Portable Foxit Reader 2.3 Pro M.Lang

Portable Foxit Reader 2.3 Pro M.Lang
Foxit Reader 2.3 Pro M.Lang Portable | 3.48 MB The following is a list of compelling advantages of Foxit Reader: Incredibly small: The download size of Foxit Reader is only 3.48 MB which is a fraction of Acrobat Reader 22 MB size. Breezing-fast: When you run Foxit Reader, it launches instantly without any delay. You are not forced to view an annoying splash window displaying company logo, author

Game Consoles Buying Guides
If you are now looking for some ideas to give present for your nephews or even your boyfriend, you might consider buying game console for their hobby. For some references, visit shopwiki.co.uk, a website that will provide you game console buying guides to get the best deals on the game console among the online stores provided the products. You can start by checking out the Xbox330 featured.

There’s a place for everyone at ATEC

There’s a place for everyone at ATEC
If you’re an Alpha developer, you’ve no doubt heard about our yearly Alpha Technology and Education Conference (ATEC), and maybe even attended one yourself. This year’s conference took place in Atlanta from Sept. 4-6.

Every year, Alpha Five developers from around the world converge for a few days to share best practices, tools, tips, and techniques. But the conference emphasizes more than just theories and concepts of Alpha Five development. Rather, we show developers how to take full advantage of Alpha as both a desktop and Web database development program.

Sound good, but not sure if a full conference is the right place for you to learn more about Alpha Five? Our very own Jerry Brightbill attended this year, and wrote up a fairly detailed summary of his overall impressions of this year’s conference attendees. Here are his notes.

Most of the attendees were not full-time programmers. A significant portion were employees of companies where IT or application development was only a part of their jobs. The people in this category used Alpha Five mainly to fill a specific business need, and only learned enough about the product to meet that need. They had limited resources available to commit to a solution.

Nearly all of the application development was on the desktop using the built-in DBF data format, and most coding was limited to action scripting and simple Xbasic. Networked applications were common, but many were using terminal services or some type of VPN, rather than loading runtimes on users’ computers and using shadowed configurations.

Most of the small companies represented had some type of IT department, even if it was only one person working at it part time. This IT function typically limited the computer configurations allowed on the users’ computers, and was often tasked to do everything as cheaply as possible, which may be why few used runtimes loaded on multiple computers.

There were a few people there who could be considered full-time developers, but most were desktop only. Even the full-time developers used only limited parts of the capabilities of Alpha Five. Some had a commercial product, and limited their knowledge to the requirements of that product.

There were a couple developers who were doing Web development. Interestingly, these developers did almost no desktop development other than reports. A couple had worked on some hybrid solutions, but quickly moved to browser-based-only development.

A number of people were running most of their business processes using databases based on some version of Alpha Five, but very few of these systems could be considered “integrated.” Most were built piecemeal with little initial specification development or overall design.

Other data platforms, such as Excel, Lotus Notes, and paper-based processes, were common elements of the overall “system” in use. Most of the interest and focus appeared directed at solving a specific problem, and not on efficient overall design.

Since most of these systems were used by a limited number of users in a controlled environment, a number of elements considered critical in a commercial application were often not a concern. These limited interest areas included usability, scalable designs, limiting user access to program elements, etc.

Some people could be considered “dabblers” or “hobbyists.” Overall, the attendee makeup was heavily weighted to people using Alpha Five as a tool to solve a business problem. Previous conferences tended to have a larger proportion of the “hobbyist” element.

Many people expressed interest in alternative data platforms, but cost was a major concern. For that reason, many were looking at open source solutions, such as MySQL. Very few even considered more robust enterprise solutions as SQL Server or Oracle.

There was a lot of interest in Web development, primarily as an alternative to internal networked applications. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a large amount of interest in public Internet applications, but that may be because of the makeup of the attendees. Apparently some of the companies hired outside consultants to build limited public Web sites.

Most of the attendees recognized they have to learn new technologies, and the sessions on Web development and SQL were very well received. But there was a reluctance to move away from what they were doing now. As is common in small business, most were working on at least one generation old technology, and many were using Alpha Five Version 7 and Alpha Five Version 8.

A surprising number had not upgraded, as they felt they didn’t need Web capabilities or SQL support and the older versions worked adequately. There was some interest in future developments, but most wanted solutions they could use now.

The main reason given for not moving to Web or SQL was the learning curve. Many of the people were fairly new to database development in general, and had struggled to reach the knowledge levels they had achieved. The concept of learning any additional techniques was daunting.

The overall format of hands-on, two-hour training sessions was very popular. Approximately 50 to 60 percent of the people in each section actively participated, while others just watched the projection screens and followed the learning guides. In some sessions, the percentage was much higher, and some a little less. Each session included discussion periods that introduced a number of topics.

Most attendees expressed the importance of face to face discussion periods, such as question and answer periods, breaks, lunch, and even evening sessions. There was a lot of networking when sessions were not being held. All of the sessions seemed to have a lot of interaction between the instructors and the people in the session.

As you can see, Alpha Conferences are excellent learning environments for developers of all stripes and skill sets. I encourage you to attend the next one. You’ll be glad you did, and smarter, too!

Portable Fireworks 8
Fireworks 8 Portable | 35.27 MB Macromedia created Fireworks as a complete graphics applications aimed towards Web designers.It offers more advanced image control than existing packages, such as Photoshop or CorelDraw, for work that specifically relates to the Internet. Fireworks enables web designers to produce high quality images, export them in a variety of file formats while retaining

Administrators define the field

Administrators define the field
A panel of deans and directors from Kansas City educational institutions met at the School of Education Monday evening, affording students interested in college administration careers a chance to discuss the field’s challenges and opportunities.

The conversation was sponsored by UMKC’s Career Services Center and featured four panelists with extensive credentials in higher education administration including: UMKC’s Vice Provost for Academic Programs, Mary Lou Hines-Fritts, William Jewell College’s Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Residence Life, Ernie Stufflebean, Rockhurst University’s Assistant Dean of Students, Sean Grube, and Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley’s Dean of Administrative Services, Thomas Walker.

LiveScience: Era of Scientific Secrecy Near End
Era of Scientific Secrecy Near End / By Robin Lloyd, LiveScience Senior Editor / posted: 02 September 2008 11:30 am ET

Secrecy and competition to achieve breakthroughs have been part of scientific culture for centuries, but the latest Internet advances are forcing a tortured openness throughout the halls of science and raising questions about how research will be done in the future.

The openness at the technological and cultural heart of the Internet is fast becoming an irreplaceable tool for many scientists, especially biologists, chemists and physicists — allowing them to forgo the long wait to publish in a print journal and instead to blog about early findings and even post their data and lab notes online. The result: Science is moving way faster and more people are part of the dialogue.

[snip]

Open Science

The open science approach forces researchers to grapple with the question of whether they can still get sufficient credit for their ideas, said physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, co-organizer of a conference on the topic set to begin Sept. 8 at the Perimeter Institute in Ontario, Canada.

[BTW: I Will Be Attending This Unique Conference Science in the 21st Century: Science, Society, and Information Technology [http://tinyurl.com/6ll8fb] / Look For Conference-Related Postings on the _Scholarship 2.0_ Blog [http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/] within the next two weeks]

[snip]

Open science is a shorthand for technological tools, many of which are Web-based, that help scientists communicate about their findings. At its most radical, the ethos could be described as “no insider information.” Information available to researchers, as far as possible, is made available to absolutely everyone.

Beyond email, teleconferencing and search engines, there are many examples: blogs where scientists can correspond casually about their work long before it is published in a journal; social networks that are scientist friendly such as Laboratree and Ologeez; GoogleDocs and wikis which make it easy for people to collaborate via the Web on single documents; a site called Connotea that allows scientists to share bookmarks for research papers; sites like Arxiv, where physicists post their “pre-print” research papers before they are published in a print journal; OpenWetWare which allows scientists to post and share new innovations in lab techniques; the Journal of Visualized Experiments, an open-access site where you can see videos of how research teams do their work; GenBank, an online searchable database for DNA sequences; Science Commons, a non-profit project at MIT to make research more efficient via the Web, such as enabling easy online ordering of lab materials referenced in journal articles; virtual conferences; online open-access (and free) journals like Public Library of Science (PLoS); and open-source software that can often be downloaded free off Web sites.

[BTW: Several Of These Innovations Have Been Profiled In My SciTechNet(sm) Blog [http://scitechnet.blogspot.com/] and/or The Scholarship 2.0 Blog [http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/]

The upshot: Science is no longer under lock and key, trickling out as it used to at the discretion of laconic professors and tense PR offices. For some scientists, secrets no longer serve them. But not everyone agrees.

Networked Cyborgs

Just a few decades ago, as a scientist, here is how you did your work: You toiled in obscurity and relative solitude.

[snip]

However, today, more and more scientists, as well as researchers in the humanities, operate like transparent, networked cyborgs. Background research is mostly done online, not in the library. Some data and preliminary research might be posted online via a blog or open notebook. Early write-ups of the work might be announced to the public, or at least discussed online with peers. And these early write-ups might also be posted to an online publication that is not peer-reviewed in the strict sense.

[snip]

“In areas like my own subfields of theoretical physics,” said MIT physicist David Kaiser, “the only constraint [on how rapidly one generates research papers] is, ‘Did you have more coffee that day?’ We aren’t usually held up trying to get an instrument to work, or slogging through complicated data analysis.”Most people think faster is better, but there are other issues.

Is It A Good Thing?

There is “no question” that all efforts to make science more open are positive for the progress of science, says open science proponent and chemist Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel University in Philadelphia, who posts his lab notebook online and started a blog in 2005 called UsefulChemistry where he and his colleagues regularly discuss chemistry problems as well as Web 2.0 tools and the technical and philosophical issues they raise.His online notebook and blog definitely make it easier to communicate with colleagues, he said. Such sharing also makes it easier for others to “replicate” scientists’ work — try it themselves and convince themselves that you are right. And this replication issue is one of the principles behind scientific research. Anyone who has written down a recipe for a friend knows that we all tend to spell things out more clearly when sharing them than we would if we were just taking notes for ourselves in our own shorthand.

Open science also has the potential to prevent discrimination in access to information. Arxiv, the site for posting pre-print physics papers, was started in 1991 by Cornell physicist Paul Ginsparg, then at Los Alamos National Laboratory, to help provide equal access to prepublication information to graduate students, postdocs and researchers in developing countries.

[BTW: Paul Ginsparg will be one of several Major Players attending/presenting at The Conference [http://science21stcentury.org/abstracts.html]]

[snip]

And open science benefits the public, Bradley said. He tries to keep his posts fairly accessible (although this is not the case for all open notebooks and open science blogs).

[snip]

“It’s not clear to me that professional scientists or people in academic institutions have a monopoly on good ideas,” he said. “There are very smart people outside of academia, for example hobbyists or people in industry who could contribute, and having more contributors can only help. The same applies to interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches.”

[snip]

Drawbacks of Open Science

One of the biggest fears of nearly all researchers is that someone else hears what you’re doing and beats you to publication. That means you wasted a lot of time (and most researchers work extremely long hours, so loss of productivity is especially painful and can also harm one’s chances for getting a job or promotion or funding for the next research project). Once you publicly reveal your thoughts, data or experimental results, some say, you lose control over ownership of that information. This topic is covered by an area of law called intellectual property, as well as patent law, and there can be significant money to be fought over when it comes to patents.

Hossenfelder, the conference organizer, says she knows of several examples in which scientists have had an idea for something, talked about it openly and then somebody else has published the fleshed-out idea first without giving any credit beyond an acknowledgment to the original idea-holder. Acknowledgments don’t advance careers.

However there are solutions to this, she said. For instance, the prominent scientific journal Nature encourages authors to include brief summaries of which author contributed what to a project. Some say that online posts provide a time-stamped record of when an experiment was documented. Those stamps can easily be arbitrarily altered after the fact, but it might also be possible to “lock” posts at a certain date after which they could not be changed without some sign-off permission to break the lock, Hossenfelder said. [snip]

Fear of Losing Peer Review

Another drawback of open science can be that results go public before they should. In science, experimental results are frequently proven wrong by subsequent work. Yet even peer review cannot ensure against this, nor can it prevent outright fraud, as proven by a 2005 case involving a South Korean scientist who claimed to have achieved the first cloning of a human embryo. A later examination of his work showed he had fabricated his results.

[snip]

“The social system of science has become so complicated, unregulated and dispersed in terms of geography and disciplines, so peer review has been elevated to a principle that unifies a fragmented field,” Biagioli said.

[snip]

And today, Arxiv, one of the most frequently cited examples of open science, has no peer review for individual papers, but it has begun to add in some constraints on allowable authors. The site used to allow anyone with email addresses associated with academic institutions to post their papers. Now, authors of research papers who post in Arxiv are vetted before they can post for the first time. In some ways, things are tightening up when it comes to openness in physics, Kaiser said. In any case, the function of print journals, in physics at least, is changing.

“Ease of sharing everything prior to peer review is flourishing, and in my opinion very few physicists are reading journals for information these days,” Kaiser said. “Journals have largely lost their information function.”

[snip]

For The Good Of Truth, Humanity, Economies?

Another argument in favor of open science is sort of a big picture issue for humanity, scientific truth and economies, Neylon said.

“Making things more open leads to more innovation and more economic activity, and so the technology that underlies the Web makes it possible to share in a way that was never really possible before, while at same time it also means that kinds of models and results generated are much more rich,” he said.

This is the open source approach to software development, as opposed to commercial closed source approaches, Neylon said. The internals are protected by developers and lawyers, but the platform is available for the public to build on in very creative ways.

“Science was always about mashing up, taking one result and applying it to your [work] in a different way,” Neylon said. “The question is ‘Can we make that as effective as samples data and analysis as it does for a map and set of addresses for a coffee shop?’ That is the vision.”

[http://www.livescience.com/culture/080902-open-science.html]

Thanks to Sabine Hossenfelder For The HeadsUp !

[http://friendfeed.com/rooms/science21]

Alpha Software: Because writing code from scratch once is enough

Alpha Software: Because writing code from scratch once is enough
Last week we demoed the as-yet-pre-beta Alpha Five Version 10 for Tech Republic’s Justin James. Justin seemed to like what he saw. But he also brought up a constant concern he hears from developers, which is what we call the “anyone but Microsoft” problem.

What this means is developers are comfortable committing to platforms such as Microsoft’s, Sun’s, or Oracle’s, etc., because they believe — in our view, incorrectly — that these are a safe bet, because they are provided by the big guys. And that means, in developers’ minds, that they will not be making a commitment to a platform that will lock them in or abandon them.

Add to that the fact that Alpha can be viewed by developers as a “proprietary” platform, because it’s an all-in-one solution that you build, debug, and deploy in. (Forget the fact, for a moment, that all commercial platforms can be deemed proprietary.)

Fortunately, we have what we think is a rational answer to this conundrum, which we shared with Justin. It starts with this argument: We’ve been around for over two decades, and our developers have never been in a situation where they couldn’t upgrade from one version to the next, or had to write their code from scratch because we made their version obsolete.

Compare that to Microsoft, for example, which over the past few years forced its Visual Basic and Visual FoxPro developers to throw out 100 percent of their code, and rewrite their apps from scratch, in order to take advantage of a newer platform.

Microsoft isn’t the first dev tools company that’s done this. It won’t be the last. It happens again and again in our industry. In fact, we wrote a white paper on the topic to counter the flawed notion that you don’t get fired for buying Microsoft (or some other big player’s appdev platform).

The demo with Justin reminded me that it’s probably a good time to bring the white paper to the forefront again. I encourage anyone who’s concerned about Alpha being a proprietary platform to take a few minutes and review it.

Pretend to act surprised: I’m speaking at eMetrics!
Today we made the official announcement of my upcoming presentation at eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in Washington, D.C. this month.

In typical Alpha fashion, I had already spilled the beans here on the blog (I just can’t help it when I get excited), but the press release was released today.

Are any of our Alpha blog readers planning on attending the conference? Feel free to use our comments section to connect with one another before you go. Hope to see you there!

Alpha Software Chairman to Speak at 2008 eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit

Richard Rabins Will Cover the Latest Techniques for Effective Database Marketing

BURLINGTON, Mass. — (BUSINESS WIRE) – Alpha Software’s Co-Chairman Richard Rabins will be showing marketers how they can strike gold by using database technology to analyze and act on their Web traffic data when he speaks at the upcoming eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in Washington, D.C. Rabins and co-presenter Janet Park, an Alpha Five database developer and President of Marketing Frontiers, will share the stage when they present, “How to Discover the Faces Behind your Clicks” at 2 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 23 at the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center, Alexandria, Va.

“Most organizations don’t realize that they’re sitting on a wealth of detailed customer information that, when tapped into and used intelligently, can boost sales and revenue growth,” Rabins says. “In less than 60 minutes, we’ll show attendees how they can integrate their existing Web data with easy-to-use analysis tools and reporting, which in the end, will open their eyes to the marketing power of Web analytics. They’ll learn how to clean, standardize, append, slice, and dice their Web data to deliver relevant, targeted communications to customers with the highest buying potential.”

“Most companies are focused on standard analytics reports about visits and pages without realizing how much leveraged value there is in appending that information with company names and addresses and more,” says Jim Sterne, Producer of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and Chairman of the Web Analytics Association. “This is a great opportunity to learn how a medium sized company takes advantage of significant segmentation power.”

Since its inception in 2002, the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit has been attracting marketing managers, Web analysts, and business intelligence experts who want to learn techniques that will increase the return on their online marketing investments. The international conference series is recognized as the premier event for optimizing online marketing value.

ABOUT ALPHA SOFTWARE

Since 1982, Alpha Software has been providing developers with award-winning tools that make it easy to rapidly build robust database and business applications. Today over 1 million developers rely on Alpha Software’s flagship platform, Alpha Five, to build desktop, client-server, distributed, Web 2.0, and AJAX applications for organizations of any size—from SOHO to the Fortune 100. Every day, tens of millions of people and businesses rely on applications built in Alpha Five. With the introduction of Alpha Five Version 9 Platinum Edition in 2008, Alpha Software set new standards for speed of development, portability, reporting, and security for database applications of all stripes. The company is privately held, and based in Burlington, Mass. Alpha Software can be found on the Web at http://www.alphasoftware.com.

PRESS RESOURCES
Media contact
Kate Ritchie
610-642-8253, ext. 162

KateR@GregoryFCA.com

Alpha Five Platinum microsite
http://www.alphasoftware.com/alphafive/platinum/index.asp

Alpha Software blog
http://blog.alphasoftware.com

Alpha Software home page
http://www.alphasoftware.com

USER REFERENCES, IMAGES, AND PRESS EVALUATION COPIES AVAILABLE ON REQUEST.

Review copies available: PRESS & BLOGGERS ONLY

Alpha Five meets AJAX 2009

Alpha Five meets AJAX 2009
There’s an interesting article from Martin Heller in the current issue of AJAX World Magazine, where Martin takes a look at the big trends of AJAX. We were fortunate enough that he covered us. Thanks, Martin!

Portable Fireworks 8

Portable Fireworks 8
Fireworks 8 Portable | 35.27 MB Macromedia created Fireworks as a complete graphics applications aimed towards Web designers.It offers more advanced image control than existing packages, such as Photoshop or CorelDraw, for work that specifically relates to the Internet. Fireworks enables web designers to produce high quality images, export them in a variety of file formats while retaining

Portable IrfanView 4.20
IrfanView 4.20 Portable | 1.26 MB IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista. It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. IrfanView is a fast, simple freeware image viewer and editor that supports all major graphic formats, including BMP, DIB, JPEG, GIF, animated GIF

Microsoft’s decision grid of death

Microsoft’s decision grid of death
Coincidentally, after writing my post on Monday about developers’ risks of being locked in or abandoned by their development platform — something that we’ve seen time and again — I came across this post on one of Microsoft’s Visual Basic blogs.

It seems Microsoft believes this decision grid, rewrite vs. migrate vs. reuse vs. replace, is a normal part of application development. Well, guess what? It’s not. Rather, it’s a statement of their failure to support their developers and their customers. At Alpha, our developers never have to consider a grid like that.

As I’ve said so many times before, developers often choose platforms such as Microsoft’s because they feel it’s the safest bet. But over the past few years, Microsoft’s Visual Basic and Visual FoxPro developers (among others) had to throw out 100 percent of their code, and rewrite their apps from scratch, in order to take advantage of a newer platform.

For those who didn’t see our white paper on application development risks on Monday, I’m putting it out here again today, because I think it’s such an important topic. Unless, of course, writing the same code you already wrote again from scratch is something you like to do. We’re not judging.

Complete Source For Mp3 Download
Get the most complete source of mp3 music download online in the website at WestSounds.com. There are plenty of songs coming from many international musicians, singers, and bands that you can find there; get the songs in easy steps of download. Check out the list of US top 100 albums along with the latest songs added to the website. Download mp3 music also from the UK top 100 albums. You can also

Portable IrfanView 4.20

Portable IrfanView 4.20
IrfanView 4.20 Portable | 1.26 MB IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista. It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. IrfanView is a fast, simple freeware image viewer and editor that supports all major graphic formats, including BMP, DIB, JPEG, GIF, animated GIF

Boosting your Business with Mailing-manager Pro

Boosting your Business with Mailing-manager Pro
The life of any company is unimaginable without communication which is one of the crucial factors. It has an impact on the development of any business. Sending business mail is one of the most popular ways acknowledged by the majority. Business mail can be used for various purposes. For instance, it can be used for communication within a specific company. With the help of business mail you can

How to discover the faces behind your clicks
In October, Janet Park and I gave a presentation at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in Washington, D.C. We titled our talk, How to Discover the Faces Behind your Clicks, and spoke about how your business’s success isn’t necessarily based on how many people are visiting your site, but rather who. We also demonstrated some pretty cool ways to find out exactly who is doing the clicking.

Conference attendees had a real interest in our topic, so I thought it would be worthwhile to share our presentation with you here on the blog. Take a look at the Power Point, and let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Portable dBpoweramp 12.3

Portable dBpoweramp 12.3
dBpoweramp 12.3 Portable | 10.5 MB dBpoweramp Music Converter nicknamed the Swiss knife of audio: Digitally rip audio CDs, Convert effortlessly between audio formats, extend Windows shell, Edit ID Tags. CD Ripper: secure, fast and supports AccurateRip, making it the only choice when ripping cds. CD details and extended information such as label, rating, composer and album artwork are retrieved

IconCool Editor 5.76 Build 81015
IconCool Editor is an easy-to-use and powerful icon editor to edit icons, cursors and web graphics. It comes with all the functions for creating and editing ICO, CUR, ANI, ICL, GIF, JPG and WBMP image files. In addition, it offers more than 50 image filters as well as 20 image effects.You can convert images in [...]

IconCool Editor is an easy-to-use and powerful icon editor to edit icons, cursors and web graphics. It comes with all the functions for creating and editing ICO, CUR, ANI, ICL, GIF, JPG and WBMP image files. In addition, it offers more than 50 image filters as well as 20 image effects.You can convert images in 25 formats to icons easily. You can extract icons from EXE, DLL, ICL or OCX and then edit or re-save them.

Support Windows XP & Vista icons
IconCool Editor can create and edit icons for Windows XP or Vista in 32-bit color depth with an alpha channel. You can easily create wonderful, semi-transparent XP icons. IconCool Editor has begun to support the next generation OS Window Vista from now on. You can create and edit Vista icons which includes the compressed 256×256 images easily.

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