The IT Dashboard is a management tool for the United States federal government CIOs to use in overseeing their IT spending. To support transparency and open government initiatives, Federal decision makers also chose to make the IT Dashboard available to the general public. In the IT Dashboard, members of the public can view the same data about performance that government officials use.

Background

In June 2009, Federal IT leaders asked two questions about their IT budgets. These questions are common in the commercial world, but have been difficult to answer in the public sector:

• Where are our IT dollars going?
• Are we getting value from our investments?

The answer to these questions is a website that gives insight into the acquisition and management of the federal government's $75 billion-plus IT portfolio. The result is the IT Dashboard, a site built in collaboration with the government's most senior IT leaders and nearly every federal agency.

Purpose of the IT Dashboard

The IT Dashboard provides full lifecycle performance information on IT projects' scope and status. The data allows users to see project status, spot problems and trends, manage performance and quality expectations, and establish accountability. The tool is useful to the public and to government IT leaders who plan and manage IT investments. The home page screen shown above gives an overview of the tool.

IT Dashboard’s value comes from several facets:

• Mashing-up data from multiple data sets (IT project justification, schedule/status, expenditures, contractors.)
• Ensuring that real-time and complete data is available.
• Presenting the data and comparisons in ways that are visual and easy to drill into.
• Providing only high-level data that doesn't overwhelm the viewer.

Site Design and Functionality

Originally conceived as a PHP application, the IT Dashboard evolved to a Drupal-based application, employing the Drupal API, several modules, and basic theming. While not all functionality is built in a customary Drupal way, we have modified all pages so that they can be accessed using menu hooks. The advantage of using such hooks is that now all those pages can use the Drupal API, and contributed modules, without worrying about whether or not Drupal has been properly bootstrapped.

One of the primary requirements was that REI Systems deploy the IT Dashboard rapidly. Since the source datasets were already available, developers avoided the need for a data migration step by working with the existing data model. With a working data model and Drupal’s easy-to-use components, we went to initial release in under six weeks. Since the launch in 2009 active development has been ongoing.

Another requirement was that the IT Dashboard incorporate captivating and practical data visualizations. To meet these requirements several visualization libraries are used across the site. FusionCharts drives most of the bar, pie and line graphs throughout the site. Google Motion Charts and JuiceKit power the more advanced Tools section of the site.

Initial plan was for agencies to enter monthly updates through data entry screens. However, this approach quickly led to delays and data quality issues. To address these issues, we introduced an XML API, allowing for system-to-system integration between the IT Dashboard and the systems used by more than 26 Federal agencies.

Access authentication for data providers is handled by integrating with an existing security system, included within the OMB's MAX system -- the tool used by federal agencies to enter and report official budgetary data. This integration was accomplished by extending the Drupal Central Authentication Services module (CAS), which controls role-based data access at both the application and database levels. The application makes certain data visible to the user only if they have appropriate permissions; otherwise, the user is limited to viewing only the publicly available data and graphics. User credentials are propagated to the database and are stored in a database session. This information is used by the Database Views module to enforce authentication and authorization rules.

The use of the FusionCharts library, which uses the Adobe Flash plug-in for rendering, meant that many mobile users were not able to easily access the same information as desktop users. To address the growing need for mobile use, a mobile-friendly version of the website was rolled out using the jqTouch library and the javascript visualization library flot.

Apache SOLR powers the search capability. A private SOLR index is used for authenticated users and a public SOLR index with a subset of the data is used for anonymous users.

Infrastructure

To support easy scalability and accessibility, the IT Dashboard resides in the cloud.

The federal government selected a technical environment that is robust; provides Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS); offers high levels of security, scalability, reliability and accessibility; and has a security plan and existing capabilities to protect publicly accessible web sites that disclose government information.

The IT Dashboard leverages a Content Delivery Network (CDN) structure for the public portion of the website to improve overall system performance. Business data is stored in a separate MySQL database; the Drupal database contains only Drupal-specific configuration information, along with static content.

The infrastructure was selected to support a tool open to use by more than 26 government agencies, members of Congress, the IT vendor community, and the general public - whomever may have some interest in the federal government IT investments.

Module Use

Contributed Modules

Major modules that were used were:

• CAS - Integrates with existing OMB CAS implementation named MAX.
• CCK - Used for data entry and file uploads.
• ClamAV - Scan attachments for viruses.
• Context - Used for page layout.
• Skinr - Allows easy application of a pre-built style library to blocks.
• ThemeKey - Eases transition from old theme to new theme on per page basis.
• Views 3 - Allowed us to plug in our own query backend, necessary to access separate application database.

Custom Modules

The following custom modules were developed for the IT Dashboard:

• Data Controller - A Views 3 Datasource plugin that has support for aggregations and efficient query generation.
• PHP Dataset - Describe data sets for views using custom PHP code. We are using this to drive views that require data from the application database.
• Views FusionCharts - Display style plugin to render view output as a FusionChart. This module is compatible with Views 2 and 3.

Challenges and Lessons Learned

We learned one significant lesson through this effort, namely that Drupal APIs were more versatile than we had originally believed. Our work on the IT Dashboard started initially with a PHP application, not using any Drupal APIs. We found several problems with this approach, each of which make system maintenance more complex and error-prone:

• The logic in SQL queries tended not to be re-used.
• Security items need to be addressed separately for each page viewed.
• There was not clear separation between logic and presentation.

Upon observing these problems, and gaining confidence in Drupal APIs, we revised several pages to use the Views module, which allowed us to:

• Centralize the logic of most queries in View Default.
• Establish a clean separation between View logic and View display.
• Most SQL-injection and XSS issues are already addressed in the code of the contributed modules.

As with any complex development effort, we met several challenges, and learned lessons that may benefit others in the community. The most significant challenges included:

• Reconciling preferences of different stakeholders for different visualization and layouts in order to take advantage of Drupal's strength in a consistent presentation style.
  Drupal offers many ways to utilize templates and generic modules to implement a consistent look and feel across many screens. However the quick turnaround and occasionally conflicting preferences from different stakeholders made it difficult to develop an overall design that leveraged this Drupal strength. We have made a number of revisions since launch to improve consistency and we plan to address this challenge by spending more time up-front on mock-ups, and facilitating agreement across stakeholders on the end-state vision.
• Legacy system includes a data model that isn't suited to new uses.
  The IT Dashboard has a separate application database that originated from a previous system. We addressed the challenge of accessing this database by using a custom query plugin for the Views 3 module.
• Facilitating expansion/collapse of table data detail to suit user preferences (an example of custom display functionality).
  Many IT Dashboard screens have custom functionality, which could not be satisfied by the Views module at a basic level. For example, some screens offer a table view of data. However, the desire not to overwhelm all users with the full set of data led to a decision that some rows should offer an "expand" button to allow drill-down capability at the user's option. Implementing this customized functionality required custom coding.

Project Team

The site is currently operated by a nine member team, composed of the following roles:

• 4 Drupal developers
• 1 database developer
• 1 QA engineer
• 2 business analyst
• 1 project manager

Additional Information

REI Systems is a leading provider of web-enabled, database-driven knowledge management and performance support solutions for federal agencies, state and local governments, and the commercial and industrial sector. For more information, please visit us athttp://drupal.reisys.com.

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It is cool and amazing. jQuery is a light weight JavaScript library that does some awesome jobs in event handling, animation and Ajax interactions on a HTML file. They call it "The Write Less, Do More" JavaScript library which can do wonders if at all you are bothered about code optimization and adding some cool effects to your webpage. It is little complex but small and very powerful, lets take a look at following code:

$(document).ready(function() {
$("#Jmenu ul").hide();
$("#Jmenu
li").filter("[ul]").hover(
function(){$(this).children("ul").show("slow");},
function(){$(this).children("ul").hide("slow"); });
});

The first line gets it ready for the Action. The second line searches for ul structures inside the parent ul with id=Jmenu and hides em all. The third line is the mouse over function on parent li nodes. The fourth line finds out if the mouse hovered li has child elements (ul) and if it has then shows them slowly (cool show effect) and the fifth line hides these elements again on mouse out. Don't forget to add jquery.js file in your html file, it can be found on their site. Now if I had to write the same code using typical JavaScript it would be hundreds of lines of code to get the same effect. That was just a small example of what jQuery can do, needless to say it can do many wonderful things that you might not have thought JavaScript can do.



jQuery programmers and enthusiasts have come up with lot of Plugins and the repository can be found at: http://jquery.com/plugins/


jQuery is happening and big thing, if you are a UI programmer, get acquainted with it, you will love it.

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Gaming has moved from your parent's basement to the limelight. Here's the eight reasons why gaming may just supplant all other forms of media in the near future.

8- Legitimacy of Competition

The fact that the term, "cyberathlete" exists is a clear indication that gaming competition is becoming a serious business. From small Guitar Hero tournaments at local bars to massive Halo competitions with millions worth in prizes; gaming competitions are not only gaining momentum as accepted activities, they're attracting crowds and even syndication. A tournament company called Major League Gaming has a contract to broadcast gaming competitions on the USA Network. The market is large enough for a good enough gamer to earn a living and Starcraft is practically Korea's national sport. Sooner or later those who pwn will be cutting in line at clubs.



7- Social Networking

Remember those news stories about couples who met on World of Warcraft? Did you hear about that guy who was arrested for stalking a girl on Xbox Live? How about Republican Ron Paul who held a campaign march in the Alliance city of Ironforge on World of Warcraft's Wisperwind server? Most gamers have friends on Xbox Live or PSN that they've never met in person. We all know of the phenomenon of online social networking led by sites like Facebook and MySpace. Along with these sites, online video games will surely play a large part in the future development of people's online presence. Soon many people will be better known by their avatars than their faces.

6- The Tech-friendly Media

More than any other form of media, gaming has adapted masterfully to the new technologies of the 21st century, particularly when it comes to high-definition displays and the penetration of broadband and Wi-Fi. No form of media has taken to both of the big innovations of the last few years like gaming. While folks are still hooking analog cable to HDTVs and using America Online with their cable internet, most gamers are using the technologies of today properly, which is why consoles are performing more multimedia functions. The media companies are learning who its audience is, and it's usually holding a controller.

5- More than Just Entertainment

Games are no longer considered simply as tools for killing brain cells. Today there is a rapidly growing market for games as tools for education and fitness. Companies are looking to develop video games that are educational, while schools are looking to the gaming industry for new kinds of educational tools. Games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit are melding exercise with gaming. As games become useful outside the realm of entertainment they not only become more socially accepted, but more important to society. Educational films, fitness tapes, and even instructional manuals will soon be totally obsolete.

4- Declining Competition

Box-office returns are down. Cable and network ratings aren't exactly through the roof either. Most folks wouldn't touch a book to save their lives, so how are they entertaining themselves? More and more, gaming is becoming an acceptable means of entertainment, due in no small part to the staleness of its competitors. With no end in sight to the Hollywood writer's strike, the steady influx of videogames could convert many couch potatoes growing tired of three nights a week of "American Gladiators."

3- Gaming Goes Big

While the increase of independent, low-budget games has been critical in the industry's success, the big-budget blockbusters are also a key part of keeping the core gaming audience satisfied. While the conglomeration of big companies and the rapidly-increasing budgets for triple-A titles has led to game creation by committee, there's no denying that catering to the largest audience possible is an excellent business decision. It's the Transformers effect& many will be entertained, even if it isn't forwarding the art form an inch.

2- Increasing Cultural Relevancy

Remember the games of the past? They were all about jumping over alligators and eating jelly beans. Today, more video games are using politics and current events as subject matter. Call of Duty 4, for example, portrays the horror of nuclear war inspired by America's conflict in the Middle East. Think about Metal Gear Solid 4's plot about private military companies perpetuating war for profit. Not only are games daring to cover "real-life" topics, they themselves are becoming "real-life" topics. More and more you'll see game reviews in newspapers, indy-made video game spoofs, and television shows centering on gaming. This all indicates that games are normalizing in the world's collective consciousness.

1- Capturing the Casual Audience

Did anyone honestly believe that this would be the console generation that catered to the elderly and&:gasp:: girls? Yet that's exactly what's happened, due largely to the success of Nintendo thinking outside the box with the touch-screen Nintendo DS and the motion-sensing Wii. Before those systems hit it big, it seems as though Sony and Microsoft had resigned to competing over the same sect of hardcore gamers into perpetuity, but Nintendo's amazing success has broadened the audience considerably, and given its competitors reason to delve into more easy-to-enjoy games. And that's why we have dozens of Bejeweled clones on Xbox Live Arcade.

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We pick some of the best software programs and utilities for your Windows computer that are completely free and still extremely useful. Given all these wonderful choices, why pay?

Audio Editing:

If you ever wanted to do some basic audio recording, look no further than Audacity - it can record, remove noise from audio and also mix multiple sound track. With little effort, you can use Audacity to record live streaming music from Internet radio stations.

Video Editing:

For videos, Windows Movie Maker from Microsoft is a good choice. It has all the basic video editing tools plus a good collection of transitions and video effects. For advanced usage, get the powerful VirtualDub - it has a number of filters (like video rotation), can create videos from image sequences, split videos or even extract sound from video tracks.


Instant Messenger:

If your friends are spread across different services like Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN and others, get Pidgin and connect to all popular IM services using a single software. Pidgin provides a tabbed interface so the desktop won’t look cluttered even if you are simultaneously chatting with multiple buddies.

Computer Security:

Your computer needs a firewall program like ZoneAlarm or Comodo Pro to stop spyware programs from connecting to websites secretly and for blocking any Internet intruders. For removing viruses from infected systems, AVG Antivirus and Avast are very reliable and unlike other commercial software, they are not heavy on system resources.

Multimedia Players:

You may already have Windows Media Player and iTunes on your computer but they are not capable of playing all audio and video formats. For this reason, I recommend VLC Media Player that is light-weight and supports almost everything including DVDs and Flash Videos that you have downloaded from YouTube. Another option is GOM player.

Digital Photography:

Taking photos with your digital camera is just half the job . For organizing your vast picture collection, get Google Picasa or Windows Live Photo Gallery. With Picasa, you can create Screensavers and Picture Collages while Live Gallery has a wonderful photo stitching feature for making panoramas. Both let you transfer pictures from the desktop to Flickr. For advanced photo editing, use Paint.NET or GIMP.

Windows Enhancements:

If you like using keyboard more than the mouse, get Launchy - it helps you start your favorite programs (and documents) without touching the Windows Start Menu. TweakUI is another desktop enhancement to help you control the appearance of Windows, change the location of default folders and so much more.

Spring Cleaning:

WinDirStat gives you a visual overview of files and folders that are consuming the bulk of space on your hard drive so you know where to hit the delete key when the drive is full. CCleaner with automatically find and remove all the unnecessary temp files from your computer reclaiming valuable hard drive space. It also clears all the junk from Windows registry so your system runs faster. MyUninstaller will help you remove software that do show up in Windows Add Remove control panel.

Desktop Email:

If you like checking and replying to your web email from the desktop, Windows Live Mail and ThunderBird are worth considering. They let you check multiple e-mail accounts in one place, apply filters to incoming email, add another layer of protection from junk email, built-in RSS reader and best of all, you can work offline.

DVD Tools:

For creating backup copies of your DVD video disks onto the hard drive, use DVD Shrink. For extracting movie scenes and MP3 music from DVDs, HandBrake is a good choice. It can also be used to export your DVDs into portable players like the iPod.

Other Worthy Mentions: HTTrack helps you create a mirror copy of any website on the hard drive for offline reading. Orbit Downloader lets you save streaming music and videos from almost every website. Copernic Desktop is an excellent software for finding emails, documents, photos and other multimedia files on your computer. Microsoft SyncToy provides a visual interface for synchronizing file folders between computers and external drives.

Do you think we are missing some really good software here ? Please share in the comments.

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Looking to download Camtasia Studio Retail version for free ? Read this..

Camtasia Studio is by far the best screencasting software - its currently available only for Windows though a Mac version of Camtasia is under development.

Related: Review of Camtasia Studio

Now a full retail version of Camtasia Studio 5 costs $300 but you can have Camtasia for free.
The only catch is that this offer is available for Camtasia Studio 3. Download the demo of Camtasia Studio 3 here and then request a registration key from Techsmith here to convert that demo into a full licensed version.

Update: Download Free SnagIt Screen Capture

Though you may miss some of the new features like Auto Pan and Zoom, Camtasia Studio 3 will still solve most of your screencasting problems - also includes quizzing, titles, PIP and support for recording PPT presentations.

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AVS Audio Tools is a set of easy-to-use audio processing tools that offers a variety of audio creating, mixing, recording and converting capabilities - a fine general tasks addition to audio editors. It also gives an easy way to rip and burn audio and MP3 CDs.

AVS Audio Tools includes a powerful music mix tool and five wizard-styled applications that will make your audio processing routine a pleasurable and convenient experience.

Music Mix Audio

mix several audio tracks.
lay your voice onto an instrumental audio file and save it as a new file.
create playlist-type sequence with fade in and fade out options in a single file.
visually judge the mixing process on a timeline
Apply a variety of loops which are included in the installation.

CD Grabber

grab audio tracks from CDs and save them to your hard drive in various digital audio formats
name your files using information received from the CDDB source
change the information obtained from the audio source (Name of Artist, Album and tracks)
select details you want to include in the file name (Track Number, Song Title, Artist, Album)
add the information to your output file such as Title, Artist, Album, Comment
select the output file format ( WAV(PCM), RAW(PCM), Microsoft ADPCM, MP3, MP2, OGG Vorbis, WMA are supported) and specify the quality of output files
visually judge the progress of the grabbing process.

Audio Converter

convert audio files from one format to another
specify frequency, number of channels, bitrate and other parameters of your output files
apply fine tuning of parameters for MP3 and OGG formats
specify the location of the output files
visually judge the progress of the conversion process
play the converted files to make sure that the quality is sufficient
modify extra text information in existing files such as Title, Artist, Album, Comment.

Audio CD Writer

create Audio CDs for playing them at any CD-player
record R/RW discs On-the-Fly without creating intermediate uncompressed file at your hard drive
erase the information at CD-RW and format CD-RW discs
visually judge the progress of the writing process
play the output files to make sure the quality is sufficient.

Audio Recorder

record your own music, voice or other audio
create files of such popular formats as PCM, MP3, ADPCM, WMA and others
choose and configure the recording device
specify frequency, number of channels, bitrate, balance, volume settings and other parameters of supported formats
add the information to your output file such as Title, Artist, Album, Comment
apply correction effects after recording to improve quality of output files: normalize the recording file and reduce the dynamic range of the signal
play output file to make sure that the quality is sufficient

Audio MP3 Writer

create audio CDs for playing them at any CD-player
record R/RW discs On-the-Fly without creating intermediate uncompressed file at your hard drive
erase the information at CD-RW and format CD-RW
visually judge the progress of the writing process
play the output files to make sure that the quality is sufficient.
Supported Platforms: Windows ME, 2000, XP, 2003
Size: 20.20 MB

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25 cracks and serial no for autocad

AutoCAD 2006, the 20th release of AutoCAD software, increases efficiency with across-the-board improvements to bring productivity up and lag time down.

AutoCAD® 2006 is a software to realize your ideas with maximum speed, power, and efficiency.

Beginning with dramatically smaller file sizes in AutoCAD® 2004, and continuing with the Sheet Set Manager in AutoCAD® 2005, Autodesk is raising the bar on productivity once again with
AutoCAD 2006. From the new dynamic blocks capability that allows you to quickly create, manipulate, and extract data from blocks, to heads-up design, which keeps your focus on your work rather than on the software,

AutoCAD 2006 makes an impact on the way you work, every single day.

Dynamic Blocks

Blocks are a lot smarter in this release. As designs become more complex, block libraries grow. And as block libraries grow, data becomes difficult to manage.

AutoCAD 2006 puts the control back where it belongs—with you. Dynamic blocks dramatically reduce cumbersome block libraries and enable you to modify block geometry during insertion with new grips and action features.

AutoCAD 2006 helps you no longer have to shift your focus between your drawing and the command line. In addition to the traditional method of entering information,

AutoCAD 2006 puts the power of the command line at the graphics cursor, where you can enter dimensional and command option information as you work. Also new in this release are customizable tool palettes. Whether you want commands, blocks, macros, company standards, or LISP routines, you can have the content you use every day, organized the way you use it.

What's New in AutoCAD 2006

Boost your everyday productivity with these new features:

Dynamic blocks give you more drafting control and flexibility over your current blocks, allowing greater manipulation while dramatically reducing the size of block libraries.

Improved annotation and composition features help streamline the creation, placement, and editing of textual and table information and greatly enhance hatching capabilities.

The enhanced user interface puts the power of the command line at the graphics cursor, where you can enter dimensional and command option information as you work and get immediate feedback.

Migration tools streamline the migration process, so you can upgrade easily while preserving customization of toolbars and menus.




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