Dave Kroondyk's Blog

Turn on Ratings Feature in SharePoint 2010

2010-06-23T16:43:00.002-04:00

Having just installed a fresh copy of SharePoint 2010, I of course wanted to immediately use the new Ratings feature (i.e. Netflix style ratings on list/library items). However, for some reason I could not find any reference to ratings in central admin or site settings. No way to turn it on, activate it, add a column, nothing. So what did I do?

Powershell to the rescue.

I wanted to enable a feature, so I did:

get-help *enable* and found the cmdlet called "Enable-SPFeature"

then I looked up the ratings feature identity online and found this blog post http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mcsnoiwb/archive/2010/01/07/features-and-their-guid-s-in-sp2010.aspx. Cool! Now I have my command:

enable-spfeature -identity 915c240e-a6cc-49b8-8b2c-0bff8b553ed3 -url http://servername

Voila! Now I have "Rating Settings" in all lists/libraries. Still wish I knew why Ratings wasn't there in the first place, but this is a good example of using some of the built in Powershell cmdlets for SharePoint.

Building libRETS 1.2.5 on OS X 10.5.6

2009-03-03T23:32:00.002-05:00

Apparently it is really hard to get libRETS to successfully build on OS X. So, I'm posting how I got it to work here as a future reference for me, and maybe others.

1. sudo port selfupdate
2. sudo port install boost +st
3. sudo port install expat
4. sudo port install antlr
5. sudo port install curl
5. sudo port install swig
6. Download and extract libRETS
7. In the extracted folder, run the ./configure script. I only wanted the ruby bindings, so mine looked like this:

./configure -with-expat-prefix=/opt/local -with-boost-prefix=/opt/local --disable-java --disable-perl --disable-php --disable-python --disable-dotnet --enable-examples --enable-shared_dependencies

8. make
9. sudo make install
10. run "ruby search.rb" inside project/swig/ruby to test

The "+st" option when installing Boost was what made it work for me after many failed attempts.

Most of what helped me solve this was buried in the libRETS mailing list - and I thought it might be more accessible here. Also, http://tzetzefly.com/2007/09/01/building-librets-on-mac-osx/ was a great start.

Good luck!

Me Meme

2008-10-20T20:18:00.003-04:00

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture

Have fun.

erubycon 2008

2008-07-14T13:25:00.002-04:00

Yikes - it's been a while since my last post. Anyways, I'll be attending erubycon this year along with 2 of my coworkers. Looks to be a great time - hopefully we can learn a lot and meet some more Ruby programmers :)

View twitter '@' replies directed at any user

2008-04-15T09:31:00.004-04:00

Often, someone on twitter will ask a question. I'll see the question, but I have no way of seeing the replies. Here are two websites that can do that for you:

http://quotably.com/
http://tweetscan.com/

Quotably tries to put topics into a thread style layout. Sometimes it gets messed up, but I'm not worried about it :)

Tweetscan is also useful for finding the replies to a specific username. I'll be keeping these bookmarked to use now when I see questions that I want to see the answers to.

Pragmatic Studio - Ruby on Rails - Day 1

2008-03-11T10:39:00.003-04:00

Wow, it's been a while since my last post. Today, I'm starting my second day at the rails studio workshop in Denver, CO. The weather here is spectacular.

Yesterday, we reviewed a lot of the core functionality that rails provides to web developers. I say "reviewed" since most of what we talked about is covered in the Agile book, but it is all stuff that you need to know backwards and forwards in order to effectively develop on rails. For example, an overview of the Ruby language and MVC architecture, using scaffolding to get a quick beginning look at how the application might feel, using and customizing helpers, validation, migrations and much more. So, it was very good to review and talk about it more.

Overall, it's been great and has given me a better understanding of the process used to develop rails apps. By the end of the third day, we'll have gone entirely through the development process all the way to running a production app. I'm excited to see what the next two days bring.

Codemash Evening One

2008-01-09T22:14:00.000-05:00

One of my goals for Codemash this year was to find out about more great blogs. Incredibly, during the first evening's expert panel, one of the questions asked was, "what are your favorite blogs to read?" I grabbed for my pen and immediately began scribbling down the responses. Here is the list I got:
Neal Ford (mentioned multiple times)
Guido van Rossum
Bruce Eckel (also mentioned more than once)
Dianne Marsh
Bill Wagner
Techcrunch
Josh Holmes
Scott Guthrie
Scott Hanselman

Also some podcasts were mentioned...
The Java Posse
Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders
Google Developer Podcast
.NET Rocks!
Parleys
Seth Godin

Hopefully, I didn't get any wrong. I'm looking forward to reviewing these after Codemash.

Codemash and computer upgrade

2007-12-27T12:34:00.000-05:00

I'll be heading to Sandusky, OH on January 9-11 to attend Codemash for the second year (last year was the first year for Codemash). I really enjoyed last year and I am expecting this year to be equally great. Basically, it's a conference where a bunch of geeky people like myself get together and learn about cool programming stuff. Last year, Scott Guthrie from Microsoft gave a keynote presentation and ever since then I've continued learning valuable things on his blog. This year, Scott Hanselman, also from Microsoft, is doing one of the keynotes and I've already been learning from his blog. So, my favorite part of Codemash is discovering great new blogs to read and learn from! Stay tuned to hear more about Codemash as I hope to blog on site.

Thinking about all the geeky people I'll see at Codemash really got me thinking that I should use some of my Christmas money to upgrade my computer. So, scratch the last post from my blog as I'm no longer interested in a digital camera with MPEG-4 recording capabilities. Instead, I decided to make my computer cooler and quieter - the stock fan on my BFG 7600GT is quite noisy. Also, the stock fan on the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ is much nosier than the stock fan on my Core 2 Duo 6420 at work (which is nearly silent on top of my desk - I love how quiet it is). Plus, these new fan/heatsink combos will hopefully allow me to overclock my CPU and Video Card. Lastly, I took this opportunity to increase my RAM by 4GB for a total of 5GB (I've got Vista x64 on the way). Here is what I bought:

Zalman VF900 GPU cooler - $32.99
Zalman CNPS 9700 NT CPU cooler - $52.99
A-DATA 2x2GB PC2-6400 DDR2 800 - $70.99

I'm really excited to put these things in my computer at home and hear the difference! I'll let you know my findings once they are installed.

Digital camera with MPEG-4

2007-12-26T15:55:00.000-05:00

I've always wanted a point and shoot camera with good video recording capabilities. Currently, I use my old Canon A75 which records video at 640x480 at 15fps. The videos I take are mostly of my nephew, so they do well to capture the moments of his young life. However, I was never satisfied with the quality. I've been aware of the Casio Exilim series for a few years. I believe they were the first camera to offer MPEG-4 recording resulting in high-quality video while keeping file sizes small. To me, this is a huge plus. In fact, I already have a DSLR to capture images, so really all I want is a simple way to capture some decent video in a small package (i.e. camcorders are too big). The Exilim series (e.g. EX-Z77) seem to fit the bill quite nicely, but are there no other options? What other cameras record in MPEG-4 for under $200? I'd love to see more options than just the Exilim series.

A new start

2007-12-10T15:27:00.000-05:00

The title of this post might be premature since it isn't the New Year yet, but I'm going to try to start blogging (again). Reasons why include:

Keep up writing skills since being out of school
Remind me to read other people's blogs and become more involved with the online software developer community
Collect new thoughts/ideas/discoveries/learnings for future reference

I assume this blog will be boring to start - especially if you don't know me. I hope to get better as time goes on. I will post on topics ranging from tennis to developing software. My initial goal is one post/week.

Note: I changed my first post from saying "Whatever" to saying "Blog created."

New Blog Post

2007-06-21T08:06:00.000-04:00

Blog created.