Microsoft POWER BI

Power BI transforms your company's data into rich visuals for you to collect and organize so you can focus on what matters to you. Stay in the know, spot trends as they happen, and push your business further.

Microsoft Power BI is helping users spot risks & find opportunities at a glance so they can save the day, every single day.

• Get your data
• Craft data stories
• Collect & share

Power BI is a cloud-based business analytics service that gives you a single view of your most critical business data. Monitor the health of your business using a live dashboard, create rich interactive reports with Power BI Desktop and access your data on the go with native Power BI Mobile apps. It’s easy, fast, and free.

Whatever your role, Power BI is the right teammate.

Convert JSON into Datatable

JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is easy for humans to read and write. It is easy for machines to parse and generate.

Basically, json is introduced in further two structures:

1. A collection of key/value pair
2. An ordered list of values

Today, we will not go into the details of this topic. A minor but very important thing we will see here that how to convert the json string into the datatable using asp.net

Assumingly, we are using NewtonJson.dll control for .NET framework 4.0 in our project.

As you can see below picture, we are importing newtonjson control with some few built-in .NET libraries.

Now see the below source code. Here, we are retrieving the json response by using httpwebrequest and Streamreader and put that into a string variable responseText and then json.

In the above picture, the red highlighted line of code indicating that how a response of json string converting into the datatable. We are using deserializeObject, the built-in method of newtonjson control and converting into the datatable. Now, you can bind it with Gridview, Datalist, Listview or any other control on the page.

Hope, it will work for you too.

Overview of Visual Studio 2015

Visual Studio 2015 is a rich, integrated development environment for creating stunning applications
for Windows, Android, and iOS, as well as modern web applications and cloud services.

Prominent features of Visual Studio 2015:

1. Web, mobile, and cloud development tools
2. Build apps for Windows, Android, and iOS
3. Integrated designers, editors, debuggers, and profilers
4. Code in C#, C++, JavaScript, Python, TypeScript, Visual Basic, F#, and more
5. Ability to deploy, debug, and manage Microsoft Azure services
6. Thousands of extensions, from PHP to gaming

Web Tools:

• HTML5, CSS3, LESS/SASS, JavaScript
• ASP.NET, Node.js, Python, JavaScript
• NuGet, Grunt, Gulp, Bower, npm
• Open source framework and runtime
• Deploy to Windows, Azure, Mac or Linux
• Free for small teams and open source

Cross Platform Mobile Development for iOS, Android, and Windows:

• Native and hybrid app development
• Use your preferred coding language
• Cross-platform tools to code, debug, and test your mobile apps
• Rich partner and extension ecosystem

Azure Tools (Cloud):

• Free hosting for 10 web apps
• Deploy in seconds. Automate via TFS, Git
• Build apps that span IaaS and PaaS
• Diagnose live apps with world-class debuggers, profilers, and data tools
• Integrate Active Directory, SQL, Office 365, SaaS, and on-premises systems
• Build dev/test environments in minutes

Tools for Windows Apps and Games:

• Leverage a rich, powerful platform
• Use industry leading coding, debugging, and diagnostic tools in Visual Studio
• Design beautiful apps with Blend for Visual Studio
• Connect your app to a range of services
• Gain deep insights into usage patterns

Office Developer Tools:

• Support all types of Office development
• Quickly get up and running
• Visual designers and IntelliSense
• Connect your app to the cloud
• Debug locally and remotely
• Publish to anywhere

Build Unity Games with Visual Studio:

• Build multiplatform games
• Debug from Visual Studio
• Create Unity scripts in Visual Studio
• Enhanced productivity with Visual Studio
• Get everything you need for Unity development for free

Node.js Tools for Visual Studio:

• Free and open source
• Intelligent code completion
• Advanced debugging and profiling
• Integration with other Visual Studio features and 3 rd party tools
• Node.js, io.js, JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS, and JSON support

Python Tools for Visual Studio:

• CPython, PyPy, IronPython and more
• Detailed IntelliSense
• Interactive debugging
• Integrated with Visual Studio features
• Free and open-source

Facebook supporting now the stronger encryption

It has been now demonstrated that sometimes left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Facebook is now pushing for stronger encryption.

Facebook now lets  users to add OpenPGP public keys to their profile, and to sign up for encrypted Facebook notifications.

Though legal for decades now, intelligence agencies have warned that widespread use of strong encryption could endanger their data-gathering efforts.

How it works: Facebook now allows users to upload their public keys onto their profile, where they can be made visible to friends or to the public, just like other contact information is. Facebook  further offers the option of encrypting notifications it sends to your email account. This provides some added protection, and also prevents your email provider from learning what you’re doing on Facebook.

If you use Gmail and have configured Facebook to send you all the notifications you can possibly configure in your Facebook settings to your Gmail account, obviously Facebook would be feeding Google ... lots of interesting information that Google could stuff into [its] database.

Using this feature further means that if your email account is hacked, or messages intercepted in transit, your Facebook notifications will be safe from prying eyes. Thorsheim believes that password reset requests are where this is most important.

Microsoft HoloLens ... a see through holographic computer

Microsoft HoloLens is the first holographic computer running Windows 10. It is completely untethered – no wires, phones, or connection to a PC needed. Microsoft HoloLens allows you to pin holograms in your physical environment and provides a new way to see your world.

 

Microsoft HoloLens features see-through, holographic, high-definition lenses and spatial sound so you can see and hear holograms in the world around you. Complete with advanced sensors and a new Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) that understands the world around you, Microsoft HoloLens is able to run without any wires while processing terabytes of data from the sensors in real-time.

 

Holograms will enable you to make decisions more confidently, work more effectively, and bring ideas to life before your eyes.

Transform the ways you communicate, create, collaborate, and explore.

Use your movements, vision, and voice to interact with content and information in the most natural way possible. 

The world’s most advanced holographic computer built on the same core as the Windows 10 family.

What is NFC Chip and How it works?

If you’re a Samsung smartphone user, you might want to know more about the controversial chip before falling for viral videos urging you to remove it.

In recent days in Pakistan, many videos claiming that the chip placed inside the Samsung smartphone battery is responsible for the posting of your private information including the photos and videos in your phone have published on social networks and on the internet. Many peoples named it with spy chips, etc...

To answer this million dollars question either the chip is spying your smartphone, Samsung explains everything about its newest NFC Chip.

The use of NFC chips in smartphones and tablets has increased over the past couple of years. Samsung has always at the forefront when it comes to the usage of latest communication technologies in its devices. The Galaxy S2 was one of the first Android smartphones to use an NFC chip and since then there have been improvements in the hardware as well as the software related to NFC features.

Know more about this NFC chip and how it works and what is the core objective to utilize in the smartphones, click on the following link:

Samsung explains everything about its newest NFC chip

http://www.sammobile.com/2014/11/29/samsung-explains-everything-about-its-newest-nfc-chip

How to convert .avi/.wmv/.flv to .mp4 file through FFMPEG using VB.Net

There are lots of software and utilities available on the internet that can convert your video or audio files into the another formats like .avi, .wmv, .wav, .flv, .mov, .mp3, .aif, .3gp, etc...

Most of them are with paid features and if you could not pay then those softwares places some watermark on your vidoe files which looks awkward.

FFmpeg is the leading multimedia framework, able to decode, encode, transcode, mux, demux, stream, filter and play pretty much anything that humans and machines have created. It contains libavcodec, libavutil, libavformat, libavfilter, libavdevice, libswscale and libswresample which can be used by applications. As well as ffmpeg, ffserver, ffplay and ffprobe which can be used by end users for transcoding, streaming and playing.

We can use FFMPEG in our code behind using vb.net or any other programming launguage and can make our life easy in order to processing video or audio files.

Below is a sample code for your reference that how we can call this ffmpeg.exe file in our code behind and process our required video or audio files.

Protected Sub btnSave_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnSave.Click   

    Dim strArgu As String, strNewFileName As String
       
    '--- Converting into MP4 file
        strArgu = " -i """ + Server.MapPath("<Source Directory>/" & <source file name>) + """ -s 480x320 -vcodec libx264 -acodec libfaac -ar 16000 -r 13 -ab 32000 -aspect 3:2 """ + Server.MapPath("<Target Directory>/" & <target file name.mp4>) + """"
   
    '--- Converting into MP3 file
    strArgu = " -i """ + Server.MapPath("<Source Directory>/" & <source file name>) + """ -f mp3 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192000 -ar 44100 """ + Server.MapPath("<Target directory>/" & <target file name.mp3>) + """"


        Dim proc As New Diagnostics.Process
        proc.StartInfo.Arguments = strArgu
        proc.StartInfo.FileName = Server.MapPath("ffmpeg.exe")
        proc.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = False
        proc.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = True
        proc.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = False

        Try
            proc.Start()
        proc.WaitForExit()
        Catch ex As Exception
            Throw ex
        End Try

End Sub

Click here to download FFMPEG file.