Confessions of a Consultant

Microsoft Jumps into Bookmarking

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:59:00 +0000

Microsoft Labs recently launched ThumbTack, which is a bookmarking website geared less towards social bookmarking and more for research bookmarking by allowing you to store full text copies of the page.

ReadWriteWeb has reported that the concept of storing the full text page is a powerful concept, it falls short by messing up pages that use javascript and does not grab embedded pictures and videos.

Only time will tell if this little application will make it out of the R & D department.

Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Anything, Even Death

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:54:00 +0000

This passed Saturday around 9:30PM I was in the middle of laying a new floor in our entry way when I received a call from my cousin. She informed me that our grandfather had passed away and immediately broke down on the phone.

Our grandfather was called to service in World War II. He was one of six men of the 101st Airborne Infantry Division to reach their destination upon infiltrating the Cherbourg Peninsula of Normandy. You can learn more from an interview of my grandfather, James Pandolfi, by three students at my alumni high school, Orchard Park High School.

My grandfather was an entrepreneur, owning at one time a small furniture / gift shop. To be an entrepreneur, you have to be always evolving and always learning. Through an entrepreneurs thirst for success, they learn through analyzing the mistakes of themselves and others. I have found recently that you can even learn through Death.

In high school, I graduated with a girl that I knew and was always polite to, but was not directly friends with. Not long after her 19th birthday she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease. We later developed a friendship through a mutual friend. In February of 2001, she was having a hard time and spent a good portion of the first half of the month in the hospital. I was away at school and had purchased a Valentine's present for her(2 bears holding a heart, one small and one large), I was going to bring it to her the weekend following Valentine's Day. I never had the opportunity, she lost her battle that Valentine's Day of 2001. I laid the larger of the two bears with her and kept the smaller.

In November of 2005, my uncle was having a hard time. He was also a military man, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division during his younger days. He spent much of his professional career designing and searching for a way to build his dream, a vertical wind tunnel that simulated sky diving to be used for recreation and training. I do not know the full story, but from what I can speculate, a friend helped him create that dream and then cut him out of the deal. My uncle was devastated and it hurt his marriage. His wife left him and took my 2 nephews and niece with her. He took his own life in November of 2005.

Three unconnected deaths have taught me three valuable lessons.

When my friend of 19 years of age passed away from Hodgkin's Disease, I was having a hard time finding my place. I was not doing well in school and I was on a path to a wasted life. When she passed, I was angry with myself for letting life pass me by, when she never had the chance to live hers.
With my uncle, I recognized that I have the same passion and determination for my work that he did. He let it consume him, and when he was unsuccessful, he let it hurt the ones that he loved most.
For my grandfather, I was caught in the "never enough time trap". I was always to busy to go visit him. When he passed I was angry with myself for being to busy. No one should live life this way. After this experience, I appreciate even more the efforts of Lifestyle Evangelist, Timothy Ferriss. After reading his book The 4-Hour Workweek I realized that I did not have to go one living my life as if there is never enough time. With my grandfather's death, I am merely angry that I did not correct this problem sooner.

SQL Server 2005 Crash: Non-yielding IOCP Listener

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:40:00 +0000

A client of mine recently had their SQL Server hang up and crash. The error log displayed a dump and the error "Non-yielding IOCP Listener". After a bit of research I have discovered that this error is in result of a bug in SQL Server 2005.

Microsoft has released cumulative hotfix patches to resolve this issue but they did not include them in automatic updates, citing that if you are not experiencing this specific problem, then the updates are not necessary.

For more information, visit the knowledge base article kb941689

iPhone 2.0 Not Meeting Expectations - FollowUp

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:09:00 +0000

Below is a video that compares the speed of the iPhone 3G in their commercial to the iPhone 3G in real life. Apple has missed the mark if this new iPhone is supposed to be the solution to slow transfer speeds.

The Rise and Fall of Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:37:00 +0000

To funny to not post. This was done by the team at Crunchbase comparing the rise and fall of twitter to the rise and fall of Germany.

Stones Thrown at Giant's Just Bounce Off

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:11:00 +0000

Ex-Google employees and an IBM refugee banded together to attempt to solve a problem, a problem that has not been solved by giant's Google or Microsoft. Cuil's approach to search, is that the internet has grown and that search provider's such as Google, Microsot, Yahoo and AOL have not grown their search databases to match it, leaving websites and pages from being indexed and unable to be searched.

The three founders, Costello, Patterson & Power set out on a quest to improve the search industry. They raised $33 Million in VC funds, created a huge uproar in the social media landscape and within weeks they are nearly off the radar.

Cuil came to the battle with a loud horn and a bunch of stones. They stormed the battle field with their horns blaring and began throwing stones at Google's massive castle walls. The problem here is the shear size of the footprint that Google holds in the market. Even if Cuil's goal was to replace MSN in the search industry, they will most likely run out of money before they make any real dent.

Google, Yahoo, and etc, despite an obvious deficit in search indexing, have already monetized their products, have created complimentary services and products that will allow them to maintain a much higher rate of loyalty from their customers. A newcomer such as Cuil will be hard pressed to gain the market share needed to allow them to monetize their products. If they cannot monetize, they cannot get cash flow, if they can not generate cash flow, the $33 million drips away and they will find investors reluctant to hand over more funds.

Cuil appears to have followed Jerry Maguire when he asked "Who's coming with me?". I wish the team at Cuil the best of luck and if they survive and prove to be successful, I have a feeling they will experience more low points than highs over the next few years.

HowTo: Change Dreamweaver to Default HTML Editor on Windows Vista

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:16:00 +0000

I encountered this problem on my work PC when I went to "edit" an .html file and Word opened...

To do this, we have to edit the registry. If you are uncomfortable doing this, then please do not attempt this hack. As usual, please back up your registry before you begin hacking away, as your registry controls your entire operating system.

Click start -> type "regedit" into the search box and press enter
Navigate to HKEY_CLASSSES_ROOT -> .htm -> OpenWithList and verify that "dreamweaver.exe" is listed as a key. If not create it.
Navigate to HKEY_CLASSSES_ROOT -> applications -> dreamweaver.exe -> shell.
Create a key and name it "edit".
On the default string that is within the edit key, double click on it and set the value to the following(assuming you have Dreamweaver CS3 and you installed into the default path, otherwise edit as necesary, include the double quotes) - "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS3\dreamweaver.exe", "%1"
Press ok and exit regedit by hitting the x in the corner.
Open IE, click tools -> internet options.
Navigate to programs -> select the drop down for html editor and choose Dreamweaver. Press OK and you are all done.

HowTo: How to Get iLife Back After a Fresh Install of Mac OSX

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 02:31:00 +0000

A while back thru Apple Developer Connection, I received the new version of Mac OS X, Leopard. I was delighted to have the newest OS from Apple for my MacBook Pro. From natural choice I chose to install from a fresh hard drive, meaning that I erased the hard drive and installed a fresh copy of the OS.

Once I was in the OS I was excited to try all the new features, especially spaces, but I was disappointed to find that I no longer had Photobooth or iPhoto which is two applications I began to enjoy with my new mac laptop. I figured that they were lost to me, until recently when I chatted with a Genius at the Genius Bar of our local "Apple Heaven". This "Genius" informed me that I can take my original equipment cds that came with the laptop and install the software onto Leopard. I was originally unaware of this being a "PC Refugee", so I am so delighted to find out this information that I am sharing it with all of you.

Load the install disk 1 into your mac
navigate to the drive in finder
open optional installs
follow the prompter.

Congrats, you once again have iDVD, iPhoto, iWeb, Photobooth and more. Enjoy.

HowTo: Convert Cellpadding & Cellspacin into CSS

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:48:00 +0000

A while back a friend of mine were working on a project together. He used tables heavily for layout design and I used a good mix between styles and tables to manage layout. We had to work together which means we had to meet each other in the middle. We came upon the problem of converting HTML's table attributes CellPadding and CellSpacing into CSS attributes. Below is the equivalents of cellspacing="0" and cellpadding="0" respectively in CSS.

table { border-spacing: 0; }

table { border-collapse: collapse; }

I hope this helps others. I still have not perfected this. But I hope I am getting closer

Review: Beware the Hype for Software as a Service

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:58:00 +0000

I first stumbled across the article Beware the Hype for Software as a Service when I read Dharmesh's rant pertaining to how awful this article was on OnStartups Blog. My first thought is quite simply when did Business Week begin inviting non high school graduates to write for their publications? One thing that I remember from high school is we were taught to research a topic before we write about it.

This article has developed such an outcry from techie entrepreneur's that it lead me to my thought that maybe this was intentional. Maybe the author was taking advice from Dosh Dosh's article on How to Say Nothing in 500 Words, particularly the point #2 "Take the less usual side." But this is under the assumption that the author uses real information to back up their claim, not "SUVs are not cool. They never were." (Which I have to make a personal note here, when my wife and I found we were expecting our 3rd child, we had to upgrade, and gas prices being what they were, we purchased a 2004 Ford Expedition with the Eddie Baur edition with 50,000 miles for over $10,000 less than what a brand new minivan would have cost. I love our SUV and it has more features than I could have afforded otherwise. Thank you high gas prices! FYI, for work driving I drive a 10 year old Jetta (35mpg))

Despite whether it was intentional or not, lets move on with dispelling this article for what it is, an attempt of someone who is using scare tactics to "stop time" and prevent the natural evolution of software delivery. But before I begin my rebuttal, from the views expressed by Mr. Marks, email, online stock brokers, Google, GoToMeeting, and etc are all bad because they are not Federally insured...

"Microsoft Vista is not a failure" - no, really it was not a failure... so explain to me Mr. Marks how when releasing new software, your market share goes down does not mean it is a failure? Yea they sold 150 million copies.. but that is peanuts to how many copies of XP have been sold, plus most people are being forced into Vista because MS will not sell anything else. Apple has been gaining market share for a while, in fact in October of 07 it was announced that they have gained 2% market share. Employees of MS have even publicly stated that Vista is a "work in progress"... all this ='s failure to me.
"Myth 1: SaaS is cheaper" - your answer here should have been not always... but most of the time it is. Ok in comparison, Quickbooks can cost $300 a license. To use his example, 10 users would cost $3000. With Freshbooks it will cost you $1068. Quickbooks releases new versions once a year with new features (and you have to pay another $3000), Freshbooks releases new features whenever they want (you may see one next time you log in, no additional charge).
"Myth 2: SaaS reduces hardware investment" "you still need fast access to the Internet."- What an idiot... access to the internet is not hardware! Anyways it truly does reduce hardware investment. Most SaaS applications can be accessed via an internet enabled cell phone. I bet your cell phone cost a lot less than your computer? What reduction of IT hardware does create is an environment where you do not have to be tied down to an office. True mobility comes from being able to access your data from anywhere, including allowing your staff to do the same. That is a key benefit of SaaS and decreased requirement for hardware.
"Myth 3: SaaS is quicker to setup" - Gene, find a new job, please. What does Ikea furniture have to do with software? Despite the author's feeble attempts at discrediting the model of SaaS, SaaS is easier to setup. Think of it this way, when you needed Quickbooks, you had to call Intuit or drive to Office Depot. When you need Freshbooks, you type www.freshbooks.com into your web browser. Now if your homepage is Google you can save some keystrokes and just type freshbooks into the search box. This does not even consider what it is like for a company to implement an ERP system such as Oracle's Applications... much of the time any employee who will use it will have to receive training on how to navigate the interface and know what codes to enter to get a desired result. Not to mention usually 6 to 18 months to implement software of this nature. Good luck with that.
"Myth 4: Your data is secure and backed up" - Gene, do you have aluminum foil covering the ceiling and windows in your bedroom? I also ask you this Gene, how many times have you left it up to your staff to swap the tapes in your tape backup or make manual backups of your data and they screwed up? Most SaaS providers make your data their highest priority. I am not going to say that it is 100% secure, but nowadays nothing is. Hell your identity used to be hijacked by someone going thru your garbage and looking for a void or torn up check.
"Myth 5:" - WHAT? Software needs to be FDIC insured if you are going to use it? That doesn't make any sense. Currently working for a provider of Online Banking Software, the rules are not different. In fact, there are screwups here almost every week. Majority of them caused by user error which result in having to restore tables or refresh data from the core system. But your data here is no more secure here than in Google's servers or SalesForce's.

If you read the fine print:

Gene Marks, CPA, is the owner of the Marks Group, which sells customer relationship, service, and financial management tools to small and midsize businesses. Marks is the author of four best-selling small business books and writes the popular "Penny Pincher's Almanac" syndicated column. He frequently speaks to business groups on penny-pinching topics. More penny-pinching advice from Marks can be found at www.xxxxxxx.com

(I refuse to put in his web address to possibly improve his search rankings.)

Conclusion
After looking at his website, he says he hates spending money on technology but he owns a technology company??? He markets his company thru the use of webinars, video tips, a monthly newsletter and whitepapers. Not to mention his website has a nice design to it.

Gene Marks is nothing more than a fool, but one who is decent at marketing. The first line on his website states that he hates spending money on technology, which from the above is obviously a lie, he just hates spending money on new technology. What he has done here has created a controversy, he has written about a topic that many tech enthusiasts hold dear which has boosted his traffic. He plays on fears that are commonly held amongst less technology educated people and builds their trust through feeling like they are not alone. He takes them by the hand, and then most likely robs them blind with costs for server hardware, server setup, configuration services, licensing fees and support contracts.

It is disappointing that BusinessWeek would let such a joke fly thru the net of their established organization. I honestly expect better.

Chris
*note: I am founder of a SaaS company which makes me biased, but I have been down the road and seen quite a bit, I am harsh on Gene Marks' article because it offends BusinessWeek subscribers' intelligience to think that this is good journalism.

HowTo: Index a ColdFusion Site for Search with VSpider

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:33:00 +0000

So in my studies of learning ColdFusion and working on my first few projects, I came into an issue. I was redeveloping the public website for the company I am currently working for. The previous site was poorly built with little or no code reuse ability and quite a bit of static navigation and content.

I redesigned and developed the entire site. When I finished I entered the coldfusion administrator and re indexed the search collection. I performed a search to test it and was immediately alarmed. My search results were displaying code... I was confused and immediately grabbed my book on ColdFusion to learn that the built in search indexing collection could be prepared two ways, by reading the raw source code and indexing it (which is fine for completely static pages) or by using the search spider that is built in from Verity.

The clear solution is to use the Verity Spider. So this post is dedicated to how I was able to index my dynamically generated site with the Verity Spider.

Make your site available on localhost, even if your site will not stay there. For example, http://localhost/mysite/

Create a text file called mysiteCmds.txt and save it to the verity folder within the ColdFusion directory. For Example, C:\ColdFusion8\verity\mysiteCmds.txt

In this document will be all of your commands for the vspider such as starting point, files to exclude from the index and so on. For Example, mine looks like the following:

-style c:\ColdFusion8\verity\Data\stylesets\ColdFusionVspider
-collection c:\ColdFusion8\verity\collections\mysite
-exclude http://localhost/mysite/admin/*
-indmimeexclude text/css
-start http://localhost/mysite/index.cfm
-cgiok

Then I open up the command prompt (start->run->cmd) and run the following line,
vspider -cmdfile c:\ColdFusion8\verity\mysiteCmds.txt

Then you need to navigate to the CF Administrator (http://localhost/CFIDE/Administrator/) and add the collection under Verity Collections. Name it the same as you set it in the CmdFile, mysite. Be sure to select English Advanced.

Next you need a search form.

<_cfform action="search.cfm" method="post" name="submitSearch" ><_INPUT class="btn" type="submit" value="SEARCH" /><_/cfform>

Last, you need to be able to display the results.

<_cfsearch collection="mysite" name="results" criteria="#searchterm#" type="simple">
<_cfloop query="results">
<_cfset score2 = (score * 100)>
<_span style="font-weight:bold ">#currentRow#. #score2#% : <_a href="#replace(url,"localhost/mysite/","www.mysite.com/")#">
<_cfif title eq "">
#replace(url,"localhost/mysite/","www.mysite.com/")#
<_cfelse>
#title#
<_/cfif>
<_/a><_/span>
#left(summary, 150)#
<_/cfloop>

Remove the underscores, I had to add them so that the code would display.

Resources:

http://www.monkeyflash.com/coldfusion/using-vspider/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/articles/vspider.html

Chris

iPhone 2.0 Not Meeting Expectations

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:19:00 +0000

Apple appears to have made some mistakes with this recent launch of the new 3G iPhone. On top of a poorly operated scarcity marketing strategy as explained by Seth Godin, there has been problems with activations and signs of poor stability. David of 37signals.com describes his unhappy experiences with the new Apple device over the last week.

In summary, the increase in speed using the 3G network has been fantastic, that is when it works. David stated that he feels the phone dropped the 3G network and used the slow EDGE network approximately 80% of the time. The new 2.0 firmware shows signs of sloppy performance with consistent delays and instances where the device freezes for several seconds. David also told the readers of Signal vs. Noise that while the phone is on the 3G network it burns through battery life, causing the user to recharge daily.

I can imagine that the iPhone uses more power than most cell phones, but Apple needs to effectively match that power consumption with the appropriate battery. That is under the assumption that the new iPhone is under powered. Lets just hope for Apple's sake that this is not the case and that their iPhone is using more power than it should be, and in this case they can identify the problem and release a patch to the firmware to fix it.

The Apple iPhone has been on a consistent path to capture not only the majority stake of the US' market share of cell phones, but also on a global level. If they cannot quickly address these issues, they will see a drop off in consumer loyalty.

In Seth's post regarding the 5 principles of a scarcity campaign, Apple could have done a better job at making their customer's feel as if they were actually cared for and many of these issues would not have been as upsetting.

Review: Rich Dad's Before You Quit Your Job

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:45:00 +0000

So I read this book after completing Rich Dad Poor Dad which I reviewed. Before I completed this book I read John T. Reed's attacks on Robert Kiyosaki. Reed accuses Kiyosaki as being a fraud and he does not recommend any advice from the Rich Dad series. After thoroughly reading Reed's argument, I continued to read Before You Quit Your Job and I came to my own conclusions about the book and Robert Kiyosaki.

Negatives:

Some of Kiyosaki's stories do not add up
Some of Kiyosaki's advice is not good
I guarantee that he exaggerates his accomplishments

Positives:

Some of Kiyosaki's advice is great (i.e. Pay Yourself First, Creditors Last - at one point I was not happy with Chase Bank, I owed them several thousand dollars and a rep made a promise that he could not keep, I refused to pay them. 3 days before my stale account was being passed to litigation a very nice rep called me, I told her I refused to pay, she attempted to plead with me until I requested a settlement. I settled with Chase for 2/3's of what I owed them. About 2 months after the debt was settled my credit score went up about 8%.
I walked away with some valuable information
I was more motivated to reach my goals

I take it from Sir Isaac Newton and believe that for every force there is an equal and opposite force. For every offense there is a defense, for every hot there is a cold, for every plaintiff there is a defendant, for every author that speaks against the norm there is a critic that speaks against the author.

I cannot say that I know for sure that Robert Kiyosaki is a legitimate author, honestly attempting to improve the lives of as many people as he can reach (declared by his books) through financial education. What I can say is that Kiyosaki is a good author, that he provides some fabulous advice and some poor advice, and he is a strong communicator. I am a firm believer that quality advice and inspiration can be found in the strangest places. Considering the information age, anyone can publish a book and when reading any book, the information presented needs to be validated by the reader, just the same as researching a topic on WikiPedia.

If you are considering reading the Rich Dad Books but are hesitant, whats stopping you? Information can only be as dangerous as the methods in which it is used and if you walk away from the book with even the slightest bit of inspiration, motivation or good advice that improves your life, your business or your investments, then what did you loose in doing so?

Laws of Simplicity

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:37:00 +0000

I recently stumbled upon John Maeda's website titled The Laws of Simplicity, which offers an intellectual approach to design, whether it be a product, graphic or computer application. Maeda has been recognized for his outstanding work in design, and his current research and book are based on the fundamentals of simplicity.

On his website, The Laws of Simplicity, he lists what he sees as the 10 laws of simplicity:

Law 1: Reduce
The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
Law 2: Organize
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
Law 3: Time
Savings in time feel like simplicity.
Law 4: Learn
Knowledge makes everything simpler.
Law 5: Differences
Simplicity and complexity need each other.
Law 6: Context
What lies in the periphery of simplicity is deﬁnitely not peripheral.
Law 7: Emotion
More emotions are better than less.
Law 8: Trust
In simplicity we trust.
Law 9: Failure
Some things can never be made simple.
Law 10: The One
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

I Strive to be a 'Rich Dad'

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:13:00 +0000

So I recently reached the back cover of the Rich Dad Poor Dad book by Robert Kiyosaki. This must be one of the most controversial business books that I have read. Many criticize Robert Kiyosaki's best selling book, stating that they doubt he has done any of the things that are written within its pages.

I began reading this book with an open mind. I feel that his writings are sincere and knowledgeable. Yes, he is cruel in his presentation of the Poor & Middle Class, but he is doing so for a reason, to illustrate the philosophies included within the book. He says that your home is not an asset, I can relate with this statement. Because he says that a true asset is one that provides income, although a home can be used as an asset for a loan, it does not provide income. In fact in many cases it sucks up your income through the need for repairs and improvements.

I feel that people are free to their opinions, but I think that many of the people who harshly criticized this book probably never read it, or if they did, they read it with their mind closed shut and unwilling to understand the teachings that Robert was attempting to pass along.

Lastly, Kiyosaki was criticized for his lack of detail in how he made his way to the top. The problem is that this book was not intended to be a detailed account of what he did to become successful. It was to open up your mind to the possibilities and opportunities that lie in front of each and everyone's face. Opportunities are everywhere and you must have the 'Rich Dad' mind set to take advantage of them.

I recommend this book and support the efforts of the rich dad team.

I Cannot Wait to be a Hacker...

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:18:00 +0000

Ok, so when I was growing up I never knew what a hacker was until the initial days of AOL dial up internet, but even then the term hacker had a negative vibe. I also never expected to become a programmer. I had aspirations to become an engineer, I think more so because I thought that people would respect me. While in school I took C++ for engineers, and hated it, thinking I could never be a programmer.

So today, I am a programmer. I now also know multiple answers for what a hacker is. Ironically enough, I fit one of them and hope to become another. From pursuing the life of a serial entrepreneur, I have come to terms with being a hacker, someone who is a programmer / entrepreneur hacking away at code and business concepts to create something great. Which is what I am trying to accomplish with my startup, property management software. I am trying to create something great.

I recently finished reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Feriss, let me say that this book is an absolute must read. As I read the last page, I realized that I wanted to make a change in my life. I realized that I wanted to become a new type of hacker, someone who travels to new lands and not just embraces the native culture, but injects themselves into it. Learning the language, eating the food, and living the life of that native land. The best part is doing it all inexpensively.

In the book, Ferriss, encourages you to free your mind of the norm and embrace the principles and lifestyle of the New Rich(NR). The NR is not about having more money, but about having enough money to support a specific lifestyle. This lifestyle is ultimately defined as a liberation from the norm, being free to travel and try new things while the rest of the world is on the clock 9-5.

Ferriss enlightens you to the possibilities, he does this by teaching you some very key principles. All this from a man who is in his low thirties and travels the world for months at a time annually. I extremely recommend this book for anyone who wants a new perspective on lifestyles and wants to break free from the norm.

The results are in, Firefox 3 is in the lead

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:58:00 +0000

The Inquirer posted the results of a memory benchmark test where they tested 5 windows web browsers under average browsing conditions for 3 hours. The results were the following:

Firefox 3 - 111.8MB
Opera 9.5 - 190.6MB
Flock 1.2 - 191.9MB
Internet Explorer 8 - 194.4MB
Safari 3.1 - 636.9MB

The MB values represent the memory-set usage after roughly 3 hours of web browsing. Firefox 3 climbed on pace with the rest of the browsers until it plateaued at around 111. Safari just kept going, Internet Explorer also seemed to be on a path up. Opera and Flock plateaued as well. The Inquirer concluded that they felt Safari and Internet Explorer would have continued to use up all of the available memory if they were left open.

Last note, the machine used had 3GB of ram and was running Windows Vista SP1.

HowTo: Create a Text File with SQL Server 2005

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:55:00 +0000

I recently had the need to create a text file from within SQL Server. I have never heard of anyone doing this before, but since I started developing with SQL Server, it keeps amazing me on its capabilities. So when I decided this is what needs to happened, I put in the research to figure out how to do it.

It is actually much easier than anticipated. The first thing we had to do was to enable the xp_cmdshell stored procedure by executing the following (courtesy of Microsoft):

-- To allow advanced options to be changed.
EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1
GO
-- To update the currently configured value for advanced options.
RECONFIGURE
GO
-- To enable the feature.
EXEC sp_configure 'xp_cmdshell', 1
GO
-- To update the currently configured value for this feature.
RECONFIGURE
GO

Once we had enabled xp_cmdshell, we could utilize the built in stored procedure that allows you to perform external processing. Basically you are performing a Windows command to create / append a text file. The syntax to do this is:

xp_cmdshell { 'command_string' } [ , no_output ]

I created a stored procedure to use when writing to a text file:

create procedure dbo.writeToFile
@msg VARCHAR(7800) = null, @file VARCHAR(200) = null, @overwrite BIT = 0
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @execStr VARCHAR(8000)

SET @execStr = RTRIM('echo ' + COALESCE(LTRIM(@msg),'-') + CASE WHEN (@overwrite = 1) THEN ' > ' ELSE ' >> ' END + RTRIM(@file))

EXEC master..xp_cmdshell @execStr
END
go

HowTo: Stop ColdFusion Cookies From Vanishing

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:29:00 +0000

I encountered this problem recently in my exploration of ColdFusion where I set cookies within the session start function of the application.cfc to track information about how a user found our site, what browser they are using and their general locale. Using debugger, I could tell that the cookies set properly when I first entered the site. Once I navigated away from the first page the cfcookies were dropped or missing.

It was driving me nuts. I did about 20 minutes worth of research before I found a solution. Basically if I had not set client cookies to no, ColdFusion would try to automatically handle cookies being set on the users machine and apparently it just causes problems. So I set this by entering the following line of code into my application.cfc.

< cfset setclientcookies="no" >

After I set that, closed and opened the browser and the cookies worked properly. Hopefully this helps others who have experienced the same thing as me.

Chris

Mozilla Firefox Turns 3

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:14:00 +0000

Today at 10am PDT, the extremely popular web browser, Mozilla Firefox, turns 3 today. This has been a long awaited event for fans of the sleek browser, which has been growing quickly in adoption as an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The new version touts new features making it more secure, easier to use and quicker. Lets hope they are successful.

The team at Mozilla is trying to make Firefox be the number one software for the most number of downloads within 24 hours of launch in the Guinness Book of World Records. The target is 5 million downloads. You can help them out by visiting http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/ and making a pledge to download the new web browser.

Chris

ColdFusion

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:03:00 +0000

Well I have been working for a new company now for almost a month. Part of the job requirements were for me to learn how to program web applications using Adobe's ColdFusion. So far I have to say that in just a few weeks I can now develop database driven applications with AJAX components. Not bad.

My initial thoughts were that I would hate programming in ColdFusion. But after building my first mini application and redesigning their commercial website using ColdFusion components, I am quite impressed.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with ColdFusion, it was one of the first application servers to allow developers to provide dynamic content using back end databases. It is very similar to Microsoft's ASP.net, Java Server Pages and PHP. It has a simple syntax that is similar to HTML and provides for ease of use programming. The latest version, version 8, has built in functionality for AJAX or dynamic interaction components, like popup windows, dynamic menus, and pods. Find more information about ColdFusion at wikipedia.

I am mid/senior level programmer using ASP / PHP, so learning ColdFusion has not been much of a challenge, not to mention it has been kind of fun. It is like driving a 10 year old Camry your whole life because of costs and then getting to see what it is like to drive a Cadillac. Not that I am comparing ColdFusion to a Cadillac, but it is nice to use a for profit application server that has quite a bit of built in functionality that does a bunch of work for the developer. But with every tool, there are pros and cons. The biggest con in this instance is the fact that ColdFusion is not cheap.

If you are interested in taking it for a test drive, Adobe has made available a development version of ColdFusion that is free to install and use. You have all the bells and whistles of the full blown version, except it is for development use. I recommend that if you have the resources to go with ColdFusion in a production environment, then you should definitely consider it as an option. It is powerful, easy and robust.

HowTo: Get Files From Mac OS X Leopard to Windows Vista

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:41:00 +0000

I started new work this passed week and the machine provided to me had no music on it what so ever, so I brought in my personal laptop. I have never attempted to copy data from Mac OS X Leopard to Vista before so it took me a little bit to find a method that worked. This is what I did:

1. On your Mac: System Preferences --> Sharing.
2. Check the box that says File Sharing.
3. Click options, I enabled FTP.
4. Make sure you have the permissions setup for your user account to read & write, as well as a password.
5. I used FileZilla, but you can use any ftp client.
6. Type into the host field the ip address of your Mac OS X computer.
7. Then for the username and password, use the same ones that you use to login to your Mac.
8. Once connected you are good to go. Download or upload as many files as necessary.

Hope this helps.

chris

Twitter Abandoning Rails? Is RoR Destined for Non-Enterprise Apps?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sat, 03 May 2008 14:30:00 +0000

Ruby on Rails has gained in popularity since its creation by David Heinemeier Hansson back in 2004. It proved to be an intuitive web development framework. But in the last few years, critics have come to believe that RoR is incapable of powering enterprise level applications.

It appears that there may be some current rumors that would back up this claim. TechChrunch posted on May 1st that "Twitter is Said to be Abandoning Ruby on Rails". Twitter has been having quite a bit of performance issues as of late. It is probable that the poor performance can be narrowed down to increase in popularity and companies creating twitter accounts and spamming users to boost traffic. I hope that this is not the image that is perceived for our Property Stampede twitter account.

GigaOm recently posted that Ruby on Rails will be getting some Enterprise-Level Support. Benchmark Capital is in investing $3.5 million in New Relic Inc, which plans to use the funds to incubate RoR to a Enterprise-Level framework. It should be interesting, but I am rather skeptic. Lew Cirne hopes to boost the adoption of RoR like he did with Java, but Java had the support of Sun and IBM, which RoR is growing without any corporate support. It should be interesting none the less.

Chris

Review: LogoEase - 100% Free Logo Builder

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:00:00 +0000

So on first impression, the website is definitely eye candy. This logo builder was designed by a UK based design firm called Logo Quality. Upon using the tool I was impressed by its ease of use. You do not need to know how to use PhotoShop to use their tool. It is simple enough for a non techie as well as powerful enough to produce a quality logo. I recommend that you give it a try.

Chris

Get Ubuntu 8.04 CDs Free!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:27:00 +0000

So Ubuntu is nearing its 8.04 release. If you act quickly, you can grab yourself a request to receive a cd for free. I requested both desktop and server 64bit cds. I am really excited for them to arrive, but most likely i will download the image as well. :D

Get Ubuntu 8.04

Chris