Writing

The Blog

Deciding Which AspDotNetStorefront Is Right For You

A while ago, I wrote about how to decide which of the various versions of AspDotNetStorefront were right for your application. I think the guidelines in that article still hold true but now that there are more versions of the software available, it should be updated. Thankfully, the fine folks at AspDotNetStorefront have already done …

AspDotNetStorefront Tip to Expose Keywords to Internal Search Engine

The newly launched AspDotNetStorefront blog launched with a bang recently. In addition to taking advantage of the opportunity to introduce the world to some of their unsung heroes in the Sales and Support department, their first programming tip is something that proved to be quite timely to one of our clients who was experiencing a …

Motorola Droid courtesy of Google – First Impressions

Well, I received my “free” Motorola Droid phone from Google for attending Google I/O this year. Or more accurately, for having the intention to attend Google I/O 2010. Last year, in an attempt to help drive Android development, they gave every attendee of Google I/O 2009 with a Google ION phone (which is a branded …

WTI Launches New Website

Our customer WTI (in association with Over The Top) has successfully re-launched their website using AspDotNetStorefront technology. WTI (aka Western Telematics, Incorporated) is a leading vendor of console servers and remote reboot devices. They pride themselves on providing “Industrial Strength Networking Hardware”. In addition to being great people to work with, this project was near …

Oddities with Google Search Results

It is most odd. Had a client just totally fall off the map (Google-wise) the other day. They think it is in reference to a number of 404 pages their CMS threw for the following (and many more) URLs: http://www.wti.com/console-servers.html http://www.wti.com/power-reboot-switches.html http://www.wti.com/rack-mount-switched-pdu.html http://www.wti.com/switched-pdu.html Anyone seen such odd behavior? You can find them in Google Search …

IIS 7.5 on x64 with 32bit applications

I recently upgraded my development laptop from Vista (with a failing hard drive) to Windows 7 with a smoking fast Hitatchi 500Gb 7200k drive. I’ve been totally stoked with the perfomance increase (especially boot speeds) so far. I’ve working through a number of issues getting IIS and VisualStudio playing nice together when I ran into …

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, …

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 …

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.  This simple little application allows you to input a location that it looks up in Google Maps and will then print out the map with cut and fold lines so you can fold the sheet into an …

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: 1: Update Product 2: Set Description = replace(Description, 'old text is this', 'new text will be this') 3: where Description like '%old text is this%' However, if the Description column in your …