Happy Holidays
12/22/2008
We’re deep into the Holiday Season and before we lose the chance, we want to convey our warmest wishes to you and your family for the most memorable holiday gatherings.
Familiar Christmas TV specials make us nostalgic, like the stop motion animation of 1964’s “Rudolph”. But aren’t there more than ever? This year we add “A Muppet Christmas” to the list. Curious, we looked into it. One TV listing source counted 341 showings of 168 different Christmas specials, and we think it missed some.
|
|
Happy Thanksgiving
11/25/2008
It’s Thanksgiving and we wanted to offer our warmest holiday wishes, but also brief you with some holiday trivia to help keep up the conversation with Aunt Edna and the kids!
The first Thanksgiving Day Parade was presented by Gimbel’s Department store in Philadelphia in 1920. Macy’s only came along with its now-annual New York tradition in 1924.
In 1927, Felix the Cat was the very first large tethered balloon to make an appearance for Macy’s. In fact, Macy's is rumored to be the world's second largest consumer of helium. The first being the US government – what’s with that?
|
|
looksoftware and Surround join forces to Accelerate IBM i Modernization.
11/20/2008
The deal brings new software, distribution agreement and futures. You probably know looksoftware, because they’re responsible for some of the coolest System i modernization tools around, like newlook and soarchitect. Well, we know them too and have worked with their software for many years. Having identified some great new synergies between our software modernization tools, we’ve struck up what’s called a Strategic Partnership. That's corporate-speak for — after finding a nice fit between our products, we struck a nice little relationship and gone to work cooperatively to develop some mutual enhancements.
|
|
The Great Pumpkin Update
10/28/2008
In the comic strip “Peanuts” by Charles Schultz, begun in 1950, the Great Pumpkin is first mentioned in a sequence of strips in 1959 as Linus confuses Christmas and Halloween. But in all those years, Linus has still never seen him.
Nostalgic for a bit of the 1966 “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” animated special? Here’s a 4 minute YouTube clip straight to the climatic non-event. And, 2½ minutes in, you get treated to the famous Peanuts piano theme!
Speaking of great pumpkins, Guinness documents a world record Jack O’Lantern as being a colossal 1,469 pound specimen carved by Scott Cully on Halloween 2005 in Pennsylvania. If only Linus had been there.
|
|
.NET? Really? .NET! Really!
10/14/2008
Microsoft’s .NET Framework and Visual Studio development environment is increasingly presenting some real compelling possibilities for Application Development, especially with the recent advances in the Windows Presentation Foundation’s (WPF) high-definition unified framework.
We will be releasing additional information on our advances with this technology and what it can mean to your business in the coming months.
But, if you are just to anxious and want to sneak a peek at how we might, as you’d expect, Accelerate that further? Check out this short WPF Contact Management Video (4.9 MB WMV) of what’s cooking in Surround’s labs.
|
|
A Blog Is Born
10/09/2008
A key service of the new Surround Tech website is this Blog. Right now, you’ll find the first tidbits of what will be a growing repository of Tips and Features, covering software from Surround, LANSA, Microsoft and more. As well, we’ll make notes on the latest industry insights, news, events and more. Old Blog entries - Even though this blog is brand new, you will notice some older blog entries. These were created from information sent in years past that might provide some useful information still today. Make Some Comments - You can participate with your own thoughts and ideas about a particular blog entry by adding comments to the posting. Don't miss out. Check back often to see the latest posting and comments or subscribe to get Blog updates sent to you. Just one more way to exchange ideas with...
|
|
Surround’s New Website
10/07/2008
Plus Old Website and Usability Paper. We’ve launched the new www.SurroundTech.com. Duh? You’re here! But we still want to tell you it presents a host of advanced Usability features, all culled from Surround’s accumulated software development experience. With a focus on the core principals of Applicability, Find-ability and Discover-ability, the site helps users find information quickly while also presenting easy access to additional relevant information and a cool new look and navigation. And the first of a number of new White Papers in the Resources section of the website is now available and centers on the Usability Features of the new site. The website has a lot of content and even new features being added daily, so there are still some holes, but we wanted to show you the “coming attractions” and whet...
|
|
Accelerator - Using a "Need Icon" Icon for prototypes
08/25/2008
"I don't like that icon." If you are a Developer and have ever had to demonstrate a pilot or prototype application to a group of end users, you have undoubtedly heard that phrase. It usually comes just after you explain that it is just a prototype application and that they should disregard the smiley face and various other temporary icons that have been used within the application. You really tried to explain that these icons are just not your expertise and that they will be changed later to better represent the associated functionality. As the Demonstration continues, you here "That Icon is changing too, right?" and "Don't you think all the icons should be in a theme?" and "Oh cool! where did you get that Bart Simpson Icon - can you send that to me?".
What...
|
|
General FTP - What is Loopback?
08/25/2008
The Loopback address is a special IP number (127.0.0.1) that is designated for the software loopback interface of a machine. The loopback interface has no hardware associated with it, and it is not physically connected to a network. The loopback interface allows you to test IP software such as FTP without worrying about broken or corrupted networks, drivers, or hardware.
Using the loopback can be quite useful for testing your FTP Automation Sessions and Scripts. Simply use "loopback" or "127.0.0.1" as your Internet host address in the Session definition and you are ready to go.
Be aware of what you are doing though. This can be a bit confusing because both the FTP Client and the FTP Server are the same machine. Don't let this mislead you. FTP does not distinguish nor is it aware...
|
|
General LANSA - Getting the System Name and Workstation ID with a Sys Var
08/25/2008
Accessing, reviewing, and logging the Machine Name that is performing a particular task is often very important. For the Server, this is the System Name and for a client, it is the Workstation ID. On the iSeries, this can be retrieved using the Retrieve Network Attribute, RTVNETA, command to get the SYSNAME Attribute. On Windows, it is available in the Registry under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" Registry Root, "SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\COMPUTERNAME\COMPUTERNAME" Registry Key, and "ComputerName" Registry Key.
To make this information more readily accessible from within a LANSA program, we suggest that you create a LANSA System Variable to retrieve this information. To do this, you will need to do 3 things:
Create the LANSA System Variable
...
|