated development experience for developers building next-generation web, enterprise and data-aware mobile applications across on-premises and public cloud.
• Provides both graphical and text-based experiences for designing databases, tables, stored procedures, entities, models, and schemas.
• Learn more here.

Simplify Database development and deployment across on-premises and the cloud. Allowing developers to build once; deploy and manage anywhere.

Data-tier Application Component Enhancements

• Introduced in SQL Server 2008 R2, Data-tier Application (DAC) support across SQL Server and Visual Studio.
• Helps IT and developers to more easily define and contain the schemas.
• Supports applications, then deploys, imports, and exports DACs more easily across on-premises and public cloud.

Data-tier Application Component (DAC) Parity with SQL Azure

• SQL Server 2012 and SQL Azure offer ‘anywhere support’ for moving a DAC database between SQL Server databases across server, private cloud or SQL Azure.
• Enables customers to build once; deploy and manage anywhere.
• Unprecedented flexibility across IT and developers.
• Import and export services in the DAC framework enables archiving and migration scenarios between on-premise and cloud database servers.
• Extract database schema as well as data and serialize it into a new logical and open archive format – a .bacpac file.
• Import the .bacpac archive into another database server.

Extend the reach of data beyond on premises applications to new devices and locations in the cloud.

OData

• Provides a consistent and open data-feed to power multiple user experiences across the web, devices and desktop with Odata, an open protocol built on widely used web standards.

Data Sync

• Enables new scenarios with SQL Azure DataSync, a cloud service which provides bi-directional data synchronization between databases across datacenter and cloud.

Data Market

• Monetize accumulated data through SQL Azure DataMarket that allows organizations to publish data for purchase and consumption by other entities.

Simplify Deployment

Take database development to the next level with SQL Server Data Tools.

Developer Productivity

• An integrated development experience for developers building next-generation web, enterprise and data-aware mobile applications across on-premises and public cloud.
• Provides both graphical and text-based experiences for designing databases, tables, stored procedures, entities, models, and schemas.
• Learn more here.

Simplify Database development and deployment across on-premises and the cloud. Allowing developers to build once; deploy and manage anywhere.

Data-tier Application Component Enhancements

• Introduced in SQL Server 2008 R2, Data-tier Application (DAC) support across SQL Server and Visual Studio.
• Helps IT and developers to more easily define and contain the schemas.
• Supports applications, then deploys, imports, and exports DACs more easily across on-premises and public cloud.

Data-tier Application Component (DAC) Parity with SQL Azure

• SQL Server 2012 and SQL Azure offer ‘anywhere support’ for moving a DAC database between SQL Server databases across server, private cloud or SQL Azure.
• Enables customers to build once; deploy and manage anywhere.
• Unprecedented flexibility across IT and developers.
• Import and export services in the DAC framework enables archiving and migration scenarios between on-premise and cloud database servers.
• Extract database schema as well as data and serialize it into a new logical and open archive format – a .bacpac file.
• Import the .bacpac archive into another database server.

Extend the reach of data beyond on premises applications to new devices and locations in the cloud.

OData

• Provides a consistent and open data-feed to power multiple user experiences across the web, devices and desktop with Odata, an open protocol built on widely used web standards.

Data Sync

• Enables new scenarios with SQL Azure DataSync, a cloud service which provides bi-directional data synchronization between databases across datacenter and cloud.

Data Market

• Monetize accumulated data through SQL Azure DataMarket that allows organizations to publish data for purchase and consumption by other entities.

Extend Data Anywhere

Extend the reach of data beyond on premises applications to new devices and locations in the cloud.

OData

• Provides a consistent and open data-feed to power multiple user experiences across the web, devices and desktop with Odata, an open protocol built on widely used web standards.

Data Sync

• Enables new scenarios with SQL Azure DataSync, a cloud service which provides bi-directional data synchronization between databases across datacenter and cloud.

Data Market

• Monetize accumulated data through SQL Azure DataMarket that allows organizations to publish data for purchase and consumption by other entities.

For More Info Visit Here..


SQL Server 2012 RC0

Automatic Properties, Collection Initializers, and Implicit Line Continuation support with VB 2010

[In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/vihangshah_it]
 

Today I’m going to post about a few of my favorite new features being added to VB with VS 2010: Auto-Implemented Properties, Collection Initializers, and Implicit Line Continuation support.

Auto-Implemented Properties

Prior to VB 2010, implementing properties within a class using VB required you to explicitly declare the property as well as implement a backing field variable to store its value. 
For example, the code below demonstrates how to implement a “Person” class using VB 2008 that exposes two public properties - “Name” and “Age”:

While explicitly declaring properties like above provides maximum flexibility, I’ve always found writing this type of boiler-plate get/set code tedious when you are simply storing/retrieving the value from a field.  You can use VS code snippets to help automate the generation of it – but it still generates a lot of code that feels redundant.  C# 2008 introduced a cool new feature called automatic properties that helps cut down the code quite a bit for the common case where properties are simply backed by a field.  VB 2010 also now supports this same feature. 
Using the auto-implemented properties feature of VB 2010 we can now implement our Person class using just the code below:

When you declare an auto-implemented property, the VB compiler automatically creates a private field to store the property value as well as generates the associated Get/Set methods for you.  As you can see above – the code is much more concise and easier to read.
The syntax supports optionally initializing the properties with default values as well if you want to:

You can learn more about VB 2010’s automatic property support from this MSDN page.

Collection Initializers

VB 2010 also now supports using collection initializers to easily create a collection and populate it with an initial set of values.  You identify a collection initializer by declaring a collection variable and then use the From keyword followed by braces { } that contain the list of initial values to add to the collection. 
Below is a code example where I am using the new collection initializer feature to populate a “Friends” list of Person objects with two people, and then bind it to a GridView control to display on a page:

You can learn more about VB 2010’s collection initializer support from this MSDN page.

Implicit Line Continuation Support

Traditionally, when a statement in VB has been split up across multiple lines, you had to use a line-continuation underscore character (_) to indicate that the statement wasn’t complete. 
For example, with VB 2008 the below LINQ query needs to append a “_” at the end of each line to indicate that the query is not complete yet:

The VB 2010 compiler and code editor now adds support for what is called “implicit line continuation support” – which means that it is smarter about auto-detecting line continuation scenarios, and as a result no longer needs you to explicitly indicate that the statement continues in many, many scenarios.  This means that with VB 2010 we can now write the above code with no “_” at all:

The implicit line continuation feature also works well when editing XML Literals within VB (which is pretty cool).
You can learn more about VB 2010’s Implicit Line Continuation support and many of the scenarios it supports from this MSDN page (scroll down to the “Implicit Line Continuation” section to find details).

Summary

The above three VB language features are but a few of the new language and code editor features coming with VB 2010.  Visit this site to learn more about some of the other VB language features coming with the release. 
Also subscribe to the VB team’s blog to learn more and stay up-to-date with the posts they the team regularly publishes.

Hope this helps,
@VHNG

Roll back (Undo) revisions in the repository with TortoiseSVN

Learn how to revert (rollback / Undo) to a previous revision in the repository with TortoiseSVN ......

Use the revision log dialog

The easiest way to revert the changes from a single revision, or from a range of revisions, is to use the revision log dialog. This is also the method to use of you want to discard recent changes and make an earlier revision the new HEAD.

1. Select the file or folder in which you need to revert the changes. If you want to revert all changes, this should be the top level folder.
   
2. Select TortoiseSVN → Show Log to display a list of revisions. You may need to use Show All or Next 100 to show the revision(s) you are interested in.
   
3. Select the revision you wish to revert. If you want to undo a range of revisions, select the first one and hold the Shift key while selecting the last one. Note that for multiple revisions, the range must be unbroken with no gaps. Right click on the selected revision(s), then select Context Menu → Revert changes from this revision.
   
4. Or if you want to make an earlier revision the new HEAD revision, right click on the selected revision, then select Context Menu → Revert to this revision. This will discard all changes after the selected revision.

You have reverted the changes within your working copy. Check the results, then commit the changes.

Use the merge dialog

To undo a larger range of revisions, you can use the Merge dialog. The previous method uses merging behind the scenes; this method uses it explicitly.

1. In your working copy select TortoiseSVN → Merge.
   
2. In the From: field enter the full folder URL of the branch or tag containing the changes you want to revert in your working copy. This should come up as the default URL.
   
3. In the From Revision field enter the revision number that you are currently at. If you are sure there is no-one else making changes, you can use the HEAD revision.
   
4. make sure the Use "From:" URL checkbox is checked.
   
5. In the To Revision field enter the revision number that you want to revert to, namely the one before the first revision to be reverted.
   
6. Click OK to complete the merge.

You have reverted the changes within your working copy. Check the results, then commit the changes.

Use svndumpfilter

Since TortoiseSVN never loses data, your “rolled back” revisions still exist as intermediate revisions in the repository. Only the HEAD revision was changed to a previous state. If you want to make revisions disappear completely from your repository, erasing all trace that they ever existed, you have to use more extreme measures. Unless there is a really good reason to do this, it is not recommended. One possible reason would be that someone committed a confidential document to a public repository.
The only way to remove data from the repository is to use the Subversion command line tool svnadmin. You can find a description of how this works in the Repository Maintenance .

What's up with SQL Server 2008 Express editions

 Microsoft has announced the release of SQL Server 2008 and that means it time for another post about SQL Server Express.

The press release indicated that SQL Express is already available, but those of you who have followed the link have found that it is not actually there. Nothing to worry about, has a dependency on the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and we need to coordinate the release to the web for both of these which will take a few more days. I'll blog about it when we release it and you can watch the Express web site for updates; when we release it, it will be available from that site.

There will be three editions of SQL Express, each one adding to the functionality of the previous one; you simply pick the edition that includes the set of functionality you need and install it. The information I posted about SQL Express RC0 is still valid, but I'm reproducing the feature comparison table here to include the third edition:

Feature	SQL Server 2008 Express	SQL Server 2008 Express with Tools	SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services
Management
PowerShell Integration	Y (Separate installation)*	Y	Y
Policy Based Management	Y (manual only)**	Y (manual only)*	Y (manual only)**
Management Studio Basic	N	Y	Y
SQL Engine
Integrated Full Text Search	N	N	Y
Merge & Upsert	Y	Y	Y
New Data type support
Filestream support	Y	Y	Y
New Date & Time data types	Y	Y	Y
Geodetic data types	Y	Y	Y
Advanced Spatial Libraries	Y	Y	Y
Support for Spatial Standards	Y	Y	Y
New Tools
Import/Export Wizard	Y	Y	Y
Replication
Change Tracking	Y	Y	Y
Synchronization Services	Y (Separate installation)***	Y (Separate installation)***	Y
Reporting Services
Increase RS Memory Limit	N	N	Y
RS Word/Rich Text Export	N	N	Y
IIS Agnostic Report Deployment	N	N	Y
Enhanced Gauges & Charting	N	N	Y
Business Intelligence Developer's Studio	N	N	Y

* The SqlPS command line tool can be enabled in SQL Express by installing Windows PowerShell 1.0 before installing SQL Express.

** Policies can be created in SQL Express and run manually. There is no support for automated policy based management.

*** Synchronization Services support in SQL Express requires that you install the component separately from the SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack.

As you can see, SQL Express with Tools includes the core database engine and the basic version of Management Studio; this is the ideal edition for people who want the right tools for developing relational database applications. The advanced features such as Integrated Full Text Search, Reporting Services and BIDS are available in SQL Express Advanced. SQL Express with Tools will be delivered in the same architectures and with the same prerequisites as SQL Express Advanced, which are as follows:

SQL Express with Tools architecture 32-bit only installation package (x86 platforms only) 64-bit native installation packages (x64 platforms only)

SQL Express with Tools Prerequisites

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1

Windows Installer 4.5

Windows PowerShell 1.0

As with previous releases (SQL Server 2005) we will be releasing SQL Express 2008 in stages. SQL Express core will be released first, along with Visual Studio 2008 SP1, and the other two editions will follow about a month later. As I said, watch the Express web site and this blog for information about the release of these two additional editions.

- Vihang