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1. The Requirement

Dr. Murphy approached us about the possibility of putting together a site that could promote the new book, establish a formal web presence for her comings-and-goings (e.g. book readings, lectures, events, etc.), and that could be managed without any technical knowledge. Dr. Murphy also expressed a desire to “work with a company that wasn’t just building giant corporate websites”. Seemed like a good fit.

2. The Approach

WordPress, WordPress, WordPress. Out of the box, WordPress met all of Dr. Murphy’s core content management needs, and since the release of version 2.5, provided a beautiful interface for managing everything on the site. While the site is fairly basic from an IA standpoint, Dr. Murphy was off and running as a WP publisher after a quick training session. In between her jet-setting trips to the UK, Spain, Germany, Italy [starting to get jealous...], we worked closely with Dr. Murphy to provide guidance on assembling the content, creating and revising the site’s design, and to boost her ranking in Google’s search index. We also provided 2 years of hosting (complete with email) through one of our affiliate programs.

Overall, we’re very pleased with the site itself, and grateful to have had an opportunity to work with such an interesting and wonderful person.

10 Notes provided me with the ideal combination of technical and creative skill and were absolutely great to work with. In creating my site, they were proactive in generating ideas and immediately responsive to suggestions and I am delighted with the finished product.

(Shucks, now we’re blushing…she sent us a signed copy of her new book too!) Thanks for reading.

Prior to making the jump to the Rackspace backbone facility in Grapevine, Texas, we frequently struggled with our “bulk hosting” provider. It seemed like every week, there were outages on 10notes.com (gasp!), email was inaccessible for hours at a clip, and our applications seemed to grind to a halt during routine POST operations. All of this prompted us to start looking around for a new hosting plan that was A) cost-effective for our growing business, and B) offered something in the way of real support to its customers…preferably support that didn’t involve a blog site reporting network outages, or mass emails to the entire customer base. Enter Rackspace.

Within minutes of visiting the RS website, we were chatting with a courteous representative who was genuinely interested in our motivations for considering Rackspace, and who was very helpful with putting us in touch with a technical representative to further clarify our needs. Within 1 day we had a formal written proposal back from the technical rep outlining a hosting plan that seemed too good to be true.

I’ve read a lot of hosting plans. I’ve even written a few myself. And my SpideySense told me to do the homework before committing to anything. So a-Googlin’ I went…to my chagrin, ValleyWag had been blasting Rackspace for the better part of Q4, 2007. As snobberific as ValleyWag is/was, there had to be some merit to this stuff…clearly a lot of customers had been burned in the fallout. Naturally, I immediately wanted to discuss my concerns with my new technical/sales rep pal; in one of those too-rare “honest sales guy” moments, our rep was very forthright and candid about the perfect storm that befell Rackspace last year. And as much as I wanted to distrust the salesman’s “honesty”, I couldn’t help feeling that he took the whole incident very personally, and I had a sense that, company-wide, RS had to dot every I and cross every T from here on out. Or go the way of the dinosaurs…

So, long story short: we have been ecstatic with the one-on-one customer support we’ve received to date, the glorious uptime of our critical business systems, and are genuinely proud to now call ourselves “Rackspace Partners” (from what I understand, only RS employees get to call themselves “Rackers”). Whether you are looking to supplement your existing IT infrastructure, or planning a wholesale migration (as we did), we would be happy to talk with you about your needs, and refer you to the only team we’ve ever worked with that truly can (and will) deliver “fanatical support“.

While we’re not exactly in to “the big money” yet, we’ve made some giant strides in terms of solidifying our presence here in D.C., as well as our capabilities. “Growth areas” include:

• Pending partnerships with a few area firms…we’re hoping to expand both parties’ core service offerings to existing and potential clients.
• 10 Notes now boasts an “Industry Partner” membership at the ASAE …so say “Hi” if you see Nate floating around on the tech listservs; this will help him feel better about paying dues.
• We got some company swag made up! Email us if you would like your very own 10 Notes coffee mug, lapel button, or sticker. Oh, and we finally got around to printing up business cards too. Someone told us that was important for new businesses.
• 10 Notes’ technical infrastructure grew from a “bulk” to a “managed” hosting environment (read: “Dreamhost” to “Rackspace”). That means we’ve got new, heavy-duty web, mail, and database servers at our disposal, and that we can do whatever we want with them! While we don’t typically provide “managed hosting” to our clients, its nice to know that we can now handle it should the need arise.
• In geeky celebration of our new hosting environment, we did a light re-design of the site (which is, hopefully, obvious). And we’re now slightly in love with sIFR.
• We now have a dedicated business telephone system! Probably doesn’t sound like a huge deal, but its infinitely better to have a delineation between the phone number that your mother dials, and the number that the rest of the world dials.
• We paid Business Taxes for the first time. So far, this is one of our least favorite parts of running the shop.
• …and we got an Accountant.
• New sales to support all of this new stuff!

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that 10 Notes is alive and well, and that we will try to be more timely with updates going forward. Bye for now.

View the demo · Download the source code

1. The Requirement

The designer for the system has added a timer feature to the checkout area; the timer starts when the user begins the checkout process. Throughout this multi-step process, the timer lets the user know that they have 30 minutes to finalize their registration, then counts down accordingly. At the database level, this effectively translates to row-level locking for the products in the user’s shopping cart; other users in the system will not be allowed to reserve that particular seat when adding workshops to their own shopping carts. (You’ve probably seen this feature in airline ticket reservation systems.)

As an added wrinkle, the client requested that if the timer expires, the system should prompt the user to refresh the session, re-start the timer, and allow the user to continue the checkout process.

2. The Approach

I’m using the AJAX.NET controls all over the place in this meeting registration system. For the timer feature, I elected to use the framework’s built-in Timer control, which basically AJAX-izes (sp?) the low level System.Timers classes. Out of the box, the Timer control doesn’t provide any graphic parameters, nor does it provide statefulness. The Timer control simply provides an Interval parameter (in milliseconds) and the ability to quickly implement asynchronous postback events back to the server-side code.

Since my requirements call for the timer to be persistent across multiple pages in the checkout process, I decided to create a user control that (A) maintained a session-based variable for the elapsed time, and (B) dynamically adjusted the interface to reflect the elapsed time. Additionally, the user control needed to handle the “timeout prompt” described above. (Respectively, “ajaxTimer1″ and “ajaxTimer2″ hereafter.)

Here’s the .ascx code for the user control:

<asp:UpdatePanel ID="ajaxPanel" runat="server">
	<ContentTemplate>
		<asp:Timer ID="ajaxTimer1" runat="server" Interval="1000" OnTick="ajaxTimer1_Tick" />
		<p>You have <asp:Literal ID="litTimeout" runat="server" /> to complete this application.</p>
		<div>
			Time elapsed: <span class="progress"><asp:Literal ID="litProgress" runat="server" /></span>
			<table id="tblProgress" runat="server" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="progress">
			<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
			</table>
		</div>
		<asp:PlaceHolder ID="plcTimeout" runat="server" Visible="False">
			<div class="timeout">
				<asp:Timer ID="ajaxTimer2" runat="server" Interval="1000" Enabled="False" OnTick="ajaxTimer2_Tick" />
				<p>The timeout for the operation has expired. Press the &quot;Continue&quot; button in the next <asp:Literal ID="litResponseTime" runat="server" /> seconds to refresh your session.</p>
				<p><asp:Button ID="btnContinue" runat="server" Text="Continue" CssClass="btn" CausesValidation="False" OnClick="btnContinue_Click" /></p>
				<asp:Literal ID="litResponseTimeout" runat="server" Visible="False" Text="<p>You have not responded in the time allotted. Your session has now expired.</p>" />
			</div>
		</asp:PlaceHolder>
	</ContentTemplate>
</asp:UpdatePanel>

As you can see, I’ve wrapped both Timer controls in an UpdatePanel. Additionally, the .aspx page where the control lives includes the ScriptManager tag, which tells AJAX.NET to create JSON converters for any controls defined inside of the UpdatePanel’s ContentTemplate. After installing the framework and adding all of the necessary Web.config stuff, that’s pretty much the long and short of creating any AJAX.NET application…pretty easy, huh?

The next step was to define 2 session vars in the .ascx codefile, 1 to store the time elapsed as incremented by ajaxTimer1, and 1 to store the response timeout as decremented by ajaxTimer2.

Here’s the short version of the ajaxTimer1_Tick and ajaxTimer_2 Tick events, where msTimeElapsed references the 1st session var and msTimeoutResponse references the 2nd response timeout session var:

protected void ajaxTimer1_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
	this.msTimeElapsed = this.msTimeElapsed + ajaxTimer1.Interval;
	this.PrintElapsedTime();
}

protected void ajaxTimer2_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
	this.msTimeoutResponse = this.msTimeoutResponse - ajaxTimer2.Interval;
	this.PrintResponseTime();
}

All of the show/hide GUI logic is defined in the PrintElapsedTime and PrintResponseTime methods. PrintResponseTime is also responsible for tearing down the registration session if the user didn’t respond to the prompt. After that, I simply registered my user control on each screen of the registration module, then added all of the required form elements to each screen. Take a look at the demo to see this in action…hopefully this illustrates how to extend baked-in AJAX.NET functionality for creating rich GUI features to handle some of the goofy business logic in your own .NET applications. Thanks for reading!

View the demo · Download the source code

10 Notes’ business model isn’t a new one by any means, but it is I believe, something that is unique among the dozens of new media and custom web development firms that have made a name for themselves in the District. You know, the ones touting AARP, ACS, NPR, the National Geographic Society, XM, PBS, Your-Acronym-Here as clients. Naturally, I have no intention of exposing any of my secrets to ye folde, but having worked for, interviewed with, and generally kept tabs on most of the local, post-dotcom startups here for the last couple of years, I can confidently state that our model is not like theirs. So watch out, there’s a new kid in town ;)

Yep, I’ve done my homework on the firms that I hope to be competing with, why I feel that we’ll be successful, and what it will take to get us there. Then I started digging around for other local startups out there that may possibly be taking the same approach as us…

So far, I haven’t found too many newer companies that are actually gunning for a local client base. What I have found are scores of 20-to-30-somethings that want to create the latest and greatest Facebook widgets or blog plugins, continue promoting UX as a legitimate discipline, be recognized as “Web 2.x Visionaries”, and generally enjoy the all-around respect and admiration of their peers. Not a darn thing wrong with that; I just found it surprising that there seems to be so little going on in the way of traditional business development, analysis, or even (gulp) creating a sales pipeline that doesn’t revolve around finding an angel.

Which is sort of the point for a lot of new startups I suppose…everyone with an ounce of entrepreneurial spirit wants to be innovative, super-creative, and generally change the business environment that they work in. 10 Notes is no different in that respect, but we do feel that there’s something to be said for researching your immediate marketplace and taking formal steps towards breaking in to it. Sure, we’d all like to get swallowed up in a wave of VC capital, crank out a beautiful new social networking site, or get invited to speak at some Innovator’s Summit…but don’t forget that we’re all living and working in one of the richest cities in the world too. In our humble estimation, it’s in a D.C. startup’s best interest to live in it, love it and cater to it.

Just my 2 cents. Thanks for reading.

Let’s face it: for an individual with only semi-hardcore development experience, no CS degree, and zero experience with “Big [digit] Consulting”, it isn’t every day that Microsoft wants to talk to you. In the last month, I’ve ignored recruiters from Lockheed, Grumman and Time Warner. But this was Microsoft…I’ve been as giddy as a school girl since the first phone screening.

Since I have no car, I had to plan for a loooong public-transportation commute from Columbia Heights, DC to Reston, VA. I got up at 4am, put on the monkey suit, and embarked @6. At 9am, after 19 cups of shitty Panera coffee, I was finally talking to Interviewer 1 of 3…

1. The “cool guy” representative. Our conversation was good (I think). As with the 2 phone screenings, I had to answer a fair number of technical questions with “I don’t know”. Did okay on the project-manager and open source sorts of questions. We also yukked it up a little bit regarding MS’ certification program, “how they do business”, and were generally friendly. When he asked “do you have any other questions?”, I kinda lost my composure a little bit. I’ve been reading this individual’s blog for a while…and I had to know if he was that guy. Totally lame.
2. The “technical guru” representative. I was pretty interested to meet this guy, since we’re both alumni of Information Concepts (which I knew beforehand). The owners of IC are on my reference list, and I was genuinely looking forward to this conversation. I felt encouraged when Interviewer #2 walked in wearing his dress-down-Friday Hawaiian shirt. While he was asking me details about my current project list, technical infrastructure, etc., I felt compelled to go to the whiteboard and illustrate what I was working on; all of the markers were out of juice and I dropped one of them twice. Long story short: this guy was a stone-faced, very knowledgeable, technical guru…I suspect he is very good at his job, and I know exactly why. I felt like a teeny tiny baby talking with him. When we shook hands, he bade me “Good luck”; I don’t think screeners say that unless they’ve already made a negative decision in their minds.
3. The “federal” representative. Didn’t even catch this guy’s last name. My original interview schedule indicated that I would be talking with Interviewer #1 again for this segment. Since #3 was obviously seeing my resume for the first time, I took this as a sign that #1 had probably passed on any further discussion with me. More of the same technical questions, then the session devolved in to a poetic journey of how much he loved Microsoft, opportunities available, incentives, etc.

At this point, Microsoft fed me lunch. The 3 other candidates that were on site were also in the room, and they also had no clue about “what we were supposed to do next”. Eventually, a secretary came around and told us that the recruiting coordinator was “still conducting an interview”, and that we could all depart.

So: I seriously doubt I’m still in the running for this position. I haven’t been to MS’ Reston facility in several years though, so the interview experience alone was a little bit like going to Disneyland, regardless of the outcome. I’ve been told that I won’t hear anything +/- for at least 10 days, so I’m trying to put the whole thing out of my mind for the time being.

For those of you who don’t know (and I didn’t as of 2 months ago), new domestic LLC businesses are required to file the Articles of Organization in D.C., as well as your Written Consent to Act as Registered Agent. The articles basically describe what exactly your business is and does. The document itself also serves as a formal registration of your LLC’s name with local government. A lot of entrepeneurs confer with lawyers regarding this doc…we generated ours using an online tool, then ran it by the lawyer. No sense paying $300/hour for someone else to create legalese on your behalf.