Archive for the software development Category

3 ways Epic’s Fortnite is changing gaming

3 ways Epic’s Fortnite is changing gaming

If you know 5 people under the age of 20, chances are, you know someone who’s played Fortnite. Epic Games, creator of this free, massively scaled, multi-platform game, is making billions of dollars from in-app game purchases. How did a game that didn’t exist at the beginning of 2017 come to dominate the gaming world before the beginning of 2019? In some ways, Fortnite is the ultimate software as a service success story. Whatever device you own, you can download

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Beginning Code Resources for Women

Beginning Code Resources for Women

Update 3/7/20: Added Oregon State’s Online Bachelor’s in Computer Science Update 5/22/17: Added Techbridge girls in the list of other resources In more than 20 years in technology, I’ve met plenty of great women developers. And yet, men outnumber women in tech by a large margin. Major tech companies are being challenged to increase diversity and inclusiveness. Learning coding is a big opportunity for people of all types. With the help of a female friend, I’ve compiled a list of

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3 Trends Pokemon Go Taps

3 Trends Pokemon Go Taps

I grabbed Pokemon GO from the App Store on my iPhone last night to check out what all the buzz was about. It’s actually a very interesting use of the smartphone. Here are some insights I gained from 20 minutes of game play. Augmented Reality Pokemon Go is a mobile app from Nintendo available for iPhone and Android. To play, you have to move around IRL (in the real world.) When you move, your character moves in the Go world.

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Daft punk in code. The bells.

Daft punk in code. The bells.

Aerodynamic in Sonic Pi sounds great. There’s just one thing that bugged me. The bells. The walk-through, featured on Hacker News, Techcrunch, Twitter and more, explains the code for the song in detail. And, the author  writes that the sound, or timbre, of the bells in the intro isn’t quite right. Working on this project takes me back to my college days. Back when I was a Music Performance and Computer Science double major at Northwestern, I would get questions.

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Code Sample Reviews–App Model Workflow

Update: The first sample was pulled. It no longer works. Have you checked out the SharePoint 2013 workflow samples from MSDN? I sometimes hesitate to download these because you never know the quality. Some of them don’t even compile without changes. Recently, I found a pair of examples from the Apps for Office and SharePoint Samples that do work with the RTM SharePoint 2013 and latest developer tools, one I had to tweak. SharePoint 2013 workflow: Workflow-powered app for SharePoint

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SharePoint Dev Tools Preview 2 Changes

A funny thing happened on Day 1 of SharePoint Conference. Scott Guthrie did not announce the Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 – Preview 2, despite the Apps for Office and SharePoint Blog post that went live just after the keynote. I could have missed it, but you’re free to stream the whole 2 hours for yourself and tell me the minute mark. Or, you can stream just the 23 minutes Scott Guthrie was talking. While we’re on

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Two Firsts: Rackspace blog + webinar

Free Webinar this Wednesday at 1PM Central. That’s the main theme of my first post on the Rackspace Blog.   I’m really excited about both. As a SharePoint Developer and Consultant, I’ve been blogging and speaking for quite a while. However, I think Rackspace.com looks good on me. What do you think? I hope you’ll join me for the upcoming webinar. If you’ve ever wanted to see how to spin up a new server in 15 minutes for very little

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Elevating Privileges in SharePoint Code

Impersonation leads to Permission Trimming SharePoint uses ASP.Net impersonation to personalize the platform based on the current authorized user. SharePoint objects are aware of the user’s identity and many parts of SharePoint take advantage of this ability. For example, when you get the lists in a site through the API, you only see the ones the current user has access to. Permission trimming, as similar functions in SharePoint are often referred, is a major convenience to the end user and

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SharePoint Weekly, Andrew Connell and MVVM

I just noticed on the SharePoint Weekly Newsletter from Nick Swan that Andrew Connell has a new blog series on SharePoint, Silverlight and MVVM. Developers love design patterns and just the thought of MVVM takes me back to my one of my favorite Computer Science classes on Java 15 years ago. If you’re not familiar with Andrew, you should check out some of his stuff. He’s one of my favorite SharePoint Development Authors and Presenters and having shared a few

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Windows 8 Tablets Are Live Today

Update 8PM: The developer preview link is live and appears to be working. My 3.8GB download says it will be done in 25 minutes. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/home/ This news has the potential to change life as a Microsoft oriented Software Developer fairly quickly. Windows 8 Tablets are live, at least 5000 or so given away at Microsoft’s Build Conference. Engadget has one of these Samsung Slate Devices and recorded a video using one: http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/13/windows-8-f​or-tablets-hands-on-preview/ They did a full hands on review of

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