"windows" entries
PowerShell Command Line Introduction
Effectively control Windows from the console
Here’s a slick PowerShell 3.0 one-liner. If you want to pull down an RSS feed from a blog, displaying only the title and publication date try:
Invoke-RestMethod "http://www.dougfinke.com/blog/index.php/feed/" | Select title, pubdate
It’s that simple. No looping, no checking end of stream, no XSLT to handle transforming the XML from the RSS feed, but wait, there’s more. This array of objects is now connected to the entire PowerShell ecosystem. PowerShell is based on .NET so you can use ADO.NET to insert it into a database, use Invoke-RestMethod again and post it to another REST endpoint or spin up Microsoft Excel and control it via its COM API. And that my friends, is the two foot dive into the PowerShell ocean.
PowerShell is Microsoft’s task automation framework, consisting of a command-line shell, an integrated scripting environment (ISE), a scripting language built on .NET Framework, an API allowing you to host PowerShell in your .NET applications, and it is a distributed automation platform. This means if you have PowerShell running on another box, you can remotely execute PowerShell there, if you have the credentials.
Getting started
What you need to do is launch the PowerShell console. On my Windows 8 box I press the Windows button, type “powers“, and hit enter.
Great! I’ve got a blank blue screen. Now what?
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Upward Mobility: Should There Be Only One?
Admittedly, the idea of Ballmer, Cook and Schmidt all battling it out Highlander-style is appealing...
As long as most people can remember, the smartphone space has been a contested one. Before the iPhone became temporarily ubiquitous, RIM and Palm were fighting it out to own the market, and today you have a plethora of platforms to choose from, including Android, iOS, Windows, and Blackberry. And because many mobile OS vendors license their products to third-party manufacturers, some mobile operating systems have little market share wars of their own, such as HTC fighting it out with Samsung and Motorola for the Android customer base.
I’ve talked before, in the context of languages, about the damage that the paradox of choice can bring to societies. Having more product choices may not make us any happier, or even lead to better products, but only create the vague uncertainty that whichever product choice we make, it wasn’t the correct one.
For obvious reasons, a monopoly doesn’t usually work out that well either, at least in mature markets with stable standards. Very few will argue that Microsoft’s most innovative years occurred during the period that they sat “fat, dumb and happy” with 90%+ desktop market share. But I would argue that there comes a time when some choices should be left to die a dignified death, and that both Windows and Blackberry mobile products are at that point.
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Building native apps from JavaScript using Appcelerator Titanium
An interview with John Anderson
In this interview, the author of Appcelerator Titanium: Up and Running describes how Titanium can be used to generate native mobile apps from JavaScript code. He distinguishes the Titanium platform from native API programming and from other popular JavaScript platforms for mobile devices. We look at the way Titanium exploits the expressiveness and flexibility of JavaScript, and some of the directions that the Appcelerator company is taking Titanium.
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Developer Week in Review: A big moment for Kinect?
Microsoft wants to Kinect with Windows users, more junk patents, and free programming lessons are everywhere.
Microsoft thinks the Kinect has a bright future with the PC. Elsewhere, we have a new contender for worst software patent ever, and the mayor of New York City wants to get his geek on.
Developer Week in Review: Windows 8 Developer Preview goes public
Win8 for free, Google throws a Dart, and Congress whiffs on patent reform.
Microsoft changes tack on a Windows 8 alpha, Google is darting away from JavaScript, and the great Patent Reform of 2011 reforms little.
Developer Week in Review: Are .NET programmers going extinct?
Microsoft embraces HTML5, selling a startup at 15, and a new version of Java looms.
For Microsoft programmers, the week brought fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding their future as an elite class of developers. For a lucky teen, it brought a big paycheck. And for fans of Java, it brought a new version of the popular language one step closer to release.
Windows 7 Starter Pushes the Web and IE
I run XP on my netbook and I've been looking forward to running Windows 7 on it. So I've been watching news about Windows 7 with interest. There is much discussion this week that the low-priced Starter Edition will only let you run three apps at a time. If you want to run more then you'll have to pay…