Geekswithblogs.net

This weekend I'm heading to Kansas City for the first time. Why? I'm speaking at KCDODN (aka Kansas City Day of .Net) (Un)fortunately the event registration is full, but I hear there is a waiting list available. To see the schedule, and get on the wait list(?), you can visit http://kcdodn.eventbrite.com/ I'm pretty stoked about it. This is my first Day of .NET talk. I've spoken at User Groups, Code Camps, the MVP Summit, CodeStock, Codeapalooza and even a couple of HDCs, but no "Day Of" yet. It's ...

Steve Ballmer raised the Search Challenge to MVPs at 2008 Summit, with the words, “I’m going to ask you one week switch your default, one week. At the end of the week…I’ll want feedback, how was your week, what happened, what did you like, what didn’t you like … Can I make that deal with you? (Cheers and applause.) That’s the deal.” I was there, I agreed, so here goes... I'm giving up Google and going to use Live Search for one week. For one week I have the opportunity to provide feedback every time ...

 

There are several possibilities, however one of the most common reasons is the combination of Internet Explorer version 7 and the Google Desktop/Toolbar. For some reason, the plugin does not seem to be compatible. Try removing the Google Desktop and/or Toolar.

 

In a previous post, I discussed how to identify the technologies you want to learn and come up with a personal learning road map, so to speak. But when it comes time to dive into one specific technology, how do you go about learning something new? In fact, I almost always ask that question during developer interviews. The most disappointing answer I get to that question is, "well, I will Google it and read articles about it." That doesn't really show a very deep level of enthusiasm or commitment. ...

If you haven't seen Google analytics before, you ought to know this: it rocks. You'll get great reports on everything from geographic location to browser to flash version (Why no Silverlight version, eh Google?) See example awesomeness here: Obviously I've only recently set this up. However, since it is up and running and working great, I figured I'd show you how to get yours up and running as well. Firstly, sign up for Google Analytics. Then afterwards, Google will provide a script to monitor the ...

I got hit with an interesting and troubling problem at work today. I won't go into specifics, other than to say it was an ASP.NET problem I hadn't encountered before and I was stuck. So I thought about it and pinged one of my twitter friends who happened to be an ASP.NET guru (and insider) and she thought about it for all of about 4 seconds and said, oh yeah... I hate that, here's a link. And wouldn't you know it, the link was to a blog right here on GeeksWithBlogs.NET. The blog entry totally solved ...

I'll admit it. At first I didn't get it. Microsoft's cloud computer platform Azure levels the playing field in an incredible way. Think about it: You have a great idea for a company but getting it it up and running is going to require a huge financial investment in server hardware to get the thing to a reasonable scale. You can't afford that, so maybe you try to get venture capital (how's that going to work out in this economy?) With Azure you can build your app and deploy it on Microsoft's infrastructure. ...

One of the timeless articles among the lists of "must reads" for programmers, The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Steven Raymond, was written to expose how the open source community can succeed. The article exposed commercial software construction as an unyielding entity that is structured and secretive, where only those closely involved understood the inner workings. Similarly, open source was associated with the bazaar, as a thriving community where everyone is involved, and the internal structure ...

I saw "big" news today that Google released a search app for the iPhone that lets a user search using their voice as input. Wow - I'm impressed. That's pretty groundbreaking. Those of us using Windows Mobile Live Search have had this feature for some time...sorry Google/iPhone zealots! FWIW, I'm not really bashing Google - they do their core function (search) very well. I just don't get all the swooning over Google/iPhone ...

If Babel Fish hasn't let me down, that title should read, "Welcome, honored visitors from China!" But if it doesn't, I couldn't tell you. (UPDATE: John Workman and a Chinese friend have provided a better translation. Thanks!) Ever since I added Google Analytics stats to the Ulterior Motive Lounge archive, fully two-thirds of my visitors there have come from China. And tonight, someone found my Geeks with Blogs site via this referral string: http://google.cn/search?q=u... Yep, that's ...

According to my Blogflux search engine results for the last month, Google has not just cornered the market, they have virtually snuffed out the competition. Engine Hits Percentage Google 17596 98 Yahoo 202 1 Ask Jeeves 36 0 AOL 35 0 MSN 18 0 Search.com 6 0 Technorati Tags: SEO,Search Engine,Blogflux ...

After installing .Net 3.5 SP1 on the existing server, that runs .Net 2.0, I've got the exception: Source : mscorlib Message : An error occurred creating the configuration section handler for system.serviceModel/bindings: Could not load type 'System.ServiceModel.Config... from assembly 'System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934... Filename : c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Fr... Line : 100 Errors : ...

I prefer to use web-based solutions when possible, but the other day the publish feature of google docs wasn’t working right, so I needed to install Windows Live Writer. I quickly found out that WLW doesn’t play nicely with Windows Server 2008. Since WLW is written in .NET, I just installed it on an XP virtual machine and copied the Program Files folder over to my Server 2008 machine. Simple. Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer,Server 2008 ...

So my wife and I sat down to watch "Strangers" last night. We tried to watch it for Halloween but our youngster was so hyper from candy overload it was hard to get him to bed. My rating would be: 6.5 stars out of 10 Summary: Overall, not a bad movie to watch and was entertaining for a horror flick. Liv Tyler, I thought did a good job with her acting. In many parts she betrayed really well how freaked out someone in that situation should have been. Scott Speedman on the other hand couldn't get less ...

I blogged years ago and voiced my disappointment of Google taking books, scanning them, databasing the contents of the books, and then making these books available to end users in "chucks". I am a computer book author and have written 18 books (two more on the way) and I wrote in my old blog post about why I didn't care for this move and how it really hurt me as an author. Back then, I wrote about the issue: "The problem is (at least for publishers and authors) is that let's say there is someone ...

*Moved to: Infragistics WPF I am currently getting to grips with the Infragistics WPF controls that they call NetAdvantage for WPF. So far I have found them easy to use, but the documentation of examples is very lax. Do not mistake me, these components are fantastic and do way more work for me than I would care to do myself, but if you Google a particular piece of their API invariable you will get pure documentation and no samples. If you are lucky someone has asked a specific question about it and ...

Rapid Development with Python, Django, and Google App Engine Guido van Rossum (Google) Learn how to create great web applications quickly on Google App Engine using the Django web framework and th... Painless Python for Proficient Programmers Part I ---- Alex Martelli (Google) Python is a popular very-high-level programming language, with a clean and spare syntax, simple and regular semantics, a large sta... Painless Python for Proficient Programmers Part II ---- Alex Martelli (Google) Python is ...

State of Ajax: The Universe is Expanding Dion Almaer (Google) and Ben Galbraith (Ajaxian.com) The Ajax revolution is complete: Sophisticated JavaScript user interfaces are nearly ubiquitous. Yet, ... Advancded Gadget and UI Development Using Google's AJAX APIs Derek Collison (Google) The Google AJAX APIs can be used to build sophisticated Gadgets and UI controls for your website. For instance,... A World Beyond AJAX: Accessing Google's APIs from Flash and Non-JavaScript Environments Vadim Spivak ...

Building Scalable Web Applications with Google App Engine Brett Slatkin (Google) In this session we'll cover techniques you can use to improve your application's performance when you surpass a sim... Best Practices - Building a Production Quality Application on Google App Engine Ken Ashcraft (Google) Once an app is out of development and has thousands or millions of users, a developer needs to... Working with Google App Engine Models Rafe Kaplan (Google) Google App Engine Datastore Models have a ...

Gears Case Studies: Zoho offline on Gears, Buxfer secure and offline finance with Gears Raju Vegesna (Zoho), Ashwin Bharambe and Shashank Pandit (Buxfer) This talk presents two case studies on Gea... HTML5, Brought to You by Gears Aaron Boodman (Google) HTML5 is a new set of proposed extensions to HTML that radically improve the capabilities of web applications. However, without implementation... Creating a Client-Side Search Engine with Gears Brad Neuberg (Google) Come see how Gears can be used ...

GWT and Client-Server Communication Miguel Mendez (Google) It's a rare Ajax application that doesn't need network access. To the despair of many a developer, though, there are almost as many ways ... Reusing Google APIs with Google Web Toolkit Miguel Mendez (Google) We like to say that GWT brings software engineering to the crazy world of Ajax, and of course straightforward code reuse is a cor... GWT Extreme! Ray Cromwell (Timepedia.org) In this session, see Google Web Toolkit used in exotic and ...

Extend the Reach of your Google Apps Environment with Google APIs Jackie Bodine, Ryan Boyd (Google) and Ron Hess (Salesforce.com) Google Apps already gives your organization an out-of-the-(virtual... Spice up Your Web Apps with Google AJAX APIs Mark Lucovsky (Google) Integrating Google Search into a website can be simple using the Google AJAX APIs. Mark will show how a few lines of JavaScript ... Visualize your Data: Google Visualization API The new Google Visualization API lets you access multiple ...

Google I/O 2008 was a big event and exposed many Open Google technologies which can be used for making Internet Applications Fast, Easily & Economically. It shows, at what speed Google is growing itself and making the Internet grow. I will log the Video links, of this event, available on YouTube. I know it is already 5 months old, but I am trying to make a collection of some important ones (according to me), at one place... I will divide it in 9 parts, and here goes the videos for Part 1: Keynote ...

Part 1:Google App Engine enables developers to build their web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications. Part 2:Google Software Engineer Brett Slatkin builds and deploys a sample guestbook web app on top of Google App Engine. Part 3:Google Tech Lead Kevin Gibbs walks through the Google App Engine stack: 1) scalable serving infrastructure; 2) python runtime and libraries; 3) SDK; 4) web-based admin console; and 5) scalable data... Part 4: Python creator and Google Software ...

As far as I can remember my home page has been google. But recently I started using iGoogle instead since I wanted to have all my bookmarks which I keep in Google bookmarks to be accessible easily, also I wanted to keep an eye on the blogs I read through Google reader. A few days back iGoogle layout was changed and google has introduced what they called a canvass view. I for one like it since I can now have google reader load in a tab or in full screen mode without having to go to the google reader ...

So, I’m a student at University of Phoenix and my curriculum will eventually cover Java. Having only worked with C, C++, C#, and VB (6, .NET) I have never tried Java on any development level. Ideally, I’d like to know Java for its portability, and then I could program for my BlackBerry ;) I rummaged through the eBooks that I have access to as a UoP student and found one that is most decidedly the book I’ll be using in my future course, The Fundamentals of Java Introductory Course by Ken Lambert and ...

I published SimpleTracker, is a simple service that will accept a tracking number or package id from major shipping companies (FedEx, USPS, and UPS), and spit out an RSS feed which you can then subscribe to in your favorite feed reader (FeedDemon, Google Reader, Outlook, Bloglines, etc). Oftentimes I’m obsessed with knowing where my packages are and why they aren’t on my doorstep yet. Now I’ll always know, without having to keep visiting the tracking website over and over! :) Technorati Tags: FedEx, ...

Recon: Abandoned WWII Munitions Facility Debrief: While at work on Friday, I had that itch to go do some exploring. It had been a long week and I wanted to put my brain in a different gear for a while. Shortly after that I got a text message that read "I'm thinking about checking out this old WWII munitions site." Sounds like just what the doctor ordered. The plan, as with any recon, is to locate and identify. So we figured on rolling out there in the daylight, looking around and then grabbing a ...

ODUG Vice President Kurt Amstutz will be talking about the recently released Map Module at next Tuesday's Orlando DotNetNuke User Group meeting. I've been busy writing my chapters for the DotNetNuke 5 book and didn't make the last meeting. I'll be at this one. I recruited Kurt last spring to put this presentation on. Here's some information on the module: The DotNetNuke® Map Module project is an initiative crafted from very popular smash up DotNetNuke® Map Module, originally called GoMap. The module, ...

I just checked my google reader, and got a very interesting update from Zain Naboulsi, the Developer Evangelist for the louisiana, texas and arkansas region. According to Steve Lipner, Microsoft's security development lifecycle will be presented to a collection of consultant agencies at first, and then broadened to envelop more and more training after its inaugural year. In addition, Microsoft's SDL Threat Modeling tools will become freely available in November. To read the Q and A with Steve, check ...

I just received this email from my contact at JetBrains: A quick update on the JetBrains User Group Giveaway program... 1) We’re happy to extend this giveaway for another year – at least until the end of 2009. Your work in the community is something we all admire, and we’d like to thank you for your efforts. 2) We are expanding the program to support a lot more User Groups – .NET, Java, Groovy, Ruby, Google, and Agile. If you want us to support any other groups, let me know! 3) We’re also expanding ...

I have been a long time user of FeedDemon, which I think is an excellent product. Unfortunately I do not feel the same way about NewsGator’s online reader, and its sync with FeedDemon on my desktop leaves much to be desired. In an effort to be able to read my subscriptions from anywhere, I’ve decided to make the switch to Google Reader. I tried GR a long time ago, when it first came out, and I didn’t like the interface, but they have cleaned that up. Thankfully. :) Also, I do plan to keep FeedDemon ...

Among other things in this article, the MS CEO discusses Google and states that MS is likely the only company who could give them any competition in the web search arena. There are also some comparisons to Apple, Hp, etc in their respective technologies. I thought it a pretty concise statement of their position. It also got me thinking about Goo. You know, I remember the first time someone asked me if I'd tried Google and then stated that is was a great search engine. At the time, seems like InfoSeek ...

I agree with the author's skepticism about the potential success of Android. It seems like the customer's needs are not being addressed with the the >">G1, a.k.a. the Google Phone. The author's statement that the "biggest thing to bear in mind is that this phone was not primarily designed to solve a problem that you, the consumer, are having. Rather it was designed to solve a problem that Google has—namely, the need to keep feeding more and more people into the maw of Google's online advertising ...

Shiffin.Com has come-up with an exciting tool for GPS tracking of BIAL Buses over Google Maps. This tool is very good and provides not just the location of the bus, but also keeps the pin moving in real-time as per speed of the bus. You can highlight the route (path) of individual bus and even Zoom-in to check the Satllite Image (static) of the location where the bus currently is. More-over it shows the Bus No. and even speed of the bus also. Bravo, Great Work guys!!! Some screenshots: ...

Read on CNET news today that Windows Mobile 7 release is delayed. Given the release of the Google Android OS coming out soon, I know this is a major blow. There is talk of improving the browser in WM (thank the gods) such that IE7 rendering engine will be used. We may actually have Flash, etc., in our WM browser. I've thought for a long time that the browser in WM could use a revamp (it's pretty weak, IMO) and perhaps this change will be a significant improvement ...

We had a few problems on a project recently where the server builds did not set machines up exactly the same. This is a pretty major problem as if the software installed across your BizTalk Group you can not expect to receive consistent or expected results. Based on this I reviewed a few servers using PsInfo recently but being a manual thing its a bit of a pain trying to identify any differences. Im sure there must be tools to do this but a quick google didnt throw up too much joy so I knocked up ...

Here is the thing, I sitting here on someone's backdeck talking to myself (blogging) while my wife attends a purse buying party. I am perfectly fine sitting here tapping away on my iPhone without any remorse for the lack of social commentary. Have I always been this way or has tech let me become anti-social? I think in my case it allows me to be more alone in a crowd than before because I look busy. On the other hand, I feel I have a better relationship with more distant friends or relatives due ...

Earlier this week I attended the first SharePoint Best Practices Conference just outside Washington, DC in McLean, Virginia. The event was organized by Mindsharp, who at this point needs no introduction (or even the hyperlink) as the leading provider of SharePoint training here in the States, and maybe the world. The conference was partially driven by the release of a fairly new book from the Microsoft Press, MOSS 2007 Best Practices. The book is pretty good, too; much better than the Administrator's ...

Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement of a candidate or party. Please do not leave comments about either since I do not believe that GWB is the proper place for such a discussion. This is an examination of the capabilities of today's technology related to elections. I was watching part of a political speech given by a supporter of one of the presidential candidates the other night and my bovine manure detector started going off. So what do I do? I start a Google search. The first site that I happened ...

A product of Google labs called "trends" is usefull to investigate search trends. What happes if we compare the search terms "C#" and "Ruby"? c# 2.02 ruby 1.00 What do we see in the graph, the Ruby line (red) stays pretty constant during the whole week, but the C# line (blue) drops during the weekend. Interesting isn't it? What conclusion can we make up with this info: Ruby is used by people that don’t have a personal life and spend the weekend developing stuff? C# is used by people that develop ...

Last night, I d/l the most recent version of CSLA for my game (henceforth codename GAGame), and tried to build it. I got something I wouldn't have expected, an error that read: error creating manifest -- access is denied Wow, that's odd, I thought. I fought with it a little while, but soon gave up and hit Google with it. I found the an article that explained what had happened and how to fix it. Apparently, 3.5 .Net FW SP1 causes permissions to your MachineKeys folder to be jacked up. Once I restored ...

Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/m... I've recently been reviewing some BizTalk setups for various reasons. These include: Is the setup correct Performance analysis and issues General troubleshooting I thought it would be useful for me and others who might want to look at doing a review of a BizTalk setup to make some notes on some of the activities you might want to do. Comparing Servers I've come across a couple of instances previously when servers had been setup incorrectly ...

Well, like most, I downloaded Google Chrome and gave it a whirl. So far, I like it. There are things that bother me - but overall - I like it. Here are some of my likes: It is faster. It does seem to deal with JavaScript quite a bit faster than other browsers. Pages load faster than before for me. This is probably the biggest plus of the whole thing really. The look and feel of the application is more modern looking (again, from my perspective) and it provides more real estate for browsing by default ...

...is not straightforward. The problem is that many (all?) of log4net's classes are not serializable. This includes the implementations of the ILog interface, which means that if you plan on using log4net loggers in your SharePoint workflow code like so... private ILog logger = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof... ...you're out of luck. As soon as the workflow is dehydrated, you'll get a nice exception stating that type X (probably LogImpl) is not serializable. One solution to this problem is to recreate ...

wow so this is what it feels like blogging from the iPhone. I waited and waited trying to justify the expense, but it never happened. So like any true techie I bought it. What is really annoying is I cannot seem to get google docs to create. I am not done but overall is good. Oh and something else some games do not repect SILENT. Thanks discovery tank game, the people around me liked the sound effects.

Microsoft MVP Richard Seroter started a series of posts on building enterprise mashups using RSSBus. Part 1, and Part 2. A few weeks ago our Executive Director / Chief Architect / Technology Overlord recently asked me to build a real, live enterprise mashup application to demonstrate for our IT leadership group. Our goal was to show that RSSBus could be used to quickly and efficiently aggregate data in compelling new ways. In the next few posts, I’m going to walk through our use case, and how I built ...

This weekend I received an email from one of my blog’s readers asking my how to search for content on my blog. To be honest, my first reaction was to wonder why someone would ask me such a silly question. But then I thought on it and realize that I didn’t know the answer, but I was pretty sure that Google could do it. For the few of you that watched the video that Microsoft produced where I answered some questions that were asked of me off camera, I said that the most important tools that a Platform ...

I recently posted on How To Receive Configuration Updates without restarting a .NET Windows Service. For some reason it never showed up in Google Reader. I guessed the reader maybe missed it for some reason. Perhaps it was something in the naming of my post. Like I mentioned in the article, it is possible to update the configuration and not have to restart the service. I was interested in learning how when I saw that log4net was doing it. I didn't take quite the same path they did, but I was influenced ...

Clint Edmonson called me out on this trip down memory lane and, since I want to use up as much of his Google juice as I can, I thought I would jump in.Initially, this very much reminded me of those "Surveys" that go around in chain e-mails and (gasp!) MySpace pages, but this idea quickly caught my interest. Here is the current link(ed) list: Michael Eaton (post) —> Sarah Dutkiewicz (post) —> Jeff Blankenburg (post) —> Josh Holmes (post) —> Larry Clarkin (post) —> Brian Moore (post) ...