iPad 3 App Development – Stay Ahead with 3rd Generation

iPad 3 App Development – Stay Ahead with 3rd Generation:
iPad 3 App development – Are you looking for this service to hire? Then you are on the correct platform of Mobile Development Experts, a trusted and offshore iPad application development service provider. But, let’s take some knowledge about the Apple iPad 3, a 3rd and current generation platform.
Really, Apple is the best company in the world of mobile market and tablet computer technology. It always brings some revolutionary technology to the world. After the success of iPad, iPad 2, it has launched iPad 3 to put the people of the world in the 3rd generation tablet Pc era. We know the features and functionalities of the iPhone series. Apple always gives something extra in each iPhone device than previous one. Just like iPhone, Apple has also provided some best and amazing features and functionality that make you feel better than other tablet computers.
iPad 3 comes with the best features such as Retina display with 4 times more pixel and a million pixels more than high definition TV than previous device, A5X processor with quad-core graphics make everything responsive that you do in it, 5 mega pixel iSight camera for clear picture capturing and for the high definition video recording, WiFi and WiFi with 4G LTE networks for faster connectivity, dictation we can also called it as voice typing means you speak and iPad type on screen, iOS 5.1 software which is an advanced mobile operating system in the globe, iCloud for storage, Airplay and many other amazing features.
You can find more than 200,000 amazing applications in-built in iPad 3. Custom iPad 3 app development from Mobile Development Experts (MDE) is robust service to avail, if you want to create your own application. MDE has been creating high quality and innovative iPad applications for the customers across the world. MDE provides iPad app solutions from personalized to enterprise level for the following categories.
Categories for Apple iPad 3 app development:
• iPad 3 business apps

• iPad 3 games

• iPad 3 education apps

• iPad 3 social networking apps

• iPad 3 finance apps

• iPad 3 medical app

• iPad 3 style apps

• iPad 3 travel apps

• iPad 3 multimedia app

• iPad 3 GPS navigation app

• iPad 3 health apps

• iPad 3 security app

• iPad 3 weather app

• iPad 3 utility tools app
So, apart from these categories, you are welcome to express your requirement to us.
Be the first with incredible iPad 3 and be the faster in business with iPad 3 application development. MDE offers you this innovative solution at affordable cost with the clarity and quality of work on your iPad 3 project.
MDE has highly skilled and experienced iPad application developers who have developed various high quality applications. They have a deep knowledge of iPad and Apple SDK. Our iPad 3 app developer has best knowledge of iOS 5.1 to develop an excellent application for your iPad.
So, the era of 3rd generation has begun now to expand the mobile and tablet computer technology world and groom apps market with the advanced iPad 3 app development at MDE.
Mobile Development Experts can boost your business and make your work easy by its Hire iPad 3 application developer.

PhoneGap – One Of The Best Cross-Platform Mobile Apps Development Tool

PhoneGap – One Of The Best Cross-Platform Mobile Apps Development Tool:

Mobile application development is now a very popular activity which has established valuable to a lot many companies, businesses and individuals. However, there is more than one mobile platform available in the marketplace having a significant business in terms of users. Many times, clients require a solution that is appropriate with all the major mobile apps development platforms. Creating such application is a really disturbing and requires comprehensive skills and relevant experience. Here one of the development tools that have been found very effective in cross platform for mobile apps development.

PhoneGap: Develop cross-platform mobile applications has become much easier with the release of Phonegap. It is Open Source platform to create mobile application Development in HTML, JavaScript and CSS for different systems (without modifying the program code), they include: iOS, Operating system, Rim, Web OS,  Symbian and Windows mobile on its way. The beauty of it is that it does not need the development of skills for a specific platform. Write your program in JavaScript, using HTML and CSS for structure. You write a mobile application like a normal web site or service. The engine PhoneGap API expands the browser technique and add the following features: access to the camera (for picture), access to the compass, access to the associates list, enjoying sound tracks, provides accessibility the computer file system, you can work with different HTML5 storage local Storage, Web SQL, etc. and also allows you to securely manage any cross-domain address.

On PhoneGap Development platform Mainly focuses on access to native API devices. which specializes in access to local API gadgets. Other upgrades include the overall balance of the API and “plug-gable” structure, the program of the API W3C DAP, API interaction and remote debugging tools. Moreover, the new interface makes platforms and platform extensions easier, along with simplification of the process of creating plug-ins. In addition to the platform PhoneGap has yet free, designer programs for all gadgets in single click.

PhoneGap assists PhoneGap developers to make a single app which can be used in different platform. One can make several applications related to business, entertainment, game and also social networking and also use third-party integration

MDE have team of skilled and experience mobile and PhoneGap Developers who develops apps for many platforms that suit for business needs.

Mobile Application Development: Web vs. Native

A few short years ago, most mobile devices were, for want of a better word, "dumb." Sure, there were some early smartphones, but they were either entirely e-mail focused or lacked sophisticated touch screens that could be used without a stylus. Even fewer shipped with a decent mobile browser capable of displaying anything more than simple text, links, and maybe an image. This meant if you had one of these devices, you were either a businessperson addicted to e-mail or an alpha geek hoping that this would be the year of the smartphone. Then Apple changed everything with the release of the iPhone, and our expectations for mobile experiences were completely reset.

The original plan for third-party iPhone apps was to use open Web technology. Apple even released tooling for this in its Dashcode project.⁴ Fast-forward three years and native apps are all the rage, and—usually for performance reasons—the mobile Web is being unfavorably compared.

There are two problems with this line of thinking. First, building a different app for each platform is very expensive if written in each native language. An indie game developer or startup may be able to support just one device, likely the iPhone, but an IT department will have to support the devices that its users have that may not always be the latest and greatest. Second, the performance argument that native apps are faster may apply to 3D games or image-processing apps, but there is a negligible or unnoticeable performance penalty in a well-built business application using Web technology.


http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1968203

Marketplace Client, Your Applications, and Registry Keys

Marketplace Client, Your Applications, and Registry Keys:
The Windows Marketplace for Mobile is off to a great start since its release October 6th. One issue that has tripped up a few developers submitting their applications has been the use of internal registry keys used to determine the location of the application. Some clever developers have discovered that there is a list of installed applications stored in the registry under: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Apps. Under the application name, you will find the directory in which the application has been installed. For example:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Apps\Company Application Name
InstallDir=”\Program Files\Application Name”

a similar list can be found here:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Security\AppInstall\Company Application Name]
InstallDir=”\Program Files\Application Name”

Since Windows Mobile does not support the concept of a current working directory, this has been one way to determine where the EXE is running from. A better approach, that is not dependant on these registry keys,  uses the following code (See Chistec’s blog post):

GetModuleFileName(GetModuleHandle(NULL), pszFullPath, MAX_PATH); 

For managed code (See Chistec’s blog post):

using System.Reflection;

private string GetApplicationExe()
{
  // Determine the full path to the application executable
  return Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().CodeBase;
}

You can then parse out the application path from the returned file name.

So what is wrong with using these undocumented registry keys? When your application is installed by the Marketplace client, it creates these registry keys, but not with the names you would expect. Therefore, if your application is relying on any of these keys, if will fail to find them, because they will not exist.  This has tripped up a few developers because this issue does not surface unless you install the application after it has gone through the Marketplace ingestion process. (The processing of your application after it has passed certification testing.)

To summarize, if you need to get the directory in which it was your application was installed, use either the native or managed APIs above. Also, make sure you are not using either of these undocumented registry keys.

Thanks,

Mike

Widget Anatomy – Security Insights

Widget Anatomy – Security Insights:
Previous post: Widget Anatomy – Performance and battery life
This is part four of my Widget Anatomy series which which will explain the ins and outs of the Widget Framework that is shipping as part of Windows Mobile 6.5.  In this installment I will discuss the Widget Framework’s security model..

Inside the sandbox – The Widget Framework security model

It is true, Widgets are executed inside a sandbox, and because of this, there are bounded to a rather strict security policy but can be summarized as follows:

1. Widgets can’t read files from the device nor can access the registry directly.  A notable exception are all files that are part of the Widget package itself.
2. Cookies can be used as temporary storage but developers are encouraged to use the persistent storage API instead.   Cookies, browser history and local cache are  isolated per widget and completely separated from the browser.
3. Widgets can’t navigate their main frame to any URL with the exception of fragment inside itself.  You can use an iframe to open a web URL though.
4. Widgets can navigate to the following specific purpose URIs

URI	Description	Example
SMS:	Starts composing an SMS message addressed to the given phone number	sms:1111111111
mailto:	Starts composing a mail message using the specified parameters (Like destination, subject and body)	mailto:test@test.com?subject=Hello?body=From%20Here
callto:	Initiates a voice call to the given number	callto:1111111111
tel:	Initiates a voice call to the given number	tel:1111111111
http:, https:	Opens the specified URI using the default browser.	http://www.microsoft.com

Widgets and the Marketplace

Windows Mobile 6.5 restricts distribution of Widgets to trusted sources only.  This means consumers will only be able to install widgets from the Marketplace and, on some cases, Mobile Operator stores directly.  This restriction was implemented because we don’t currently support digital signature verification for widget files which prevents users from being able to verify the origins and authenticity of any given widget.  This might seem a little restrictive but I believe it provides the right balance between security and flexibility, specially if you consider that there are ways to allow enthusiasts and developers to install widgets from non-trusted sources, as long as they acknowledge and understand the risks of doing so.  Use your best judgment :).

Other important security considerations

• The local persistent storage is unencrypted, use caution when storing information that should be protected in clear text.
• The widget ID is sent to the server as part of the user agent string if you would like to use it on your server for any reason.
• Widget files are stored unencrypted on the device file system so anyone with device access can potentially read them.
• Cross domain data access is allowed, this is super important for widgets since they can be used to mash up data from multiple sources.

That’s it for now, feel free to comment about any other security related questions that were not covered.
Next post: Widget Anatomy – Touch and D-Pad inputs, oh joy!

Widget Anatomy – Touch and D-Pad inputs, oh joy!

Widget Anatomy – Touch and D-Pad inputs, oh joy!:
This is fifth and final part of my Widget Anatomy series that described the ins and outs of the Widget Framework that shipped with windows mobile 6.5.  In this installment we will discuss the different ways a Widget can receive inputs from the user and how best respond to them.

First the easy one: Touch

Touch is the primary input for all our professional devices and it looks like they will be a significant percentage of our device offering.  Handling this is fairly easy since the browser engine translate the touch event into a mouse click which can be handled by using the onclick event handler as shown in the following example:

   1: <html>

   2: <head>

   3:     <script type="text/javascript" src="js/ImageSearch.js"></script>

   4: </head>

   5: <body>

   6:     <div id="SearchBox">

   7:         <input id="SearchQuery"/>

   8:         <img src="images/search.png" class="searchIcon" 
onclick="doSearch();" />

   9:     </div>

  10: </body>

  11: </html>

It is important to note that, since there is no “mouse” for widgets most of the other mouse related events like onmouseover, onmousemove, etc will not be triggered in a reliable enough way to use them.

Now the hard one: The Directional-Pad

I been making special emphasis to the fact that Widgets work seamless across all Windows Phones so, we need to ensure that the can be used correctly when the user interacts with it using the directional path.

It is important to note that, unlike IE6, a The widget framework will respond to a D-Pad input event by moving the focus to the closed actionable element in the direction of the user click.  This behavior is similar to the old pocketIE and among friends we call it “Link to Link navigation”.

An actionable element is defined as any DOM element that can receive focus (Like a form field) or an element that implements its onclick event handler.  When an actionable element gain focus the onfocus even is triggered, the same way, the focus is moved away from the element the onblur event is triggered.  Now we can easily use those events to show the user where the focus is since the Widget Framework does not automatically highlights the focused element.  We do this because we don’t want to inhibit the creativity of the widget creator to design his/her own focused highlight strategy.

The only “little” extra detail is that all elements that can gain focus need to have the tabindex property defined (the value is not important).  This is easily forgotten but if not set, the focus and blur events will not trigger,

<html>

<head>

<script type="text/javascript">
   1:  
   2:     function OnFocus(element) {
   3:         element.style.backgroundColor = "red";
   4:     }
   5:     
   6:     function OnBlur(element) {
   7:         element.style.backgroundColor = "white";
   8:     }
</script>

</head>

<body>

<div onfocus="OnFocus(document.getElementById('one'))"

onblur="OnBlur(document.getElementById('one'))"

onclick="alert(1)"

tabindex=1>

<p id="one" style="font-size:medium:">1</p>

</div>

<div onfocus="OnFocus(document.getElementById('two'))"

onblur="OnBlur(document.getElementById('two'))"

onclick="alert(2)"

tabindex=2>

<p id="two" style="font-size:medium;">2</p>

</div>

</body>

</html>

In this example, we created two divs that can receive the input focus, you can move from one to the other using the D-Pad, the element that receives focus changes the color of its background to red.

 

Conclusion

Writing Windows Mobile applications is now as easy as writing a web page, and, by following some best practices your widget can be as functional and attractive as any other native application on the platform.

This is the end of this blog series and since Windows Phones are now available on many countries, you should go get one and write many cool widgets for it.  Don’t forget to share the results with the world by uploading them to the marketplace!

Until next time

Jorge Peraza

Widget anatomy series at glance

#1 The manifest

#2 The keys for a great user experience

#3 Performance and battery life

#4 Security insights

#5 Touch and D-Pad inputs, oh joy!

Windows Marketplace for Mobile: Certification Testing, Hopper, and Multiple Screen Support

Windows Marketplace for Mobile: Certification Testing, Hopper, and Multiple Screen Support:
You work very hard to develop, test, and market your Windows Mobile application. Failing Windows Marketplace for Mobile certification testing can be a frustrating experience, but it doesn’t have to be.  Failing certification costs a submission credit (or another $99 if you have exhausted your initial five credits), you have to correct and resubmit your application – likely not what you planned.  In this post, we’ll cover a few tips that should help you increase the first time pass rate and have your application published to the Marketplace sooner. 

TIP NUMBER ONE: Understand the Certification Requirements

As a Windows Marketplace for Mobile developer, you are notified via email when the Application Submission Requirements for Windows Marketplace for Mobile is updated. You can also check the Windows Marketplace for Mobile forum for important announcements including the availability of new requirements. You may be surprised the number of developers that attempt to pass certification testing without understanding the requirements. If you have any questions regarding the requirements, please post them in the very active Windows Marketplace for Mobile forum.

TIP NUMBER TWO: Run Hopper early and often

From the requirements document:

1.17. Hopper Test The application must complete two hours of Microsoft’s Hopper test without exhibiting unpredictable behavior, hanging or crashing.

The more you run Hopper, the more confidence you will have in passing this requirement. While the requirement calls for two hours, a good benchmark is the number of hours your app runs without problems. Use this as a development metric. There is no reason your application can’t run for 20 hours or more. A suggested practice is to let your application run overnight and check it in the morning when coming into work. Ideally, Hopper and your app will still be running!

Use the correct version of Hopper

There are separate versions of Hopper for Standard and Professional. Make sure you are using the correct one for the device / emulator you are testing against. Also Hopper has been updated to support Windows Mobile 6.5. The correct version of Hopper can be downloaded here.

Starting Hopper

Hopper is brain dead stupid. That is no knock against this stress testing tool. Hopper simply ‘taps’ and ‘types’ randomly into your application. It will stress your application like no user would in the real-world. It is great for exposing bugs that are not found during normal ad hoc testing. To ensure the device or your application is not hanging, it periodically pulls down the Start screen. It does not know anything about your application, in fact you have to artificially ‘force’ Hopper to tap and type into your application. This is done via a Focus Application. The focus application periodically (the default is every 10 seconds), forces your application into the foreground. As a developer, you need to customize the Focus App for your application, changing the string constant that references to your EXE name and path. Starting Hopper and the Focus app (you don’t need to explicitly start your application, it will be started by the Focus App) can be tricky, since Hopper immediately starts tapping and typing when started, making it difficult to navigate to start the Focus App. There are a couple of solutions to this:

1. Use RapiStart to remotely start the Focus App (this will implicitly start your application) and then Hopper in sequence. You can download RapiStart here: Windows Mobile Developer Power Toys.
2. Use the Managed Focus App. This tool is hugely convenient in that you specify all of the dependencies for Hopper in a config file and then just start the one application – no building necessary! It will launch your application and Hopper for you. I recommend this tool with a big caveat as some developers have had problems (Hopper failing after less than 30 minutes) with it. It seems to activate applications differently than does the native focus app. I would recommend using the native focus app first to establish a baseline. Then use the Managed Focus App. They should behave exactly the same. If not, stick with the native Focus App.
   

Hopper is stressing your app, therefore your app may crash

Note that Hopper is a stress tool and as such, your application may crash during a Hopper run. This is a good thing in that Hopper is doing its job stressing your app. It is a good practice to run your application under the Visual Studio debugger when running Hopper. Especially when you are early in the development cycle. This way when your app crashes, the debugger will stop exactly where the crash is occurring. You can also inspect the state of your app to help determine the cause of the crash.

Hopper failure: Start menu dead

One of the more common Hopper failures (log files are stored in \testlog\hopper.log) is ‘Start menu dead’. See here for a good explanation and possible causes of this failure: Hopper: Start Menu Dead!. The Hopper blog is also a good source for tips on running Hopper; however the content is skewed more towards OEMs.

TIP NUMBER THREE: Adapt Your App

From the requirements document:

1.13. Multiple Device Support
Developers must identify the required device functionality during the Windows Marketplace submission process. Applications must have the ability to run on multiple Windows Mobile device platforms, for example, multiple Standard or multiple Professional devices. Although not recommended, applications can support a limited number of Windows Mobile devices.

Screen Rotation

While not previously stated explicitly, this requirement also includes the proper handling of screen rotation. Just about every Windows Mobile Professional device now supports dynamic rotation. Typically this is triggered when sliding out an on-device keyboard or titling the device.
The Adapt Your App section in the Windows Mobile Developer center is a great resource for information on how to ensure your application properly adapts to different screen orientations, sizes, and DPIs.
When changing orientation the OS will send your application a size event. Make sure you are taking action on this event: OnSize (if a managed) or WM_SIZE (for native code). For example, you may need to reposition some of your user interface elements. For a great in-depth article on this topic, check out: Adaptable Apps For Windows Mobile.

Test, Test, and Test again

Take advantage of the plethora of emulators that are included with the SDKs / DTKs. The emulators support screen rotation (press the Calendar button) and come in multiple DPI and screen sizes. See here for a blog post on how to automate this process: PowerShell and Quick UI Check for WM Applications. Best case is to test on at least one device that ships in-market as some scenarios are difficult to test sufficiently within the emulator.

Need additional Help?

Hopefully these tips will help you avoid certification testing failures, if you need help with your specific test failure, use the Support link in the developer dashboard to create an email support request. Just be sure to include all identifying information regarding your application including the product id. The Marketplace certification team will respond within 48-business hours.
Thanks,
Mike

Mobile Glossary

Mobile Glossary:
Bookmark this page!  The BestFit Mobile Glossary is a collection of terms used in mobile marketing & development. We add terms frequently.
Cross-Platform App: is a mobile application built using a cross-platform framework that allows the majority of the business logic code to be used in more than one mobile operating system. For example, an app can be built using Appcelerator’s Titanium system with code written in Javascript that runs much like a native app in both iOS and Android systems in terms of speed and use of all hardware features. While some amount of additional coding, graphic work and adaptation will be necessary to make the app work correctly on each type of mobile phone or device, the majority of the code is re-used. Good cross-platform systems create efficiencies when it comes updated to the app’s basic logic and features.
Geo-Fence: a geo-fence is a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area. A geo-fence can be dynamically generated—as in a radius around a store or point location. Or a geo-fence can be a predefined set of boundaries, like school attendance zones or neighborhood boundaries. Custom-digitized geofences are also in use. When the location-aware device (such as a mobile phone or tablet) of a location-based service (LBS) user enters or exits a geo-fence, the device receives a generated notification. This notification might contain information about the location of the device. With the user’s permission, the geofence notice might be sent to a mobile telephone or an email account. Geo-fencing can be particularly beneficial to retailers.
Hybrid App: is an application combines features and functionality from both mobile web pages and native or cross-platform apps. Typically it gives the user views of mobile pages encased in a programmed app. The app contains standard elements that users expect and allows the user to take advantage of certain hardware specific features, such as the camera or geo-location.
Mobile advertising: 1) A form of advertising that is communicated to the consumer/target via a handset. This type of advertising is most commonly seen as a Mobile Web Banner (top of page), Mobile Web Poster (bottom of page banner), and full screen interstitial, which appears while a requested mobile web page is “loading.” Other forms of this type of advertising are SMS and MMS ads, mobile gaming ads, and mobile video ads (pre, mid and post roll). [Source: Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Wiki Glossary MMA]; This is an area that poised for extraordinary growth, as mobile devices now far outnumber televisions and desktop computer yet mobile advertising expenditures currently represent only a small fraction of all advertising dollars.
Mobile Site / Mobile Website / WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) site: 1)  website created for viewing on a mobile device — phone or tablet — using a mobile browser. Mobile sites are usually a version of an organization’s main website, with streamlined information and navigation; 2) a website that is specifically designed and formatted for display on a mobile device.
Native App: 1) a native mobile application is one that is written to run specifically with the mobile device’s operating system (OS). iPhones, for example, run iOS. Native code for iOS is Objective C. As of this writing, iOS runs on both iPhones and iPads. Android is the Linux-based operating system from Google for Android devices. Native code for Android is usually written in a customized version of Java (not to be confused with JavaScript). Android OS versions are named for desserts, such as Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich. Note that various Android devices — phones and tablets — may require different versions of the Android system; 2) An application designed to run in the computer environment (machine language and OS) being referenced. The term is used to contrast a native application with an interpreted one such as a Java application that is not native to a single platform. The term may also be used to contrast a native application with an emulated application, which was originally written for a different platform. [Source: The Free Dictionary]
What are the benefits of Native apps?

• Native apps that are coded properly will tend to run faster than hybrid apps, mobile sites or even cross-platform apps. Both native and cross-platform apps can take full advantage of all the hardware features of the specific mobile device as compared to mobile sites and hybrid apps.

What is the downside of a Native app?

• Native apps tend to take more time to develop and are therefore more costly to create. Developing for another platform requires 100% rewrite of the code.

Near Field Communications (NFC): is a set of standards for smartphones and similar devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity, usually no more than a few centimeters. This relatively new technology allows purchases from a smartphone to a similar device that is just centimeters away. Google Wallet is an example of this – consumers store credit card information in a virtual wallet and then use their NFC-enabled phone at terminals that accept MasterCard PayPass transactions.
Push Notifications / Push Messaging: 1) Any content sent by or on behalf of advertisers and marketers to a wireless mobile device at a time other than when the subscriber requests it. Push Messaging includes audio, short message service (SMS) messages, e-mail, multimedia messaging, cell broadcast, picture messages, surveys, or any other pushed advertising or content. AKA: Wireless Push Advertising
SMS/text Short Message Service (SMS): 1) a standard for telephony messaging systems that allow sending messages between mobile devices that consist of short messages, normally with text only content. [Source: MMA Glossary]; 2) SMS is also known as “text messaging.” Smartphone users send billions of text messages daily . SMS/ text messaging was one of the first forms of mobile advertising and remains one of the most widely used, especially in Europe and Asia.
SMS / text messaging: requires permission from the recipient is interactive

Dynamics CRM Debugging & Diagnostics

Dynamics CRM Debugging & Diagnostics:

How much I love various corporate platforms: Exchange, Active Directory, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM. It's so interesting to tune them! Quite usual diagnostics of errors becomes an amazing quest, and to understand the cause of the error, you got to collect information bit by bit, only then revealing the whole picture. Recently I had to deploy Microsoft CRM in our company, so this article is about from where the developer should start if there are errors in Dynamics CRM.
Windows Log. Perhaps, the easiest and the most trivial way to check why one or another part of CRM doesn't work is to check Windows Event Log. Useful information can be found in these three sections: Application, Security and System.

CRM Trace Log & Dev Errors. This one is the most information rich sources about what's going on inside CRM processes. There are multiple ways to enable tracing, which can vary depending on the CRM version. As I was working mostly with CRM 4.0, written below refers to this version mostly.
The easiest way to enable CRM Trace Log is to use CRM Diagnostics Tool. Also, this utility allows to enable Dev Errors. After this CRM will start showing verbose output about errors to end-users.

To review the logs you can use a little program CRM Trace Log Viewer. And don't even try to view the logs in the Notepad. CRM updates the log very frequently, it becomes huge, and finding anything there manually is quite uneasy thing to do. By the way, by default, trace logs files are stored in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Trace.

Attention! This log is very actively updated, which negatively impacts performance. I'm not kidding! Once I've forgot to disable trace log, and began data import. Log size has grown up to 10 Gb in 20 minutes, and soon ended up taking the whole free space on disk.
IIS Log. Also very useful place. You can view all HTTP requests to CRM here. Typical record looks something like this one:
2011-12-31 00:23:55 ::1 POST /MSCrmServices/2007/CrmService.asmx - 80 - ::1 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+MS+Web+Services+Client+Protocol+2.0.50727.5448) 401 2 5 0
Point your attention to the last figures. Here is what they can tell you:
- Field sc-status. This is nothing else than HTTP response code. In this particular case the error code is HTTP 401 Unauthorized. Practically, error 401 is almost one of the widely spread errors, which you can get in IIS.

- Field sc-substatus. For example, substatus 2 means “Denied by server configuration”. I also remember getting substatus 5 "Authorization failed by an ISAPI/CGI ", which means that IIS authorization is not set correctly, and you need to check CRM itself. As you can see, substatus allows to narrow down the error scope.

- Field sc-win32-status. In this case 5 "ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED". Nothing really new, but can be useful, as there are a lot of codes described in the documentation.
IIS server logs can be found in the folder C:\inetpub\logs. But you got to know it yourself already!
Performance Counters. I didn't use this functionality too much, but this one can definitely give you a bunch of useful information. There is no need to list all available counters here, they're described in all details in the documentation. Here is the list of counters categories:
- CRM Async Service

- CRM Authentication

- CRM Discovery

- CRM Locator Service

- CRM Outlook Sync

- CRM Platform

- CRM Server

- CRM Sql Governor
So, as you can see, almost all aspects of Dynamics CRM can be monitored with performance counters

FTP Program

The File Transfer Protocol is a system for transferring files between two computers over the Internet where one of the computers is normally known as server and the other one as the client. The FTP program is very useful for website management as the webmaster can update the web pages by uploading the local files to the web server easily and normally at a much faster speed than the web browser. For normal PC users, the FTP program can also be used to download files from many FTP sites that offer a lot of useful stuffs such as free software, free games, product information, applications, tools, utilities, drivers, fixes and etc.

The FTP program usually comprises an interface that shows the directories of the local computer and the remote server. Files can normally be transferred just by clicking the relevant arrows. To log into the FTP site, we normally have to key in the user name and the password; however, for public domains, we just need to type the word anonymous as the user name and you can leave out the password. The FTP host name takes the form  ftp.servername.com, for example, the Microsoft FTP site’s host name is ftp.microsoft.com while the Netscape FTP site is ftp.netscape.com.

More VB Sample codes: http://www.vbtutor.net/VB_Sample/sample.html 
http://www.vbtutor.net/VB_Sample/sample.html 

Learn animation in Vb2010

In this section, we will show you how to move an object by pressing a command button. You need to make use of the Top and Left properties of an object to create animation. The Top property defines the distance of the object from the top most border of the screen while the Left property defines the distance of the object from leftmost border of the screen. By adding or subtracting the distance of the object we can create the animated effect of moving an object.

Start a new project and name it as Movable Object, or any name you wish. Now insert a PictureBox and in its Image property import a picture from your hard drive or other sources. Next, insert four command buttons, change their captions to Move Up, Move Down, Move Left and Move Right. Name them as MoveUpBtn, MoveDowbBtn, MoveLeftBtn and MoveRightBtn.

Learn animation in Vb2010:
We have added yet another new lesson in our Visual Basic 2010 tutorial. In this new lesson, we show you how to create animation in Visual Basic 2010. Click on the link below to check it out.
http://www.vbtutor.net/vb2010/vb2010_Lesson28.htm

Free Studio 5.0: Last Free Software from DVDVideoSoft

Free Studio 5.0: Last Free Software from DVDVideoSoft:

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I'm using Opera Unite to post audio of my songs, poems, interviews etc on the web. With all the recordings I've done over the past half century or so, it's a lot of sorting out to do, but check out this link to lend an ear to this work in progress. The page opens with some miscellaneous items, followed by a series of folders which you can use for navigating through the clips.

Go well.

Karl Dallas

DVDVideoSoft News

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Free Studio 5.0: Last Free Software from DVDVideoSoft The following announcement was posted by DVDVideoSoft: 11 Jan 2011 05:37 AM PST Free Studio 5.0 is the last free release by DVDVideoSoft. Starting with the next major release of version 6.0 our programs will be paid. However, our fans and followers will have an opportunity get free activation code for the new commercial version of Studio 6.0. You just need to follow our news to know about latest updates and free activation. Later on we will integrate a special page on our website where all corresponding information will be displayed. All minor upgrades for the current version of Free Studio 5.0 are still free and available for download at www.dvdvideosoft.com.

How to Host a Webinar on Your Own Website

How to Host a Webinar on Your Own Website: Joel here from Instant Teleseminar.

Join us next Thursday, March 3rd at 6:00 PM Pacific Time to learn how you can publish an Instant Teleseminar event on your own website or blog.

Here's the event URL:

http://it-coolstuff.com

Notice that it's *not* an Instant Telseminar event page.

It's a WordPress site I set up just this afternoon, with Instant Teleseminar's webinar viewer embedded.

The goal for this call is to show you how fast, easy, and cheap it is to do this yourself on your own website or blog.

And if you want to hire someone to do it for you, you'll know how fast, easy, and cheap it is, so that you know how much you should pay them (i.e., not a lot).

See you next week!

Joel Sanders
Instant Teleseminar

P.S. You can go there and enter your questions for the event now:  http://it-coolstuff.com

GT Designer3 1.0.1B x86

GT Designer3 1.0.1B x86:

GT Designer3 1.0.1B x86 | 1.13 GB

Description: Building automation projects for the firm Mitsubishi HMI

Free Website Design Software

NetObjects Fusion Essentials Free Web Design Software is one of the most popular web design tools available today. A true drag-and-drop website builder with numerous easy-to-use tools and components that allow you to build sites quickly and easily.

Plain and simple, NetObjects Fusion Essentials is different. NetObjects Fusion Essentials is a HTML generator instead of a HTML editor. What does that mean? You layout your images, add your text, and NetObjects Fusion generates the HTML for you. Your web page is built. NetObjects Fusion Essentials also offers many add-on components to help you enhance your web site. Add photo galleries, forms, rollover images, scrolling text, Flash, and even e-commerce to create a sophisticated site quickly and easily. NetObjects Fuson Essentials is the ideal choice for designers who don’t know HTML, business owners who need a web site, or anyone who wants to create a web site for personal use.

http://netobjects.com/html/essentials.html

BlueGriffon Tutorial: How to Create a Website with the BlueGriffon Free Web Editor

BlueGriffon Tutorial: How to Create a Website with the BlueGriffon Free Web Editor:
BlueGriffon is a free and open source WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") web editor. Unlike the other free web editors around, this one contains an up-to-date engine that supports the modern HTML and CSS constructs used on  the Internet today. Find out how you can use this web editor to design and create your own website in this   BlueGriffon Tutorial.

http://www.thesitewizard.com/bluegriffon/bluegriffon-1-tutorial-1.shtml

Five quick ways to get a new website indexed by Google

Launching a brand new website is tough. When you first start out, your website is completely unknown, you have no inbound links, and you can’t be found in the search engines. So what do you do?
I've launched a lot of new websites over the years and I've experimented with many different methods of getting websites indexed. Here are my top five indexing tips...

1) Submit your website URL to Google

This is a bit of a no-brainer but it really has to be first in this list. Google can’t index your website if it doesn’t know about it, so submitting your homepage URL is definitely the best place to start. This may not be the quickest indexing method but it’s a safe and sure one to start you off.
Of course Google makes no guarantees that it will index every URL that is added but don’t let this stop you. Just make sure you only add one URL per domain (normally your homepage) otherwise it could be considered spam. Google’s crawlers will find all the other pages in your website by following internal links.

• Here’s the link to submit your URL to Google:
  www.google.com/addurl
  
• Yahoo also has a similar ‘Add URL’ function:
  search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
  
• And so does Microsoft Live:
  search.live.com/docs/submit.aspx

Five quick ways to get a new website indexed by Google: If your launching a brand new website that no-one knows about yet then try these great indexing tips

http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/five-quick-ways-to-get-a-new-website-indexed-by-google

Free iPad CSS layout with landscape/portrait orientation modes

The iPad has finally launched in Australia today, hooray! I will probably get one soon so I can continue to optimise my CSS layouts for as many devices as possible. But in the mean-time I will continue using the iPad emulator that comes with the iPhone SDK.
To celebrate the launch of the iPad I have built a special iPad optimised website layout that uses pure CSS to change layouts in the portrait and landscape orientation modes. The layout can be downloaded for free at the bottom of this article or from my iPad demo page. Here is a basic diagram of how the two orientations look:

Free iPad CSS layout with landscape/portrait orientation modes: A free iPad optimised website layout that changes design when the device is rotated

Link:  http://matthewjamestaylor.com/demos/ipad-css-layout/index.html

Create Fractals with Recursive Drawing

I love recursive processes in science and I've been creating art from fractals for a long time. Recently I experimented with a recursive drawing process of building up pixels at different scales to create a tree. Well that was nothing... I've just discovered the best recursive drawing tool ever!

RecursiveDrawing.com

It's a web-based drawing app that works in your browser. Watch the video first, it gives you an excellent introduction to how it all works. This is an amazingly simple tool where anyone can create beautifully complex pieces of art in no time at all. I'm totally hooked!

Link:  http://recursivedrawing.com/draw.html

Create Fractals with Recursive Drawing: Introducing an awesome fractal drawing tool by Toby Schachman: recursivedrawing.com