application

The vExpert 2013 applications are now open – apply now

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Applications are now open here: http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2013/03/vexpert-2013-applications-are-now-open.html

 

The vExpert 2013 applications are now open. This is a great group to be a part of, so if you have been an active contributor to the VMware community, I highly recommend applying! There are three tracks you can follow though for application, so follow the link above for more information and guidance on applying. This last year I was lucky enough to be awarded the title, and I hope to be able to retain it this year – as such I have been blogging as regularly as possible and have also released some cool little utilities, scripts and other bits and pieces to the community. Hopefully this will all pay off and I will be able to retain vExpert status through 2013 🙂

Over the past year, John Troyer has done a sterling job keeping the group going and organising events and other collateral, so much thanks go to him and the other vExperts who have of course helped out where possible.

Good luck on the applications and don’t forget to keep contributing. This is what makes the community stronger!

How to pin an application on a network / mapped drive to your Windows 7 or 2008 R2 taskbar

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So here is something that has been annoying me lately. On my work machine I use a couple of applications that are stored on mapped network drives. When you try and right-click the .exe to select “Pin to taskbar” there is no option to do this. Here is a work around that will allow you to get these network stored applications / exe files pinned to your taskbar in Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2.

1. Copy the .exe file of your application on the network drive to a temporary location on your local machine or server’s drive.

2. Make a shortcut to this .exe on your desktop.

3. Right-click on this shortcut and then select the “Pin to taskbar” option which will now be available.

4. Right-click the pinned icon on the taskbar and then right-click the shortcut in the list of options that appears – select Properties.

5. Edit the “Start in” and “Target” fields to point to the actual location of the original application on the network location.

6. You can now remove the temporary shortcut and .exe that you copied as these are not needed anymore.

You’ll now have your network location application pinned to your Windows 7 or 2008 R2 taskbar.

Developing my own small twitter “tweet” application

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The last time I did any coding in VB was probably 11 years ago when I was 13 or 14 in high school. I used to take computer science as a seventh subject (learning Turbo Pascal) and dabbled in a bit of Visual Basic in my spare time. I created a computer mouse / keyboard training application for a local pre-primary school that helped the kids (4 year olds) learn to use a PC and develop their hand-eye coordination.

So last night I decided I would take a look at the twitter API and see if I could make anything useful with Visual Studio 2008. I came up with this small twitter application, which allows you to post updates also known as “tweets” to your twitter status page. It has the following features so far:

1. Twitter username and password entry with option to save these details on the local PC.
2. An area to type your actual “tweet” with character limit counters (you can only have 140 chars per tweet).
3. The obvious Update button to send the “tweet”
4. A quick logo that I did to make the interface look a bit more interesting.

I will follow this post up soon with some detail on how I did the coding itself (as requested by c0d3r and youknow – for the purposes of ridiculing my noob vb code!). Nothing special though – I just followed a couple of tutorials that I found on the net. Also thanks to PlutoSA for refreshing my memory on doing a counter!

Here is how it looks so far…

tweet-app