Jay Smith

My good friend Zach Young has been doing a lot of great work with using Live Meeting to enhance the user group and event experience over the last year.  He has even been part of the Virtual Alt .Net (VAN) calls that have grown like crazy and are completely virtual! 

I had the chance to corner him the other night after our Arkansas User Group Leadership call and interview him on the subject for User Group Radio, so head on over and check out this great interview and the awesome resources Zach has put together to make getting off the ground with Live Meeting a lot easier on the rest of us!

Zach thanks for the interview it was a great time.

Tags:

I just upgraded to JetBrains ReSharper 4.5, a productivity tool I dearly love…,  ok, so you know when someone says that they are about to rip someone a new one ;-).  Well, I am not going to rip too bad.  I will just say I DO NOT like regions, used them when I was a boy, but now I am a man, ok, so you get the picture ;-).

So, here is the story I am working along writing a WCF Service for my current project, and run the Full Cleanup (Alt-Ctrl-Shift-F) and after it is done, I see these #region tags around the members that implement the interface.  I instantly start looking for how to turn that off. 

Here are the steps I took to do just that:

• Go to ReSharper->Options
• Navigate to Languages->C#->Type Members Layout
• Uncheck Use Default Patterns (Don’t be scared, the Custom Patterns populates with a lot of XML, Don’t Panic!)
• Scroll almost down to the bottom of the text, looking for <!—interface implementations –>
• Delete the <Group>…</Group> tags

Now running the Cleanup does not add pesky regions around my interface members, I am going to have to spend more time in these setting because I have a feeling this is not the only place they have sneaked into.

Oh, if you delete that line and want to get it back, just check the Use Default Patterns and apply the settings, it will re-write the default settings.  I verified this on my install and it worked fine.

*UPDATE*

I spent a few more minutes today and just did a blanket remove of any of the <Group>…</Group> in the Type Members Layout and all is good.

Tags:

Today I was looking for guidelines for formatting blog post and came across an article by Scott Mitchell titled “What’s the Best Way to Format a Title for a Blog Post, Article, or Tutorial?”.  In the post he gives 4 options for a title of a post on “Grouping Data using the ASP .NET ListView Control”.  I started typing a reply to his post but thought it would be a good idea to blog my thoughts on this to continue the conversation and document my thoughts in a place I can easily find ;-).  Yeah, sometimes I blog about stuff as much for myself as I do for others.  You see I have a very bad memory and my blog is also my online knowledge base, but I digress.

So how does one determine a good title for a blog post, article, or tutorial? 
This is especially difficult with all the competition for site traffic and search engine optimization worries out there.  I just want to worry about the content of my post and not so much about the ranking of it, but to make sure those that need to find my solution can, we have to put some thought into it. 

So here are my simple guidelines for selecting titles for my content.

• Go to your favorite search engine and pretend you are looking for your article, what do you search on?   Write down the keyword you use.  Continue to do a few other searches pretending that your first did not return what you where looking for.  Write those down as well.  Once you have identified the 1-5 key words that would return what you are looking for see if you can make a title out of it.  Usually you can just put those words together and you have it.  Using Scott’s example my choice was “Grouping Data using the ASP .NET ListView control” because if I were looking for info on this topic I would have searched for the keywords Grouping, ListView, and  “ASP .NET”.  Possibly adding C# if I got a bunch of VB .NET results first ;-).

• If you are posting on a solution to an error, such as “(407) Proxy Authentication Required”, use that at the title. Because we usually just copy and post the error message when looking for solution like this.

Well, there you have it, not very sophisticated but it works for me.  Thanks to Scott Mitchell for asking the question and forcing me to think about it.  Until I read his post I hadn’t really tried to quantify how I come up with titles.

If you have other guidelines for coming up with titles of your content and would like to share them I would love to hear them.

Tags: writing

I have downloaded many apps in the past to use at work only to find out that they do not properly handle the proxy authentication at my location.  At home they work just fine, but at work no way!  One was Witty the WPF twitter client, I actually downloaded the code and patched and submitted that back to the developer.  You now have the option to configure the proxy settings in the options windows.

Recently I downloaded Podder, version 2 has some awesome new skins for an WPF application but still doesn’t work through my proxy server.

I did some research and did find a solution, by adding the following to the config file, Podder.exe.config in this case you can define the default proxy behavior for the application. 

   1:  <system.net>

   2:      <defaultProxy enabled="true" useDefaultCredentials="true">

   3:        <proxy bypassonlocal="True" proxyaddress="http://proxy.example.com:8080"/>

   4:      </defaultProxy>

   5:    </system.net>

It needs to be in the <configuration> node and it worked best if I put it at the bottom below everything else.  Putting it at the top made Podder crash, not sure that really had anything to do with it, but putting it at the bottom didn’t crash.

I wish more developers provided ways to configure the proxy server in their internet enabled apps, but they don’t.  At least now if can work around their laziness and hopefully get it to work any way.

Other apps that I plan to try this on are Blu, and DigiTweet to start.

Tags:

I always get asked to explain what podcasting is and how it works being a technical person I usually get into talking about RSS feeds, enclosures, blogs, bit rates etc.  Which by the way usually goes over their heads. 

I recently found a great video produced by the folks at Common Craft, if you are new to podcasting or have been wondering what all the buzz is about check it out.

Tags: podcasting, youtube

Just got the following information from Jason Kergosien about another cool event going on in the DFW area.  If you were like me and didn’t make it to MIX09 you should really check this out.

Couldn't attend MIX 09?

We are bringing MIX to the DFW area, but instead of repeating the MIX conference, we are boiling down the best of MIX into a 1-day hands on lab. This community event, called MIX Notes, will provide hands-on examples presented by industry leaders.

Computers will be provided, but participants are welcome to bring their own laptops.

Where:                                 Tekfocus (in the InfoMart)

When:                                  June 20, 9 AM - 4 PM

Registration Fee:   $25

* Lunch will be provided

Sign up today at http://www.mixnotes.net

Tags: mix09, mixnotes

Incredible BizSpark event in Dallas, TX on June 12th if you are enrolled in the BizSpark program or interested you should check it out.

SparkStart is a full day of business and technology discussion (open format) and learning event for startups (“startup bootcamp”).  This event will also be a networking opportunity for those startups who are new to the BizSpark program and not yet enrolled in the program and would like to mingle and learn from key business and technology influencers.  It will also be an event for those startups who are recently enrolled and need to keep the momentum going by learning key strategies for success, both in business, and in technology. 

There will have 6 tracks (3 business, 2 technology, and one demo) on key business topics such as “Funding”, “Marketing”, and “Production”.  Each business track will feature a panel of business experts.  Panel members from the business community and moderators are experts in their field, both from the Dallas/Fort Worth area and from all over Texas that include bootstrappers, venture capitalists, angels, incubators, and consulting.

The event will feature technology topics such as “RIA Development”, “Cloud Development”, and provide an opportunity to visit our “Envisioning Center” where we will be demonstrating our web technologies and the Microsoft Surface (http://www.microsoft.com/surface/) throughout the day.  Attendees will literally get to see what our large customer executives see at the Microsoft Technology Center in Dallas in our envisioning room in order to inspire, ideate, and get answers to vital questions. 

There will also be a “sign-up” station for startups who want to sign up for BizSpark and begin immediately receiving the benefits e.g. software, support, and visibility.  (http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark)

Date: June 12th, 2009 - 10:00am to 4:30pm with us. Register Here

Where

Microsoft Technology Center – Dallas

7000 State Highway 161, Building LC1

Irving, TX 75039

469-775-0000

Tags: bizspark, sparkstart

I just got an email from Mark Rackley I wanted to pass along.  Registration is now open for the “SharePoint Saturday Ozarks”!

Join SharePoint architects, developers, and other professionals that work with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for ‘SharePoint Saturday Ozarks’, on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 in Harrison, AR. 

SharePoint Saturday will be an educational, informative & lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals & MVPs, covering a wide variety of SharePoint-orientated topics. 

SharePoint Saturday is FREE, open to the public and is your local chance to immerse yourself in SharePoint!

Get all the latest news http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/ozarks/.

I’m registered are you?

Tags:

I had a great time presenting RSS and ATOM Syndication using WCF to the Northwest Arkansas .NET User Group on Tuesday night.  I have made my presentation deck available in a PDF available for download form here.

I will be posting the source and the script to my Google code account.  Check out my Presentation page for more info on how to get the code.

Exposing data via RSS and ATOM doesn’t have to be hard, using the System.ServiceModel.Web Syndication objects provided in the 3.5 version of the .NET Framework makes it easy to handle data in a format independent way and let the client then determine how they want to consume your data. 

If you adding RSS and ATOM support to your application I suggest you get familiar with the System.ServiceModel.Web namespace.  I will posting more on the subject in a few work in progress blog post, so stay tuned.

Thanks to everyone at the Northwest Arkansas .NET User Group for having me it was a great time as always.

Tags:

This is a reminder that the Arkansas User Group Leader Call is tonight at 8:00 PM CST.  Meetings going forward will be held via Live Meeting please use the following link to join http://tinyurl.com/dytjef.

All groups suffer from the fact that most of the work is done by a hand full of individuals.  Tonight Zach Young will be facilitating a discussion on this very subject.  We hope to find some techniques that we can employ to increase the involvement of members in the actual running of a group or event.

Meeting Information:

Topic: Get Member Involved!
Medium: Live Meeting (verify you system) 
Meeting Link: http://tinyurl.com/dytjef

I’ll see you tonight!

Tags: building community