Visual Studio 2010

April 12th, 2010 by Andy No comments »

意义深远的一个产品，也将会是微软未来的一个重要棋子，因为她开始支持了云计算。所有程序员都应该了解一下这个工具。

微软今天发布开发工具Visual Studio 2010。新版本的该软件可以支持开发者开发基于微软云计算操作系统Windows Azure的应用。
微软将Visual Studio 2010视作是其发展云计算架构的重要一个步骤。微软资深副总裁，亚太研发集团主席张亚勤说：“这一版本的推出，使得云计算不仅有物理设施的平台，更重要 有了开发的平台，有了开发工具，大家可以开发应用。”

“Windows的成功在于大家可以开发应用。云计算要发展，一定要有这么一环。”张亚勤说。

Visual Studio 2010还支持移动与嵌入式装置开发，并能实现当前热门的Agile/Scrum 开发方法，并有大量可支持最新微软产品的新功能，如对微软Windows 7多点触控和Ribbon界面的支持。

微软还于同日发布了.NET Framework 4，并宣布高交互网页技术Silverlight 4也将于近日发布。

Visual Studio 2010也是微软亚太研发集团服务器与开发工具事业部成立以来参与的最大开发项目。有超过100名工程师参与其中，参与多个重要模块设计。

微软大中华区开发工具及平台事业部总经理谢恩伟说，微软会用多种方式来促使用户过渡到Visual Studio 2010，也会发展租赁服务这一模式，除了此前针对第三方托管厂商的租赁，在云平台上的按需、按使用量计费也已经开始尝试。

谢恩伟说，微软在租赁服务模式仍是以投资为主，这些投资有望在接下来的5到10年中促使在线服务收入有大的提升。

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Posted in Others, Technology

HTML5 – Canvas

April 10th, 2010 by Andy No comments »

点击上面的图片连接可以体验，不过Safari好像支持的更加完美，可以听到开枪的声音:)

作者 Mihai Sucan · 2009年1月8日

本文翻译自 HTML 5 canvas – the basics

目录

简述

HTML 5 规范引进了很多新特性，其中最令人期待的之一就是 canvas 元素。HTML 5 canvas 提供了通过 JavaScript 绘制图形的方法，此方法使用简单但功能强大。每一个 canvas 元素都有一个”上下文( context )” (想象成绘图板上的一页)，在其中可以绘制任意图形。浏览器支持多个 canvas 上下文，并通过不同的 API 提供图形绘制功能。

大部分的浏览器都支持 2D canvas 上下文——包括 Opera, Firefox, Konqueror 和 Safari。而且某些版本的 Opera 还支持 3D canvas ，Firefox 也可以通过插件形式支持 3D canvas ：

本文介绍 2D canvas
基础以及如何使用基本 canvas 函数，如线条、形状、图像和文字等。为了理解此文章，你最好了解 JavaScript 基础知识。

可以点击此处批量下载本文实例代码

canvas 基础

创建 canvas 的方法很简单，只需要在 HTML 页面中添加 <canvas> 元素：

<canvas id="myCanvas" width="300" height="150">
Fallback content, in case the browser does not support Canvas.
</canvas>

为了能在 JavaScript 中引用元素，最好给元素设置 ID ；也需要给 canvas 设定高度和宽度。

创建好了画布后，让我们来准备画笔。要在画布中绘制图形需要使用 JavaScript 。首先通过getElementById 函数找到 canvas
元素，然后初始化上下文。之后可以使用上下文 API 绘制各种图形。下面的脚本在 canvas 中绘制一个矩形 (点击此处查看效果)：

// Get a reference to the element.
var elem = document.getElementById('myCanvas');

// Always check for properties 和 methods, to make sure your code doesn't break
// in other browsers.
if (elem && elem.getContext) {
  // Get the 2d context.
  // Remember: you can only initialize one context per element.
  var context = elem.getContext('2d');
  if (context) {
    // You are done! Now you can draw your first rectangle.
    // You only need to provide the (x,y) coordinates, followed by the width and
    // height dimensions.
    context.fillRect(0, 0, 150, 100);
  }
}

可以把上面代码放置在文档 head 部分中，或者放在外部文件中。

» Read more: HTML5 – Canvas

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Posted in Technology

What is strategy?

March 30th, 2010 by Andy No comments »

Overall Definition:

Johnson and Scholes (Exploring Corporate Strategy) define strategy as follows:

“Strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long-term: which achievesadvantage for the organisation through its configuration of resources within a challengingenvironment, to meet the needs of markets and to fulfil stakeholder expectations”.

In other words, strategy is about:

* Where is the business trying to get to in the long-term (direction)
* Which markets should a business compete in and what kind of activities are involved in such markets? (markets; scope)
* How can the business perform better than the competition in those markets? (advantage)?
* What resources (skills, assets, finance, relationships, technical competence, facilities) are required in order to be able to compete? (resources)?
* What external, environmental factors affect the businesses’ ability to compete? (environment)?
* What are the values and expectations of those who have power in and around the business? (stakeholders)

Strategy at Different Levels of a Business

Strategies exist at several levels in any organisation – ranging from the overall business (or group of businesses) through to individuals working in it.

Corporate Strategy – is concerned with the overall purpose and scope of the business to meet stakeholder expectations. This is a crucial level since it is heavily influenced by investors in the business and acts to guide strategic decision-making throughout the business. Corporate strategy is often stated explicitly in a “mission statement”.

Business Unit Strategy - is concerned more with how a business competes successfully in a particular market. It concerns strategic decisions about choice of products, meeting needs of customers, gaining advantage over competitors, exploiting or creating new opportunities etc.

Operational Strategy – is concerned with how each part of the business is organised to deliver the corporate and business-unit level strategic direction. Operational strategy therefore focuses on issues of resources, processes, people etc.

How Strategy is Managed – Strategic Management

In its broadest sense, strategic management is about taking “strategic decisions” – decisions that answer the questions above.

In practice, a thorough strategic management process has three main components, shown in the figure below:

Strategic Analysis

This is all about the analysing the strength of businesses’ position and understanding the important external factors that may influence that position. The process of Strategic Analysis can be assisted by a number of tools, including:

PEST Analysis – a technique for understanding the “environment” in which a business operates
Scenario Planning – a technique that builds various plausible views of possible futures for a business
Five Forces Analysis – a technique for identifying the forces which affect the level of competition in an industry
Market Segmentation – a technique which seeks to identify similarities and differences between groups of customers or users
Directional Policy Matrix – a technique which summarises the competitive strength of a businesses operations in specific markets
Competitor Analysis – a wide range of techniques and analysis that seeks to summarise a businesses’ overall competitive position
Critical Success Factor Analysis – a technique to identify those areas in which a business must outperform the competition in order to succeed
SWOT Analysis – a useful summary technique for summarising the key issues arising from an assessment of a businesses “internal” position and “external” environmental influences.

Strategic Choice

This process involves understanding the nature of stakeholder expectations (the “ground rules”), identifying strategic options, and then evaluating and selecting strategic options.

Strategy Implementation

Often the hardest part. When a strategy has been analysed and selected, the task is then to translate it into organisational action.

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Posted in Business

How does IT raise enterprise productivity?

March 13th, 2010 by Andy No comments »

A fundamental question. See the answers from Gartnet Blog Network.

Productivity drives growth in the economy and in your market value. The shift from a focus on cost cutting to raising productivity is among the three transitions CIOs reported in their responses to the 2010 CIO Survey. Please see the highlighted links for more detail.

This post concentrates on how IT raises productivity, a question provided in the comments to

IT has a central role in raising productivity because it is a source of leverage for information, communications, collaboration and management. In other words, IT resources are available and for the most part are not consumed or used up in the execution of business activities. That means I can readily flow more activity over the same resource base and therefore drive more productivity.

Economists will tell you that there are many ways to measure productivity. There is output per work hour, capital, invested capital, assets etc. For our purposes we will just use a simple idea that it is output per resource. That will allow us to play a little fast and loose with the examples so they can be clearer.

Here are ways in which enterprises can use IT resources and capabilities to improve productivity:

IT can automate processes and activities shifting those activities from resource constrained people to less constrained and higher capacity systems. Much of the internal automation of HR and other administrative processes are examples.

IT can shift work from internal to external resources such as customers, suppliers and other interested parties. Such a move raises productivity particularly when those external resources have the information and motivation to perform those tasks better than your people.

IT can accelerate cycle time for internal processes by improving coordination and workflow. Shorter cycle time means that more work units can flow across the teams

IT can raise the quality and availability of external products and services as well as internal operations. Here information combined with preventative maintenance and continuous improvement locks in gains.

IT can expand trading/operational hours and access without requiring additional resources. Online stores, customer help facilities and other services provided over IT are examples.

IT can raise the value of products and services with minimal increase in the cost of providing those products and services. Information is the key, particularly when applied to offer personalized or differentiated service.

These are some overall ways in which IT can raise productivity.

Please provide your own examples and thoughts, as I am sure this just touches the surface.

Given the range of options I would like to suggest focusing on one thing – Cycle time. Reducing cycle time not only raises productivity by increasing throughput, but in doing so it raises the quality of the results (fewer errors) and the customer satisfaction (prompt & responsive)

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Posted in Technology

李开复成长中的十句格言

March 11th, 2010 by Andy 1 comment »

创新工场董事长兼首席执行官李开复在西北农林科技大学以《促我成长的十条箴言》为题，用平实而不失幽默的语言，讲述了自己的很多故事，与7000余名学子一同分享自己成长过程中获得成功时的激动与喜悦，经历困难与挫折时的蹉跎与彷徨，为青年学子指点人生———

1、“自信不失谦虚，谦虚不失自信。”

李开复讲道，小时候，当他拿着90分的考卷回家，却被妈妈结结实实打了一顿。妈妈生气地告诫他，打你不是因为成绩不好，而是太自大。从此，他就记下了这个教训并受益终身———自信，但在自信中要不失谦虚。

2、“天赋就是兴趣，兴趣就是天赋。”

李开复11岁留学美国。大学二年级时，他作出了一个惊人的决定———转系！而这个决定，改写了他一生的轨迹。“如果你很爱一件事情，吃饭、睡觉、洗澡都在想这个事情，你在这个领域不成功都很困难。”李开复这样说。

3、“思考比传道更重要。”

读博士之前，李开复的系主任告诉他：“做出一流的博士论文并不是你的论文本身，而是读博士过程中所得到的分析、思考、解决问题的能力，这样你未来才能解决其他的问题。更重要的是思考，也就是思考比传道更重要，来这里不是听老师教你怎么走，而是学会如何思考或者学习如何学习。”老师的这番话让他受益一生。

4、“我不同意你，但是我支持你。”

5、“挫折不是惩罚，而是学习的机会。”

6、“有用的创新才重要。”

7、“用勇气改变可以改变的事情，用胸怀接受不能改变的事情，用智慧分辨两者的不同。”

8、“求知若饥，虚心若愚。”

9、“追随你的心，用它引领你的一生，任何其他事情都是次要的。”

10、“一个人的价值不是你拥有多少，而是你留下了多少。”

十条我都非常的赞成，最后一条是我最喜欢的。

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Posted in Personal