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2300 years ago, Aristotle wrote down the secret to being a persuasive speaker , the secret which forms the basis for nearly every public speaking book written since then. Do you know the secret? If you don’t, you might be wondering what a 2300-year-old theory has to do with public speaking in the year 2010

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Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking

Our new plug-in Optical Flares will be available Monday morning (around 9AM PST) but we wanted to highlight some key features that you may have missed. Be sure to check out the product page and watch the feature videos: Go to the Optical Flares Page Some Key Features include: This Eclipse image is a tutorial available with Optical Flares along with 4 other advanced tutorials including a concert scene and building a wall of lights.

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Feature Spotlight: Optical Flares

eCommerce payment processing by Streamline.com This service provider in the payment card processing domain claims to be the largest of its kind within Europe and boasts of being able to cater to all types of businesses irrespective of the size. They are a member of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group.

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Online Payment Processing by Streamline.com

Confessions of a Public Speaker is a highly entertaining and insightful insider’s view of public speaking, with value for speakers of all levels. This article is the latest of a series of public speaking book reviews here on Six Minutes .

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Book Review: Confessions of a Public Speaker (Scott Berkun)

Good to see that the dates for the Community Tech Days have been confirmed. It’s now set for 24th January at Microsoft IDC in Hyderabad. The event has a great line up of sessions and speakers, and its a nice opportunity for developers and IT Pros to know about the enhancements in Microsoft technologies right from Microsoft and other experts too

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Community Tech Days in Hyderabad

Today, I had to deliver a talk on Security features in .NET and IIS and I was going through the www.iis.net website.  In the past I had been there for Smooth streaming and other stuff but I stumbled upon the tools, a truck load of them that are very handy utilities while managing a webserver. URL Scan Site Shell Server Defender and much more related to security at http://www.iis.net/downloads/Security and with respect to performance http://www.iis.net/downloads/Performance Ok, and my titbit for this post is that, if you want to use the URL Scan utility on your server running IIS 7, IIS 7.5, you need to enable IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility before configuring the tool.  Here is a write up on the same site to do that at http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/125/metabase-compatibility-with-iis-7/ Cheers !!!

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IIS Tools – truck load of them at www.iis.net

Video Copilot presents the all new 3D lens flare studio: Optical Flares! Key Features include: 3D Position & Light Tracking Real Texture Mapping Includes 60 Presets (Pro Preset Pack Available) Realistic On-Lens Simulations Automatic Luminance Tracking Dynamic Triggering (Animation without Keyframes!) Creative Tutorials and much more! Check out the product right now: Optical Flares Product Page Be sure to watch the feature videos for an exciting, in-depth look at using Optical Flares.  With such a powerful plug-in, we separated the videos into individual sections so you can check out the features you want to see! Optical Flares will be available Monday, Jan 25 in our online store. Optical Flares is available for download only

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ANNOUNCEMENT: Optical Flares Page Online!

After Effects CS5 will to be a 64 bit application only.  At the moment QuickTime is only a 32 bit application and users of other 64 bit applications like (3D max 64 bit, Nuke 64 bit, etc.) do not have the ability to import or export any QuickTime files.   So seeing how QuickTime is one of most popular formats that has been supported by After Effects since the beginning, what will happen with AE CS5? I received direct word from the Adobe After Effects product manager himself: Michael Coleman ____________________________________________________________________ He said this: “QuickTime is very important and we will continue to have QuickTime support in the next After Effects

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QuickTime & AE CS5: The 64 bit Question

Six Minutes weekend reviews are back for a third year of bringing you the best public speaking articles from throughout the public speaking blogosphere . This review features topics including: speechwriting lessons from Martin Luther King Jr.; structuring your presentation logically; becoming aware of your voice; benefits of a flip chart; mistakes with visuals; speaker habits; stages in a professional speaking career; and more! From the Six Minutes Archives  One Year Ago from Six Minutes … Speech Analysis: I Have a Dream – Martin Luther King Jr

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Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2010-01-15]

As some of you may know, the new version of After Effects CS5 will be native 64 bit, which offers major speed and memory enhancements (among other things) but 3rd party plug-in developers like Video Copilot, will need to update their code before they will work in 64 bit. But worry not… When After Effects CS5 ships, (some speculate later this year) Video Copilot is committed to offering free product upgrades to customers on all of our plug-ins. All… TWO of them Twitch & Optical Flares

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Optical Flares & Twitch: 64 Bit?

Freedom Fone’s ability to fulfill it’s promise as a must have tool for bridging the digital divide has yet to be determined. Millions of poor people have access to mobile phones, but with tariffs as high as they are in countries like Zimbabwe, experimentation in this field is still costly. And of course, for our project these are early days

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Free Kiswahili synthetic voice for Freedom Fone a possibility

Video Link As we get closer to the release of Optical Flares, our new lens flare creation studio, I wanted to show you some cool examples of Optical Flares in action. This reel includes actual productions by some of our beta testers and some tests I did internally.  I think this reel has a nice variety of how lens flares can be used but I’m sure you could think of many more! Motion graphics or visual effects… be ready for Optical Flares: January 25, 2010.

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Optical Flares In Action

Streamline.net web hosting review Brief Introduction This is yet another company that was launched a decade back as an off shoot of Dollamore – the parent company and managed to make a name for itself in a very short time by hosting close to over 150,000 websites. They pride themselves on the fact that their customers find it easy to do business with them and ascribe that to the fact that they have been able to make the process of web hosting a very convenient and uncomplicated one

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Streamline.Net budget web hosting company

Kubatana , a Zimbabwean non-profit organisation committed to democratising access to information, was awarded a Knight News Challenge grant in May 2008 for its Freedom Fone software development project. The Freedom Fone project aspires to help civic organisations extend their information in an audio format to mobile phone users. In Zimbabwe the mass media is monopolised by an entrenched and unpopular government

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Molo and Kubatana’s partnership helps put information in the hands of Zimbabweans

To keep up the pace with 24 x 7 work schedule, which usually becomes demanding for both mind and body, employees need a nap at regular intervals to sustain the pressure at contemporary workspaces. Inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s practice of Dymaxion Sleeping, which involves four 30-minute naps over a period of 24 hours, the “Sleep Suit” by Forrest Jessee is a sort of portable sleeping bag that lets the user have a power nap anywhere, anytime. Interweaving structural pleats made in EVA foam, often used as padding in sports equipments and sleeping bags, the Sleep Suit ensures optimum comfort even in hard surfaces

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Sleep Suit lets you have a power nap anywhere, anytime

“simple problem or target: a target that is easy to achieve, or a problem that is easy to solve” Here is a breakdown of the 3 most used browser to access my blog. IE7/8 has soooo many features that makes the browsing experience better (And thy are extremely easy to implement) Introducing Instant Search “Starting with Internet Explorer 7, the Instant Search box provides an AutoComplete feature so users can search for similar search terms used in previous searches. Internet Explorer 7 also enables users to add multiple search providers

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Low Hanging Fruit

The last couple of days I’ve been searching and evaluating some point of sale systems for a friend… I found a excellent solution from openbravo ! It has just one problem (that could easily be fixed using WPF). The software is designed to run on 1024 x 768! Their are some tweaks you can do to force it to run on 800 x 600 but some panels still do not render properly! I want to run this solution on a panel pc that can only do 800 x 600! Introducing the ViewBox “Defines a content decorator that can stretch and scale a single child to fill the available space.” Now I can place my content inside the ViewBox and always assume I will be displayed at x resolution, if not… it will auto-magically resize it for me!!! Easy

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View-the-box

This weekend was Devs4Devs and we had a blast! Here is my slide deck SketchFlow in 20 minutes or less Thank you to everyone who attended my session! Since joining BB&D , I also get a opportunity to present ASTRA or TR sessions, here is the slide decks of my recent presentations Composite Application Library (PRISM) SketchFlow What’s new in Silverlight 3.0 ImagineCup 2009 – Microsoft Robotics Studio 2008 I will also start slowly uploading older presentations from Tech-ed and Developer Days!

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Devs4Devs “The Challenge”

I FINALLY managed to finish the series on all the COOL stuff in the new Windows 7 taskbar! Anatomy of the Windows 7 taskbar – ThumbnailToolbarButton Anatomy of the Windows 7 taskbar – Overlays Anatomy of the Windows 7 taskbar – TabbedThumbnail (Part 1) Anatomy of the Windows 7 taskbar – TabbedThumbnail (Part 2) Anatomy of the Windows 7 taskbar – Progress Anatomy of the Windows 7 taskbar – Jumplist (Part 1) Anatomy of the Windows 7 taskbar – Jumplist (Part 2) If you want to see a “real” application using some of these features, check out Fishbowl “Experience your Facebook content in new ways with a trial desktop client application that lets you personalize how you read your newsfeed, update status, comment, like, browse and upload photos.” Also download the source from codeplex: http://fishbowl.codeplex.com/ Other Light it Up- List of Applications that use new Windows 7 Features The Weekly Source Code 46 – Jeff Key rocks Taskbar Meters that Monitor your Windows 7 CPU and Me

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Anatomy of the Windows 7 taskbar

The last topic I want to cover about the Windows 7 taskbar is the Jumplist!!! To create a new JumpList, call CreateJumpList() JumpList jumplist = JumpList.CreateJumpList(); We should now choose if we are only creating user tasks or custom categories? I decided to create user tasks jumplist.AddUserTasks(new JumpListLink(Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, “MiMail.exe”), “Mail”) { Arguments = “mail” }); jumplist.AddUserTasks(new JumpListLink(Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, “MiMail.exe”), “Contacts”) { Arguments = “contacts” }); jumplist.AddUserTasks(new JumpListLink(Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, “MiMail.exe”), “Calendar”) { Arguments = “calendar” }); We could also use custom categories to group our tasks JumpListCustomCategory category = new JumpListCustomCategory(“Mail”); category.AddJumpListItems(new JumpListLink(Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, “MiMail.exe”), “Inbox”) { Arguments = “inbox” }); category.AddJumpListItems(new JumpListLink(Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, “MiMail.exe”), “New Message”) { Arguments = “newMessage” }); jumplist.AddCustomCategories(category); Don’t forget to call Refresh() jumplist.Refresh(); Now, if you read my previous blog post and had no clue why you would want to use it? JumpList allows you to specify a application (and its arguments) to be executed if you click on a user task!!! Cool, isn’t it

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Anatomy of the Windows 7 taskbar – Jumplist (Part 1)

Imagine for a second that you are writing a application like outlook… lets call it MiMail.exe! This application is very basic and has 3 views that are relevant to me! i want to be able to see my mail, contacts and calendar! There is also 3 specific tasks that I want to be able to execute: new mail, new contact and new appointment! At any given time, I only want one instance of this application running but I want to be able to execute these task by using the command line arguments, ie: MiMail.exe /mail MiMail.exe /newContact I am going to use a variation of the mediator pattern to facilitate the inter process communication via named pipes! Mediator Pattern The mediator pattern , one of the 23 design patterns described in Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software , provides a unified interface to a set of interfaces in a subsystem . This pattern is considered to be a behavioral pattern due to the way it can alter the program's running behavior. Usually a program is made up of a (sometimes large) number of classes

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Inter-process Mediator

Ever noticed the subtle progress overlay while downloading something from the internet? With Windows 7’s new taskbar, applications can visually display their progress on the taskbar! We first need to set the mode TaskbarManager.Instance.SetProgressState(TaskbarProgressBarState.Normal); The Windows 7 taskbar has 5 possible states NoProgress – No progress is displayed. Indeterminate – The progress is indeterminate (marquee).

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Anatomy of the Windows 7 taskbar – Progress

Everyone breathes. It’s one of the most natural things we do. However, if you ask singers to name the most important part of vocal technique, 9 out of 10 will say “breathing.” So, is there some special way to breathe that makes your voice better?  Yes! In this article, we explore breathing as it relates to vocal variety as a speaker .

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Breathing: The Seductive Key to Unlocking Your Vocal Variety

Criticize spec work, design contests or crowdsourcing sites, and you run the risk of being called a snooty designer , a gatekeeper, a parnoid bedwetter, a high-maintenance whiny art baby. Or worse. Being opposed to designers (mostly younger ones, often from developing nations) working without pay means you are a dinosaur, unwilling, or unable, to adapt to the ‘new reality’ of the graphic design industry

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Numbers – The ever-shifting realities of crowdsourcing and design contest sites.

““Look, it comes down to this,” says Stairs. “You’ve spent two hundred and fifty thousand of Bijan’s money so far, and you think your company is now worth thirty million dollars, right?”” – “Full, Upright and Locked Position” – Andrew Olson Andrew was one of the cofounder’s of  thePlatform which was the first company I invested in after joining Spark (acquired by Comcast). He’s now writing a fiction book and one of the characters is apparently loosely based on me

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"Look, it comes down to this,” says Stairs. “You’ve spent two hundred and fifty thousand of Bijan’s…"

I was playing around with Particular 2 and came up with this particle swirl using a couple of smoke images as particles. I love that Particular 2 reacts to the lighting as well as fake shading to make the particle seem more volumetric. Here is what I did, in Particular 2 custom particles are called Sprites, so once you select this as your particle type, the texture slot becomes available to use my smoke video that is included with the project download.  I stretched the particle area and rotated the world transform to make it look like a twister