json2csharp is a simple but powerful online tool to generate C# classes from JSON. Depending on your requirements and preferences you might want to rewrite the generated classes, but the amount of time saved on using a tool like this can be quite substantial.

Json.NET is a framework for (among other things) serializing and deserializing. It works great with the json2csharp classes, and reduces the amount of code needed.

If yoy’re considering learning JSON and C#, I would strongly recommend these as a starting point.

Surface comes with a built-in kickstand and a Touch Cover that is also a fully functional keyboard, making it easy to switch between tasks optimized for touch and type. A Type Cover is also available for a more traditional typing experience. It has two cameras, stereo speakers and dual microphones tuned for Skype, as well as a USB port and MicroSD card slot.

Surface with Touch Cover

Surface with Type Cover

Surface with built-in kickstand

Surface with full-sized USB port

Surface with Touch Covers and Type Covers

For more information, read the press announcement, watch the Microsoft Surface Event Keynote or visit the Surface product website.

(Taking my professional hat off and my geeky girly hat on, I would like to end this post with my initial reaction to seeing Surface for the first time: “OMG IT LOOKS SLEEK AND SEXY AND IT HAS COLORS AND THE PINK COVER WILL MATCH MY WINDOWS PHONE PERFECTLY AND I TOTALLY WANT ONE LIKE YESTERDAY!”)

Focus on HTML markup

The first step in browser compatibility testing is to focus on HTML markup while developing. Focus on the actual content, place important information and navigation on the top of the page, and move what’s not important to the bottom of the page. This ensures a good user experience for everyone. On this website the sidebar content has been moved to the bottom of the page in the HTML markup. In case of no styling, or if content is being read out loud for visibility impaired persons, it’s not necessary to scroll or read through the entire sidebar before getting to the content. The Web Developer extension for Firefox and Chrome has a feature to disable all styles with two clicks resulting in this:

In this case there was a small bug with the page navigation that was invisible with styles enabled. It only took a few seconds to fix this, versus frustrated users trying to navigate in the top screenshot:

Check website in major browsers

The second step in browser compatibility testing is to check the website in major browsers. On my Windows 7 computer the newest versions of Google Chrome, Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari are installed. Mobile testing is also done on my Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone with Internet Explorer. (Which is also good for testing CSS font stacks because it is currently quite restricted in terms of font support.)

Check website in online browser tools

This may rule out some errors, but the major issues are the outdated browsers such as Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8. The third step in browser compatibility testing is therefore to check the website in online browser tools.

Adobe BrowserLab is a nice free, online tool to view screenshots of websites in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 on Windows, as well as some other major browsers. This screenshot compares Internet Explorer 6 on the left and Internet Explorer 9 on the right. There are some issues with Internet Explorer 6, but they are minor and ignorable:

Another great tool is Browser Shots, which provides screenshots from over 150 versions of browsers on several platforms:

Check website in device emulators

The fourth step in browser compatibility testing is to check the website in various device emulators, such as iPhone Emulator, iPad Emulator, Android Emulator and Opera Mobile Emulator as shown below.

These four steps are simple and quick to complete. It is not time-efficient to ensure 100% perfect results in all browsers on all platforms when it comes to personal websites, but these steps at least ensure a good result for most visitors. The tools are available – use them!

Today I received a long e-mail with table definitions and data types, and I wanted to see the different data types used. This is a typical case where Excel does the job, but as I always have Notepad++ open it was easy to get the result I wanted in just a few seconds.

1. Paste the text into Notepad++ (CTRL+V). As you can see, there were 473 lines and half of them were blank.

2. Mark all the text (CTRL+A). Click TextFX → Click TextFX Tools → Check +Sort outputs only UNIQUE (at column) lines (if not already checked).

3. Click TextFX → Click TextFX Tools → Click Sort lines case insensitive (at column)

4. Duplicates and blank lines have been removed and the data has been sorted alphabetically. (The first line that may appear empty contains a space, which is regarded as a character and is included in the list of unique data.)

This is a handy feature somewhat hidden away in the menu, and it has saved me a lot of time already.

My attention span has decreased. I expect instant response and search engines to know what I want to search for before I’ve finished typing. I refresh if I have to wait longer than a couple of seconds, because something must be wrong if I have to wait that long, right? I skip to new web sites and topics without really taking the time to reflect on what I’ve just read. Is the title of a news article not interesting enough, is the summary too long, is the picture misleading? Then I’m already on article number two, three or four. Or back to my inbox, checking to see if a new e-mail arrived in the past minute. My eyes shift, my head spins, and some days are so hectic they’re over before I notice it. Sounds familiar?

Being able to multi-task is great, but I have to be careful that my strive for effectiveness doesn’t turn into a big pile of “everything stew”. It’s possible to multi-task, but impossible to do everything at once. I want to regain my focus and allow myself the time to let information sink in.

Who’d have thought a smartphone could help me with that? Smartphones have been branded as time-thieves, and for good reasons. They’re always available and they provide instant response. But, for now, they can’t handle multi-tasking in browsers as well as a computer. It takes time to load and reload pages, and even if it’s possible to use tabs it takes time to open them. It both takes longer and costs more to load a web site on a smartphone than a computer, and that forces me to make more deliberate decisions.

I don’t open a web site unless I know that I’m interested enough in the topic to wait for the web site to load. I actually have to wait for web sites to load, and when I’ve already waited I might as well spend some more time and read the whole article. I focus on that single article before moving forward to something new, and that forces me to focus in a way I haven’t done for a long time.

Data Quality Services overview

Data Quality Services (DQS) is a new knowledge-driven solution in SQL Server 2012 to improve data quality by cleansing, matching, de-duplicating and profiling data.

To improve a business’ data, the first requirement is to know the data. Data Quality Services centers around a Data Quality Knowledge Base (DQKB) that stores three types of knowledge: out-of-the-box knowledge provided by Microsoft (such as country names and regular expressions for validating e-mail addresses), knowledge generated by Data Quality Services by sampling the business’ data and knowledge generated by business users.

The Data Quality Knowledge Base is then used to improve data quality, either interactively by business users through the Data Quality Client application, or automatically in SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages with the new DQS Cleansing component.

Issues that Data Quality Services address

Good quality data is complete, conformed, consistent, accurate, valid and unique. Data Quality Services can address issues with any of these.

Completeness – Is all required data available?
Sample data problem: 50% of all zip codes are listed as 0000.

Conformity – Does data conform to the specified format?
Sample data problem: Dates are listed as YYYY-MM-DD in one system, and DD-MM-YYYY in another system.

Consistency – Do values represent the same meaning?
Sample data problem: Sales amounts are presented in Euros in one system, and as Norwegian Kroner in another system.

Accuracy – Does data accurately represent reality or a verifiable source?
Sample data problem: Countries are spelled incorrectly.

Validity – Do values fall within acceptable ranges?
Sample data problem: E-mail addresses are listed as name@gmail instead of name@gmail.com.

Uniqueness – Is data unique?
Sample data problem: One person is registered as two customers: Cathrine Wilhelmsen and C. Wilhelmsen.

Data Quality Services components

DQS consists of two main components: Data Quality Server and Data Quality Client. It also provides a DQS Cleansing component in SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) for cleansing data automatically in packages, as well as Master Data Services (MDS) data quality functionality.

Data Quality Server is implemented as three SQL Server catalogs: DQS_MAIN, DQS_PROJECTS and DQS_STAGING_DATA. The two first catalogs contain data necessary to run Data Quality Services, while the third catalog is the intermediate staging database for data that will be processed in Data Quality Services operations.

Data Quality Client is a standalone application used by business users and IT professionals to administer and manage knowledge bases and data quality projects. The client can be installed and run on the same computer as Data Quality Server or remotely on separate computers.

When to use Data Quality Services

A saying that most people in the data warehousing world have heard is “shit in, shit out”. Data Quality Services makes it possible to change that. But when is it appropriate to use Data Quality Services? In what situation, for what data?

One of our clients have a strict policy not to manipulate any data in their data warehouse, but rather expose poor data quality to the source systems and correct it there. They are not interested in using Data Quality Services to actually improve the data, but are very interested in using Data Quality Services as a method to expose poor quality data. By using the new DQS Cleansing component it’s possible to log poor quality data and enable automatic reporting to the source systems, instead of using resources on checking the data quality manually.

Data Quality Services looks very promising with Big Data, unstructured data, the demand for faster response times and ad-hoc analysis – when the users just want to analyze data and not build a comprehensive data warehouse. The possibilities are there, and it will be exciting to see how we use and what we think of Data Quality Services in a year or two or five.

Solution:
Delete or rename registry entry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE\NLS_LANG

No standard fonts resemble Minya Nouvelle, the font used for headings on this site, so Segoe WP Semilight was chosen as a fall back font before Arial, Tahoma and sans-serif. The same fall back fonts were chosen for the body text. This makes this web site look quite different on a Windows Phone compared to a desktop browser, but it is a deliberate difference.

The picture below showcases the standard fonts in Internet Explorer on a Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone 7.5. There might be more supported fonts, but these are the fonts listed in various articles that are referenced at the end of this post.

Arial (Bold / Italic)
Arial Black (Italic)
Calibri (Bold / Italic)
Comic Sans MS (Bold / Italic)
Courier New (Bold / Italic)
Georgia (Bold / Italic)
Lucida Sans Unicode (Bold / Italic)
Segoe UI (Bold / Italic)
Segoe WP (Bold / Italic)
Segoe WP Black (Italic)
Segoe WP Light (Italic)
Segoe WP Semibold (Italic)
Segoe WP SemiLight (Italic)
Tahoma (Bold / Italic)
Times New Roman (Bold / Italic)
Trebuchet MS (Bold / Italic)
Verdana (Bold / Italic)
Webdings
Wingdings

Font Support for Windows Phone
Supported Fonts on IE for Windows Phone 7
Fonts in Silverlight for Windows Phone
Unsupported Features in Internet Explorer Mobile.