Monthly Archives: February 2010

My Current Favourite iPhone (3G) Apps

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This is a list of my current favourite iPhone Apps. Most of these are free and where they aren’t, they’re almost free. I use each of these regularly and can highly recommend them. Just thought I’d share the love…. 

iPhoneApps_TweetDeck

Tweetdeck 

Cost: free

Category: Social Networking

Multiple accounts, multiple columns to segregate your groups & searches, synchronization with your desktop version, Facebook integration (if you like that sort of thing), choice of picture services (twitpic, yfrog, tweetphoto), geo tagging, In-app browser. I could go on. It’s my app of choice for Twitter. Follow @iandodsworth if you want updates from ‘the horses mouth’.  iPhoneApps_QikVideo

Qik 

Cost: £1.29

Category: Utilities

Video recording on iPhone 3G anyone? No limits on length of recording, wifi sharing, 200×152 or 400×304 resolution (higher resolution means slower frame rate though), on-screen settings for zoom | brightness | resolution | audio boost | special effects (normal, Black & white, Red only, ‘Avatar’). Size of files only limited by size of your device.

I had tried iVideoRecorder for a while but the 1 minute recording limit kept catching me out, especially when it then takes another minute to save the video you’ve just recorded. I will say this however, iVideoRecorder’s video quality is better. Both apps are the same price. iPhoneApps_SmartRecorder

Smart Record 

Cost: £0.59

Category: Utilities

Way better than the Voice Recorder that comes standard with iPhone (3G). Records for as long as you want (caveat – the most I have attempted was about 2.5 hours). App is quick to get started, is simple to use and quality of recordings is good, if not great. Syncs with Box.net, SyncDocs & over wifi, sharing via email, takes pictures during a session (remembers place in conversation when the picture was taken), appending to previous recordings. It also has a great help section if you do get stuck, which is rare.

iPhoneApps_UltimateToDos

Todo

Cost: £

Category: Productivity

Getting Things Done anyone? If you’ve read the book you’ll know what you need. This is the ‘electronic device’ that you’ll be wanting to play with all the time. It syncs to Toodledo, an web-based version of the app. This is the single most used app on my phone. The one thing I feel it is lacking though, is geo tagging of your to-dos (which is a feature of Remember-The-Milk). So if a future update of the app gets this feature it’ll be complete.

iPhoneApps_AmazonMobile

Amazon UK

Cost: free

Category: Online shopping

It’s amazon.co.uk in the palm of your hand, need I really say more? My only gripe with this one is that it took so long to come out (in the UK).  

iPhoneApps_NationalRail

National Rail  

Cost: £4.99

Category: Travel

Up-to-the-minute updates on your trains whereabouts, location aware, set a ‘home’ station, next-train-home router planner, journey planner, live departures & arrivals, platform information.

After debating over the purchase price for a while I finally cracked and bought it. I still think £5 is steep for what you can do via their website for free, however, they have managed to make their site so unusable (from an iPhone) that you don’t have a lot of choice. A while ago a chap named Malcom Barclay developed an app that showed all the train information (route planning, etc) and gave it away for FREE. Sure enough, National Rail decided this was too much of a good thing so took away his license to publish information and created their own application. Make what your will of it.

Is it a good app? Yes, for all the pain they put you through (on purpose in my opinion) on their website (via iPhone), they make up for in the usability of this app. If you travel on British rail I think that it’s something that you can’t do without (Well, you can, but this makes your life a LOT easier). For the price of two high-street coffees you get an app that is stable, user friendly, intuitive, and (in my case) the information provided has been spot on.

iPhoneApps_Ping!

Ping!

Cost: £0.59 (+ in-app purchase of £0.59 for picture messaging – worth it)

Category: Communication

You pay £0.59 for the app and you text for free. Add to that an in-app purchase for picture messaging and you are good to go. Any messages that you send or receive are free of charges – just make sure you have an internet connection. Only one other thing with this is to say that it only works between Ping! apps. So, in order to send a text/picture, your intended recipient will a
lso need to have Ping! installed.

With the growth in application-based mobile devices nowadays it won’t be long until many more handsets/Mobile OSes are supported.

iPhoneApps_DropBox

Dropbox 

Cost: free

Category: Utilities

Sign up for a Dropbox account and sync all your files to the cloud and with any other computer you want. This is the app version, so now you can view all your files right on your iPhone. Sharing is by way of a link to the file in your Dropbox (which is placed in a email for you). In order for you to quickly view files you need right away you can select any number as favourites. These then are downloaded to your phone for when you don’t have a connection to the tubez. What would make this more of a killer app? Being able to attach the files directly to an email.

iPhoneApps_WhiteNoise

WhiteNoise 

Cost: Free

Category: Utilities

When I was growing up I always had a [desk] fan going (it was helluva hot where I used live and it kept away the mosquitoes), so I’m used to having some sort of drone whilst I am sleeping. White Noise does this wonderfully. It has loads of background sounds that help to immerse you in audible bliss. I find that the ‘Brown noise’ works brilliantly in drowning out all other sounds – and on the rare occasion that we have a party we use this to help our son sleep. It works wonders.

iPhoneApps_LetsGolf

Let’s Golf 

Cost: £1.59

Category: Games

Golf fan? This might make you one. A simple little game with great graphics and good challenges. Play a course at Fiji, USA, Scotland & England at varying levels. Earn a few prizes and get your name in lights along the way. A great way to pass the time waiting for trains….

iPhoneApps_NetNEwsWire

NetNewsWire 

Cost: free

Category: Utilities

Get all your RSS feeds into one place on your iPhone. Download the feeds whilst you have an internet connection and you’ll have something to read where ever you go. That is unless some blogs only give an excerpt in their feed, which narks me off royally. For those of you that don’t feed the whole post go read this post.

iPhoneApps_Units

Units 

Cost: free

Category: Utilities

All your conversions in one handy place. For free.

iPhoneApps_AbsoluteRadio

Absolute 

Cost: free

Category: Entertainment

Absolute radio. Absolutely awesome. Absolutely Free. Internet connection required.

iPhoneApps_AngryBirds

Angry Birds 

Cost: £0.59

Category: Games

Because it’s addictive. Apparently some Pigs stole eggs from the Birds and now the Birds are pissed. Your aim (‘scuse the pun) is to destroy the pigs by flinging different [angry] birds at various structures housing the bacon pigs. Loads of fun and fairly simple, what more could you ask for to waste away the time?

iPhoneApps_LondonTubeDelux

London Tube Deluxe 

Cost £0.59

Category: Utilities, Travel

This app is another must for those in London. Covering all of the underground lines, London Tube Deluxe has an up-to-date status for each line (including a description of the fault, if any), a map overview (PDF), journey planner, departure times and locates your nearest tube station.

 

That’s my list for now. I’m always on the lookout for more great apps so if you have any recommendations let’s hear about them!

Custom Visibility Toggling SSRS 2008

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A while back I wrote a post about how to toggle the visibility of rows/columns in tables/matrices for SSRS 2005. In the comments of that article someone asked how this was done in SSRS 2008. The short answer was that the method is the same. However, setting all the properties can be confusing as their whereabouts is a little different. Hopefully this post will clear things up.

Let’s do this by way of example:

I created a project with a single report. The Data source is AdventureWorks2008 and we are looking at Total Sales figures by Year & Month (keep it simple right?). I have set up a matrix object and added the required fields and set subtotals for Month & Year. See Fig 1. below:

Objective: Enable Toggling of the Month group, using the Year Group as the Toggle Item

At this point I want to point out two key areas, as this is where we will be concentrating our efforts:

  1. The Row/Column Groups section at the bottom of the designer
  2. The Visibility Properties at the bottom right corner (Last item in the Properties list – but only when an object is selected)

Now, select the drop-down arrow for the Month Row group (See Fig 2.), choose Properties and then select the Visibility tab.

The objective is to enable toggling of the Month rows in the Matrix. We could choose to Show or Hide the Month rows when the report is initially run, or to make this decision based on an expression. Using an expression will determine which rows are expanded and which are collapsed when the report is run initially. I have chosen to use an expression:

=IIF(Fields!YEAR.value=2001, False, True)

This says that if the Year group value is ‘2001’ then show the Month Sales Total values (‘Expanded’), else Hide the Month Sales Total values (‘Collapsed’). See Fig 3. below:

Also note (in Fig 3. above) that I have set the YEAR cell as the Toggle Item. We’ll configure this next.

Once you have set the above properties go back to the designer and highlight the YEAR cell in order to view its properties. These should be on the bottom right, otherwise right-click the cell to bring up the properties window. Find the Visibility > InitialToggleState property and set it using the following Expression:

=IIF(Fields!YEAR.Value = 2001, True, False)

This says that if the Year group value is ‘2001’ then show the toggle icon as ‘Expanded’ (True), else show it as ‘Collapsed’ (False). This allows us to ensure that we are in sync with the expression we used to set the initial visibility of the Month rows. Fig 4. shows the end result of all this hard work:

The Visibility Properties

Understanding what each of the three visibility properties does will help to use them effectively.

Hidden – Can be set to either ‘True’ or ‘False’. This can be done by selecting True or False from the drop down, or by using an expression to set either of those values after evaluating a condition. True equates to the object being hidden and False to the object being shown (tricky eh?).

InitialToggleState – This is only applicable if the object that you have selected can toggle the visibility of other objects. It refers to the state of the toggle icon and can either be ‘Collapsed’ (‘+’) or ‘Expanded’ (‘-‘). As explained by way of example above, setting this to ‘’True’ sets the icon to the ‘Expanded’ state, and False to the ‘Collapsed’ state.

ToggleItem – Use this property to set the object that will enable the user to toggle the visibility of another item. In the example above, I have chosen YEAR as my toggle item for the Month Group.

Beware the Gremlins

You need to be aware of setting properties for the right objects or groups, or you may find that your report does not display correctly:

Fig 4. shows what happens when you set the Visibility properties for the Month & Data CELLS in the report instead of the Month Group properties. Setting the Month Group visibility properties means that you won’t get that nasty white space, and there’s no need to set the visibility of the cells (in this instance).

I have placed the example project in a nice little zip file for all you folks that might want such a thing.

SQLBits VI has been announced!

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That’s right folks. Another SQLBits is almost upon us. And this time it’s in London! This SQLbits is to be held at the Church House Conference Center on the 16th April 2010. Details will be updated over at www.sqlbits.com. Simon is on lookout for volunteers, so if you are interested in helping out in anyway you can, contact him or leave a comment here (& i will forward the details to him).

See you there!


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SQLBits (V) Videos available for Download

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That’s right folks. If you missed out on some (or indeed all) of the awesome presentations at SQLBits V, you can now view them online or download them for viewing at your leisure. Simon Sabin has done a great job once again, so a big thanks to him and the rest of the SQLBits team.

Here’s a taster for what is available:

And of course the link to the entire list is right there under each of the presentation descriptions.

If you need a recap of SQLBits V you can read all about it here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).

Download Reports (.RDL) files for editing (SSRS 2005)

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If you ever happen to be in a situation were you do not have access to or have ‘misplaced’ the SSRS report files (.rdl) and you need to edit one (or more) of the reports on your server, there is an easy way to download the .rdl files.

Follow these easy steps:

  1. Open SQL Server Management Studio,
  2. Log on to the Reporting Services Instance that contains the reports you are looking for
  3. Browser through the directory structure to the report that needs to be updated
  4. Right-click the report and choose Edit…
  5. Now follow the prompts to save the file to a destination of your choice
  6. Open BIDS & create a new project/solution
  7. Import the (previously) saved .rdl file into your SSRS project.
  8. Edit away to your hearts content….

 

I’m not going to ask why you don’t have access to or have misplaced the files in the first place (No source code management? Seriously?). I am sure there are a myriad of reasons that you can come up with. This post merely provides a quick way to recover your files and continue edits/updates that may be required.