Author: Michael Gibbs

I'm a technologist at heart, assisting companies best utilize the Internet to market themselves and sell their products and services online. This includes organizations as large as Google and as small as one or two individuals.
At Over The Top and Exhibit A Communications, I've programmed solutions for Google as well as at least one other company that was later acquired by Google.

I've been CTO of an Internet SaaS company and spent my time pretty evenly between guiding the future technical strategy of the company, architecting software solutions for my dev teams, designing and running a data center to service our clients world-wide as well as being a technical evangalist/sales engineer to our media clients large and small.

I've also been Chief Photographer of the Daily Sun/Post newspaper back when it was a 5-day a week daily newspaper.

I also spent a great many years as a beach lifeguard for the City of San Clemente as well as Jr. Lifeguard instructor and then as it's program coordinator.
Bragging rights
Private Pilot with Instrument rating and proud husband of soon to be 25 years (and counting).

March 8, 2010

Search and Replace in SQL TEXT or NTEXT column

In the past, when doing global search and replaces across text fields in SQL server, I’d been taking the path of least resistance and just writing ASP.NET pages to loop through and performing .Replace() on the SQL column in question.

Of course a devoted programmer, or at least one with more time on their hands, would have instead spent the time trying to find a better way to skin that cat. Well, courtesy of Google, I think I’ve found one. This article from SQLTeam.com all but handed me the answer. Since you can’t use the TSQL REPLACE function against a TEXT (or NTEXT) column the code below will work using UPDATETEXT instead:

February 18, 2010

Signing Into Google Sites In A Different Domain

This tutorial should be helpful to our clients wishing to access project intranets we’ve established in the ExhibitA.com domain using Google Sites. The challenge comes when you try and log into a Google Site (GS) that is part of a Google Apps domain (GA), it isn’t immediately obvious how to log in if email address you are using is part of a different GA domain or is a standard Google Account (like for Gmail or Google Analytics, Checkout, etc).

While the graphics and the discussion will be specfic to logging into a GS on ExhibitA.com, it can be applied to any GS hosted on a GA domain.

February 11, 2010

Custom Envelopes From Google Maps

Looking for a great way make your invitations stand out from the rest? Then use this mashup from mapenvelope.com.

January 29, 2010

Find and Replace in SQL ntext Columns

Normally, doing a search and replace in SQL is not radically difficult. You basically do an update using the replace() function. For example:

Update Product
Set Description = replace(Description, 'old text is this', 'new text will be this')
where Description like '%old text is this%'

January 29, 2010

Google Puts Nail in Coffin of IE6

Google announced today that many of the elements of Google apps will no longer support older browers; most notably Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6.

They are determined to not let lack of support for faster Javascript processing or support HTML5 get in the way of providing a great interface for their customers. As such, after March 1, 2010, Google Docs suite and Google Sites editor will not work with IE earlier than 7.0, Firefox below v3.0, Chrome below 4.0 and Safari below 3.0. Starting next week they will present messages to users to the this effect and recommending that they update.

More importantly, they intend to roll out Google Mail (Gmail) and Google Calendar later in the year. Given that Microsoft has already put out a cry to people to STOP USING IE6, I think that Docs and Sites will not be the death knell but I’m certain that when Gmail stops supporting it, Google will have effectively put the last nail in the coffin of this antiquated web browser.

I say, ABOUT TIME!

What do you think?

January 25, 2010

Chrome’s Got Extensions

Yes, the developer’s version of Chrome has extensions for some time now but the latest stable release now includes not only support for extensions but also new HTML and Javascript APIs.

The Google Code Blog today announced that Extensions would now be available far and wide. If you want to learn more about extensions for Chrome, follow this link.

Don’t know what Chrome is all about? Well it is, IMHO, the fastest and best browser on the market today. You owe it to yourself today to check this great web browser out.

Here is a list of my favorite extensions (in no particular order):

Bookmark all tabs – Bookmark all tabs using quick keyboard shortcut: ctrl + shift + d
ChromeMUSE – Multi-URL Shortener/Expander – Shorten and expand URLs with different shortening service providers. Probably my most used extension these days
Chromium Delicious Plugin – Extension to work with delicious.com
Google Tasks – A simple Google Task extension for Chrome.
Google Voice (by Google) – Notifies you of new messages and gives you quick access to calling and free SMS via Google Voice
iMacros for Chrome – Automate your web browser. Record and replay repetitious work
Kuber PageRank Checker – This SEO tool shows the pagerank of webpages beside the address box. Click the icon Alexa rank shows as well as WHOIS link.
Lorem Ipsum Generator – Creates random dummy text
MeasureIt! – Draw out a ruler that will help you get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.
Nofollow Checker – Simple nofollow highlighter. Great way to easily see if links on a page use nofollow or not.
Pendule – Extended developer tools for Chrome.
QR-Code Tag Extension – Display a QR-Code tag for the current URL in the brower. QR-code is a very convenient way to quickly jump to a certain page with for instance mobile devices
RSS Subscription Extension (by Google) – Adds one-click subscription to your toolbar.
Speed Tracer (by Google) – Get insight into the performance of your web applications.
Window Resizer – Resize browser window to emulate various screen resolutions

What are your favorite extensions for Chrome? Use the comments below to sound off..

January 22, 2010

AD2USA Website Goes Live Today

Our client Advanced Dental Designs (AD2USA.com) went live with their new AspDotNetStorefront website today. A hearty congratulations go out to the AD2USA team!

January 22, 2010

Google Personalized Search Results Got You Down?

So, you’ve spent all this time, money and effort on optimizing your site so that it gets the exposure it deserves in search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. And then Google announces that personalized search results are really the wave of the future. You see from first hand-experience that no only are search engine results being tailored to your search patterns when you are logged into Google, but you are also seeing that your anonymous Google Searches are being similarly affected. How do I optimize against the 6.8 billion "search engines" (individual Internet users who’s results are being manipulated to put them in control of what they see)?