All Things Geekery – A blog by Eric

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The February BAND gig is next Tuesday (Feb 23) at 6:00 pm, in the Libra Conference Room at Husson University in Bangor! Come hear Chris Bowen, our Microsoft developer evangelist, speak on Windows Azure and what’s new in Visual Studio 2010/.NET 4! He will be giving full hour presentations on each so you are sure to come away with lots of knowledge and understanding of where these new technologies can be used in your development projects.

As always the meetings are free, and we just ask for a $3 donation if you want to have pizza and soda. We hope to go out with Chris afterwards so you can hang out with him, ask questions, or just have a fun time with other developers.

Description: Chris Bowen from Microsoft will be joining us to talk about Windows Azure and Visual Studio 2010/.NET 4! Come see what these new technologies will do for your development projects. Windows Azure: What? Why? And a Peek Under the Hood — What is Cloud Computing and where can it take you? In this session, Chris will first focus on showing the potential benefits of creating applications for the cloud with Windows Azure. Then, we’ll pop open the hood to show you around the main parts of the engine, including web roles, worker roles, and queues. You’ll see how Windows Azure plugs in for interoperability with other on-premises and cloud applications via the App Fabric. You’ll also learn how Windows Azure can be used to host technologies other than .NET – such as Java and PHP – and get a glimpse into what’s coming next with project “Sydney” and the integration of Windows Workflow into the cloud. Visual Studio 2010: That’s a 10-4, Good Buddy — There’s a buzz in the air as Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 are arriving soon, and they’re bringing plenty of cargo that developers will enjoy, from new features to improved productivity. We’ll hop on and take a tour, giving you the lay of the land in terms of what will help you as a developer. The sights will include parallel application development, new editor features and debugging capabilities (including a new historical debugger), improvements for web and Windows development, new .NET language features, and much more.

Information courtesy of the BAND – Bangor Area .NET Developers

I get asked this question a lot.  Usually, it stems from a couple of sources…

1) Someone uses the wonderful tool over at WebsiteGrader to check their website.  One of the suggestions, is to use a 301 redirect to make sure either the non-www goes to the www version, or that the www version of your URL goes to the non-www.

2) Pragmites includes a short list of suggested optimizations when they do some link building for you.  One of their suggestions is the 301 redirect.

If you don’t know what a 301 redirect is, I suggest you start reading this article: What is a 301 Redirect?

Personally, I really stink at doing .htaccess modifications… so trying to figure out how to do this through .htaccess was not an easy task for me.  Until I found that someone had already done this, and had already written it up too!

SEO Book to the Rescue!

SEO has an excellent article on how to create a 301 redirect for your website. 

They have examples of how to 301 redirect non-www to www, how to redirect from www to non-www, and even one about HTTPS redirects…

Plus, as an added bonus, a way to redirect a large number of URLs from an old website, to a new one (PHP coding required for this last method).

LinkedIn lets you set three Websites in your profile.  The default shows these as “Website” and “Blog”.   You can change these to use whatever anchor text you want.

Here are the steps to change the anchor text for a website link in your LinkedIn profile:

1. Log into your LinkedIn account.
2. On the left of the screen, click the Profile link.
3. Scroll down until you see the Websites section, and click the Edit link for the link you want to change.  I’ve provided a screenshot showing where the Edit link will be:
4. In the dropdown (see the left arrow), change this to Other.  You will now have a box where you can enter your anchor text.  This is the right arrow below.  You can change this to whatever you want.  This will be your anchor text.
   
5. When finished, click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen. 
6. Now, when you view your Profile, you will see your link with your anchor text!

Daniel will present at the next Bangor Area .NET Developer (BAND) meeting (June 23rd, 2009):

WPF – A little further down the rabbit hole

Probably most of us have seen at least one slick demo of WPF or Silverlight. Such demos are inspiring, but they don’t convey what it’s like to actually use WPF in the real world. Fresh from completing our first business-centric application that uses WPF extensively, I’m excited to share from my experience of using WPF in the real world.

Daniel is a developer for Tyler Technologies in Bangor.

More information on: Bangor Area .NET Developers

More from Daniel: http://www.danielgpratt.com/

Reposted from The Blomsma Code

Two of Internet Marketing’s “Heavy Hitters”, Mike Filsaime and Anik Singal have joined forces this year and have created a brand new money getting system.

It’s called “Launch Tree”.

Launch Tree will teach you EXACTLY how PPC Classroom built a $10M+ Business by giving away free DVDs for 6 days…

How Mike Filsaime Built a $10M+ Business giving away Free software…

===> How you’re leaving 456% of your money on the table…

===> How 3 “15 Second” tweaks made a marketer $350,000 more in 90 days…

Launch Tree is scheduled to open on May 12, 2009.
Launch Tree

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,
I could still hear him frantically clicking the mouse.
Was he still building websites? Could it be PPC?
I looked at the clock-it said quarter to three.

For months he has said it will soon change our life,
but faith can be hard for an IMer’s wife.
The stockings were hung and we’d put up the tree,
with no help from him, just the children and me.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
while their daddy was posting on more forum threads.
I don’t own a kerchief, but had jammies on
and I hoped he would come on to bed before dawn.

When all at once there arose such a clatter,
I had to get up to see what was the matter!
I raced to the den and peeked ‘round the door,
his chair was turned over and lay on the floor.

The shade on the desk lamp was sitting askew,
and my dear IMer was nowhere in view.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but my wild-eyed IMer who shouted “Come here!”

He’d been on the floor and I didn’t know why;
I thought he was hurt and I started to cry.
He gave me a smile that could not have been cuter
and drying my tears I approached the computer.

More rapid than eagles his words, how they came,
and he whistled and shouted and called out these names;
On Google! On Yahoo! On MSN, too!
With Adwords, and Adsense and articles too!

To the top of the list! To the number one spot!
I’ve launched my campaign and the sales are red-hot!
His eyes, how they twinkled, his dimples so merry,
I wondered if he had been nipping the sherry!

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
soon let me know I had nothing to dread.
He laughed and he whistled, just like St.Nick,
as the sales just kept coming, click after click.

He sprang from his chair and he hugged me real tight
and he whispered these words on that Christmas Eve night.
“I found a great system to rinse and repeat…
and from this Christmas forward our lives will be sweet.”

I’d heard this before so I asked how he knew.
He gave me a folder – it was labeled CommBlue.
He spoke not a word, but went straight back to work.
I felt bad for the times I had called him a jerk.

That one little site became two, and then three,
and I knew we would soon be financially free.
So to all you CommBluers, don’t give up the fight…
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Written by Honey and posted on one of the Commission Blueprint (aka, CommBlue) forums.  If you haven’t checked out Commission Blueprint, and want to get into Affiliate / Internet Marketing, I suggest you check it out today!

‘Twas the night before startup
and all through the house
not a program was working,
there clicked not a mouse

The users were nestled all snug in their beds
with visions of systems alive in their heads.
The programmers slumped round their screens in despair
and felt that a miracle now would be fair.

Then from the back office there rose such a chatter
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter
and there to my marveling eyes did appear
a wonder programmer with a six pack of beer.

His resume glowed with experience so rare
he turned out great code with that bit-pusher’s flair.
He spoke not a word but went straight to his work,
turning specs into code like a sitcom berserk.

A wink of his eye and a nod of his head
soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
More smoothly than salesmen his programs they come;
he whistled and shouted and called them by name.

On update, on add, on inquire and delete,
on batch jobs, on closing on functions complete.
His eyes all glazed over, hands nimble and lean,
from long days and nights spent in front of a screen.

He tapped and he hammered, he nothing did shirk,
turning specs into code; then he turned with a smirk,
and laying his finger upon Enter key,
the system came up and worked perfectly.

The updates updated, the deletes all deleted,
the inquiries inquired and the closing completed.
He tested each whistle, he tested each bell,
and with nary an append it all had gone well.

The system was finished, the tests were concluded,
the client’s last changes were even included.
Then the user explained in apocalypt font,
"It’s just what I asked for, but not what I want."

Author unknown… Just some Christmas fun I was sent via email.  Thanx Chad!

Being self-employed (not entirely by choice), I’m dabbling in things on the side to bring in some extra income.

I’ve been buying and selling on ebay, trying my hand at internet marketing, and doing surveys (yes, the online kind where you get paid).  I’ve made a couple of hundred dollars now (over several months) and some Amazon gift cards (always useful).

So far, the best place I’ve found to do surveys is SurveySavvy.  They pay for many different types of surveys, and some of the surveys can lead to a “focus group” that has it’s own payments (like the Amazon gift cards I’ve been getting).

So, if you want to do surveys, head on over to SurveySavvy and sign up.  You complete a couple of “profile surveys”, and then you get the paid survey links in your email. 

The Northeast Roadshow will be in Augusta this year (well, the Maine venue is).  It’s scheduled for December 16th (a Tuesday).  They’ve moved the venue, since the previous location was packed to overflowing.

Chris Bowen (one of the speakers) has more details (including the agenda) on his website.  I’m planning on attending.

Chris Harrison (a PhD student at CMU) is working on a new input method.  Scratching.

Yes, scratching.

Johnny Chung Lee (from the Wii remote fame) posted an article with some videos.  The technique looks rather interesting.  You can scratch and tap on a surface, and use it to control your computer, PDA, etc.

The full article is here (including a video of the scratch method).

Scratch Input and Low-Cost Multi-spectral material sensor

Here is another user interface.  It uses a space and time method to keep track of what you were doing.  The video explains it better than I can.

SpaceTime