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Geeky/Programming Product Reviews

IzyMail – Get Windows Live Hotmail on your iPhone

Since Microsoft doesn’t want to enable IMAP for Windows Live Hotmail accounts (It just started enabling POP3 for Hotmail Plus users), getting your Windows Live Mail on your iPhone just doesn’t work. This really stinks if it is your main email address. GMail on the iPhone stinks because of the threaded conversations – every time you send a message, you get a new one in your inbox – ugh!

Yahoo has IMAP which is good, I just don’t use it for my email. I actually use Windows Live Custom domains and use my @stevienova.com address with Windows Live Hotmail, which is really cool.

Now, the solution I am using is IzyMail – and it works. I tried quick to set it up on the iPhone itself, and it didn’t work, but there are instructions on how to set it up if you have a Mac – which I just so happen to have. I assume if you setup and Outlook account on Windows using IMAP and sync those settings it will work too. I paid the 18 dollars for the premium subscription, and it is worth it. My email now syncs to my iPhone, and all the folders. If I move a email from the inbox to a subfolder, it moves it on the server. Now, my iPhone mimics my Windows Mobile smartphone using Windows Live HTTP (DeltaSync) email syncing (as opposed to IMAP or POP3)

Please Microsoft – open up IMAP – as even a paid option! Or, on the flipside – Apple – allow HTTP mail on Mac’s and iPhones!! Getting your email from the web to a device SHOULD NOT be this complicated!!! Maybe in like 1995, but not in 2007!

Now, just have to figure out a way to get my contacts sync’d up OTA and the phone will actually be somewhat useable!

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Geeky/Programming SQLServerPedia Syndication

SQL Server 2005 – UNPIVOT

The other day, working on something crazy, I came across a use for the new UNPIVOT keyword in SQL Server 2005. Now, I figured I would use PIVOT before UNPIVOT, but so it goes.

Basically I had a temp table I populated that had some columns, then columns numbered 1-10 with different values. But I needed them to be row based, not column based. I could write some crazy union’s or something, but I figured, it was set up like a pivot table, so why not try UNPIVOT.

SELECT  
    MyId,
    MyName AS ‘Name’,
    tblPivot.Property AS ‘MyProperty’,   
    tblPivot.Value AS ‘MyValue’
INTO #tmp_values
FROM  
  (SELECT MyId, MyName,
CONVERT(sql_variant,[1]) AS [1],
CONVERT(sql_variant,[2]) AS [2],
CONVERT(sql_variant,[3]) AS [3],
CONVERT(sql_variant,[4]) AS [4],
CONVERT(sql_variant,[5]) AS [5],
CONVERT(sql_variant,[6]) AS [6],
CONVERT(sql_variant,[7]) AS [7],
CONVERT(sql_variant,[8]) AS [8],
CONVERT(sql_variant,[9]) AS [9],
CONVERT(sql_variant,[10]) AS [10]
   FROM dbo.MyTable
  UNPIVOT (
    Value For Property In (
    [1],[2],[3],[4],[5],
    [6],[7],[8],[9],[10])
    ) as tblPivot

you can see, you have to make sure all of the fields are the same data type, basically you can get them from being columns to being back to rows with columns Property (would be like 1-10) and then the Value would be the value in the field. Pretty nice and slick!

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Geeky/Programming Life Random

It's all in the family… My Uncle Matt is a MS Access to SQL Server Conversion Expert!

Last weekend I went out to Florida to visit my Aunt Jen and Uncle Matt, I have never been to Florida so this was cool. I knew that Matt had www.palmbeachdatabase.com – I took a look at the site a couple years ago but never really dug into it. Turns out he is like one of the best MS Access to SQL Server Converters around. Now, don’t get me wrong – Microsoft Access stinks – but more for a database than for a front end. Using SQL 2000/2005 as a backend and Access as a front end isn’t TOO bad, really VB 6.0’ish. I would rather see ASP.NET Front ends, but it really depends on what companies want.

It was cool to have someone in the family I can relate to! Since currently I am working on Data Warehousing and SQL Server 2005 stuff, this was cool that we could “geek talk”!

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Life

Breaking News! Steve has a MacBook!

So, last night I picked up a used MacBook from a friend. I will tell you, much different. The interface to me is sometimes just not intuitive to me. We will see. It is like a 13 inch so its much smaller than my Dell laptop. Good for just hacking around and testing Mac stuff out. Don’t worry, I’m not moving to the Dark Side.

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Uncategorized

Portland Differences #10 – Establishments Like Bathroom Graffiti

P1000990

Seriously. Every other place I have been, usually they frown on people writing on the walls, marking up stuff, writing obscenities (“Here I sit broken hearted, tried to…”)

In Portland, bathroom graffiti is an art form. Either that or bars and restaurants just stopped caring and figured it looks cool enough, lets just leave it. I have been to multiple places, and the bathrooms are just covered in graffiti, just odd 🙂

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Geeky/Programming Life Product Reviews

iPhone Woes! Syncing Contacts

Whew, finally got my contacts onto my iPhone. How?

I use Windows Live Custom Domains, which then I use Windows Live Mail. As you would think, none of this is supported on the iPhone in any way shape or form. There is no “over the air” sync of contacts either. Blah.

So, I cleared out my Plaxo contacts, synced that up with Windows Live Mail. Good. Then, cleared by Yahoo contacts, synced that up with Plaxo, good. Then in iTunes, set my contacts to sync with my Yahoo Address Book, then manual sync to the phone. Finally have my contacts! Although, its a manual process! Yuck!

On the T-Mobile Dash (or any Windows Mobile 6.0 Device) – you can sync directly with Exchange, or Windows Live Mail – OVER THE AIR!! And if that fails, you can sync with your Outlook Address Book manually. Also, there are 3rd party apps that will sync your contacts on your device with pretty much anything. So far I haven’t found anything for the iPhone, well I am guessing because there are no 3rd Party Apps! I haven’t dug too much into the hacked apps to see if there is anything yet.

Next – syncing my Windows Live Mail – I am not sure if this is even going to be possible!

Side Note: one thing that irks me on the iPhone is it takes two steps to get to contacts, and another to see their info. Would be nice if there was a main screen icon for “Contacts”

Update: I found this http://theliveforums.com/index.php?autocom=ibwiki&cmd=article&id=1  which I am doing now instead. The ITunes to Yahoo Address book sync is really flaky, it only worked once for me. And, which really is a pain, if I add a contact in Windows Live, I have to wait for it to sync to Plaxo then Yahoo, then Sync manually. Using the method at the live forums, I can sync my Windows Contacts directly from Vista. Much easier. Still work be nice to sync OTA though!

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Geeky/Programming

Hacked!!! iPhone running T-Mobile

well, I did it. Bought a 4GB model, just finished hacking it, I have my T-mobile SIM card in, it makes calls.

Followed this to get it activated

http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=5273

then this to get it unlocked

http://iphone.unlock.no/

EDGE Settings (Not sure if this is the best, but it works)

Settings -> General -> Network -> Edge
APN: wap.voicestream.com
username: [blank]
password: [blank]

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Geeky/Programming Product Reviews

iPhone Free Unlock? Information is FREE!

Looks like the iPhone Dev Hackers Team has just released the source code for a free unlock so you can use the iPhone with any SIM…how sweet is that? It reminds me of the movie Antitrust – where they broadcast the source code over every device in the world!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/11/early-iphone-sim-unlock-open-source-code-released/

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/exclusive/iphone-free-software-unlock-confirmed-death-star-explodes-298825.php

http://iphone.unlock.no

Now, I have bashed the iPhone recently, and I still stand by that bashing. I hate the fact it is locked to AT&T. I will never get one and activate it with AT&T. But, do I get one and hack the hell out of it? Well, of course. If I can move my SIM from my T-Mobile Dash to the iPhone and back, well that is just awesome. I still think there should be an SDK, hopefully one day there is.

Question is, do you wait for the 2nd Gen iPhones? Do you get one now? I might walk down to the Apple store right now and check them out. Seeing as I can hack it/unlock it, it makes it soooo much more appealing. Here is a screenshot of some code, directly from my computer, love it :

image

Oh, and also an Exec at Apple today said that they are indifferent on 3rd party apps on the phones, which is a good stance.

I still despise iTunes. Next task for the iPhone Dev Team – rewrite iTunes!

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Business Intelligence Geeky/Programming SQLServerPedia Syndication

SSAS Cubes – Speeding up Queries and Performance

So, you have a SSAS 2005 (SQL Server Analysis Services) Cube, and its not performing how you want it to. What do you do?

The first thing to look at is your attribute relationships (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174557.aspx). Make sure you don’t have redundant relationships (AS should warn you as well) By default when you create a cube, and go through the wizard, only the default attribute relationships are set up. What this means is that all attributes are related to the key attribute by default. If you have related attributes, you want to set up those relationships!! This will help in a couple of ways. First, when creating hierarchies, it won’t warn you that you don’t have relationships set up. Second, your aggregations will actually have a better design, Analysis Services will be able to take into account the relationships and your aggregations should hopefully rock!

What’s next? Look at your reports and queries off the cube. Can you redesign them? Are you running some crazy query? Here is a good tip for using sp_create_plan_guide to influence query plans.

My suggestion is to run SQL Profiler and see how your cube is being accessed. Are the aggregations being used? Are things being read from cache? Use the BIDS Helper to take a look at your aggregations and see the row counts and make sure everything is working as you have planned.

Ok, what else? Cache Warming.(http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7B84B0F2C239489A!994.entry) After running Profiler, or even setting up something automated to capture the queries being ran into another table, you can use this info to “warm your cache”. Basically when you process your cube, run the most frequently ran queries automatically so then the next time users run them, it will pull from cache.

Balancing your cache, aggregations and storage design modes is something you seriously want to dig into. Should you be purely MOLAP? Or MOLAP with Proactive Caching? Or do you want to go purely ROLAP or all the different designs in between the two? You want to minimize data latency.

Some of these things often get overlooked when first designing a cube, which then could make it tough to do once you have things deployed to end users. Also, SSAS 2005 isn’t the best at letting you tweak some of this stuff, I watched a presentation on SSAS 2008 by Donald Farmer and things look A LOT better in SSAS 2008, which I cannot wait for!

But that is a post for another day 🙂

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Product Reviews

RocketDock and Taskbar – Trying something new..

A friend was complaining going on about how Windows looks bad and Macs just look so cool, yadda yadda, and as I dug in deeper, it was like, “oooh the pretty icons at the bottom” and stuff like that.

So, I decided to look into options for Windows with a dock at the bottom. I know Stardock has Object Desktop has something, but I have tried their suite in the past, just puts too much bloat on your system, and it costs $$ too. I found one and set up their system to by more “Mac Like”

Found another alternative – RocketDock. (gotta love the tagline: “The single greatest piece of software. Ever.”) – It is a sweet dock application, I like it so far. And, I have been using Windows since Win 3.1, and then 9x, and I have always had my taskbar at the bottom of the screen, the default. Well, after install RocketDock, I am trying something new – the taskbar at the top.

new_layout_Small

I have the RocketDock set to autohide, which is cool.It is a different experience, but I kind of like it. I still am switching the Sidebar in Vista on and off too, I have the App Launcher gadget which is nice, as well as the Battery Meter gadget…

If you are feeling like you need a change, check out RocketDock

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