Official Blog of Will Strohl

What Microsoft Thinks the Future Looks Like

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:00:00 GMT

Gizmodo originally publish an article where they editorialized the most recent video released by Microsoft. They even took a light-hearted jab at them, joking about needing a lot more hand sanitizer due to touch interfaces. I would be more concerned about there needing to be a lot more screen cleaners everywhere to counter-act our greasy fingers!

The compelling thing to me about this was not just the vision that Microsoft has – which is compelling to say the least. It’s also the art of presentation that they used to effectively communicate their vision. They used simple video elements, animated simulations, resonating situations, and more to show productivity and other potentially life-changing features that they feel are on the horizon.

This video does many things that most presenters need to think about when building their presentations. Yes – even a blog is a presentation! They effectively use the mentioned techniques in their chosen medium to instill an emotional attachment to their topic and their brand. This is something that I wish more people could do so well…

Enjoy the video below. It’s just over 6 minutes in length.

Hanging out With My Klout Out!

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 08:00:00 GMT

Originally, Chris Hammond and I were planning to go to the #KloutDevNight meetup tonight to hang out with the good folks at Klout.com. Well, Chris got a hamstring cramp or something from too much DotNetNuke training and decided not to go. So, I invited Kim to go with me, and off we went to the offices of Klout! Overall, it was a great idea and I’d love to do it again!

Klout is a web service that measures influence on the social web. It takes your activity and the activity of those you interact with (and vice versa) and analyzes it to determine who has influence of others, and over what topics. Despite their controversial scoring algorithm update today, I was very excited to go to their headquarters and hang out with such a cool company!

Overall, the event was fun and we met some really cool people. We spoke with people from Klout, Twitter, and other companies. I was able to get deeper insight into Klout itself, as well as into their scoring update that had happened earlier in the day. They were more than aware of the impact that their update has had on their community, and have a complete understanding of it.

I don’t envy them. DotNetNuke has been there before too. Luckily, it happened before I joined! :)

While Kim and I really did have a great time, there was plenty of room for improvement for future #KloutDevNight’s…

There wasn’t an agenda of any kind. While on the surface this was a cool thing, there wasn’t any announcement of any kind that there wasn’t an agenda. That in itself would be enough agenda for me.

It wasn’t clear who was with Klout and who wasn’t until you actually spoke with them. Sure, you can tell most people apart by body language, but that’s not the point. Only a few of the Klout staff wore their own brand. I’d been more apt to introduce myself to more people that had been wearing Klout gear.

That’s it for the criticisms. Like I said before, it was a great event. There was plenty free beer, sliders, Klout swag, ping pong, and even beer pong. These guys (and gals) sure know how to have a good time. I really do look forward to the next #KloutDevNight.

Telerik Insider Program

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 08:00:00 GMT

There has been a program offered by Telerik for some time now, where they will sponsor speakers to give presentations to user groups and code camps. This was partially an effort to further ensure the quality and existence of user groups since they saw a decline in user group activity in 2008. The list was never very long, but until now, I didn’t realize how short the list really is. Telerik announced their Insiders Program today.

The program lists several top-notch speakers who are available to speak at various community events, their bio and abstracts (when available), and any events that they’re already scheduled to speak at. I am very proud and honored to say that I an in their list of insiders.

When I was originally tapped to be in this program, I was concerned since my primary topic of choice tends to be DotNetNuke, but they are completely understanding and accepting of the various talents and passions that their insiders have.

You don’t see my list of abstracts on my bio page there right now, but you will in the future. Some of the other insiders already have abstracts and appearances listed to make it easy for you to see the availability and specialty of each presenter.

While it’s great to boast about something like this because of how exclusive it appears to be, I cannot honestly sit here and do that without acknowledging that I didn’t make it to this list all on my own. Like many of you, I’ve had mentors and a strong family to back my journey up and get me to where I am today. With readers, supporters, user group members, community leaders, and others – I couldn’t accept this exceptional honor to be a Telerik Insider!

Technorati Tags: Telerik,DNN,DotNetNuke,CMS,Content Management,WCMS,Presentations,Community

Use jQueryPad For Your jQuery Editor

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 08:00:00 GMT

This will be a quick post. I just wanted to let all of my readers know about a tool that Rob Chartier found today. It’s called jQueryPad. This is an editor built specifically for jQuery developers to use to build out any jQuery code that they want. Although I have two specific features on my personal wish list, this tool is outstanding!

jQueryPad is a free and open source application, written in WPF. As a result, it’s only available for Windows, but that shouldn’t be a problem to most of my readers. The only downside to how it is distributed is that there isn’t an installer for the program. You can put it nearly anywhere on your computer though, and add it as a shortcut to your start menu, or task bar.

Features

There are several features that will immediately make you happy with the tool:

Able to change the version of jQuery used
HTML pane to add snippets to run code against
jQuery editing pane
Temporary file saved in memory
Ability to open in your installed web browsers
Quick running of the code by pressing F5 on your keyboard
Integrated tips to help you learn any shortcuts to the program

Missing Features

I really wish that there was an installer for the program. Even though it takes minimal effort to make it usable on your system, this is extra time that should not be necessary.

There is no intellisense. However, judging by the comments on the download page, this will probably be the most requested feature for a future version.

If you write any code that throws a JavaScript error, there really isn’t any error-handling. It would be very nice to see these errors trapped and bubbled up to have a meaningful UI response for the developer.

Conclusion

That’s about it…. Overall, I am more than pleased with jQueryPad. I have already begun using it to test how I write jQuery, including with the Widget Suite for DotNetNuke.

Technorati Tags: jQuery

Dilbert Leaves Bugs in the Software

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 06:08:00 GMT

TechnologyFri, 04 Feb 2011 06:08:00 GMT

Someone shared a hilarious Dilbert cartoon this morning that I thought was classic! I’ve actually heard this conversation many times during my career – always tongue-in-cheek, of course. Now, you get to share in this too!

Original Comic

I hope you like it too!

Technorati Tags: Dilbert,Comic,Funny

Android Apps Used During our Trip Across the Country

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 04:27:00 GMT

As you may or may not know, I recently moved to the San Francisco area in California, which involved moving my family and our entire home. Due to all kinds of things, the family wasn’t able to move with me until the end of December. Finally, the time came, and we drove from Orlando, FL to San Francisco, CA. It was a very fun and challenging journey for a family of 5, across 8 states, and through 4 time zones for 6 days. The trip could’ve been shorter, but we stayed with family in Arizona for a couple of days.

During this time, we used our Android G2 phones quite extensively. There are apps that we always use, but including those, a couple of apps proved to be very helpful to us.

Here I Am 2 Pro

We wanted to keep our friends and family all updated at the same time, with the most efficient amount of effort. Basically, I wanted a fun and easy way to update the social networks, SMS, e-mail, and more using an app. While I could use a check-in app like Foursquare, SCVNGR, or Whrrl, I knew I wouldn’t always want to post my location at an actual “venue.” So that ruled out the typical venue location apps. I didn’t find anything with the best user experience that I was looking for, but Here I Am 2 Pro did a fair job of doing the job.

I loved that (depending on GPS/wireless coverage) I could post my elevation or address along with the latitude and longitude directly to a contact, Facebook, and more. Couple that with the syndication capabilities of the existing social networks, and you can post this information to anyone, anywhere. Due to privacy concerns, I’d only suggest using this for special occasions. I was quite annoyed that there weren’t more places to post my location to. Probably the most annoying thing about this app is that I couldn’t have any more than 5 contacts to send information to.

This is not a free app, but for $0.99, I really cannot complain too much.

Google Maps

We all already know that Google Maps does a more than decent job of providing a very useful and usable online/mobile mapping experience, despite some odd glitches here and there. And don’t even get me started on how much I love the navigation feature (even though I didn’t need it for this trip). However, during a road trip, this experience gets even better, depending on your data connectivity. I had a decent data (G to 4G) through most of the trip across the country.

In the Android version of Google Maps, you can overlay Wikipedia to get useful landmarks and information about the areas you’re driving through or near – as well as get a good idea if there are any places you want to stop. This was very cool to play around with and educate your kids while you travel.

Special thanks to Chris Hammond for this idea! :)

This is a free app that’s normally bundled with your phone.

Google Sky

One of the things that really amazes me out of all of the built-in Google apps is the amazing experience and accuracy of Google Sky. I played with it before, just seeing what it could do. During our road trip, we really got to put it through its paces when we reached certain areas that are void of light pollution, where you can see all of the stars that the human eye can see.

We stopped somewhere in the western side of Texas, and pulled off the road. One of the kids asked what a specific set of stars were. Not being an astrologer, I fired up the app, and proceeded to help them find the various constellations. Then, one of them asked where another one was. This app allows you to search for something specific, giving you visual cues to move to see what you’re searching for. It’s amazing!!!

This is a free app that’s normally bundled with your phone.

Facebook

If you use Facebook like I do, it’s a very useful tool to keep your personal friends and family updated on what’s going on in your life. For the most part, I keep my professional like out of my Facebook profile. However, many people were excited and eager to follow us on our journey across the United States, for various reasons.

Not only was I able to post updates (which I mostly did using Here I Am 2 Pro), but I kept up-to-date on everyone else, and used this app exclusively to upload images from our various stops and landmarks.

The only thing that’s missing from this app for me is the ability to upload videos. I had to plug in to my laptop and connect to wireless to do that – which I did a few times. Also, while it’s nit-picking, if I wanted to tag anyone in my photos, I had to login to the website to do it.

This is a free app, and it’s normally bundled with your phone.

Whrrl

I gave up Foursquare a while ago. I grew tired of not getting credit for my check-ins way too easily, and the growing number of drive-by check-ins by people. Those things take all of the fun out of the experience. I’ve been using Whrrl for a while now though, and it’s great!

One of the things I love the most about Whrrl is the integration with Facebook Places. It will automatically check you in on Facebook too, if you want. You can also tweet your location. However, there are still elements of competitiveness, especially amongst you and your friends. You can compete to become the leader of specific venues, and the level up doesn’t appear to end (so far).

Unlike having badges, there are societies, and these societies help you to not only gain points, but also to find new places, give recommendations, and share pictures.

Probably the thing I like the most about this app is the lack of venues. It appears to mostly be business-centric. Foursquare is overflowing with bogus and meaningless venues, leading to check-in fatigue and losing credit for check-ins, and possibly losing a mayorship. In some areas, you can literally spend all of your time checking in to places as you walk, never having put down the phone.

Another thing I love about this app is that there appears to be more businesses using it than on Foursquare. In even the most unexpected areas, I’ve seen opportunity to win prizes from nearby businesses, or even the one I am currently checking in to. I’ve even won before.

One thing to worry about this app is that it is data-intensive. In Edge and G areas, the app can work pretty slow.

This is a free app, but you will need to download it from the marketplace.

Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds, Paper Toss, Talking Tom

One of the things that you might have automatically thought of during the opening of this blog post is, “Oh my god! I cannot believe the kids are still alive. I would’ve killed them!” This is probably the most common thing we’ve heard when talking to people about our trip. Rightfully so. Children already cause a certain level of stress, no matter how much you love them. Stick them in a car for nearly 3,000 miles, and this becomes much more relevant.

Luckily, besides having a portable DVD player, one of the many things we were able to use to keep them occupied were the games available to us on the Android marketplace. The most popular with the kids included: Angry Birds, Paper Toss, Talking Tom, and Fruit Ninja. I cannot even begin to tell you how many pigs and birds I heard die over our 3,000 mile trek to San Francisco.

Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds will cost you around a dollar each, and Talking Tom has a paid version. Otherwise, these are free apps. The paid versions are well worth their $1 price tag.

Xfinity Mobile

We are a Comcast Cable customer with an Xfinity plan. This gives us our cable broadband and plenty of HD programming on our HD DVR. However, we also have access to an Xfinity Android app that allows us to manage our account and watch videos, but also browse through programming to remotely program our DVR to records specific shows from anywhere in the world.

This is just what we were able to do. I spent a few moments one day looking through the programming over a week on the Food Network. I was looking for a show that Kim and I are supposed to be on. We were in the background during the filming of one of their shows. I scheduled a few shows to record, and when we arrived home, they were waiting for us.

Technorati Tags: Android,Mobile,Apps

Do You Develop Websites? WebsiteSpark Might Be For You!

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:19:00 GMT

TechnologyMon, 29 Mar 2010 19:19:00 GMT

Microsoft recently had the excellent idea of helping out start up companies with their software needs by creating the BizSpark program. That program had become quite popular. So popular, in fact, that my company, RezHub is a member. Like BizSpark, WebsiteSpark is a similar program whose goal is to make it easier for website developers to start up. They take the burden of the cost of software off of your hands for up to 3 years!

I am not just here to tell you about WebsiteSpark, but I am here to also help you sign up. That’s right! I am a Network Partner, so let me know if you are interested in FREE SOFTWARE! Hehehe…

What Do You Get?

What do you get with the WebsiteSpark program? That’s easy:

Increased visibility and connections with network partners and hosts
Two professional support tickets
Free online training
Access to MSDN newsgroups
Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
Expression Studio 2
Expression Web 2
Windows Web Server 2008
SQL Server 2008 Web

I kept the list pretty general, as there are several other benefits for you to have.

What Does it Cost?

Initially, it costs you nothing. At the end of the 3 year membership period, you just need to pay a small $100.00 USD exit fee.

There are a ton of other things to know, but I promise you that it’s all good stuff! I would encourage you to check out the WebsiteSpark program website for yourself to make up your own mind. When you’re ready, contact me, and I will get you signed up!

Do I Qualify?

In the very least, in order to qualify to participate in the WebsiteSpark program, you just need to be developing a website solution using Microsoft technologies. If you need a web host, no problem! WebsiteSpark has a list of Hosting Partners that offer free 12-month hosting for those of you that are in the program. My favorite is Applied Innovations. Yep, they’re a Hosting Partner!

This is perfect for those of us that use DotNetNuke® since it’s already on the Microsoft platform – that makes it super easy!

Are You Already in the Program?

If you’re already in the program, please leave a comment to let everyone know how much you love it!

Technorati Tags: WebsiteSpark,Hosting,Web Development,Microsoft

Orlando Code Camp 2010 Wrapped Up

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:06:00 GMT

TechnologySun, 28 Mar 2010 22:06:00 GMT

Another year has gone by, and as of last night, the 5th annual Orlando Code Camp has wrapped up. Normally, my perspective of the code camp is much different than this year. It began as a simple attendee, then upgraded to a Speaker, and then a Speaker/Volunteer. This year, I was a Speaker and I helped our Orlando .Net User Group President, Esteban Garcia, run the code camp. So, this time I am blogging from a very different point of view.

I cannot express to you how great it is to have a full crew of people to help with the planning of the event. I more or less planned and executed last years Day of DotNetNuke® all by myself, so I know more than most how much goes into planning a code camp type event – no matter how big or small it is. This years Orlando Code Camp was planned by the ONETUG board: Esteban Garcia (President), John (JT) Torrey (Treasurer), Brian Mishler (Director of Marketing), Darinel Cabrera (Director of Membership), and James (JT) Taylor (Director of Education). Oh, and me too! Together, I think we formed a great team to make this years code camp a success.

Did I say it was a success? YES! Although I am biased, and knowing that there were small hiccups along the way, we indeed had a successful event. We had a registration count of well over 600 people, and the attendee count the day of the event ended up being 587 people! We had plenty of .Net love for everyone that attended too. There were 14 Microsoft MVP speakers, over 70 sessions to choose from, and plenty of food and giveaways for everyone.

I wasn’t able to monitor the twitter traffic this year, but I had in years past. While the all of the previous code camps in Orlando were indeed a success too, I think we did a much better job of communicating and marketing through twitter, so this made the twitter traffic increase. Does that mean anything? Yes it does. This allowed us and others to monitor feedback from those attended before, during, and after the event. We could effectively measure how everything went this way. It also enabled attendees to communicate with each other at the event, and to communicate with others around the world that were attending through our broadcasted LIVE track through Live Meeting.

Microsoft Speaker Idol

We were also very happy to welcome and host the first annual Microsoft Speaker Idol state finals, created by Roy Lawson. Our good friend, Russ Fustino, of Russ’ Toolshed was there to document the whole thing. This event took a total of 3 sessions, one for a wild card round. I was very honored to be invited and attend as a judge for the finals. We had some incredible finalists, including the winner, Brandon Kelly. The winner of the wild card round was also the designer of our praised t-shirts this year, Diane Leeper.

Russ and his crew recorded the whole thing. It should be on Russ’ Toolshed and Microsoft’s Channel 9 sometime over the next week.

Set-Up

Despite hanging out with some of the speakers until around 2:30 AM the night before, I was there bright and early at 5:20 AM to help set-up for the day’s events. I am both surprised and incredibly impressed that most of the volunteers that signed up to help out actually showed up between 5:30-5:45 AM. Thank you so much! Once we got security to realize that we were there and what they needed to do, we were in business and began moving tables and chairs, and getting rooms all set-up.

We only had a few glitches in the morning. There were a couple of projectors that needed to be reconnected, and we found out that last years signs weren’t going to make the cut this year. We also had some other minor issues with Internet and projectors, but being the outstanding hosts they are, Seminole State College knocked out everything for us. You couldn’t ask for a better code camp host!

During the Day

Between having 2 sessions myself, and another 2 time blocks judging the Microsoft Speaker Idol contest, I was absent from the common areas for a good chunk of the day. Luckily, we have a great group of people running the event alongside me, and the best volunteers you could ever find! After set-up was done, the rest of the day ran itself. It went without a hitch.

My Sessions

I was very honored to be chosen as one of the 6 people to be featured on the live streaming from our code camp. We kept the LIVE meeting room in the main common area, while the rest of the sessions were all together, a short walk away. I was of course speaking about DotNetNuke® during both of my sessions.

The first session was my LIVE one, and it went very well, despite having a couple of hiccups, caused by myself. I was able to recover very quickly and easily though, thanks to the way that I manage all of the DotNetNuke® sites on my development machine. It was different though. I am used to either speaking in front of an audience, or in front of an online audience – not both. I had to keep reminding myself to talk to both groups at the same time, not excluding either one. This meant repeating questions, looking into the webcam occasionally, and not assuming where people are in the world. I had some great questions from both the online and present attendees.

With this part of the event being Microsoft sponsored, we had Microsoft folks on-hand to moderate the questions. At one point during the presentation, I was told of an online question that actually was a statement, “Will, this person wanted me to tell you that you’re hot.” This is certainly not expected, and I hadn’t really heard anything like that since high school. I simply said thanks, when our moderator spoke up, “Will, the person’s name is Peter.” Hahaha! I was certainly caught off guard. Funny stuff!

Like I said before, the other session rooms were a short walk away. While it wasn’t that far, some people would certainly disagree with that statement. Regardless, after packing up my stuff and talking to people at the end of my current session, I had to hike it across the way to the next session room. I got all set-up and began presenting about 10 minutes late. The session went great though. This was the second time for me doing this session. The first time was at South Florida Code Camp, and I felt like I bombed the demo, despite being told otherwise. This time was great! Everything went very well, and I think I got across what I was trying to.

End of the Day

After the final sessions, we gave the microphone over the Russ’ Toolshed to allow them do a presentation to the winner of the Microsoft Speaker Idol contest. It was very cool and exciting to see the finalists be introduced and interviewed one final time before the winner being announced. Everyone received $200.00 USD just for being a finalist. Those who finished 3-5 received a Zune, the second place winner received an XBox 360 Elite. The first prize winner also received the XBox, but was also rewarded with a special trophy. Brandon Kelly was the overall winner, and even brought his trophy with him to the Pub Club (after party).

The end of the day is what a lot of people cannot wait for. There are typically some great raffle prizes, and one or more grand prizes that everyone wants. This year, the grand prize was an XBox 360 Elite! That’s awesome! We had what appeared to be over 100 people sticking around through some very boring announcements from the area user groups just to find out who won. Once the XBox winner was announced, people immediately began herding out the doors to their cars.

Pub Club (After Party)

I have never been to the venue where we held the after party this year. It was at a place called Route 46 Entertainment District. This was truly one of the best venues to hold a social gathering like ours, but it was just a bit far from our code camp venue. (JT) James Taylor was the person responsible for researching and choosing our Pub Club venue, and I must say he did a fantastic job!

This is normally the place and time where some of the best networking happens, but this venue was truly an “entertainment district” as it implies. I thought of it as a mini-theme park of bars. The food was very good, and the drinks came a plenty. The service was top-notch as well, but the impressive beer list didn’t have Newcastle or Guinness. (I just learned the night before that I now like Guinness at the speaker party.)

While we were doing our thing, we couldn’t help but notice an all-girl band warming up on the stage near us. This of course caused a stir of various comments from our group of techie guys. Especially since they were all attractive. Being a local, I couldn’t help but think that this might be the band that a local radio personality is part of, Heroine. I asked a server who was playing tonight, and she told me a band named Rockit Fly. Okay… Must be another band, I thought. But two of the blondes really reminded me of that radio personality, Tiffany Martin.

After all of the day’s festivities, I was worn out, so Kim and I decided that we would leave after we heard the first song from the band. As soon as I heard the singer begin, I knew I was right. This was indeed Tiffany Martin, and her band Heroine. Her hair was done up to where it looked like a mullet, but it wasn’t. It was just a female-rocker-dew. :)

Kim and I are fans of hers and the radio show she’s on, Monsters in the Morning. Knowing this, you can assume that we couldn’t leave without saying hi!

The Final Word

I am still tired while I am writing this post to you. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the end result that gets posted has a ton of typos. I keep having to re-spell words. That being said, I am also missing important details and facts, but I will leave you with the feedback that I left Pub Club with.

By all accounts, I learned that every one really had a great time and thought the event went exceptionally well. The only negative comment I received is one that I always have agreed to as well. The session rooms are way too far from the common area. While I under no illusion that this was said by many people, it only made it back to me once. Unfortunately, this is something we have to deal with for this specific venue. Sorry.

We had over 70 sessions, over 14 Microsoft MVP’s, over 45 speakers, 587 attendees, over 600 registered, over 30 volunteers, 6 LIVE sessions, and by far the coolest code camp shirt ever – thanks to Diane Leeper! The design has the state of Florida mapped out using the session topics and speaker names, along with the top sponsors of the event.

I want to thank all of the volunteers, including the photographers. Even though I wasn’t there every moment to see everything you were doing, I got nothing but the greatest of compliments on the jobs you were doing. I do want to especially thank Jace Weiss and Brian Banville. They both did much more than any single persons share of work. Not only did Jace run the food and refreshments pretty much the entire day, but he also took a spill to the ground in the parking lot at 5:30 AM trying to save the t-shirts box from hitting the ground. I felt so bad, but luckily he wasn’t injured.

Brian was like having a right-hand-man. He helped JT take care of registration, along with a few others – but he also was there and did every single other thing that I needed to have done.

Finally, I have to thank the sponsors of the Orlando Code Camp. Without them, most of everything that we take for granted at code camps wouldn’t be possible. Please take a moment of your day to check them out and maybe even send them a note saying thanks. Their support allowed us to do so much this year. Between them, the volunteers, and the speakers, code camps would not be possible! Thank you!

My only regret is that we were more than fortunate to have Brandon Haynes as one of the speakers. Brandon is easily one of the smartest people I know, and I wasn’t able to attend his session, and I was only able to talk to him for about 10 minutes. :(

My Photo Album for the Orlando Code Camp 2010

Technorati Tags: Orlando Code Camp,Events,Community

MSDN Webcast: Simulcast Event: Orlando Code Camp

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:46:00 GMT

TechnologySat, 20 Mar 2010 20:46:00 GMT

I already teased this a bit in my rundown on what to expect from this years Orlando Code Camp. Now, I am able to tell you specifically which sessions will be broadcast out to the world for your enjoyment. This is very exciting for us for a couple of reasons. First, this is a new thing for us to do and it’s a very welcome challenge to overcome for this years code camp. Second, Microsoft has honored our code camp with being the very first code camp to ever do this. With numerous code camps happening all over of the world each month, we are very truly honored. And don’t worry… We are well aware of the pressure that this brings. :)

All day long, the folks at Microsoft are helping us to stream a high-quality video feed of 6 of the sessions at the code camp. The first session begins at 8:30 AM EST. If you’re in another time zone, adjust your alarm clocks and partying accordingly.

Session 1: Installing and Upgrading DotNetNuke and DNN Modules, Will Strohl
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM EST
There are quite a few misconceptions out there about the level of difficulty when installing and upgrading DotNetNuke®, we'll walk you through the entire installation and upgrade process outlining some of the common problems and solutions.

Session 2: Scalable Cloud Applications with Table Storage, Esteban Garcia
9:45 AM – 10:45 AM EST
Learn how to take advantage of Windows Azure Table storage to manage your data at a fraction of the cost and with great scalability. We'll create a sample application and explore the different features of table storage on your dev machine and in the cloud.

Session 3: Getting RAD with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, Stan Schultes
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST
This demo-intensive session covers the improved support for building distributed business applications in VS2010. We'll focus on some of the improvements and new advanced features.

Session 4: Windows Phone 7, Nikita Polyakov (not pictured) and Kevin D. Wolf
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST
There really isn’t anything that they are allowed to say about this session yet, because the content of their topic has been highly confidential until now. They are talking about some of the things announced about Windows Phone 7 at Mix.

Session 5: Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Custom View Helpers, Sayed Hashimi
2:15 PM – 3:15 PM EST
If you've been using ASP.NET MVC then you've certainly been using some of the built in view helper methods that are available. We'll take an in-depth look at how you can easily and effectively create your own view helpers and discuss how the default view helpers were created and the benefits that they provide.

Session 6: Design for Developers, Diane Leeper
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM EST
Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose. It’s also the secret weapon of your developer toolkit. Learn 5 of the key fundamentals of design and how they can help your applications stand out.

If you’re physically attending this event, these sessions will not be in the same room as the rest of the sessions that are in the same track. Due to the technical needs to broadcast these sessions, they will be in another room, as if they were all part of the same track. We will let you know what room to go to on the day of the event – just like the rest of the tracks.

If you’re not excited about this, I don’t know what could get you excited! You have a small mix of everything that you’d want in a day of learning about various Microsoft technologies.

Technorati Tags: Orlando Code Camp,MSDN,DotNetNuke,DNN,Cloud,Azure,Visual Studio,Windows Phone 7,ASP.Net,MVC,User Experience

What to Expect from Orlando Code Camp 2010

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:34:00 GMT

TechnologyFri, 19 Mar 2010 03:34:00 GMT

I have gone to the Orlando Code Camp every year since it was first held on the UCF campus 5 years ago. It was run 3 consectutive years by Shawn Weisfeld, and boy does he run a tight ship. He was also the Orlando .Net User Group President, and his example is one the main ones I have used in leading the Orlando DotNetNuke® Users Group and in organizing the first annual Day of DotNetNuke®. Since, Shawn has moved on to bigger and better things. Taking over was his then Vice President, Jessica Sterner. She continued to run a great event. I hardly noticed a difference in the event from year to year. This story, repeated itself again when Jessica stepped aside and allow Esteban Garcia run the user group and code camp. That brings us to this years event.

Orlando Code Camp 2010 on March 27
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Seminole State College (map)
100 Weldon Blvd.
Sanford, FL 32773

Esteban has big shoes to fill, and we all know it. Luckily, his team includes some of the best people that a code camp could ask for to help run the event. (And I’m not saying that just because I am one of them.) We have some outstanding people on the ONETUG board. I have the utmost confidence that this year will once again be an outstanding code camp for all others to follow. That being said, let’s get to the point!

Orlando’s code camp traditionally has brought in some heavy hitters in terms of speakers. For example, one year we even had Dino Esposito presenting AJAX! Those were some great sessions, despite his BBQ horror stories. ;) While we don’t have a Dino this year, we can easily boast about the 15 Microsoft MVP’s that are speaking this year. Altogether, we have over 40 speakers presenting on various development topics.

Lots of Sessions, High Quality Speakers, Relevant Topics

Among the 70 sessions that you’ll find at Orlando Code Camp are: Windows Phone 7, DotNetNuke®, SharePoint, MVC, WPF, C#, Oracle .Net, Silverlight, Azure, Visual Studio, and more! All of these topics and others span across 12 tracks of various content, with a total of 6 classes that you can attend over the course of the day. You cold potentially learn about all of the above topics in a single day, and get a free lunch and a free t-shirt! (That’s the artwork for the code camp shirt above. It’s done by the very talented Diane Leeper!)

MSDN Track

One of the rooms will be dedicated to being a live streaming MSDN track that will be broadcast to the world on Microsoft’s MSDN website all day long. This means that you might be able to get your face on Internet TV. Hahaha! We are the first code camp in the world to do this. Only select sessions will be in this room, so be sure to check out the agenda when you get there.

First Annual Microsoft Speaker Idol State Finals

User groups throughout the state of Florida held mini-competitions to find new speakers that would talk about any topic for 5-10 minutes and do it well. Winners from each user group competed in their Regional Area against their local user groups, and those winners will be competing against each other at this years code camp to find out who will be the very first Microsoft Speaker Idol for Florida! The winner will be promoted internationally, and win some great prizes. The regional winners already won $200.00 each. The finals will be presented by the one and only Russ Fustino of the highly acclaimed Russ’ Toolshed.

You might know what that means… Everyone will be on video, and there will be prizes given to attendees! I am a judge too… So, if you’re a finalist, I am officially accepting bribes! ;)

Party, Party, Party!

I have said this over and over again. I will continue to do it as long as it remains true. The after party at the Orlando Code Camp proves to be the most fun and most productive “party” that I have ever had the pleasure of attending. All kinds of things have come from the after party at this code camp. I have seen new businesses formed, new business partnerships, jobs filled, and even things like the Day of DotNetNuke® being made a reality!

Do not underestimate the power of the after party. Yes, most people will be having their “beverage of choice,” but you will have exclusive access to most of the speakers and event coordinators that you would not otherwise have. If you want to talk about anything related to the technologies you work with, THIS IS THE RIGHT PLACE AND RIGHT TIME. Face-to-face social networking doesn’t get any better or any easier. Just show up there immediately following the raffles at the end of the day. And yes, it is always family-friendly. :)

Route 46 Entertainment District (map)
4316 W. State Road 46
Sanford, FL 32771

FREE STUFF!

If that wasn’t enough, there are a ton of door prizes that will be given away throughout the day. Among those prizes are all kinds of software licenses - some being worth well over $1,000.00!

If you haven’t ever been to a code camp, can you guess how much all of this will cost you? Let’s imagine that your supervisor found a similar event. How much do you think you’d pay for it? Some would easily be over $2,000.00, and you wouldn’t get any door prizes, and you might even have to buy your own lunch to boot!

The Orlando Code Camp is and always will be 100% FREE TO ATTEND! Register now. Get your friends to register now. Bring your co-workers. Bring your boss. Get credit for it as a day of work. Do whatever you need to do, but make sure you don’t miss it!

While you’re at it, blog about it and tweet about it. The official hashtag is #OrlandoCC and the event twitter account is @OrlandoCC.

See you there! :)

Technorati Tags: Orlando Code Camp,Community,Events,Code Camp,Microsoft Speaker Idol,MSDN

Bing Challenge Day 7: The Final Day

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:46:00 GMT

TechnologyThu, 18 Mar 2010 23:46:00 GMT

Well, it has been an exciting week. I had pledged to use Bing exclusively in place of my preferred search engine, Google. I knew going into this that I would get a little bit of flak and cause some ill will, as the topic of search engines can be a religious-type conversation among techies. That, and depending on how we search and when we search, we can each get completely different results – literally. This test was not at all surprising in those aspects. Here is my run-down on the final day, and a summary of my findings.

On my final day, it was mostly uneventful. This is to say that for the most part, I found what I was looking for when I was looking for it. Only one specific search stood out as a “failure” today.

Misspelled Non-Contextual Search

There is no way around it. You are going to misspell your words from time to time. Luckily for us, the search engines like many sites have come up with creative ways to account for this all-too-common human error. It is rare that a standard application has a problem with this, but for search engines it is quite a different proposition. Many applications have a certain type of context to work with. Even when factoring in programs such as a word processing application, they are not dealing directly with expectation of context. It just scans the words and offers feedback for words it doesn’t recognize.

Search engines do not have the luxury of the scan-it-and-forget-it software approach. They are instead bound by a much more fluid and sensitive aspect of software design in anticipating what a human user is expecting to see instead of what we want them to see. For the most part, search engines do fine. However, Bing really missed the bus on one of my searches today.

A while back, I wrote a tongue in cheek blog entry poking some fun at Chris Hammond and Shaun Walker. It’s not really important to know who they are if you don’t already. But in a niche .Net community, they are considered a pretty big deal. I wanted to link to this blog post, so I searched for it on Bing, and a happy accident happened. I misspelled Chris’s last name. Bing had no idea how to handle this.

If this alone was taken into consideration, it wouldn’t be an issue at all, but I plugged in the same exact search terms into Google to see how it would do.

As you can see, Google was able to pull context out of the same search terms and determine that I meant to spell Chris’s last name with the missing “D” at the end. I wouldn’t know how to pull context out of the same search terms, but the engineers at Google have figured out how, while Bing apparently didn’t.

Final Results of my Bing Challenge

Over the course of the week, Bing was consistently giving problems finding what I was looking for. Out of a total of 8 problems I logged with searching, Bing only won out over Google once. Every other time, Google clearly had its pulse on what I was looking for. While writing this blog entry, I also gave myself time to reflect over not only what happened, but why I think those things happened.

Google has had a very long time to work on their search algorithms. In a world where a month can equate to a year of time in technology, Google has a lifetime of work ahead of the engineers at Bing. When you take that into perspective, you might think to yourself, Google clearly has the upper hand. I would say otherwise. Using my analogy, Google beating Bing at this is like a retiree beating up a 4rd grader. You would expect it, and you would likely root for the underdog as well as be more forgiving for its mishaps.

I mentioned that there were 8 problems I’ve had searching. I must have used the search features on Bing nearly 100 times or more over the course of the last 7 days. Bing only failed me 7 percent of the time. Whoa! That 4rd grader has really matured. That retiree should be ashamed! At this rate, we might see Bing overtake Google in relevance within the next couple of years.

However, I am not as forgiving as you might be. I will be reverting back to Google until the day comes where Bing is more useful to me than Google. My time is much too valuable to me to continue to switch search engines – even if it is only 7% of the time.

Technorati Tags: Search Engines,Google,Bing,Review

Bing Challenge: Day 6

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:56:00 GMT

TechnologyWed, 17 Mar 2010 23:56:00 GMT

In my ongoing quest to put Bing through the wringer, and to see how it compares to my usual preferred search engine, I had some interesting results today. Before I get into that though, I should mention that I have truly been taking this challenge seriously. I have switched my default search engines, and I even search for more things than usual, just to put that much more effort towards my end goal. What’s that goal? Easy. I want to give Bing its fair chance to make me a believer – if it can.

Searching for Technical Assistance

Probably the most common thing I use any search engine for is to look for assistance to technical issues I am having. This is common. While it really is more fun and beneficial to figure out the answer on my own – I simply don’t have that kind of time anymore. So, one of my first steps to solve a technical issue that I don’t know the answer to is to jump on a search engine and see if anyone else has asked the same question I have, and what their resolution was.

Today, my main technical issue revolved around an upgrade I am applying to 20+ modules and 4 skins that are using the Telerik control suite. This implementation of the popular control suite is more than a few versions old. However, throughout my project, I am getting the following error:

Request for the permission of type ‘System.Web.AspNetHostingPermission, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089’ failed.

I was running in circles looking for the cause of this error. So, like a a true “expert,” I turned to my resources to find the answer. :)

I went to Bing first of course. I used a pretty standard search engine query style that I have come to use to find all of my answers successfully over time. Here is my search:

telerik Request for the permission of type ‘System.Web.AspNetHostingPermission, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089’ failed.

As you can easily see, I just searched for the error message I encountered with the technology prepended to the query terms. Unfortunately, Bing didn’t like that. It instead seemed more content with ignoring the fact that I was concerned about Telerik altogether. None of the results on the first page pertain to Telerik at all. Not good…

Putting the same query into Google proved to do the exact opposite. The very first result was from the Telerik website itself. While not all of the results on the page pertained to Telerik specifically, there were many more than on Bing.

I could not help but think while this was happening that with Bing being marketed as a “decision engine” that it made the decision for me what I was looking for instead of passing what I really expected back to me.

Technorati Tags: Search Engines,Google,Bing,Review

Bing Challenge: Days 3-5

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:37:00 GMT

TechnologyTue, 16 Mar 2010 22:37:00 GMT

I am not sure if it’s fortunate or not, but the last couple of days with Bing have been uneventful. The few times that I wasn’t able to find what I was looking for, Google hadn’t a clue either. In fact, one specific query returned nothing from Bing, and only returned about 8 non-relevant results from Google. I’ll keep you posted as this weeks Bing Challenge comes to a close.

Technorati Tags: Bing,Google,Review,Search Engines

Bing Challenge: Day 2

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:53:00 GMT

TechnologyFri, 12 Mar 2010 23:53:00 GMT

Today is the second day of my personal challenge to myself to give the Bing “decision engine” another full test run. Today, I didn’t really have to search a whole lot. When I did, they were very simple searches. I am finding that searches that are not targeted to specific websites or technologies work pretty well. When I go outside that scope, I begin to see the searches go from slightly different, to completely different, in comparison to Google.

Like I said, the searches today were uneventful. I mostly got what I was looking for with similar effort that I’d expect from Google. There was only a single exception.

Image Search

I used the image search pretty extensively today. I was very pleased with it. The searches executed and returned results very fast, and the results appeared to be completely relevant. I think it goes without saying that the entire page looked much nicer than Google too. :)

Vanity Search

Have you heard of a “vanity search?” Well, let’s make sure… A vanity search is when you search for your own name on a search engine. For example, I might search for “will strohl” or “william strohl.” Since I go by “Will” in pretty much every circle of my life, that is what I usually search on. I realize that this may present an interesting challenge to search engine programmers, as the short form of my name is a common word, offering little to no context.

When I performed the vanity search on Bing, I was surprised a great deal to no see myself on the first page. This is not due to conceit. I spend a great deal of time in SEO efforts to get my name to return relevant results. Unfortunately, Bing has decided to ignore those efforts completely. I did not show up until their second page of results. If my settings were different, I would have been on the third page.

As you can see above, there are mixed results. There are plenty of results for “strohl,” but nothing for “will.” I was surprised to see results instead for people of the same surname, but with names like David, Pamela, or Greg. It is very clear that Bing doesn’t know that “will” is also a name. This is interesting though. When you factor in that Bing most definitely recognized “strohl” as being a surname, it is disappointing to see that the same programming logic wasn’t used to make the same decision. If it did, then it was a complete failure. With Bing being marketed as a “decision engine,” this is an overwhelming failure in decision making. In fact, it makes their commercials seem more funny – for the wrong reason.

This same search in Google renders me as every single search result on the first page of search results. This same search in the past used to be dominated by a bunch of results from the Strohl Systems company. So, it is clear that I have been doing pretty well in optimizing for one of the search engines. :)

That’s it for day two. Since the next two days are the weekend, I do not expect to have much to report until Monday, but we’ll see.

Technorati Tags: Search Engines,Bing,Google,Review

Bing Challenge: Day 1

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:02:00 GMT

TechnologyWed, 10 Mar 2010 23:02:00 GMT

I decided today to give the Bing search engine another try. I had tried it first launched and I wasn’t happy. While the result generally were pretty good, they were not targeted enough, and even when they were, the targeting was inconsistent. I intended to give Bing a full week then, but I only made it 6 of the 7 days. It was enough for me. I resorted back to the infamous Google. It has been a long time, so it’s only fair to try it again. Today is day one, and I will be doing this for 7 days. Here’s a review of the problems I’ve had.

I am only going to report the problems I’ve had. That being said, you can be pretty sure that I use a search engine anywhere from 20-100 or more times per day. So keep that in mind when reading. It will give this review more context.

Going into this, I didn’t expect for my testing and results to be so different. I really did expect for both search engines to be comparable. Day one proved to be surprising to say the least.

Search: Earth Day Events

I was researching “earth day events” today for my weekly green chat. I was expecting to receive a list of results containing websites that had Earth Day events listed on them, or sites that offer advice about Earth Day events. This was an interesting test. In this case, both search engines get a partial FAIL from me, with Bing slightly edging out Google for the higher level of failure.

The first result on Bing was for a site called Earth Day 2010 – EnviroLink Resource Guide (http://earthday.envirolink.org/). While this site does indeed have an area and search on their site for Earth Day events, there is not a single event listed on their entire site. I would think that the search engines would have enough logic to figure this out for us and drop the relevance of such a site using the search terms I did. The only reason Google won here is because they listed this same site as the second result, and not the first like Bing.

Site Search: Tea Maker

Quite often I will find myself needing to reference something on my website. In order to do this, I use the search terms, “[keywords] site:willstrohl.com” and I usually see exactly what I am looking for. Today, this search consisted of “tea maker site:willstrohl.com” as I wanted to see what came up. I have the tea maker in my office, but this is a great test for my experiment. The results of this were disturbingly different.

Google gave me exactly what I wanted, and nothing more. I couldn’t have asked for a better search result set.

Bing, however, didn’t give me what I wanted or expected at all. In fact, the page I was looking for on my own site was not in the search results at all. All I received were archive pages from my blog calendar.

Bing clearly failed here. I was very disappointed here. I fully expected for the results to be a mirror image. However, the other part that was the most disappointing to me was the integrated shopping search results in Bing. Why in the world would an end-user expect or want to see that in a website specific search???

Search: Tweet Backup

There is a site that I rarely use. I frequent it about once every other month. It is a site that backs up my tweets from twitter. Because of this, I have a difficult time remembering the site name and domain name. I should probably bookmark the site, but for one reason or another, I just never have. I have always known in the back of my mind that a quick search would bring it up on the first couple of results. This was another instance where I was surprised. On both search engines, I searched for “tweet backup.”

Google did what I always see it do. It gave me the site I was looking for near the top of the search results. I highlighted the site in red below:

Bing once again disappointed me. That site wasn’t on the first page of search results at all, much less near the top. Instead, I found it near the bottom of the second page of search results. This would be sad for me for any search engine, since I rarely venture past the first page of results. It also confused me to see the twitter home page to be listed as a result for those keywords. I cannot think of any reason that would have enough relevance to be the 4th search result out of every web page in the world once the word “backup” is in the query.

That’s it for today. Everything else was pretty much expected. The only time I directly compared Google with Bing is when the results looked out of place, or I couldn’t find what I was looking for. That being said, most of the day, I stayed on Bing. While that sounds like a win for Bing, in comparison, I cannot think of the last time I left Google to go to another search engine to find something when it was my default search engine.

Let’s see what happens for the rest of the 7 days…

Technorati Tags: Search Engines,Google,Bing,Review

South Florida Code Camp 2010 Recap

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:59:00 GMT

TechnologyMon, 01 Mar 2010 05:59:00 GMT

Another year has gone by since I last visited the Miami area. It was of course for the South Florida Code Camp. There were many things that continue to remain the same with this event: the venue, the coordinators, and of course the fact that this was an incredible event! The South Florida Code Camp is one of the code camps in the state of Florida that you should never miss. There are outstanding speakers, outstanding topics, and a ton of people to network with!

The Speaker Party

Being a speaker, my experience would begin with the speaker party the night before the event. This is something I normally cannot attend since I travel so far to attend. It’s kind of hard to validate the travel time during work. However, I was able to make it to the speaker party this year! It was a blast too! Then again, what else would you expect? With some of the best speakers in the state all coming to one place, such an event couldn't be expected to be anything but great!

(Thank you to Kim for taking the pictures at the speaker party.)

The Code Camp

The code camp itself was great. It was a bit confusing at the registration desk, but didn’t get in the way too much. I was disappointed to only see donuts for breakfast though. I am not a fan of donuts. Despite those very small issues, the morning went off without a hitch.

There was nearly an entire track of DotNetNuke® love at the code camp, so I found myself staying in the same room most of the day. Woo hoo!

The first session of the DNN day was DotNetNuke 101, presented by Jim Begley of Glide Computing. I went searching for water during the beginning of his presentation, so I missed the first 5-10 minutes. So, I am not sure if he went through installation or not, but he did a great job of walking the attendees through the various features of DNN. He spoke of administration, pages, modules, and skins. I am certain that those in attendances were impressed.

Next was a speaker that was new to me, Gary Kulwin. I am not sure if it was his first presentation or not. He was presenting a session titled, The Elegance of XMod. Basically, he demonstrated how to use the popular XMod module by DNNDev.com. I was excited to see this session out of all of them since I have a copy of this module myself. I just haven’t took any time to try it out myself yet. Gary’s presentation was very beneficial to giving me more reasons to get started with it. By the end of the presentation, we were watching him work with a nearly functional example of a mini-app created by XMod. I say nearly functional only because we didn’t get completely through all of the examples, and I think he had to leave a couple of things out that weren’t ready for the demo. Great work, Gary!

Finally, it was my turn. My session was How to AJAX-ify Your DotNetNuke Modules. My goal was to show a handful of ways to add AJAX functionality to your DNN modules, and to also demonstrate the difference between those ways using the same module functionality in different views. I am sure I got those points across, but I am deeply disappointed with my performance with the code demonstration. I really was off my game and wasn’t able to get into my intended groove. I had a specific path planned out in terms of how I was going to demonstrate each of the AJAX methods, but it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. I ended up jumping around and skipping a couple of things, only to come back to them. I am sure at least a couple of the people might have been confused by this. Basically, I compared no AJAX to DNN’s Partial Rendering, and then walked us through using jQuery and Telerik AJAX methods. If you want to see the slide deck or the source code, check my earlier blog post.

Lunch Time

There was nothing interesting to report about the lunch itself. It was standard pizza, but I got there late, so it was cold.

At the end of the lunch, I spent a great deal of time talking to Andy Warren about community and community events though. It was probably the most valuable and rewarding part of the day. Even though Andy lives in my neck of the woods, I would have traveled to Miami just for that conversation. Thanks, Andy!

That highlights the most important thing about these events… The social networking that can be done at code camps is something that can only be duplicated by user group meetings. However, not to scale. I have seen a ton of positive conversations, plans, partnerships, jobs, and much more come out of the networking at events like these. Heck, that’s how the Day of DotNetNuke® was born!

The Rest of the Sessions

Jim Begley was on-deck again to speak about DotNetNuke®, and this time it Selling DotNetNuke to the Small and Medium-Sized Business. Since my conversation with Andy had last much longer than I anticipated, I one again missed the beginning of Jim’s presentation. However, the rest of what I saw was on par with what I would call a great presentation. He had plenty of attendee participation, where it was clear that they all were very interested in using DNN to make money. Nice! That is usually a clear indicator of the success in a presentation, and this time it really was.

I only stayed for one more session before leaving to pickup the family before the after party, and it really wasn’t really a session. It was the South Florida Microsoft Speaker Idol Regional competition. The winner of this contest would compete against the other regions at Orlando Code Camp next month.

There were 5 presenters competing for this honor, and a $200 gift card. Each contestant would need to give a 10 minute or less presentation about anything Microsoft. There were some outstanding presentations, including SEO, ASP.Net 0-60, and more. Though I really favored a presentation from someone that didn’t place in the top 3, the winner was Jeff Truman. Congrats!

(That being said, I was later recruited to be a judge at the State finals, so I am now accepting bribes! Hehehe…)

The After Party

The family and I arrived early to the after party venue, JP Mulligans. The after party is one of the most important parts of the code camp events, that is, unless you know everything and know everyone already. If you never want to gain another contact or learn anything new, then by all means, skip the after party. You probably can do everything on your own, without any help whatsoever. :P

The venue was pretty good for an after party. It’s basically a bar and grill, and specializes in beer and wings. The coolest part of this place though was that one entire side was actually the side of a hockey rink too! We were able to watch 2 different hockey games while we were there. It was awesome! My son especially liked it. His face was glued to the glass most of the night.

The food at events like these is never meant to last, so it went pretty quickly. Only a couple of people missed it. There was plenty of great conversations had that night. Did you miss it? Tsk, tsk… Along with the rest of the event, you can see some of the SFLCC pictures on my Facebook album. Don’t miss it next time!

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,DNN,DNN Blogs,South Florida Code Camp,Code Camp,XMod,Modules

South West Florida: Tech Fest Event

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:42:00 GMT

TechnologyThu, 04 Feb 2010 16:42:00 GMT

Do you live in or near, or frequent the South West Florida area? If you do, then you might want to attend the first ever Tech Fest Event. It is the Thursday before South Florida Code Camp, so it would be a great primer for the code camp, or to talk your boss into paying for you to attend both! This is a half day event, running from 2:00 PM to 6:30 PM on Thursday, February 25, 2010. I am told that there will be lots of premium content with some great speakers from around Florida.

Among some top-notch speakers rises their keynote speaker, Jack Braman, the Eastern U.S. Vice President of Microsoft. Other featured speakers include Ricardo Olivares, a Business & Technology Strategy Executive and MIT Sloan Alumni, and Brian Zaas, a Business Development Executive with over 22 years of experience implementing technology. Heavy hitters!

Right now, the event is completely free. But on February 20th, they will be charging attendees $20, so register now!

Technorati Tags: Technology,Free,Events,Community,Tech Fest Event

Regional Microsoft Speaker Idol Competition 2010

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:04:00 GMT

TechnologyWed, 27 Jan 2010 00:04:00 GMT

For the first time, there will be a Regional Qualifier for the Florida Microsoft Speaker Idol contest on February 20th. This contest was announced a few months ago. Basically, you present a technical presentation on anything “Microsoft” for up to 10 minutes. User groups all over the state have been participating in this event, and that includes the Orlando DotNetNuke® Users Group (ODUG).

We held our competition at our December meeting where we had several ODUG members give us some great presentations. However, we rebranded our instance of the event as the DotNetNuke® Speaker Idol. :) We made sure to keep our version focused on DNN for obvious reasons, and it worked out really well. I had more compliments and feedback about this meeting than any other. Also, the attendance was very high. The competition proved to be stiff. We have 6 DNN presentations to choose from. In the end, there could only be one winner though. That winner was Darrell Hardy.

On February 20th @ 5PM, he will be going up against the winners from the Orlando .Net User Group (ONETUG), and the Lakeland .Net User Group to find out who is going to represent the Central Florida user groups at the state competition.

This should prove to be an outstanding event. It’s being held at the Tatame Tea & Sake Lounge, in Winter Park, FL. This place has been getting nothing but great reviews, so I am super excited! The place is run by the former ONETUG President, Jessica Sterner.

Following the Idol competition, we will be holding a .Net Jeopardy game, where you will be able to compete with your fellow user group members and members of the other user groups for many prizes. Put your .Net knowledge to the test, and show us what you got!

Roy Lawson, the President of the Lakeland .Net User Group, is bringing a grill and cooking up what he is telling us is “the best smoked chicken and ribs on the planet!” I don’t know about you, but I am going to definitely try those!

Now that you know what’s going on, make sure that you register to attend on the ONETUG website… See you there!

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,DNN,DNN Blogs,Microsoft,Speaker,Presentation,Community,Events,User Group,Orlando .Net User Group,ONETUG,Orlando DotNetNuke Users Group,ODUG,Lakeland .Net User Group

Migrating Windows Live Writer and Missing Posts

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:55:00 GMT

TechnologySat, 16 Jan 2010 18:55:00 GMT

It is not uncommon to move from one computer for one reason or another. When the original PC was also where you blogged, then you will likely want to move your posts as well, so that you can manage them on the new machine. Another similar use case is when you might work on more than one machine. If you plan on blogging on both of them, you might want to use Windows Live Writer on both as well.

Moving your blog posts is easy enough. There are plenty of blogs that talk about that. Basically, all that you have to do is move the contents of the following folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\My Weblog Posts
- OR -
C:\Users\<username>\My Documents\My Weblog Posts

If that’s all you’re looking for, please continue to read on… There is something you need to know.

If you’re wanting to copy the blog posts across machines, then you’d really want to use a solution such as that spoken about by Antonio Chagoury in his blog.

Antonio Chagoury: Customize the Location of Windows Live Writer’s “My Weblog Posts” Folder

That seems easy enough to do, and it is. However, something I have noticed is that when you open Windows Live Writer, any old posts and drafts seem to be missing! When I noticed this, my first instinct was that I must have done something wrong. So, I went through the steps again to be sure. I did them right… The posts and drafts are in the right places – we just don’t see them. You’d never believe what the fix is!

If everything is indeed in the right places on your machine too, then this is the fix.

Create a new post.
Save your progress.
Magically, your archived and draft posts will appear where they should’ve been in the first place!

This is just plain stupid, in my opinion. Those posts should just appear there like you expect. I don’t know why this happens, but it is clear that WLW doesn’t read the posts folder until you save a post.

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer

Do You Want to Help Make Orlando Code Camp 2010 Successful?

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 10:48:00 GMT

TechnologyFri, 15 Jan 2010 10:48:00 GMT

Being the newest Vice President of the prestigious Orlando .Net User Group (ONETUG), I also inherit some responsibility with one of the best code camps in the State of Florida, and perhaps the country! :) This time around, I will be helping to drum up and coordinate volunteers for the code camp. I know you’re already jumping at your screen right now, trying to figure out how you can help, but let me tell you a few things first.

A volunteer to any developer community event is an invaluable asset, and as a result, you would be the only reason that the event is successful. Having run the first annual Day of DotNetNuke® last year, I know that better than most. The volunteers make sure that people get what they’re expecting, and they make things happen that are supposed to happen. Here is a random list of things that need to get done at any code camp, and we’re no different:

Attendee registration
Bag stuffing
Signage posting
Room prep
Room cleaning
Attendee support
Speaker support
Vendor support
Lunchtime logistics
Door prize and giveaway logistics
and more…

Hopefully, you can begin to see the importance and impact you’re going to have as a volunteer to this year’s Orlando Code Camp. So… What are you waiting for??! Register for the code camp as a volunteer, and maybe we’ll have some goodies or special event set-up for you! :)

Technorati Tags: Orlando Code Camp,Orlando .Net User Group,ONETUG,Events,Community

Orlando Code Camp 2010 Call for Speakers

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:11:00 GMT

TechnologyFri, 15 Jan 2010 01:11:00 GMT

As of a few days ago, the call for speakers officially opened for this years Orlando Code Camp. Since it first began 5 years ago, this has been one of the premiere code camps to go to in the State of Florida. One of the main reasons for this has partially been because we’ve had some really great speakers every year. When I say “great speakers,” that doesn’t necessarily mean that the speakers were high profile. It just means that they put on some very good presentations about relevant content.

Do you have something interesting to show the developer community? Can it fill an hour time slot? You don’t have to be an expert on anything, but you do have to be willing to stand in front of your peers and show them something cool. Believe me, YOU have what it takes. Put together a session title and description, and go on to the Orlando Code Camp website, and submit your session.

All people and all sessions are welcome. Just make sure you have your abstract (title and description) well-written. If you get that right, and you also incorporate something new or innovative, you’re nearly guaranteed to be chosen to speak at this year’s Orlando Code Camp.

This year, the Orlando Code Camp is on March 27, 2010 and is once again at the Seminole Community College. Mark your calendars to attend, no matter if you’re speaking or not.

Technorati Tags: Orlando Code Camp,Code Camp,Events

Windows Live Writer Limitation with Images

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 21:12:00 GMT

TechnologySat, 09 Jan 2010 21:12:00 GMT

My latest blog entry was about my trip to Connecticut in 11/2009. I was so excited about some of my pictures, that I tried to include many of them. I used the Polaroid Picture plugin for Windows Live Writer for all of them at first. I thought, “Why not?” After all, I’ve done this many times before with no problems. This would prove to not be the case this time around.

I am currently writing on a newly installed instance of Windows 7 at home right now. It was really great to finally get some personal stuff taken care of to make this possible. Anyhow, I have nearly all of the programs that I need installed right now, including WLW. I have even gotten my blog entries all synched up with the cloud, so I can blog from multiple machines, using the same WLW posts.

I said that this experience posting was different because my first post from this machine simply would not go through. I kept trying and trying, and even checking my firewall, because I kept getting an obscure (but unvalidatable) error message:

Network Connection Error
Error attempting to connect to weblog at:
<blog url>
The operation has timed out

This was perplexing, because the connectivity was there. The blog and the API that talks to WLW was working just fine. The blog would simply not publish. And to make matters worse, it would take forever to get that error each time, and the error somehow regenerated the blog entry as a draft several times. The WLW event log was only helpful to tell me the exception that was occurring. Nothing more. It was frustrating, and doing several web searches didn’t really help me at all. In the end, I just had to use the few clues on the sites that came up in the searches to lead me to my answers…

I first thought that maybe the “timed out” clue meant that the image sizes were too large. So, I resized and compressed them. No dice.

Next, I decided to reduce the number of images. I cut them in half. Still didn’t work.

Finally, I changed the method that I was using to include the images. I switched from the Polaroid plugin to the standard image plugin on WLW. Viola! For some reason, the Polaroid plugin is not working on this system. (Windows 7 Ultimate)

Now that I found that I could get a post to work again, I included all of the original images (optimized) again, only to find the original error had also come back. This time, reducing the number of images got me around the error.

It seems that I may have been reaching the HTTP post limit on my server.

Summary: Optimized your images for the web; reduce the number of images in your post; and try using another plugin or remove it altogether, if you are using one in your post.

Even though I am happy to be posting again, I sure wish I could use the Polaroid plugin. It really is a sweet plugin!

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer

Southwest Florida Code Camp 2009 Video

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:27:00 GMT

TechnologyTue, 27 Oct 2009 15:27:00 GMT

Earlier in the month, I spoke about DotNetNuke® in 3 different sessions at the Second Annual Southwest Florida Code Camp. While there our Microsoft Evangelist, Joe Healy, always does a great job of not only promoting all things Microsoft, but doing so in an engaging manner through interviews, pictures, and video. He did the same thing for the Day of DotNetNuke®, but the video hasn’t been released yet.

This time though, I was one of the lucky people to make the final cut of the video. Even though my son stole the show, I am still glad to make the video. :)

I say that, because I brought my son with me to the speaker party, code camp, and after party. He was wearing the smallest Day of DotNetNuke® shirt we ordered – an instant hit! Check out the video that Healy made on the Channel 9 website. You will see him and I at 2:06, and he is showing of his DNN shirt with Stan Schultes at 2:28.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,DNN,DNN Blogs,Events,Community,Southwest Florida Code Camp,Code Camp,Video

User Testing Made Easy with 3 Important Tips

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:02:00 GMT

TechnologyWed, 07 Oct 2009 11:02:00 GMT

First of all, in light of the recent FTC debacle in terms of bloggers, and users of social networks having to disclose relationships with companies, I will tell you that my only association with UserTesting.com, Steve Krug, and his book publisher is through being a customer, and later, a fan. I am not being paid or compensated in any way from any company or entity for my remarks in this blog post. If you’re unfamiliar with what I am talking about, do a news search for “ftc bloggers” and you will see a ton of news stories covering my disclaimer above.

At my day job, usability was a main concern of ours, even before our first line of code was written. If your software product does not have a focus on usability, then it will undoubtedly fail. But what is usability?

Read a Book (You know you want too…)

I thought that I knew what usability was. I mean, it’s simple, right? You just make sure people can use your product. Wrong – kind of… Even though you can simplify it like that, there is so much more to consider when usability is being addressed. How do I know that? Well, one of my favorite books these days is not a technical book, per se, but rather a non-technical book that focuses on design in technology. It is called Don’t Make Me Think, written by Steve Krug.

If you are like I was, and you haven’t given any dedicated time to learning usability from a seasoned usability veteran, then stop all design and development now. Read Krug’s book, and then apply what you have learned. Seriously. Don’t worry. If you listened to me, you will only be dedicating about 2 hours of your day to reading. If you compare the cost of man-hours to read the book, to the invaluable knowledge you will have after having read it, there will be no doubt that the book was well worth your time.

The book takes you through many seemingly simple design issues, and talks to you about the right and wrong things to do when doing things such as creating buttons, links, layouts, and work flows. Krug does a fantastic job of writing in a style that mirrors the concepts he speaks about in his book. The book is very usable: easy to read, quick to get through, and relays all of the information you need without any work on your part. This book is for anyone concerned about design, and not just programmers.

Use a 3rd Party User Testing Service Provider

In Krug’s book, he mentions user testing quite a bit, and even lays out a plan for you to execute your own user testing session. However, through the amazing breakthroughs in technology, a company has combined a few common technologies to make user testing much more cost-effective for any company. How so?

A typical user-testing plan will involve one or more (or all/more) of the following steps:

Have company meetings to discuss user testing goals

What areas do we need tested?
What kind of tasks need to be defined?
Who is our target audience to test?
What department(s) and project sponsor(s) need to be assigned/involved?
What projects need to be shelved to accomplish this?
Do we know what we are doing?

Have company meetings to discuss user testing execution plan

How many people will be tested?
Where will those people come from?
Where will the user testing take place?
How will we compensate or otherwise give incentives to the users?
What physical resources will be needed to execute the user testing?
What human resources will be needed to execute the user testing?
How will the user testing be reviewed?
How and where will the results be distributed and stored?

Define a budget for the user testing project
Execute the logistics to get the user testing site set-up
Begin user testing
Handle any unknown anomalies that could not be planned for
Close the user testing and clean up the user testing site
Compile and review the user testing results and data
Distribute the user testing results
Make appropriate changes as needed

The preceding list is not for the faint of heart. Each bullet will obviously require substantial planning and man-hours to accomplish. Also, I purposely left some things out to not turn you away. (If you’ve made it this far.) Needless to say, this is a lot for any size company to take on. If you are doing this yourself, hopefully you have had some formal experience with this before. Otherwise, I’d say that your user testing results will be skewed.

The first and most substantial problem I see with doing this yourself, is that you are unlikely to find user testing participant who will test your product(s) without being compensated in some way. That compensation will normally result in the tester feeling obligated to be less than truthful about their experience and feelings. I don’t know about you, but I would much prefer to have brutal honesty about my software product. If something really sucks, tell me about it. I would rather have the problem corrected right then and there, versus finding out later that the problem was much bigger than originally communicated.

Second, this is a lot of work to do. In order to get the user testing done right, you would have to dedicate a substantial amount of time and staff to make your user testing sessions successful, and worth the time and resources that you’re paying for. In my opinion, both of these reasons are reason enough to not move on. It’s time to revise the user testing strategy.

This is where technology has stepped in to change our lives forever, in the user testing space. It goes without saying that my previous concerns warrant you hiring a 3rd party to conduct your user testing project. However, conventional user testing methods are still quite expensive, and when not conducted correctly, their results will be mixed.

There is an online service out there at UserTesting.com, where you can sign up, and pay for exactly what you want. They have an ala carte selection work flow. The work flow allows you to choose your demographic, number of testers, tester technical ability, user computer set-up, define tasks, and more.

UserTesting.com uses a screen capture tool on the tester’s machine, along with a microphone, allowing you to both see what they’re doing, as well as hearing what they think. The tester is encouraged to speak about what they are doing and thinking throughout the duration of the test. Tests generally last about 10 minutes, depending on the tasks you have defined for the tester. Once the tester is done, the finished video is hosted on their site, where you can download and/or view it yourself.

This is great! I can choose the age, gender, technical ability, income level, and more for each tester. In traditional testing, you get what you get, and sometimes that’s not very clear. What’s more, you get a person who is not interested in saying only nice things, since they are not getting compensated by you. They have no attachment to you since you’re not in the room with them, holding their gift certificate or something.

Now let’s talk bullets and band-aids… For just $29.00 USD per tester, you take care of most of the list above. If you test 10 people, that’s a total of $290.00 USD out of pocket. If you do this yourself, that amount is going to increase exponentially, perhaps $2,900.00 USD or more – not including the cost of staff involvement. You only had to involve management, and your staff still kept moving on their current projects. You didn’t have to hire any consultants, rent or buy physical resources, or anything else to make this happen.

This is definitely one of those “it’s too good to be true” situations, but as a customer, I can tell you that I would not do user testing any other way again. We learned so much about our customers, our product, and about things we never would have thought about before.

Most Important User Testing Tip! Define Tasks, NOT Directions

Here’s a quick tip for you when planning your user testing tasks… When you’re planning your user testing tasks, DO NOT give them a step-by-step description of how to accomplish the task. Instead, give them a one-sentence description of the task, and let them figure it out. Believe it or not, you will get more information from that, every time.

WRONG!

Click on the About Us tab
Click on the Contact Us form
Click on the Submit by Form link
Tell us what you think

RIGHT!

Send us feedback using the form on our website

This scenario will show you if you got your overall design right. You will learn if the placement of your links, pages, and other objects are in intuitive areas of the page, and easy to use or find. Your tester will tell you if they did or did not like any of the preceding concerns or design elements. They will show and tell you where they expected certain design elements to be and look like.

I hope this blog post got you excited about user testing. I have become so passionate about user testing, but usability overall. A company the looks at usability, is a company that cares about customer service. And that puts you to the front of the line in my short list of companies that I will spend money with and/or recommend.

Technorati Tags: Usability,User Testing,Customer Service

Vice President of the Orlando .Net User Group

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:20:00 GMT

TechnologyTue, 06 Oct 2009 10:20:00 GMT

The title of this post probably should say it all, but I have recently been appointed as the Vice President of the Orlando .Net User Group (ONETUG). I woke up to an e-mail in my inbox one morning, congratulating me on the appointment, so I of course tweeted about it as soon as I could! ;)

This is a huge deal in my area. The ONETUG is one of the most successful and active user groups in the State of Florida. Historically, their events have been (in my opinion) some of the best in the entire state. I have modeled many of my user group concepts and events using them as an example. Now, I have to fill those really big shoes myself.

The ONETUG was founded by Joel Martinez. Whatever his original vision was for the user group, I think it’s safe to say that the success of the ONETUG is much more than anyone could have hoped for. I am super excited and honored to be considered worthy enough to be accepted as the Vice President by the ONETUG board. The Board votes on the appointment of other board members, so they full well know what they have gotten me into – even if I don’t know it yet. Hehehe…

What do I do as the VP of such a great organization? Basically, I assist our current President, Esteban Garcia, with any and all tasks that need to be taken care of to make our monthly meetings happen. I am also the person who handles nominations of people to the Board and I sign any checks brought to me by the Treasurer.

Along with the previously listed duties, the ONETUG is responsible for organizing the annual Orlando Code Camp. I have been to every code camp in the State of Florida. I know I might be a little biased since I am from the area, but I really do feel that the code camp in Orlando is the best one in the state. We have Shawn Weisfeld to thank for that. He laid out a fantastic example for everyone to follow.

Call To Action: We Want YOU!

Now that I have much more invested in the ONETUG, it is time for me to do my part. My first task is to get some feedback from you. Please e-mail me to let me know any thoughts that you have about the ONETUG, no matter what it is. You won’t hurt my feelings. Answer questions such as these for me:

Have you ever been to a meeting?
What did you like/dislike about the meeting?
What would you change about the meetings?
Do you like the venue?
Are there topics and/or speakers that you want to hear?
Why haven’t you been to a meeting?

I think you get the idea. It is partly my responsibility to help the President make this user group as valuable as possible to YOU, the member. We are here to make sure that you get what you’re looking for from each and every meeting. We will certainly try our best to meet and exceed that challenge.

Technorati Tags: .Net,Community,User Group,Orlando .Net User Group,ONETUG

South West Florida Code Camp 2009 Recap

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:55:00 GMT

TechnologyMon, 05 Oct 2009 02:55:00 GMT

Yesterday, I had the honor of speaking about DotNetNuke® at the second annual South West Florida Code Camp. Code camps are a great way to meet new people that you can network with about technology. Last year, I missed my opportunity to do this at this particular code camp. This year, I was making up for it with 3 sessions about DotNetNuke®. As it turns out, it was a good thing I was there.

The South West Florida Code Camp is organized by John Dunagan. If you haven’t met John, enjoy your time with him when you do. He is a .Net community machine. Even though this is one of the smaller code camps in Florida, he put on an outstanding event. They topped off their attendee count at 150, which is a 50% increase over last year. I don’t think any other code camp in Florida can boast such a stat. His diligence at recruiting speakers and registrations has paid dividends.

The Trip Down

For the first time, I brought my 9 year-old son with me to a code camp. We decided to have a father/son weekend trip. We spent the first part of that in a 3.5 hour road trip, which he slept through. The trip down was long. I am beginning to realize that I am no longer enjoying the scenery in Florida. Everywhere you drive, it’s the same tree and off-ramp, over and over. There’s nothing interesting about driving here. I miss California. We arrived at our hotel about an hour before the speaker party began.

The Speaker Party

The speaker party was held at the Islamorada Fish Company Restaurant, inside the Fort Meyers Bass Pro Shops. My son LOVES Bass Pro Shops, because it has a very fun atmosphere, fish tanks, and other cool things like paintball guns.

We arrived a bit late to the speaker party, but just in time for the shirt distribution. Soon after we arrived, some food was brought out. It was mild buffalo wings, and cajun shrimp. Both were very delicious.

The Islamadora was a great place to hold this kind of event, as we were on a private side patio with a cash bar and plenty of privacy. With great food, and decorative deep sea fishing gear adorning the walls, it was truly a fun place to hang out. However, I must complain that the bar didn’t serve Newcastle Brown Ale, so that was disappointing.

The Code Camp Venue

This code camp was held at the Florida Gulf Coast University. Unlike many venues, this one was easy to find. Many code camps also do not clearly mark parking when the event is held at a similar facility. This time, the parking was clearly marked. Big win there!

However, once you got out of your vehicle, and began walking to the buildings, it was not clear which building was which. I know the e-mails and website told us the building numbers, but not everyone remembers that information when walking away from their car at 8:00 in the morning.

Check-in was flawless and quick. But I did arrive a little bit after the morning announcements from John Dunagan had already begun. But I was early enough to get settled in before the keynote speaker took the helm to get everyone started.

The keynote was done by the Microsoft Developer Evangelist for our state, Joe Healy, who opened up telling us how he doesn’t like to do keynote presentations. Though, he then led us through a history lesson of how the .Net community in that area became what it is today. It of course ended with Joe talking to us about how John Dunagan has turned everything around. Great job, John!

I spent the rest of the morning following the keynote going over my presentations, making sure that everything was going to run as planned. Following lunch, my 3 presentations would begin, back-to-back. The presentation files are already on this site, on the Sessions page.

During this time, my son was having fun playing on his Nintendo DS, and receiving compliments from everyone about his Day of DotNetNuke® shirt that he was wearing. I was calling him my little sandwich board. Hehehe… Joe Healy even made sure to take a couple pictures of him in the shirt.

My Sessions: Introduction to DotNetNuke®

It’s been a while since I presented this “introduction” session. However, it’s always a fun one to do, as it is a critical moment for those in attendance. They are often in a state of mind where this presentation will either push them into being motivated to use DotNetNuke®, or push them away from it. It is completely up to the presenter. Depending on how the presenter provides the information and how the technical demonstrations go, the attendee will forever have this initial impression of DotNetNuke®. No pressure! ;)

This presentation went very well. However, I didn’t get to all of the information that I wanted to. I covered the installation and upgrade of DNN, as well as discussing the installation of modules. But I barely got to touch on things like administration, creating pages, and so on. This type of session really should be two sessions to be 100% effective.

My Sessions: DotNetNuke® 5 Widgets

I have given this session about widgets 5 times now. This is the first time where I really felt that it well. I went through all of the same demonstrations and information as before, but something really clicked this time. That being said, I did rework the demonstrations in the morning to include some updated information and pictures. I am still reflecting on this one though. I am not sure what made this one better. Even though I felt it went well, I still think that there is a problem with the flow of the presentation. Not sure yet what the fix is there either. Despite my previous concerns, I did get several compliments on the session.

My Sessions: Using jQuery in DotNetNuke®

I have only given this jQuery session one time before. In that demonstration, I fielded so many questions that I didn’t really get a live run on the demonstration (as it was planned) in front of an audience. I did this time, and quickly learned that I need to make some changes in the demonstration if I have beginners in the audience. I only had one module developer sitting in this session, so I am unsure of how much the others got out of my presentation. I ended up spending the end of my session showing various selector techniques and walking through the jQuery documentation site.

The After Party

My son and I took of a few moments early from the end of the day raffle, and went to the Islamadora Fish Company Restaurant again for the after party. This time, we were on our own for the food, and that was fine. It allowed us to get our hands on the menu, which looked impressive. I ordered their Fish Tacos, and they were delicious!

Service was slow though. I do not think that the staff there were expecting that many people to be there. We had nearly 1/3 of the code camp attendees show up.

I spent a lot of time with some fellow DNN’ers in the area. I want to thank them for some great conversations. My son was having a great time. At one point, he ordered a root beer. Once he got it, he was full of amusement for the rest of us. He stood up, propped on foot on the chair he was sitting in, and held his (root) beer bottle by the neck and drank with us. It was funny!

Stan Schultes asked my son if he had a good time. Kohen of course answered, “Yes.” When Stan asked what his favorite part was, my son answered, “the root beer!” Hahaha!

We had a great time hanging out with everyone, but since we were going home the same night, we had to leave early. Though, quite a few people were leaving early. I was surprised. After another 3.5 hours, we arrived home, safe and sound.

Thanks to all of the sponsors, organizers, and volunteers that made this event possible. We cannot wait until next year!

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,DNN,DNN Blogs,Code Camp,South West Code Camp,Events,Community,Widgets,jQuery

A Gaming Theater? Heck yeah! I want one!

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:02:00 GMT

TechnologyThu, 01 Oct 2009 08:02:00 GMT

I was watching Current TV, and one of the stories featured a theater in Spain that has been converted to be a large place for large groups of people to gather and play against or with each other on popular video games. It combines a theater with a club, and throws in everything else a gamer might enjoy. I really love this idea and think it could take off and be successful in America too.

Technorati Tags: Gaming

Windows Live Writer Tip: Using the Auto Linking Feature

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:17:00 GMT

TechnologyThu, 17 Sep 2009 14:17:00 GMT

One of the first things I do when using new or upgraded software is to look at the “options” or “preferences” to see how I am allowed to customize or extend my experience with the software. Windows Live Writer was no different. I had been using WLW for quite a while now though, and I only recently noticed one of its features. As it turns out, it’s one of my favorite features! Did you know about the Auto Linking feature?

The Auto Linking does exactly what it sounds like. It automatically links text in your blog posts for you, as you type. There’s no thinking or clicking involved one you set it up. This feature is so simple and intuitive – but most of all, it’s incredibly productive! Here’s how to use it…

First, click on the Tools menu, and choose Options.

In the Options dialogue, click the Auto Linking option in the left pane.

The Auto Linking options will load on the right side. This is where you can manage the text that gets automatically linked while you are typing. Make sure that you keep the “Automatically link matching terms” checkbox checked. In order to add a new text snippet, click the Add button.

In the new dialogue, you can enter the word(s) to match against. For my example, I used “DotNetNuke®” for mine, to link to http://www.dotnetnuke.com. You can also optionally choose to have the link always open in a new window, set the rel attribute, or a Title.

Once you are happy with the text and URL to link to, click OK to save your link. You can now click OK to exit the Options dialogue, or continue adding more links. The end result is that while you’re typing, the text will be automatically linked on the keystroke after the text is matched. It’s awesome!

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer

Why the Apple Software Update Irritates Me

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:19:00 GMT

TechnologyTue, 15 Sep 2009 14:19:00 GMT

I have always disliked the Apple Software Update, mainly because in the beginning it kept nagging me to install iTunes, and even installed it without my knowledge before. I only have it running to keep Quicktime updated. I don’t like Quicktime myself, but many people and movie houses post videos in the Quicktime movie format. Therefore, since I like to watch movie trailers, I keep Quicktime installed, and updated.

In the last 2 years, the software update has been less intrusive to me, but today it ticked me off again. I am just being picky and venting, but it showed me something that caused me to get irritated enough to spend some valuable time looking into it.

The software update dialog popped like it usually does, showing the available updates and new software available for Windows. Usually, only Quicktime shows up in my updates pane. However, this time, the iPhone Configuration Utility also does!

I have never owned and do not plan to own an iPhone. Therefore, I have had no reason now or in the past to install such a utility, much less update it!

I looked in my “Add/Remove Programs” dialog to see if I could uninstall it. It’s not listed. I looked all over in my “Program Files” directory. There’s no such program. I did a search through my registry. There were several entries with “iphone” in the names and keys, but not enough to show me an installed program.

This leads me to believe that this is a NEW install, not an update to an existing program, which is very misleading. After all, if I have a program that needs an update, it’s generally a good idea to keep it updated - for security reasons, if nothing else.

Have any of you run into this too? Do you have any more knowledge on the subject?

Technorati Tags: Apple,iPhone,Quicktime

Jacksonville Code Camp 2009 Recap

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 04:50:00 GMT

TechnologySun, 30 Aug 2009 04:50:00 GMT

I had the honor of once again speaking at the Jacksonville Code Camp, for the second year in a row. I was very happy to be accepted to speak at this event, as it is one of the largest and most renowned in the State of Florida. I do not know what their official final head count was, but I am told that their registration number reached a whopping 640! That is impressive for any community event, and definitely a number that most reach for.

I drove up to Jacksonville the night before. This drive was MUCH different than last year. Last year, there was a hurricane hovering over the entire county. It was one of those hurricanes that mostly consist of rain though. This year, that drive was not eventful or ominous at all – just your typical boring Florida drive.

We used RezHub.com to book a room at the Homestead Studio Suites, about 2 miles from the venue. (RezHub’s travel search form is built using jQuery and CSS!) This was the cheapest hotel ($59.99/night) within a few minutes drive time to the venue. This hotel was more like one of those long-term hotel places. Each room had a full fridge, stove, and dining area. Overall, it was nice. There was great water pressure, the room was clean, and it had central air. However, our freezer leaked water onto the floor. Also, the water was either too hard or too soft, because it was the kind of water that kept making you feel that you hadn’t rinsed all of the soap off. I really cannot stand that.

The venue this year was at the University of North Florida. I must say that despite the ongoing construction on campus, it was a really nice place. The buildings were all nice and new, and had a great appearance. The class rooms were all nice as well, having what appeared to be new furniture and equipment.

Unfortunately, my room was the only room with a projector problem. I have never had a projector problem with my current laptop, or since I began speaking – so I was definitely due for one. Once I exhausted my troubleshooting skills, I asked for help from the Jax Code Camp volunteers. They eventually ended up having to redirect the wires on the podium to allow my laptop to work. From what I was told, the room I was in was the only one that didn’t have a laptop connection completed for the room. But we got it sorted out with plenty of time to spare. Thanks guys!

The screens and projectors in the room I was in were huge! They were perfect for the purpose we were using them for. I couldn’t help but think of the possibilities that they could have with the right surround sound system. Hehehe…

My presentation was entitled, “Using jQuery in DotNetNuke Development.” The intention of my presentation was to give some background of jQuery, and then move into the various ways jQuery could make a difference in DotNetNuke® development.

What I quickly found out though, was that half of the attendees had not even used DNN yet, much less developed in it. So, I adjusted my presentation accordingly. I used a lot of time giving background to the attendees about DNN, and its features, and pros and cons. They seemed to really enjoy this, and had plenty of questions. I gave away a Day of DotNetNuke® 2009 shirt for each question. Unfortunately, this meant that I had to cut off time from our demo. It’s a good thing that I already had the module code available on CodePlex. It’s a Lightbox gallery module that was built specifically to give various examples of using jQuery in a DNN module.

My last presentation was at the Day of DotNetNuke®, which I also ran. I really feel that I bombed that presentation, because I was very exhausted and my mind was all over the place, thinking about the event. I think that today’s presentation was an excellent follow-up, as I was rested and prepared, and had nothing to worry about but the topic and content. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did.

I had a great conversation with a lady whose name I cannot remember about shopping carts in DNN, and custom DNN development. I pointed her to some of the usual suspects in our DNN ecosystem. Then, I had a very similar conversation with two other ladies at the end of my session. They too were look at shopping cart solutions for DNN, but had been having a really hard time meeting their business requirements. They already have one in production, so they know very well what requirements they have.

We spoke at great length about how they might need to approach their shopping cart replacement strategy. What really stuck out about the conversation though, was that they were speaking to someone local about their problems before speaking to me. He had been telling them to avoid DNN at all costs, because installing modules was way too difficult to do. I was taken back to say the least, since this is one of the easiest things to do in DNN. I gave them a demo of the different ways that people may use to load modules into their DNN website:

Using an install package
Using a DNN manifest file
Using the Create Module interface

That demo literally took less than 10 minutes including questions, so I think that I cleared up any concerns that they had with module installation. (Though we ran into one error when installing one of my custom modules. I didn’t realize until later that it was because I was trying to install a DNN 5+ module on DNN 4.09.04. I chose another module and moved on.)

I finished up our conversation by showing them the file system and solution setup for a compiled module. It was like giving a second presentation (which I of course don’t mind doing). I really feel that I helped them, so if nothing else happened, I am pleased with that.

I of course recorded the session as I usually do, but at this point, I am not sure when I will be able to make it available. :(

I am sorry to say that I didn’t stay for the entire day. I had to leave to head back home. If the morning was any indication for how the event would end up, then it had to be incredible!

I have already sent my slide deck to the organizers, and also posted it on the ODUG website.

Did you attend this year’s Jacksonville Code Camp? What did you think?

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,DNN,Jacksonville,Code Camp,jQuery,Community,Events

CodePlex Feature Request: Project Status Dashboard

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:37:00 GMT

TechnologySat, 29 Aug 2009 19:37:00 GMT

I have begun to build up a list of projects on the popular project repository, CodePlex. In doing so, I have noticed a management problem, in terms of usability and convenience. When you are logged in, and go to the home page, there is a convenient shortcut area on the right side, that will take you to your projects. It lists all of the projects that you participate in, regardless of your role in that project. This alone is just fine, but what if I want to know more about two or more of the projects?

Think about things such as: number of downloads, number of page views, page view increase/decrease percentage, creation date, last activity date, and so on. If you have 5 projects, and want to know all of that, you either have to spend about 10 minutes navigating to and through each project, or decide to move to other things that deserve your time. This is not good if you want to actually increase visibility of your project. Since they have added advertisements to projects, such information becomes even more important.

Let consider this information… What if you had a chart that looked something like this, where the column headers allowed you to sort the data by the respective column?

Project Name	Number of Downloads	Page Views	Page View Change	Last Activity	Open Issues	Creation Date
Project A	5	33	+20%	8/26/2009	0	8/20/2009
Project B	24	78	-5%	8/15/2009	3	7/2/2009
Project C	2	16	+3%	8/22/2009	1	8/17/2009
Project D	154	533	-34%	7/29/2009	7	5/22/2009
Project E	77	129	+43	8/27/2009	3	6/10/2009

With information like shown above, this puts you in a powerful position to market and manage your projects. I am telling all of you about this not because I want you to develop this or to whine about it. Rather, I am telling you about this, because I created a feature request on the CodePlex website. Their features work on a voting system. The more votes a proposed feature has, the more priority the CodePlex team gives it on their road map.

So what are you waiting for? Vote to get a Project Status Dashboard put into the CodePlex website. Even if you don’t have your own projects, this feature will help you by the project owners being able to better manage the project.

Technorati Tags: CodePlex,Open Source

Blogging Woes with Windows Live Writer (Update)

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:43:00 GMT

TechnologyThu, 27 Aug 2009 16:43:00 GMT

I posted an entry a few days ago about a problem I began experiencing with Windows Live Writer. I am proud to announce that those woes are all gone, and I am back using Windows Live Writer (WLW) again! Woo hoo! Here’s what I went through…

If you looked at the other post, you know that I began getting an obscure error from WLW. It was, “An invalid IP address was specified.” What in the heck does that mean? I didn’t know until several hours later. I was extremely lucky to have the expert assistance from a well-known DNN community member and Core Team Member, Brandon Haynes. I already knew he was a smart guy. I mean, look at his blog address! :) I now got to see first-hand how bright Brandon is…

Luckily for me, my error and PC symptoms really intrigued Brandon. He began writing console apps and sending them to me to help troubleshoot what we thought was a problem with WLW. With his incredible assistance, we quickly determined that the problem was not with WLW at all, but rather something deeper in Windows.

We spent plenty of time conversing via Live Messenger about the possible causes and various symptoms that my PC was giving me. Eventually, we determined that the root of my problem was with my DNS server list. One of the DNS servers was returning all IP numbers incorrectly encoded. You know, those boxes and wing dings that you see when the character encoding is wrong? What that means to my PC is that anything that needed to call out that wasn’t a web browser or IM was not working right, and/or was reporting various errors.

I posted the fix on the forum thread I opened on the WLW forums so anyone else who gets this error can fix it. I looked for hours on various search results, and I kept seeing my error. But I never once saw an answer to fix the error.

I cannot thank Brandon enough for his time and expertise. He completely floored me with his (blind) troubleshooting abilities and knowledge. His skills prevented me from wiping my PC clean, and starting from scratch. I nearly did. If you ever have a chance to work with Brandon on something, jump on the chance! :)

What I Learned About the Various Blog Clients

In the aforementioned post I spoke about a few of the blog clients I began to try, in looking for a WLW replacement. I must say that I am often not impressed with the software that Microsoft puts out there. Out of my favorite software products, I can easily count on one hand how many originated in Redmond. That being said, WLW would definitely be on my top 5 in that same list! I can point out many things that WLW doesn’t have that other blogging clients does. However, the features that is does have beat the competition, hands down. Just considering the WYSIWYG editor, plugins, and image handling, I cannot choose another program out there.

I am extremely happy to be using WLW again. Now, if Microsoft could just add some of those missing features… Hehehe…

Technorati Tags: Blogging,Windows Live Writer

Another Technology Scare Tactic

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:39:00 GMT

TechnologyWed, 26 Aug 2009 13:39:00 GMT

Scare tactics happen too often these days. You see them in the news, politics, sports, commercials, and so on. This is not new to us. For example, most pharmaceutical ads basically tell us that we will die if we don't talk to our doctor and begin using their product. The HPV ads are the worst at this. Now, we are on to the average consumer and their PC.

I have been hearing and seeing ads for products like CleanPCToday, where they scare the average person into thinking that their PC is infected with viruses before the commercial even ends. I am sure that if you have family members like I have, you will undoubtedly be asked about this product, or one like it. Your Aunt Jane will buy this up immediately. But why?

(FYI - I didn't link that company on purpose. I don't want them to have the benefit of the link.)

This commercial uses statements such as, "Does your email take more than 3 seconds to open? This is a tell-tell sign of virus activity on your PC." Give me a break! Many programs can potentially take more than 3 seconds to open up. There is a plethora of reasons to explain this, only one of which being a virus.

Be prepared to answer that phone call from your Aunt Jane, asking you to stop by because her PC is still slow, even though she installed that latest speed-up-my-PC product from the infomercial last night.

How can you avoid Aunt Jane from calling you for something this stupid though? Well, there is no real way to do that without disowning your favorite Aunt. You could fix the PC, but that will warrant plenty of future tech support calls. You could point her to a PC support service, but then your favorite Aunt may have to fork out some outrageous fees to that service for something that could have been fixed at a fraction of the price.

I say, fix the PC, and downgrade your Aunt's profile to a Guest account. Ha! That'll teach her. Just kidding. Our Aunt Jane's are all different, so I would love to hear how you handle this.

Technorati Tags: PC, Antivirus, Support, Marketing

Blogging Woes with Windows Live Writer

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:48:00 GMT

TechnologyTue, 25 Aug 2009 23:48:00 GMT

Earlier today, I began writing a blog in between solution builds. This is common for me to do. I try to multi-task every moment throughout the day. Somehow, I still always seem to be out of time. Weird...

I have been using Windows Live Writer (WLW) to create, publish, and manage my blog entries for several months now. I used to use a web interface on my site. I must say, that using WLW was awesome! I was able to work on a blog post for as long as I wanted without worrying about the session expiring, or any other web-based snafu. It was like having electricity for the first time. I loved not having to light the candles on my blog!

Well, I eventually got my blog post to the point of being able to publish it. I had all of my text where I wanted, my styles all shored up, images added, tags added, and so on. I clicked the Publish button. Ding! I received an error. Whaaaa...?!! I never get an error using WLW. Crap! Here is the error I was seeing:

The error "An invalid IP address was specified" was incredibly confusing to me. It still is. I began to ask and vent about this error, here, here, and here. I even searched for the error on the search engines. Nothing was coming back, so I posted a forum thread about this error at the Microsoft Live Forums. Then, I was pleasantly surprised to have Chris Hammond pop up and offer to help me. We were able to determine that the problem is definitely on my machine. Something is seriously out-of-whack with my instance of WLW. That didn't help me post my blog though, so I began to search the registry for clues (not recommended for newbies). After a while, I was still getting nowhere.

Woefully, I began to look for alternatives to WLW. I found a couple of good blog posts on the topic, such as: 15+ Alternatives to Your Boring Blog Editor, Six Time-Saving Blogging Tools, and Blog Editor Alternative. With all of the options provided by these resources, I couldn't help but dabble. But I was limited to what I could and should try. My blogging routine and platform requires that I at minimum have the following features:

MetaWeblogAPI
Intuitive and easy image handling
Code snippet handling
Multiple blog accounts
Intermediate to advanced HTML editing capabilities
Windows OS

This ruled out most of the options out there. However, I did try a few...

First, I tried Qumana, which is a blog client for both Windows and Mac. It's interface was intuitive, and I had my blogs imported in no time at all. It has the ability to incorporate advertising directly into blog entries. This is not an important feature to me, but you might like it. However, I could not successfully publish my first post. It just gave me the wait animation. Nothing would happen. I was floored, as the program had worked flawlessly, and easily up to that point. This was not totally unexpected though. This program runs on Java, and bugs like this always happen to me with Java programs. I am not a fan of anything Java, we a result. Oh well... Next!

I then installed the ScribeFire addon for Firefox. I was very impressed with this browser plugin. It was easy to use, and handled most of my requirements. However, it did not allow me to manage the HTML very well at all - forcing me to go to the source view to manually edit the HTML. It has some really cool features, many of which I hope can be in WLW someday. I think the most useful feature is the context menu that you can use directly from a webpage to initiate a blog entry about that page. I can use this for quick posts about websites, but this is definitely not going to be able to replace WLW. I was able to post my blog entry from earlier though! After posting, I did find that I had to go and manually mark the entry as "published".

The next blog client I decided to try was Zoundry Raven. The name does nothing for me, but the initial impression from this blogger had me interested. I was hoping that I would be installing the more stable and bug free version after he/she tried it. That is what I am using right now. It has a Thunderbird feel about it. The interface is boring, but clearly has a lot of features to take advantage of. I am very pleased there. I love that it has many of the features that I wished WLW had. However, it is clear that the image handling is not going to be as hands-off as I want it to be, and I am not sure how code snippets will be handled. We'll see.

For right now, I still do not have a new blog editor, and honestly I do not want a new one. After using these other programs, I know that I was truly happy with WLW. I really need to find a fix for it - especially since I will be doing a presentation about blogging next month. Ugh!

Technorati : Blog Clients, Blogging, Qumana, ScribeFire, Windows Live Writer, Zoundry Raven

Google Reader Adds “Send To” Feature

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:25:00 GMT

TechnologyMon, 17 Aug 2009 17:25:00 GMT

I don’t know about you, but my RSS Reader of choice is Google Reader. It’s chock full of features, fast, and I can access it everywhere. With feature updates like the one I am about to talk about, it only gets better. There may be a better reader out there, but so far, this one suits me just fine. Google Reader is the main tool I use to keep up with all things DotNetNuke®.

What is an RSS Reader?

Some of you might not know what a RSS Reader is. First, Wikipedia does a great job of defining a RSS Reader.

In short, a RSS Reader is a software tool or program that allows you to aggregate content of your choosing from anywhere on the Internet. There is a very wide variety of product offerings for all kinds of RSS Readers out there. Some are installable desktop programs, others are web-based, and yet others try to bridge the gap between those two. Regardless of your preferred reader, you can save all kinds of time by using them.

The New “Send To” Feature

Using Google Reader, I read today on Matt Cutts’ blog about the new “Send To” feature. If you’re not familiar with Matt Cutts, he is the head of the Webspam Team at Google, and an avid blogger about many things, mostly technology (and Google, of course).

Matt just wrote about the “Send To” feature, where Google Reader allows you to share your favorite blog entries from any of your feeds with a simple click or two of the mouse. This is great, as it can easily save you a bunch of time if you want to share a particular piece of content via Digg, Facebook, and several other built-in sharing sites. Additionally, they took this feature even further, in allowing you to add any other similar site very easily. Since I like using DotNetKicks and PimpThisBlog, that’s exactly what I set out to do.

Using this feature is as simple as clicking on the “Send To” button at the end of any item in your feeds. Then you choose which method you want to use to share that item. You will not see this on your reader until you go into your settings and add at least one method of sharing.

As you can see, there are several options provided to you by default. But the real beauty of this feature is that it also allows you to add links that are not there. For example, my favorite link sharing site is PimpThisBlog. Adding them as an option to “Send To” is as simple as clicking the “Create a Custom Link” button at the bottom of the page.

With only three fields, you cannot go wrong. All you need now is the URL format for your link sharing site. PimpThisBlog uses the following format:

http://pimpthisblog.com/Submit?url=[YOUR_URL_HERE]&title=[YOUR_TITLE_HERE]

The folks at Google did a good thing by providing their replacement tokens right there on the form, and to also make them easy to use. In order to add my link, I ended up with the following URL for the form:

http://pimpthisblog.com/Submit?url=${url}&title=${title}

That’s it! I just gave it a name, and I was immediately able to successfully share any of my favorite blog entries with the world!

On a side note, you may notice that in my screenshot, I have icons specified for both of my custom links. I got creative in my acquisition of those icons. Therefore, I am not condoning the same “creativity” by telling you how and/or where I got them. :)

Technorati Tags: Google,Social Bookmarks,RSS,Readers

Shared (or Static) Methods versus Singleton Methods

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:50:00 GMT

TechnologyThu, 13 Aug 2009 10:50:00 GMT

I figured that since I have manager to build up a respectable readership here, I might as well try to make this a little more interactive, while also providing some useful information to you all.

I was in the middle of refactoring an entire class library this morning when the solution to a few of my problems came in the form of changing a Shared method to a Singleton method, and vice versa. The question then hit me, “Is there something I don’t know about the tradeoffs of using each?” I set out to research this a bit, reminding myself of some things I have forgotten over time. (Warning, I am only looking at this from the ASP.Net side of the house.)

For any newbies, or non-programmers reading this… The surface difference between the two types of methods are that a Singleton method requires an instantiation of it’s class, while a Shared (or Static in C#) method does not. This results in the difference of code such as:

     ' Using Singleton Methods

    Dim ctlCustomer As New CustomerController

    Dim intCustomerId As Integer = ctlCustomer.GetCustomerIdByName('John Doe')

    ' Using Shared Methods

    Dim intCustomerId As Integer = CustomerController.GetCustomerIdByName('John Doe')

At it’s core, Shared Methods are great for Function or Utility Libraries, and API Libraries. However, you run into the limitations of not being able to properly inherit the function and override it. You also have differing limits in terms of the number of allowable arguments to be passed, but I find that limit too high already. Then there is also the potential to create methods that are not thread-safe, if they access or manage any state information. What’s not thread safe? Well, that would be when you access things like cache, viewstate, and so on.

In my opinion, there are some distinct scenarios where Shared methods are bad. For example: DAL (data access), Cache, and Email Notification and classes. All of these examples have the inherent need to access objects that would throw an exception, should two calls come in at the same time. Even worse, the DAL also runs the risk of overloading your connection pool to your database server. As a result, other methods that would not ordinarily timeout, will. When that happens, you don’t always get a clear message, pointing you to the true problem that I have described here.

When we think of Singleton Methods, there is an immediate concern of using more memory when we instantiate an entirely new instance of a class. There are plenty of people who (right or wrong) do not trust the Garbage Collector in .Net. Then there is also the school of thought that less code is better. If I can do something with one line of code, it’s faster, and better for the overall project, right? Maybe…

Here are a few resources I dug up on the topic through a simple search that may help you make up your own mind:

Static/Shared Methods by Mike Diehl
A Question About C# and Static Classes and Functions by Stackoverflow
Static Method Abuse by James Gregory
Mark Members as Static by Microsoft
Are Static Methods Evil? by Channel 9 Forums
Static vs Instance Method Performance by Greg Beech
What is Better? Static Methods or Instance Methods by MSDN Forums

I think that’s a pretty decent introduction. What are your thoughts and experiences in using both types of methods?

Technorati Tags: Programming,ASP.Net,VB,C#

Upcoming .Net Community Events in Florida

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:10:00 GMT

TechnologyThu, 02 Jul 2009 15:10:00 GMT

There are quite a few events coming up in Florida in the next few months. They are all free, and most will give you the opportunity to win free stuff just for showing up. Awesome! If you find yourself in or around any of these events, I strongly recommend you stop by. I have been to most of them, and they are great.

All of the following information came from the Orlando DotNetNuke® Users Group (ODUG) website. See our events page.

July 9 - Orlando DotNetNuke® Users Group
Will Strohl (nobody) will be talking about the Core DNN Blog Module.

July 14 – Orlando PASS
Chad Miller will be discussing Powershell with SQL Server.

July 15 – Space Coast .Net User Group
Oleg Sych will be presenting on VSTS and TFS.

July 16 – Orlando .Net User Group
Joe Healy (Microsoft Developer Evangelist) will be speaking about the developer features in IE8.

July 16 – Space Coast SQL User Group
Don King and Clay Seifert will be each presenting a different session. They will be speaking about SQL Server 2005 Clustering and SQL Server Analysis Services, respectively.

July 21 – Lakeland .Net User Group
This user group will be holding a session entitled “Lakeland’s .Net Speaker Idol” and it promises to be a fun time, where you will see speakers compete against each other for prizes.

August 4 – Orlando DotNetNuke® Users Group
DNN author, Darren Neese will be showing the new features in the DNN skinning engine.

August 18 – Space Coast .Net User Group
Topic and speaker TBA. (sorry…)

August 20 – Orlando .Net User Group
Christopher Bennage (MVP) will be showing the attendees SilverArcade.

August 20 – Space Coast SQL User Group
Joe Healy (Microsoft Developer Evangelist) shows the group SQL Server 2008 enhancements from a developers perspective.

August 29 – Jacksonville Code Camp
The Jax Code Camp crew overcame some very challenging obstacles last year. I was extremely impressed. I expect them to put on a great event again this year.

September 5 – Tallahassee Code Camp
Tallahassee Code Camp was a great time last year. They always have some great presenters on-hand.

September 10 – Space Coast SQL User Group
Jack Corbett will be presenting a yet to be determined topic.

November 5 – Orlando DotNetNuke® Users Group
DNN Blog Project Team Lead, Antonio Chagoury, will be presenting “Mashing Up Your DotNetNuke Using RESTful APIs.”

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,DNN,DNN Blogs,.Net,Code Camp,Events,User Group,ODUG,Orlando DotNetNuke Users Group,ONETUG,Orlando .Net User Group,Space Coast SQL User Group,Space Coast .Net User Group

Web Browser Market Share from My Perspective

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:58:00 GMT

TechnologyThu, 25 Jun 2009 22:58:00 GMT

The trend recently seems to be that comments and topics are brought up on twitter, and they end up growing to be something more outside of it – especially in the world of DotNetNuke® that I have immersed myself in. Today was no different. A fellow DNN twibe member and also a member of the Orlando DotNetNuke® Users Group (ODUG), Mike van der Meulen, gave me a friendly jab about using FireFox. He said:

God! Why do you people all use FF, the rest of the world doesn’t :-)

That provoked a thought in me, “what is the current market share for the web browsers?” Not being a scientific study, I proceed to check 3 sources: my blog, W3Schools, and RezHub. They each have a different demographic. W3Schools is visited primarily by techies. RezHub has more of a mainstream flow of visitors. Finally, while my blog tends to lean towards the techie visitor, it does have a mix of both. Here is what I found…

W3Schools

W3Schools has a very techie following, meaning that most of their visitors have a technical background of some kind. They either are professionals in the IT industry, or they dabble in it in some way. That being said, most techies tend to use the most trendy applications and gadgets. As of today, the W3Schools website is showing the FireFox accounts for 47.7% of their visitors, and Internet Explorer collectively shares 41% across its various versions.

RezHub.com

As I mentioned before, RezHub is frequented by a more mainstream web audience. There are all types and ages of people that come to this website, and has a very high number of unique daily visitors. It is a very clear indication of what the general public is using to browse the Internet. However, contrary to the techies, a mainstream Internet visitor is much less likely to change the web browser that they are using due to all kinds of reasons. Mostly, Internet Explorer is generally pre-installed and set as the default web browser of nearly all computers.

In what appears to be a drastic reversal in market share for the web browsers, RezHub’s visitors clearly favor the Internet Explorer family of web browsers at 64.48% of the visitors, while FireFox makes up a measly 24.74% of the market share.

My Blog: The Mighty Blog

Now, we look at the favored web browser of my visitors here on this blog. The results look very similar to W3Schools, in that the trend clearly leans to the FireFox web browser at 45.52%, whereas Internet Explorer comes in second this time with 40.59% of the market share. Contrary to my original beliefs, it would appear that most of my visitors are also techies. I guess I need to post more food reviews, and some more of my photo work. :)

In Conclusion

Most of you were probably reading this to get an idea of which web browser(s) you should be covering more thoroughly in your development efforts. There appears to no longer be a conclusive stat that covers all demographics like there used to be in the IE 5 days.

We need to more closely consider our audience that we intend to visit our website than ever before. For example, if we were building a site that is targeted at delivering technical content to our visitors, we would probably want to make sure that FireFox renders the best out of all of the web browsers. In contrast, maybe a website whose purpose is to deliver cooking recipes would target Internet Explorer as their primary web browser.

In my own personal opinion though, you should be targeting both Internet Explorer and FireFox simultaneously. Even if your visitors are clearly using one web browser over another, you want to deliver the best possible experience to your visitors. This holds true for all use cases, including those where your visitors are not purchasing a product, but rather are receiving free content. If you have a competitor whose site functions and looks better in their favorite browser, you’re going to lose that visitor.

Let’s face facts, all sites exist to either earn money or traffic (usually both). Ignoring either major web browser will certainly lead to you losing visitors from the other browser demographic. I say develop for both, and this will also ensure a more stable future. You never know when and how fast one web browser will steal loyalty from the other.

Technorati Tags: Web Browsers,Browser,Market Share,Internet Explorer,IE,FireFox,FF

Tips to Get Retweeted on Twitter

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:51:00 GMT

TechnologyMon, 08 Jun 2009 05:51:00 GMT

If you are a user of the newest rage, twitter, then you might have seen or heard a term called “retweet.” When someone retweets, it means that they are repeating someone else’s tweet. Usually, this form of passing on information includes giving the original tweeter credit. Before we can talk about this more, we need to tell you what a tweet is. A tweet is the name given to an update that you place on twitter. So, once you have posted your update to twitter, you have tweeted.

So, why might someone want to retweet your tweet?

They might think that you said someone very cool or interesting
Your tweet might contain some very relevant and new information
Your tweet could be something that someone feels passionate about
The information in your tweet is marketable

Regardless of the reason, the end result is the same – the person(s) who retweeted your tweet wanted to spread the word. For example, I have retweeted an update from the Day of DotNetNuke® official twitter account. (Secret: I run that account as well.)

As you can see from above, the Day of DotNetNuke® posted an update to promote the event. In this case, Will Strohl (me), wanted to let all of his followers know about the event. In order to do so, he retweeted the original tweet. In it’s simplest form, this can be done by copying and pasting the original tweet, but most twitter applications facilitate this function as a feature. Regardless to how it’s done, the format is always the same:

RT [poster]: [original tweet]
RT @DayOfDNN: Go to the Day of DotNetNuke this weekend http://bit.ly/ec4Pv
Retweet [poster]: [original tweet]
Retweet @DayOfDNN: Go to the Day of DotNetNuke this weekend http://bit.ly/ec4Pv
Retweeting [poster]: [original tweet]
Retweeting @DayOfDNN: Go to the Day of DotNetNuke this weekend http://bit.ly/ec4Pv

As you can see from above, it is quite simple to retweet someone else’s tweet, but how can you increase your chances of your tweet being retweeted? Let explore some simple tips…

Be the First to Break News
Few of us are reporters, but we all witness news, or news-worthy activity. For example, if DotNetNuke® releases a new version of it’s application, the first tweet about it is very likely to be repeated over and over. The gravity of the information your posting can sometimes be enough all on its own to encourage retweets.

Say Something Interesting
We will not always have something that is interesting to others. For example, if you tweet about someone not holding the elevator for you, such an event is way too common to be retweeted. However, if the person who didn’t hold the elevator were Bill Gates, then you might have a retweetable tweet. Also, there are times when relevancy might do the same thing. For instance, if there is a hot topic going around at the time, and you post a funny joke about it, this may have a wildfire effect on twitter.

Include a Picture
Sometimes, a tweet is very likely to be retweeted, only if it included a bit more information – such as a picture. For example, if you went to the grand opening of a new restaurant by Emeril Lagasse, that alone is not retweetable. But if you were to have a picture in your tweet of you standing next to him, that is likely to be retweeted. There are many picture services that help you do this, such as YFrog, and TwitPic. This can be taken another level these days with services like 12 seconds, where you can tweet video.

Pay Attention to the Length of Your Tweet
Twitter only allows 140 characters of content to be posted at a time. Twitter usernames are allowed to be up to 15 characters. Keeping that in mind, if you tweet 138 characters in your latest update and someone wanted to retweet it, then they would have to try and edit your original tweet. Most people will not do that. In general, you want to keep your tweets down to 120 characters to not discourage folks from retweeting your update. This allows people to just click a retweet button somewhere, and they do not have to worry about editing your update. Most twitter applications will put the retweet in the format mentioned above.

Ask for the Retweet
Sometimes, you already know that something you are saying is important, or you simply want the extra exposure on that tweet. Many people simply need that extra little nudge to retweet your update. You’d be surprised at how many of your followers would do this if you just ask, “Please RT,” at the end of your tweet.

It’s that easy… Just be short, interesting, and leave room for folks. That’s some basic advice to get retweets on twitter.

Technorati Tags: Twitter

Power Saving Tips for the Google (G1) Phone

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:15:00 GMT

TechnologyTue, 31 Mar 2009 22:15:00 GMT

I have been using the first generation attempt from Google in the cell phone or smart phone market. Nearly everyone already knows that the G1 or Google Phone exists. Everyone has their own opinion on whether or not it’s a good phone to have. For me, there’s no question that there is no other phone that I could live with. I absolutely love mine, and I cannot wait to use their next version, codenamed “cupcake." While that is indeed a horrible codename, the new features look incredible.

Since we cannot look at the G2 right now, I figured that I would help you with your G1 right now. The fact is, the G1 is packed full of features. But, just like any other computer out there, the more features that you use at once, the more power it will use. For those that do not understand this, the G1 could be a difficult or bad experience. Some have even gone as far as returning their phone because they do not understand this. Unfortunately, I cannot fault them for that. If the phone doesn’t work how they expect to, please do return it. That being said, once you understand how much your G1 is doing out of the box, the better off you’ll be.

When you first begin using the G1, it will already be doing the following at a minimum:

Screen will be at its brightest level
Sound will be turned all the way up
Auto-synch is enabled for all Google services
Wireless networks is enabled
GPS is enabled
Screensaver time will be longer
Instant messenger(s) running

Your phone probably has much more than that going on, but you should get the idea. Once you walk out of the store, and begin using your phone, that list will get longer and longer as you install applications. Some applications are always on, while others allow you to close them.

The rest of this post contains tips that can help you save battery life on your G1 phone. Some will apply to you, and others will not. We all use the G1 differently. That being said, just know that there is not a longer life battery out there for us to buy.

Tip #1 – Keep Only the Minimum Number of Applications

Just know that many applications “call home” from time to time. What does that mean? It means that the application uses your data plan to contact a server to do something. This may be checking for application updates, or looking for data (i.e., email, twitter, etc.). The more applications that are open, actively calling home, the more power your phone is using. Conversely, even if those applications are not calling home, they are taking up memory, which also uses up power.

So, make sure that you only install the applications that you absolutely use, and only open them when you need to use them. Also, uninstall any applications that you’re not using.

Tip #2 – Close Your Web Browser Windows

When you use the web browser, you undoubtedly are having a great time looking all kinds of things up. However, if you leave the browser window open, and just exit back to the desktop or start the screensaver, your phone will be using more power to keep the browser window open, and the browser history for that window.

Close every browser window when you’re done with it. Even if you have only one window open, close that window as well. What will happen is that the web browser will open up a new one that has no browser history to maintain.

Tip #3 – Turn Off the Phone Every Now and Then

Some applications are not able to be closed by us. We think we closed the application, but in reality, it is still open in the background. Unless the program has a setting that literally is labeled something like “Exit” or “Close Application,” think of what you’re doing as minimizing the application.

As a general rule, I would suggest that you turn off your phone and turn it back on every 1-3 days. This will ensure that all open applications are closed. This has another added benefit too. You get a fresh connection to the cell phone carrier network. This is a good thing. However, also be aware that applications like the Live Messenger will automatically start up and sign you in when you turn your phone back on.

Tip #4 – Use Only the Networks You Need

The G1 gives you the convenience of using the Edge, G, 2G, or 3G networks. You can also use local wireless networks, such as your home or work wireless network. Unfortunately, the default settings has the phone constantly scanning for all of these network connections, so it can either optimize your phone’s data speed, or notify you that the network exists. Every time this scan occurs, more power is used. This scan happens at least once a minute.

If you are in an area that you know doesn’t have 3G available, turn it off. Your phone will no longer scan to see if 3G is available again. Also, turn off the wireless networks option completely until you actually want to connect to one.

Tip #5 – Get the Power Manager Application

One application that is an absolute necessity is the Power Manager. Without this application, there is very little that you will be able to do to really get the most out of your battery life. No matter how many tricks you employ to save battery life, this application will at least double your efforts for you. I have blogged about the Power Manager before, but in short it allows you to create and change profiles to match conditions on your phone to help you save power. For example, one of my profiles is called “Low Power.” This profile is started by this application when the battery life lowers to 30%. When this happens, I have the phone do the following:

Dim the screen
Turn off GPS
Turn off wireless networks
The screen saver comes on quicker
Volume goes down
Bluetooth is disabled

The profile I just described may not work for you, but my list should give you an idea of what is possible. You can easily customize or create new profiles to manage the phone features to fit your needs and extend the battery life. Just know that the application now costs $0.99, which is a steal!

Summary

I hope that my tips have given you an idea of how to extend the life of your battery on your G1 phone. And maybe you will have an idea of how to determine another option to better help you use your G1 phone longer and easier. If you have any additional tips, please leave a comment.

Technorati Tags: Google,G1,Android,Power Manager,Battery Life

Is Your G1 (Google Phone) Battery Draining Faster Today?

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:23:00 GMT

TechnologyMon, 16 Mar 2009 21:23:00 GMT

If your G1 phone, otherwise called the Google phone, seems to be losing its charge faster today, than it normally does, that’s probably because it is. As of today, one of the most popular Android applications began charging for their program. The program is called Power Manager. It is the most important application you can possibly install on the G1, as it helps to make your battery life last longer. This application does more than just say that it will save battery life. Once it is set up to save power according to your usage patterns (which you set), it makes an incredible difference. For me, that meant only charging my phone once a day, compared to the typical owners that charge theirs 2 or more times a day.

As of today though, all of our dreams are shattered. The Power Manager application is no longer free. I went in to check my settings because my phone appeared to be visibly draining itself of power. When I did, Power Manager let me know that my trial had expired. Wha…? I unfortunately had to pay the extraordinary amount of $0.99 USD to keep using the application. Truth be told, that is a steal. I just wanted to gripe. ;)

Technorati Tags: Google,Phone,G1,Android,Power Manager,Application

Is Your Child Blog Missing from the WLW Import?

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:58:00 GMT

TechnologyFri, 06 Mar 2009 21:58:00 GMT

In a previous blog entry tonight, I briefly outlined that I was not able to import one of my child blogs when attempting to use the Windows Live Writer (WLW) method of blogging to a DotNetNuke blog. It was quite perplexing. I even posted a forum post about it, as I could not find any information about anyone else having the same issue.

To quickly recap, I followed the instructions provided in a blog post by Antonio Chagoury. In Step 4, WLW shows you a list of available blogs to choose from. I would imagine that most folks would only have a single blog entry available in the list. However, if you're like me, that may not be true.

In my instance, I have a parent blog of which I do not post to. Then, I have two child blogs, Personal Edition, and Professional Edition. (I named my child blogs before the DNN PE announcement.) The Professional Edition is where I post all of my DotNetNuke related entries. Everything else goes into the Personal Edition. I go into more detail about this configuration in an earlier blog post. Basically, it allows me to split up the RSS feeds pretty painlessly.

Back to step 4... Professional Edition was missing from my list of available blogs to connect WLW to. There didn't appear to be any real reason for this. My first instinct was that this was a new bug that I had found. This turned out to be mostly true.

Background Information

The DotNetNuke Blog Module allows any blog owner to create child blogs for a variety of reasons. When the blog owner creates such a blog, the blog module inserts their UserId into the new blog record. Sounds simple enough, but if you're not careful, this work flow can be easily disrupted.

The Super User or Host account was designed to be able to do anything on an entire instance of DotNetNuke. In the case of the blog module, this account takes more of a moderation role. For example, being able to manage rogue bloggers, or inappropriate posts.

In the case of existing blogs, the Host account can create child blogs for the actual blog owner. This behavior is important to note, as this is the cause of the problem I am writing about.

Why is the Child Blog Missing from WLW?

When the actual owner of a blog creates their own child blog, everything works as expected. But when a Host creates a child blog on someone else's existing blog, the UserId that is inserted into the blog record is that of the Host account. If you are not using a tool like WLW, the different UserId might never present a problem. However, when you use WLW, the first step asks for authentication information. This information includes the blog URL, username, and password. When WLW pulls a list of available blogs from your blog website, it only pulls the blogs that match the UserId matching the given username. BINGO!

How Do We Fix This?

Fortunately, the fix for this problem is quick and easy. That is, as long as you have either direct access to the database, or a Host account. I will assume here that you're using a Host account. The first thing we need to do is figure out what the BlogID is for the child blog that is missing. We can do that using a bit of T-SQL.

Using the host account, you would run the following query using the SQL page, found in the Host menu. Make sure you check the "Run As Script" checkbox.

SELECT * FROM {DatabaseOwner}{ObjectQualifier}blog_blogs

Using the previous query, be sure to take note of two things. First, note the UserID that is assigned to the other blogs that are not missing. Second, take note of the BlogID for the missing blog. I will refer to both of those values as X and Y, respectively.

Run the following query, replacing X and Y with the values you found in the previous query.

UPDATE {DatabaseOwner}{ObjectQualifier}blog_blogs SET UserID = X WHERE BlogID = Y

That's all there is too it! You can now import the missing child blog into WLW.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke, DNN, Blog Module, Windows Live Writer, WLW

First WLW Blog Post on WillStrohl.com

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:32:00 GMT

TechnologyFri, 06 Mar 2009 19:32:00 GMT

Today is the first that I am trying Windows Live Writer (WLW) to post to my blog. This post is mostly just to see how everything works. However, I have run into one major problem. Searches on the DotNetNuke website have yet to lead me to anyone else having the same problem though.

Basically, I followed the excellent instructional blog post by Antonio Chagoury. When I get to Step 4, I am missing my most active and popular blog, Professional Edition. I only see my main parent blog, The Mighty Blog, and Personal Edition.

I posted this problem in the DotNetNuke Forums, hoping that someone else comes up with an answer. Let me know if you do.

Technorati Tags: WLW, Windows Live Writer, Blog Module

January 2009 ONETUG Meeting Review - XNA Gaming by Joel Martinez

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:53:00 GMT

As you probably already know, I pumped up the last ONETUG meeting a lot. That was primarily because they were talking about XNA. I love to watch XNA demos. I just wish there was more time in the day to play with it myself.

The meeting had well over 40 people registered attend. However, I think that they had a lot more than 50 show up. We had to pull out extra chairs, and we ran out of food and drinks.

The ONETUG Vice President, Fabio Honigmann, was by himself trying to get things ready, and he was already running behind. He asked me to help by working the registration table, and I was more than happy to oblige.

There were some great things to note. First, Fabio was able to work out a deal with a local audio/visual company to film the ONETUG meetings for free. They were there in full force that night, doing a promo video in conjunction with their typical video services. Their video and lighting equipment quickly put my single webcam and HD camera to shame. :) I thought of asking them to trade cameras, but I doubt it would have had the reaction I would've wanted.

I was of course able to promote the ODUG before, during, and after the ONETUG meeting. In fact, I managed to recruit another ODUG member while there. I found someone that was just thinking about using DotNetNuke, and he said it was "a sign" that I was there. Awesome!

I always have my ODUG materials out there for people to pick up, and I try to wear my ODUG attire too. That night, I had my Open Force Connect - Orlando shirt on.

Joel Martinez was finally able to get started after a while. He did a great job. However, I didn't pay as much attention as I should have, since I had already seen much of what he spoke about during a previous presentation. I kept myself busy preparing an ODUG newsletter to send out.

Joel's demos were great. There were a great many times when he would show a little bit of AI or other features, and the entire room would go, "Ooooo...," or, "Ahhhhh..." For instance, there is a very easy way in XNA to put a 3D sky into your game, or manage lighting. It's friggin incredible!!!

Here are a couple of pictures of the meeting that I took while I tweeted...

Unfortunately, either Phodroid or Twidroid didn't rotate this picture. http://phodroid.com/gpgnmg
Here is Joel talking about XNA. Same problem with rotation. Hasn't happened before, or since. :( http://phodroid.com/82c9ew

Technorati Tags: DNN, DotNetNuke, DNN Blog, ONETUG, Orlando .Net Users Group, XNA , Community, Review

ONETUG Meeting Tomorrow Night - XNA Game Studio

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:43:00 GMT

ONETUG is the Orlando .Net Users Group. The next ONETUG meeting is tomorrow. They have their founder and Microsoft MVP, Joel Martinez speaking about XNA Game Studio. I cannot wait! Watching XNA demos are so much fun!

This is kind of a repeat session because the last time he spoke there weren't many people to show up. It was during the night before a hurricane hit Orlando last year. I am sure that we won't have the same problem this time.

I also have it on good authority that there will be PLENTY of giveaways for those that attend.

Hopefully, we'll see you at the meeting tomorrow night.

Orlando City Hall @ 7 PM (Show up early to network and eat pizza)

Technorati Tags: ONETUG, Orlando .Net Users Group, XNA, Community, Events

Things Geeks Want - Adventure Toys

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Geeks are not hard to please, just give us a couple of toys. Here are a couple of toys from the Wish Wish List.

Dolphin Boat - a boat that allows you to skim across the water like its namesake
Air Scooter - a small helicopter-like vehicle for personal flight
Icon A5 - the best of both worlds... A personal flight and water craft!

What's your favorite wish wish list toy?

Technorati Tags: Shopping, Gift Ideas, Geek

Wrox P2P Forums for DotNetNuke Books

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:23:00 GMT

You may not know, but the folks at Wrox have just completed an upgrade of their forums, and there are areas on their specifically for their books. I was pleasantly surprised to find this out. While everyone is encouraged to contribute and use these forums, the authors of the books are encouraged to reply to threads and usually do.

To quote Jim Minatel, Wrox Editor, "The new forums add RSS feeds, digest email subscriptions, avatars, rating posts, thank-yous for posters, better spam prevention, better admin features, SEO friendly URLS, easy to use layout templates, and a bunch of other goodies."

Check out the DotNetNuke forums for Wrox books here:

http://p2p.wrox.com/dotnetnuke-439/

Technorati Tags: DNN,DotNetNuke, DNN Blog, Wrox, Community

First Impression of MSDN Developer Conference - Orlando

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:07:00 GMT

The MSDN Developer Conference (MDC) is a great event! Basically, it is the "best of" from the PDC that just passed.

The keynote today was given by Ron Jacobs, where he gave us some demos on Windows 7. He showed us how the services platform will work, shortcut keys and functions, the new taskbar, and tried to show us the new multi-touch functionality in the touchscreen. Unfortunately, that demo didn't work. :( It was intended to be a touchscreen version of Pong where two fingers creates the bar to bounce the ball on the screen.

The Micrsoft speakers are all wearing really nice black dress shirts with Microsoft branding. They all look, "kinda like ninjas," my fellow ODUG member said.

There was a TON of networking going on in the main common areas, with one of the breaks even hosting a "tweetup". This was a meeting of the various people who use Twitter at the event to have a face-to-face meeting. That was very fun. There was even code camp and user group planning going on for speakers, content, voluteers, etc.

The area user groups shared two tables in front of the Open Space room. ODUG of course had their banner out! :) Sorry, no pictures. I forgot my camera today...

One of the most popular features today was the lunch though. It must've been a 5-star buffet! There were plenty of items vegetarian-friendly, including a Heart of Palm salad. The chicken and fish were cooked perfectly, and were packed with flavor.

I am sitting at the user group tables during the last sessions right now. Unfortunately, I will not be attending yet another after-party. Tonight's excuse is really good though. The family and I are attending a sneak preview of The Day the Earth Stood Still. I have to rush across Orlando to make the premiere following the last session.

Great job hosting this, Microsoft! It was outstanding!

Technorati Tags: DNN,DotNetNuke ,DNN Blog ,ODUG ,Orlando DotNetNuke Users Group ,User Group ,Code Camp ,Community ,Events ,Microsoft ,MSDN

My RSS Address Has Changed, Now Using Feedburner

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:58:00 GMT

I updated the way that my blog is syndicated today. It now gets consumed through a different URL. I have begun using the Feedburner service. Yes, it is now owned by Google (the "G" word to some of you), but I didn't know that until after - I swear! :)

I first impression I have from it is incredible, due to how many services it offers you, for free! You have so many services to choose from that one might feel overwhelmed at first. As long as you read through the service descriptions, you'll be fine. I mostly wanted to make subscribing to my RSS feed easier for all visitors to do. Secondly, I wanted some feedback from the consumption of the RSS feed. Unfortunately, this is a feature not yet implemented into DotNetNuke®.

Implementing the Feedburner service turned out to be very easy! After going through their set-up, all I do is provide a link to their feed URL that is consuming my feed.

The new address is as follows: http://feeds.feedburner.com/willstrohl

If it's not too much trouble, I would appreciate it if you could take a moment to update your RSS readers with the new URL. If you don't want to, that's fine too, as it will continue to function going forward. But if you don't, I might have to frown in your general direction - when you're not looking, of course... :)

Technorati Tags: DNN,RSS

Holiday Gift Ideas for the Geeks You Know (ThinkGeek.com)

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:18:00 GMT

If you know anyone, chances are at least a couple of the people you know have some "geek" in them. That being said, there is a popular website out there that caters to the geek in us all, by selling some fun and funny products.

Here are a few that caught my eye that pretty much any (male) geek would love!

Crayola Executive Pen
http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/supplies/8ed0/

Office Space - Cubicle Kit
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/8e6c/
Office Space - Initech Employee Award ("no talent ass clown")
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/9244/
Office Space - Red Swingline Stapler
http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/supplies/61b7/

Ninja Electronics Duster
http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/supplies/7076/

Stickman Action Figure (I just won one through Community Credit)
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/collectibles/a7f9/

Santa Vader Bobble Head
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/collectibles/a8c6/

There a lot more items that are gift-worthy, but I cannot sit here and list them all. If in doubt, any of the shirts are a favorite for any geek! :)

Technorati Tags: Shopping ,Gift Ideas ,Geek

I'll Be At MDC Orlando on Thursday, Will You?

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:58:00 GMT

From what I heard PDC was really great. There was a lot of great blog posts and general buzz around how great it was. To follow, MDC was announced, which is rumored to be the "Best of" from PDC. MDC stands for the MSDN Developer Converence.

There will be plenty of great speaker there presenting all kinds of cool things from .Net Framework version 4.0, to Silverlight, to Visual Studio 2010, and much more. I am especially excited about hearing the ASP.Net and jQuery talk from Joe Healy, Christopher Bennage, and Rob Eisenberg.

The admission for MDC is a paltry $99, and you are sure to get much more than $99-worth out of it. There will also be plenty of vendors there, no doubtedly with giveaways, as well as the local user groups - including the ODUG!

http://www.msdndevcon.com/Pages/Orlando.aspx

Register now! There is still time... You don't want to be the only kid in class without that newest thing-a-ma-jig that they are giving to everyone that attends, do you?

Technorati Tags: ODUG ,Orlando DotNetNuke Users Group ,User Group ,Community ,Events ,Microsoft ,MSDN

I am Community Credit Winner Again

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:40:00 GMT

The one month that I really did log every single thing I did, I won first place on Community Credit. So it was not at all unexpected to get awarded that month - but I was surprised to see it be first place. However, this month was different. I won 9th place!

The reason that this was unexpected is only because I didn't full that I put any effort into it. In fact, I wasn't sure if many of my submissions made it into Community Credit. Apparently, they did!

I am the proud winner of the Stickman Action Figure. It looks REALLY cool! I cannot wait to get it!

Thank you so much to David Silverlight and everyone else that make Community Credit possible. We all appreciate it!

Community Credit Submission Made Easy

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:15:00 GMT

Today must've been Antonio Chagoury day, because all roads have led back to him. In preparation for tomorrow's ODUG meeting, I have been catching up on my DotNetNuke® blog reading and DNN news, and his blogs kept being at the end of the line for every path I took! That is certainly a testament to his impact on the community right now. Great work, Antonio!

Anyhow, one of the things that took up a bunch of my time tonight is a software program that he wrote for the Community Credit program. It is sometimes a pain to use the Community Credit website, as the postbacks occassionally hang, and there are a couple of bugs that I run into that annoy me.

The software that he wrote is called Community Credit Studio, and can be found on CodePlex. As of this evening, it only has 52 downloads, but I expect that to rise.

This desktop program basically emulates the web form, but without the nasty postback. Apparently, the original idea arose from David Silverlight, the Community Credit founder, asking Antonio to add the Community Credit submissions as a feature to the DNN Blog Module. Since Antonio is the Blog Module Project Team Lead, it was worth asking. However, the request came too late to make it into the current release.

I have been using the program pretty extensively tonight, in an attempt to make it back to recording my community involvement. I must say, that although there are no bells and whistles that I noticed, it does exactly what I expected it to do. It is missing some usability features, but works great!

If you participate in the Community Credit website, I would suggest trying the program out. Go ahead! Give it a test run!

Orlando MSDN Developer Conference Coming Up

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:49:00 GMT

If you missed PDC and you're in the Central Florida area, you have a chance to check out all of the content you missed last time around. It is the MSDN Developer Converence in Orlando on December 11.

Registration begins at 7:30AM and the keynote is at 8:30AM. I am told that the $99 registration fee will be more than validated with the giveaways.

http://www.msdndevcon.com/Pages/start.aspx

Funny Google Ad

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:15:00 GMT

I normally block out all ads on web sites. It is pretty much a habit it now. If you asked me if I have seen [online ad description here], chances are that I haven't. I just don't really care. I would imagine that most people do this, so the prices of online ads really confuses me. But that's not what this post is about.

Here is the ad I saw:

(Warning: If you click on the above screen shot of the ad, you pretty much answered the question.)

Google Amazes Me... Again!

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:07:00 GMT

You know, I should stop being surprised when Google does something else innovative. They are a prime example of raising the bar, over and over again. However, to be fair, many of their innovations have been bought...

The newest innovation I have come across was by the way of a Twitter comment by Scott Hanselman. Google has integrated web cam chat into their e-mail client!!!

I simply love the Google suite of applications, but above all the GMail application is top-notch. No one comes close. One disappointment that I am growing increasingly tired of waiting for though is for their desktop chat client to catch up to the web version in terms of features.

Call of Duty: World at War

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:46:00 GMT

Wow! I don't know exactly what I expected, but the newest Call of Duty is fantastic! I have it on XBox. The regular game play is great. I haven't played the Live mode yet, but multiplayer is highly improved!

This version of the game takes us back to the 1940's and the World Wars. Therefore, we are using some of the older weapons such as the M1 Garand. Instead of helicopters and air strikes like in the previous version, we now have artillery and dogs! The dogs will kick your butt!!!

My favorite part of the game has always been going head-to-head with others in multiplayer mode, and this time the game play is outstanding! The maps are larger, and more complex. No matter how good you are, it is easy for the lesser skilled player to catch up and even beat you! My son was lucky to get 5 kills on me in the last version, and he keeps me on my toes and even beats me in this one.

I guess the final thing to say so far is how impressed I am with the realism that this version brings. Up to this point in the game, we are playing a U.S. Marine, and being a former Marine myself, I can tell you that there is not only a great deal of realism in terms of injuries. But the interation between Marines is also very real. I glossed over it, but the blood is more pronounced, I saw limbs fly off, and the fog of war is really captivating.

Great job! If you like this kind of game, you better get it when you can!

Voting Day & Scott Hanselman Blog

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:51:00 GMT

Get Out and Vote!
No matter who you're voting for, it is of the highest importance that you make time today to get out to your voting precinct and let your voice be heard!

Tips for Preparing a Technical Presentation
Scott Hanselman has a recent blog entry where he speaks to the steps he takes to prepare for his presentations. I am more of a free-form, winging it kind of guy, and most times this works for me. However, I do not forego pre-work altogether and whenever I see good ideas like his, I snatch them up! :)

Google's Haunted House - SPOOKY!

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:12:00 GMT

We see these kinds of calculators out there every day. They allow you to enter or choose some values and they tell you how much money or carbon you will be saving should you change your habits. This is another on of those from Google. As usual, they make these kinds of things fun!

http://www.google.com/hauntedhouse08/

Orlando Developer Community Events

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:58:00 GMT

We have some great events coming up in the Central Florida developer community:

October 25 - SQL Saturday
November 10 - ADOGO Meeting
November 10 - OPASS Meeting
November 20 - ONETUG Meeting
November 20 - ODUG Meeting
December 6 - Tampa Code Camp
December 8 - ADOGO Meeting
December 10 - ODUG Meeting

CodeZone Hates Google Chrome!

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:13:00 GMT

I have begun trying to use Google Chrome as my default browser. This is mostly to be able to accurately determine the differences between it and the other mainstream web browsers.

One of the things I do at least once every other day is visit CodeZone.com. If you are active in any user group whose focus is on Microsoft technologies, chances are that you've been there.

Anyway, I went to the site using Google Chrome, and I was shown the following error:

(click for a larger image)

So it seems that CodeZone is discriminating against the Google web browser! Hehehe...

Google Chrome Misses the Mark

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:58:00 GMT

Google Chrome was released today. It is Google's new web browser. I have been using it most of the day and night since it was released. Overall, I must say that I like it a lot. It is based on the Apple Kit and FireFox, so the experience is appropriately similar to the experience of Safari (in speed) and FireFox (in rendering).

I have just a few gripes for this release:

I am used to and demand the ability of being able to granularly set my security settings. It you can in Chrome, it is not easily found.
The widely used and very popular fckEditor does not render.
Many of the styles in my stylesheets are overridden for some reason. I have seen this mostly in links so far.

Quote About Programming

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:00:00 GMT

One of the hundreds of things that I have feeding into my RSS reader is a feed for quotes. While many of them I simply dismiss as a waste of time, this one amused me:

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

I have not idea which Rick Cook was supposedly quoted as saying this, so here is who I think it is. :)

AOL, SPAM, and Will You Just Die Already?

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:00:00 GMT

You know, sending legitimate e-mail is becoming increasingly more difficult as spammers get more and more creative in finding ways around SPAM prevention techniques used by the larger e-mail providers. That being said, one of the sites I am associated with just became black-listed by AOL.

I already do not have a favorable opinion of AOL. They misrepresent the Internet to their customers. Most of the AOL customers I have met do not understand how I can connect to the Internet without the AOL software. Fortunately, this is changing for the better. As kids grow up and teach their close-minded parents about the Internet, eyes are opening, and AOL is losing its market share.

Anyhow, let's get back to the topic at hand...

Although the site I am talking about will eventually send out a large amount of e-mail, it isn't right now. So, according to the AOL white list guidelines, someone must have marked one of our e-mails as spam manually. This infuriates me since the only e-mails that are sent out so far have been as a response to either a reservation made by the visitor, or a response to them signing up on the site. We haven't even begun a newsletter marketing campaign yet.

[Homer's Voice] Stupid users!

Although none of this would be necessary if not for the spammers out there.

[Homer's Voice] Stupid spammers!

Well, now I have found myself jumping through hoops this morning to make sure that our server has the appropriate settings, and then filling out their form. Then, responding to their e-mail check. And I am finally at the point of crossing my fingers and waiting for them to approve or deny my white list request.

What I cannot stand about this is that I am sure I will have to do this again in the future, but for a different e-mail provider. When that happens, if they allow us to participate in a rebuttal process, who's to say that we will not have to make changes to our e-mail servers that will no longer keep the likes of AOL happy?!

On a closing note, I would like to mention a heartening article I read in a VERY good and environmentally conscience magazine called "Fast Company". The article I am mentioning walks us through all of the reasons that AOL should be closing its doors in the near future. It basically outlines all of the bad decisions that it has made in the past that has resulted in its current low levels of revenue. All I have to say about that is, "when are you going to just die already?!"

And I am done.

[Steps down from the soap box]

Feel free to gripe back about how stupid this post and my view point is...

Woo hoo! My new system...

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 12:00:00 GMT

My PC at home typically doubles as a file server. In PC years, my home work station was ancient. I should have replaced it a long time ago.

I just mentioned it being a file server. Well, wiith it being a file server on my home network, I naturally had permissions in place to keep prying eyes out of certain directories. For instance, the last thing I need is a curious family member to accidentally opening and changing a code file or Photoshop file.

Wouldn't you know it, I forgot to reset these permissions before removing and moving the hard drive for data extraction to the new machine (new, larger, and faster hard drive).

The file transfer didn't like me trying to move all of the files with deny entries in the ACL. I had to first try and use the SubInACL tool from Microsoft. However, I either couldn't find the right command line arguments, or it wasn't going to fix my problem.

Next, I tried an open source product from SourceForge, called SetACL. This worked like a charm. I found it on a forum while performing a Google Search to find a solution to my problem. After some reading through the online documentation, I was able to reset the permissions on all of the directories and files in the old hard drive.

Orlando Code Camp 2008

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Orlando Code Camp is certainly an event that I always look forward to, and that I would also point any SQL, Windows, or .Net developer to as well. There is always a wide range of topics that techies of many areas would appreciate and learn something in. With this being the 3rd Annual Orlando Code Camp, it just seems to get better and better.

In all honesty though, the venue this time was a bit small, but there is very little to be done about that since the venues are typically donated, and each room needs to meet certain technical requirements in order to allow a speaker to present. That aside, this was another huge success!

My main passion in the techie world is DotNetNuke®. The first year of Orlando Code Camp, there was an entire track dedicated to DotNetNuke®. I was ecstatic and enjoyed the entire day in a single room. The second year (last year) though, there was only a single session on DotNetNuke®. I was afraid that this might happen again, so I immediately volunteered myself for two sessions. One session being about skinning, and the other for using SubSonic in module development.

Not too long after I signed up as a speaker, DNNSpired.com generously invited and sponsored one of the DotNetNuke® Core Team Members, and the Vice President of Core Technology and Co-Founder, Joe Brinkman. Having Joe accept and speak at Code Camp was an awesome experience. Unfortunately, some personal committments kept me from hanging out with him during the pre-party and after-party, but it was otherwise very cool.

His session was about using PowerShell to automate and test certain things in DNN. However, a technical glitch forced him to abandon that and speak more about the upcoming Cambrian release than he probably intended. Well, with there being several MVP's and DNN enthusiats in the room, his session was bound to run over into mine, and it did. I didn't at all mind. There was no telling when else we would be fortunate enough to have him speak to us, and get the kind of inside knowledge that he offered.

The first DNN session was about the best resources to learn how to use and develop in DotNetNuke®, presented by Brian Scarbeau. Mike Web from DNNSpired.com, and myself assisted him (not that he needed it). He invited us to speak to what helped us learn for a minute or two each.

Stan Schultes was next to present. His topic was on the installation, upgrade, and management of DotNetNuke®. Unfortunately, Stan has some little imps that follow him around to all of his speaking engagements. They love to cause him grief during his presentations to make things break. It happened to him again, and after switching out from one of the attendees laptops to another speaker's laptop, he was finally able to present on his topic, but unfortunately, it was much more truncated than it should have been due to the technical problems earlier. Sorry Stan.

For those of you who haven't seen one of Stan's complete presentations, I can assure you that it is top notch! :)

The next session was on securing data connection strings as presented by Darrell Hardy. HIs presentation was great and reminded us of a couple key things. First, security is not the same as encryption. Second, hello?... Encrypt your connection strings and connection string section. He demonstrated the relatively unknown way to encrypt the connection string via command line and the aspnet_regiis assembly, then how to do it in ASPNet 2.0 in codebehind. For those of you that missed it, he had some great eye-opening things to say. Too bad you missed it!

Ryan Morgan had the pleasure of presenting just before lunch, and he took us through part 2 of his module development topic. Part 1 is freely available on his web site ArrowNuke.com, and was presented at the first Orlando Code Camp. There were quite a few things that I learned there, not the least of which were the short-cut keys to reformat a single-line XML file. (For those of you as interested as I am, it is the following series of key strokes: Alt+A, Alt+K, Alt+F. He also covered Scheduler creation, management and troubleshooting - which was great.

** AT LUNCH ** Mmmm... Lunch was provided by Publix and was YUMMY!

Joe Brinkman was up to bat after lunch, but I already went through his presentation, so I will move on to mine. But first, I would like to say, "Thank you, Joe. You may not know, but your presence at Code Camp was very appreciated and extremely informative."

My session about using SubSonic in module development was next, and although I think it was a disaster, I got quite a few compliments on it. The only reason I feel that it was a disaster was because I only had a short amount of time to work on it and I had planned on a full session time block. I was battling internally with what to pull out of the session, and what to leave in throughout the presentation. Regardless, I wouldn't have had it any other way since the loss of time was due to picking the brain of Joe Brinkman. ;)

The final session was by Tracey Wittenkeller from T-Worx.com, and it was about skinning DotNetNuke®. He always does a great job of breaking down the skin process into palattable chunks. His presentation two years ago is what led me to begin generating skins. This one was similar, but more informative and better organized.

In my opinion, all of the DNN presenters were exceptional and it was a great day for the DotNetNuke® community in Orlando, Florida. Thank you so much for all of your efforts and contributions to the DNN community and the .Net community in general.

Don't forget to join the Orlando DotNetNuke® Users Group!

HOW TO: Use Localhost With an Actual Domain Name

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:00:00 GMT

First of all, you will need to be running Windows and have your system configured to have and run IIS. After that, the rest is cake... The first thing we need to do is determine what URL you want to use. In our example here, I will choose to use "www.anywhere.com"

Go into IIS, and enter the properties for your site. Unless you are running a server instance of Windows, you will only have a single site. Right click on it to get to the site properties.

In the "Web Site" tab, click the "Advanced" button.

Click the "Add" button to add an identity to the site. Enter the port as number 80, and then enter the URL into the "Host Header Name" field. (Please note that you might want to repeat this step if you intend on not using the "www." in the URL.)

Click OK to exit out of all of the dialogs and to save your changes.

Go into your system32 directory. This is either found in the WINDOWS or WINNT directory on your hard drive. Either way, continue to the following directory.

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\
C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\

Within this directory, there is a file named "hosts". Make a copy of this file to use as a backup in case you mess something up somehow.

Now, open up the hosts file using NotePad. Add the following lines of text to the file and save your changes.

127.0.0.1 anywhere.com  # localhost alias
127.0.0.1 www.anywhere.com # localhost alias

That's it! Your site should already be responding to requests made to the anywhere.com domain. On small occasions, you may have to restart IIS, or clear your local DNS cache. Otherwise, your site is ready to use the domain name locally.

Orlando .Net Users Group

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Woo hoo! The very first Orlando DotNetNuke Users Group is about to occur. I cannot wait! I have high hopes for this users group. Especially due to the great examples of other user groups in the area.

It is set to be on February 2nd, 2008. For more information, visit our web site at:

http://sws.lhps.org/dnnorlando

Single XML Schema Element with a Single Attribute

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 16:46:01 GMT

First of all, happy holidays to everyone that celebrates something this time of year. :) I have been hand-coding quite a few XML schema files (XSD) recently. Writing it is easy enough, but I just ran into what seemed like a very thing to write - that is until I actually begun to write it.

I wanted to define a single XML element that has a value, and a single attribute. It would look like this:

<myElement myAttribute="textvalue">123.45</myElement>

Well, my first instinct was to write it like this:

<xs:element name="myElement" type="xs:decimal" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1">
    <xs:attribute name="myAttribute" type="xs:string" use="required" />
</xs:element>

However, with Visual Studio being the trusty side kick that it is, it quickly let me know that my code was invalid. D'oh!

I then begun toying with a few variations of it, and then even quickly looked through the W3School Schema Reference, before turning to a forum.

Right after I made that post, a light bulb suddenly lit up in my head. I know how to show myself how to do this!

Visual Studio has a really cool tool that is built in that will write schema definitions for you. I don't usually use it though, because it does not write the schema in an extensible way. However, in this very situation, the tool was a life saver. I simply created an XML document with the element structure I wanted. Then, I selected the "Create Schema" option from the XML menu (only available when viewing the XML document).

Whalla!! The schema was created and opened right before me eyes!

Here is how to define the XML from above:

<xs:element name="myElement">
    <xs:complexType>
        <xs:simpleContent>
            <xs:extension base="xs:decimal">
                <xs:attribute name="myAttribute" type="xs:string" use="required" />
            </xs:extension>
        </xs:simpleContent>
    </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

DotNetKicks - Funny Error

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:11:48 GMT

Hahaha... Sorry, it is still quite amusing to me. I just finished scanning a really good article on the strengths and weaknesses of the Web Form model. I liked it so much that I wanted to "kick" the author through DotNetKicks, and I received this error... (Click the thumbnail to see a larger view of the screenshot.)

Argh!!! Internet Explorer 7 is the DEVIL!!!

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:20:10 GMT

Can you picture Kathy Bates' character in 'The Waterboy' saying, "Look out, Bobby Boucher... Internet Explorer 7 is THE DEVIL!" I certainly can...

I wrote before about how I have (mostly) switched to Internet Explorer because it has been rendering web pages faster than my other favorite browser, Firefox. Well, that was written from the perspective of an end-user. As a typical visitor and user of web sites, that is fine and dandy...

NOW... Here it is from the perspective of a web developer or programmer... INTERNET EXPLORER IS HORRIBLE!

In the good ol' days when we only had to worry about Firefox 1, Internet Explorer 6, and version 5, cross-browser compatibility was relatively easy. The only hard part was getting things to work the first time. Then, you knew what to do with each and every project.

This has become something more of a monster with the inclusion of Internet Explorer 7. Why can't Microsoft just do what they are SUPPOSED to do? Just build the friggin' web browser around the W3c standards?!! Why can't all web browsers do that more?

This is ridiculous that I have to spend 3 or more days on a project that should already be completed - just because Microsoft's own software does not create code that is properly rendered across all of the browsers, and their browser is the worst at the actual rendering of the pages... Argh!!!

This browser is going to take 5-10 years off of my life span - EASILY!

Okay... I am done venting. Carry on...

Google is Creating a Phone

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 23:05:44 GMT

There has been rumors for some time now that Google has been patiently developing plans to release a cell phone to the market. Well, it appears that this is true.

However, it appears that this one will have more applications and a better value...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20070802/tc_infoworld/90691

Visual Studio Error: Unable to write to output file...

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 07:00:00 GMT

If your Visual Studio crashes as much as mine does, you have invariably ran into an error stating "Unable to write to output file [filepathandname]: Unspecified error". At first, this error really ticked me off, as it left me with no path to troubleshoot and/or correct the error.

The problem?

Now let me digress to the behavior that occurred just prior to the error... Although I am running on a relatively clean install of Windows XP (not upgrading to Vista anytime in the near future), and Visual Studio 2005, i have many instances where Visual Studio 2005 will freeze for seemingly no reason. Sometimes, whatever is holding it up will clear out and I can get back to work. Other times, I have to force it to close through Task Manager.

Just before this error occurs, Visual Studio would have frozen and closed either due to it capturing an error, or because I had no choice but to close it. When I reopen it and attempt to build a project or solution, it will sometimes return this error.

Unable to write to output file [FILENAME]: Unspecified error

If you attempt to rebuild instead of build, it will do nothing. You can close and reopen the program... No dice. Since it kind of sounds like a permissions error, you could check the permissions throughout your system. It won't help. You can do the unthinkable and reboot your machine and this error will not go away.

The cause?

So... What caused it? Why is this happening to me (you)?

This problem is there due to Visual Studio not being able to resolve the location of a file that is supposed to be in your project. Either the folder name or file name changed and Visual Studio cannot find it.

This happens to me most often when the freeze occurs while I am moving or renaming files in my project (folders too).

The solution?

First, make sure that your project is allowing you to see files that are not "included" in your project.

Second, look through your folders and find any files with an exclamation point before the filename. Fix the missing or renamed file problem. Normally this involves restoring the previous file name or moving files back into the old directory. Try rebuilding and you should be fine!

Safari: It's Still for Jungles Only UPDATE 2

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 05:00:00 GMT

I forgot to mention yet another tid-bit about this Safari release...

When you choose to install the Bonjour part of the package, the Bonjour module makes calls out to the Internet repeatedly throughout the day. This happens even when Safari has never been opened!

I don't know about the rest of you, but I never trust a dormant program that makes calls out to the Internet - REGARDLESS to who developed the program. And the calling executable is conveniently named "mDNSResponder.exe". That sounds 100% safe, doesn't it? The bright side is at least it isn't named something more malicious sounding like, "SteveJobsIsWatchingYouRightNow.exe".

Can you guess what I have recently uninstalled??? :)

Safari: It's Still for Jungles Only UPDATE

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 07:00:00 GMT

I just wanted to hit on a very good point when it comes to the Safari web browser... SPEED.

It was noticed by a friend that the Safari web browser was faster than IE or Firefox. I tend to agree with that assertion so far. And this is a serious consideration when choosing a web browser since each second on the Internet can easily be equated by the average web surfer as a minute or more. Afterall, I have just recently switched back to IE for the same reason...

However, when you consider everything that the Safari web browser is NOT doing when rendering the page (CSS, HTML, XHTML, JavaScript, etc.), it seems to be pretty clear as to why this browser is faster. It is not rendering everything up to W3C standards. That shortcut alone could easily account for the increase in speed - especially if you mix in the fact that this is all done client-side and is therefore dependant on our own PC's.

Safari: It's Still for Jungles Only

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 05:00:00 GMT

A friend and colleague just sent me a link to the download page for the Safari web browser. I was instantly impressed that Apple is attempting to make their web browser a serious player in the Internet world by making it a cross-platform player, but I am equally not impressed with this release.

First of all, it is tiring, frustrating, and absolutely obsurd that people like me have to program for multiple web browsers on a single codebase. Safari is just continuing to make this job all the more frustrating.

Being a fan of the folks at Apple, I absolutely LOVE their products, omitting this black sheep in the family we all call "Safari" (as long we are not cursing at it). While I am a fan, I know many people who use Macs daily either for personal or professional tasks, I cannot for the life of me think of any one of them that uses Safari. All of them use Firefox.

While this Internet browser war continues to rage on, I have very unfortunate news for Firefox. There is one thing that more important to me than anything when I consider a web browser. While additional features are a very close second, I have switched back to Internet Explorer (read: Exploder) for my web surfing needs. This is due to one unmistakeable and unbeatable fact: of the two current versions of these browsers, Internet Explorer is simply faster at rendering the page.

I am sure there is a tradeoff there that I am not aware of, for instance, perhaps Firefox's delay is due to a much welcomed security check during the rendering process, but only a web browser hound who compares their code and reviews them daily would know such a thing.

Psst... Mozilla, if this is the case, you either need to speed it up, or let the greater public know!

As an IT professional, although I HATE the fact that I need to consider multiple web page renderers, at least the major players (not Safari) all look similar. Apple's Safari department needs to pay attention to the public as much at their iPod department does!

Now, this is definitely not a comprehensive review of any of the products. In invite you to make your own judgements and choose the one that best fits your needs. I didn't delve as far as comparing the additional features, responsiveness and functionality of the RSS readers, or anything else. Listen to this web browser manufacturers!!! If I cannot get past your rendering problem, then forget it! I have dropped you from the radar.

Speaking of the browser "radar"... Where is Opera in all of this? They are certainly ahead of Safari, I can tell you that. They even have a mobile version of their browser for handheld users. Take that, Firefox! Let's get a move on people!!!

That's it from the depths of nothingness... Back to work for me!

VISTA is not quite the "view" we are looking for...

Tue, 29 May 2007 05:00:00 GMT

With the marketing giant, Microsoft, you cannot deny that Vista is the best operation system, ever. Right? Hmmm...

I beg to differ... I am not trying to beat a dead horse, but Vista has been long anticipated and there have been great expectations. However, Vista is nothing different than watching the funniest movie trailer ever, only to go see the movie and realize that you have already seen all the best parts.

Let me just clear something up though. I certainly do make my living on Microsoft products. I program using their software suite, operating system and so on. If not for Microsoft, I am not sure what I would be doing right now. However, I cannot at any time agree with their assertion that they are innovators, or with their decision to release Vista as is.

Vista is simply XP on steriods, but after over-doing it and now it has saggy boobs that weren't there before and it is currently suffering from erectile dysfunction. After 5 years, I am greatly disappointed. There are no "must have" features, yet PC makers, and distributors are being forced to force us to buy it. There is currently nothing wrong with WIndows XP that we haven't already handled and/or are used to. Why pay the money to switch???

Like the XP launch, you are going to be forced to deal with programs and drivers that don't work, a bloated codebase (how did that happen?), forced hardware upgrades, and more. Even worse, nearly all of the software vendors are behind in releasing patches, and drivers to ease your pain.

I strongly urge you all to send a message to Microsoft... DO NOT buy Vista right now. Stand up and demand Windows XP (or your other favorite alternative operating system). We are already stuck with a President who put us in a pickle, do not put yourself in one too. :)

Here is my suggestion... Move to linux and run an emulator or dual boot into Windows only when you need to. Then you don't have to worry about it at all. Maximum PC has an EXCELLENT article on this, here. However, Microsoft has just recently taken aim at Ubuntu and the Linux community in general. This is some sort of patent infringements, but they will not tell anyone what those actual infringements are... Typical...

Remember...

http://www.maximumpc.com/linux

Jammin!, Google, and Good Deed

Wed, 16 May 2007 05:00:00 GMT

I thought while I was jammin' out, listening to some Miles Davis that I should post an update...

On Work...

Work is going well. I still cannot tell anyone anything yet. :( Sorry.

On Google...

I just came across a pretty cool web page that puts what appears to be all of Google's searches onto one page. There is nothing fancy about it, but I thought it was interesting

http://lloydi.com/blog/simplygoogleoriginal.htm

On Good Deed...

I may have very well been duped, but I feel good about what I believe was a good deed yesterday. I was behind a couple at a toll booth and they obviously didn't have any money. Since I couldn't control the situation at all, I didn't get upset like most people I see at a toll booth. I just waited a few moments.

The gentleman driving was furiously looking through the front and back seats and finally jumped out of the car and politely told me his situation and asked if I could spare 50 cents to help him get to the airport.

Since 50 cents really isn't much money and it could only help the situation, I agreed. Well, between that booth and the airport there were 3 more toll booths. Luckily for them 2 of them were on my way and I ended up behind them at both of them. I paid most of their way. They were thanking me multiple times at each booth.

Even if it was some sort of way for them to con someone like me out of a buck or two on a toll road, it feels good to just assume that I did the right thing to "pay it forward" and do something for someone that they couldn't do for themselves.

Internet Explorer <LI> rendering problem

Mon, 07 May 2007 07:00:00 GMT

If you are looking at this post, you are probably already aware of the issues that Internet Explorer (read: EXPLODER) forces developers to deal with when using the <LI> HTML tag to do certain things. Most all of the dynamic menu systems use this tag, so Internet Explorer is placing a huge hurdle in front of us.

It is well documented and well known that Internet Explorer refuses to recognize the closing tag of the <LI> element. Instead, Internet Explorer decides to continue to treat it as if the tag was never closed (past behavior from when the tag was never closed).

If you are using a dynamic menu or listing such as those offered by the likes of SolPart or telerik, you are probably well aware of this problem. This is especially likely if you have tried any modifications to the rendering or skinning of those controls.

Countless forums threads and blogs suggest adding some CSS to clear up this issue. For example:

<li style="display: inline;">

This did nothing to help me. I saw absolutely no change in the rendering of the page using this approach.

The only thing that cleared this up for me was to add the following CSS to my stylesheet:

li{
_width: 1px;
}

What this does is tell Internet Explorer to resize the <LI> element to be 1 pixel wide. However, when anything is in the <LI> element, it will automatically resize to the expected width. All other browsers ignore the width attribute because of the underscore preceding the width keyword.

Whoa! Free Image editing program!!! (Paint.Net)

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Now, I am sure that this post will generate some comments (sent or not) about GIMP. I have not used GIMP because at home I have a full version of Photoshop CS. However, at work right now I do not have any image editing abilities other than what the standard "Paint" application and Microsoft Office offer. Nearly everyone knows that those options are horrible. I tried installing GIMP some weeks ago, but the install conflicted with a GAIM/Jabber (now called Pidgin - that story is yet another reason to HATE AOL) installation I have and I really do not want to mess with that.

I then began searching the web for a "free image editing program". While I cam up with some very interesting and sometimes x-rated results, I found nothing but links and references to GIMP. This is indeed a testament to the user-base of that particular program. I eventually gave up the search.

Just today, a co-worker mentioned another program that I did not find in the previous searches. This program is called "Paint.Net". I just downloaded and installed version 3.05. I must say that although I have not used it to perform any major image enhancements, creations, or alterations, this program has been immediately impressive. I am sure that since I am a Photoshop user, I will soon become disappointed, but I do not plan on needing to perform any major image editing tasks at work anyhow.

Here are my initial impressions:

Easy to use (MAJOR benefit)
Incorporates some Photoshop short-cuts [place video of Borat saying "That's nice!" here]

So... For the rest of you who are looking for something basic to perform image enhancements, this may be a good place to look before dropping $100 or more on Photoshop Elements.

Interesting Social Networking Web Site

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 05:00:00 GMT

I know this isn't new, but I just recently paid some attention to the LinkedIn social networking site. I found it to be a very interesting and creative spin on using the social networking power found on the Internet to connect co-workers and former co-workers. Not only that, it contains features to help each other advance themselves professionally. I have only been a member for about a week, but my first impression of this web site is very positive.

One immediate frustration I have experienced was when I first began searching for co-workers from a previous employer. Being a programmer and having created my own search services, I wrongly assumed that I could search using all lowercase letters. While the search did indeed work, the site saved this search using the lowercase letters. If there is a way to edit the job title and employer name, it is not easily found. Now, I look incredibly unprofessional on a professional networking web site. Ugh!!!

In case you are interesting, my LinkedIn profile is here.

Net Neutrality

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 05:00:00 GMT

I found a good blog post on Net Neutrality today. However, the video it incorporates is even better. This video is a MUST SEE for anyone who likes the Internet even a little bit!

Orlando .Net CodeCamp by ONETUG

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 05:00:00 GMT

The 2nd annual Orlando .Net CodeCamp event completed yesterday as an overall success. I thought it was once again very ell put together and managed. Thank you to the members of ONETUG and especially Shawn Weisfeld, Jessica Sterner, and Ken Tucker. You are all very valuable to the local .Net developer community. Also, a huge thank you goes to Seminole Community College for letting us use their facilities for this important event. We couldn't have had this without you.

Highlight of the event: I brought in children's books for extra raffle tickets and won 4 times. I ended up bringing home 3 nice books and a thermos mug for my hot tea. I guess this makes up for the thousands of raffles that I participated in and didn't win... :)

Low of the event: I locked my keys in my truck and missed some of Shawn's opening comments. :(

"FrontPage Killer"

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:00:00 GMT

You can easily tell from a simple search on Google (or your favorite search engine) that the term "FrontPage killer" gets used a lot in reference to many different web site creation programs. This terms has been used by supporters of products like Macromedia (whooops! Adobe) Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, and so on.

In my most recent search using this term, I came across a free application called NVU (pronounced "n-view" and stands for "new view"). Although I have not used this application yet, it has been touted by many bloggers as the standard "FrontPage killer". (Just from reviewing their web site, it appeared to be pretty exciting.)

However, I must confess that the first time I heard the term "FrontPage killer", it was by a Microsoft Employee in reference to an upcoming replacement for Microsoft FrontPage. (However, it was made clear that they were not allowed to really call it that.)

When I was getting a new download of MS SQL Server Books Online today, I noticed an ad on the MS web site for something called "Microsoft Expression Web". This immediately raised a red flag with me, reminding me of the statement above. So, I clicked on it like a drone and saw the supposed "FrontPage killer". Here is a link to it. Let me know how you like/dislike it.

http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/expression-web/default.mspx

2nd Annual .Net CodeCamp

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 06:00:00 GMT

This is the second time they are putting on this FREE event. Last year was great!!! There were freebies for everyone (tech books, shirts, and more), including lunch. It appears that lunch is probably paid for again, but they make no mention of the other freebies this time. Last year it was held at UCF, but they moved it to SCC this year. If you are at all interested in .Net, this is a great event for learning, sharing, and networking.

Orlando .Net Codecamp
http://www.orlandocodecamp.com/

Their Flyer
http://www.orlandocodecamp.com/images/codecampflyer.pdf

Location:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=100+Weldon+Blvd+32773&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=38.22949,71.015625&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=28.744709,-81.30548&spn=0.010347,0.024376&om=1&iwloc=addr

Interesting! Google Trends... What EXACTLY is it telling us?

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 06:00:00 GMT

I found out about Google Trends some time ago and I briefly played with its features, but I had forgotten about it until today when I read about it again in my current issue of Maximum PC. In reading it, I finally thought of a good reason for me to use it.

If you don't already know, Google Trends allows you to see near real-time search term popularity and compare search terms.

If you do not already know, I am a DotNetNuke Portal supporter. I use it for nearly all web projects that I have. I won't go into why right now. That could be for another posting. However, I did want to try and judge the popularity of the DotNetNuke project compared to other popular portals. I used Google Trends to test this out. See the results below.

Portal Search Popularity in the United States

Portal Search Popularity in the World

I expected the PHP portal results to be at least somewhat high. This was not surprising at all. However, I am no longer as savvy on the most popular PHP portals right now. Performing a search, I found quote a few out there. I at first also included Xoops, but its results were quote low. You may have better luck if you know of other PHP portals that are more popular.

The trend results were very interesting and somewhat concerning for me. I cannot believe how much more SharePoint and Websphere are searched for on Google. Especially when you consider the different in costs! One could speculate on this "trend" in many different ways, but I will allow you to draw your own conclusion.

Google Trends Update

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 06:00:00 GMT

I found a couple more of the more popular portal web sites (CMS), and I found using Google Trends that DotNetNuke is still at the bottom of the "trends" shown on Google. Hmmm... I then took DotNetNuke out of the trend and here are the results.

Google Trend Results for Popular Portals World-Wide

If this is data that we can rely on, then this shows some interesting "trends". :)

What will continue to baffle me for some time is the fact that so many people are intent on spending money on a CMS like Websphere or SharePoint when there are low or no cost solutions out there that are just as good or better (with a few exceptions, such as MS Office integration).

Update... and Code Camp

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 05:00:00 GMT

Well, it has been (once again) a while since I last posted. A bunch of cool things have happened. My new job is going well, I got my truck fixed and repainted (photos to come soon), and I have been working (which is playing to me) hard.

I really wanted to post about an event I attended somewhat recently called .Net Code Camp. It was held at the UCF Campus in Orlando, Florida and it ran several tracks simultaneously to center in on whatever subject you wanted to learn more about and network with others on. I have no idea how detailed the Code Camp would be until I got there. I failed to check the information posted on their web site.

In order to appropriately highlight what I got out of this event, I should tell you a bit more about myself...

Several years ago I was tasked with providing a new web site for the companys intranet. The previous one I had been simply updating with new content. It was similar to most things you find on the internet where someone says "I can build a web site" and the end result is something static with a single column of links and animated GIFs. In this case I was lucky and the previous people to edit the site actually knew a bit about HTML, so there was some organization to it. However, no time or design effort was given to add any scalability or flexibility to the site in the UI or the back-end programming (yes, there was some ASP done).

In planning to replace the site with something that more correctly addressed the needs of the company, I came across the common idea that this company needed a portal. Answers.com has definitions for what a portal is, so I won't bore you with it.

I searched online for a while with my favorite tool, Google. :) After some research, I kept hitting on something called IBuySpy Portal. Within some of my freebies from previous events I had been to and magazines I had subscribed to, I remembered that I disk I was given or sent had this term on it. I proceeded to and found that they had some resources to support it. There was a download and information section and a forum with plenty of users who were using and extending it. This inspired me to do the same, so several months later the new intranet web site was released to the company and it was received with open arms. I was even rewarded with our annual IT award for the web site.

If you don't already know, the IBuySpy Portal was a great start for any portal web site, but it was also very incomplete. I had to write my own Active Directory back-end for it. I also created a built-in page creation mechanism. There was so much more done to it. Also, with the different needs of various departments, I had the need to create sub-portals to account for larger amounts of information and varying needs for the way users logged in. This is only a few of the many upgrades it received. It became nearly unrecognizable, except for the fact that I didn't change the build name.

I found out about 6 months later that right after I had committed myself to this project another portal was released as an open source solution using the very same .Net language I was using. It is called DotNetNuke. This new portal offered all of the things that I had built, and much more.

About 3 or more years of maintaining that site and then moving on to a new company, DotNetNuke has become a monster compared to what it once was. So, while this new employer wants a portal solution, I now have a chance to use DotNetNuke to provide a base for the intranet and internet web site for this employer. Right out of the box, I have already save myself MONTHS of development and debugging time. I can deploy this solution and simply write new DotNetNuke modules to plug right in to the current portal. I do not have to worry about security, it is already taken care of for me. I simply use the built-in features to handle this for me.

While I have already been debugging and testing DotNetNuke in this new environment and I have not yet made it live, this .Net Code Camp came up. I wanted to go for pretty much the same reasons that everyone else does. I wanted to learn things that other people have been able to learn from their projects that have differed from mine, and I also wanted to network with others who are more experienced than I am.

To my great surprise there were several different tracks available which focused on various topics. However, the one at the very end of the list caught my eye. It said DotNetNuke!!! I was ecstatic. I immediately committed myself to sit in that one room all day long. I wanted to soak up everything that these other people have learned to give myself a head-start on my newest journey.

The track was great. I learned a lot of things. The speakers and attendees all were from varying backgrounds and had different focuses with DotNetNuke itself. As you would expect, the track began with an introduction to DotNetNuke, and ended with some more complicated stuff, only to be followed by a question and answer session. It was highly useful. It was a dream come true, so to speak.

Also, the organizers, Orlando Dot Net Users Group, did an excellent job of getting speakers and freebies there. Not only was the event completely free, but they even threw in a free lunch and a semi-free event to follow at a local bar & grill. From what they said the speakers were not paid to be there, but they also brought their own freebies and made it a point to be there and let us pick their brains. It was a brilliant success. Many of the speakers I have seen before at expensive and free Microsoft Events as well.

To sum up all of my babbling above, if you run across a .Net Boot Camp in your area GO TO IT!!! It may not be as good as the one I went to, but it is definitely worth your time. Thank you to all of the organizers and speakers who attended! Thank you so much!

Now, I just want to give a plug to a few of the speakers that I had the pleasure of listening to and learning from (not that they need it). Thank you all for your time and sharing your experience! If you have time, visit these folks:

Ryan Morgan - http://www.arrowdesigns.com/
Tracy Wittenkeller - http://www.t-worx.com/
Stan Shultes - http://www.vbnetexpert.com/

Holy Web Site, Google-Man!

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 06:00:00 GMT

Many people in the internet world already know about it, but Google has recently launched Google Pages. This is a very useful tool for those that either do not know how to build a web site, or choose not to use a web site editor for whatever reason. It is EXTREMELY easy to use, but it requires that you have an account with Google. For some, this will obviously add to the many privacy conspiracies surrounding Google's "data harvesting" on individuals.