Sometimes technical, sometimes not, never a kitty

The next meeting for the Pittsburgh .NET User Group (Pgh.NET) will be on Wednesday, November 8, from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and is presented in partnership with the International .NET Association (INETA). Jason Beres from the INETA speakers bureau will be our presenter.

Deep Dive into Atlas Controls and Toolkit -- Building Applications
This session dives into the control details in the Atlas toolkit.  At the end of this session, attendees will have a full understanding of the data binding in Atlas, the Atlas Update Panel and other controls, such as the AutoComplete Extender.  In addition, the presentation will look at how all of the controls can be used to create business applications and "mash ups" using XML Web Services.

About Our Presenter
Jason Beres is the author of Teach Yourself Visual Studio .NET 2003 in 21 Days; the co-author of the Visual Basic .NET Bible and the C# Bible; and a contributor to SQL Server 2000: The Complete Reference and ASP.NET @ Work: 10 Enterprise Applications. Jason has been a featured speaker at Microsoft Dev Days, the largest regional developer-centric conference that Microsoft has each year.

Dinner and networking will run from 5:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m., with the presentation beginning at 6:00 p.m. The meeting will take place at Microsoft, 30 Isabella Street, North Shore.

Please RSVP to Council Events or 412.918.4229, so that we have an accurate count for dinner.

Thank you,

Jared Roberts
Director, Member Programs
Pittsburgh Technology Council
412.918.4243

I found out today one of my fraternity brothers was killed in Mexico over the weekend.  Brad and I had rooms next to each other as freshmen, and we could talk through the hole in the wall for the radiator pipe at night (which annoyed his roommate to no end).  He had the greatest collection of Doors albums, and we spent hours jamming.  Later, we pledged the same fraternity, and lived in the house for the next couple of years.  Brad eventually went his own way, leaving the fraternity and Allegheny College.  We lost touch after that.  He went goodness knows where, and I went to Alabama for graduate school.

Brad’s easygoing nature often belied just how smart he was.  He was one of those guys who could instantly find a hole in any argument, but wouldn’t argue the point.  Brad was a good talker, and relished good, thoughtful conversation.  Instead of being an arguer, he’d lay out what he was thinking and why.  Sometimes, he and I saw eye to eye on issues, and sometimes we were polar opposites.  No matter, he was respectful of you, even when you disagreed.

It wasn’t much of a surprise to find out he was a videographer for Indymedia.  That just suited him perfectly.  The photo below is part of the story of his death at http://www.indymedia.org/en/2006/10/849305.shtml, and is a great image of Brad.  This was his thoughtful conversation look, and is a good way to remember him.  If you never knew him, this photo’s all the introduction you need.  There’s some more story at http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/feeds/ap/2006/10/29/ap3128352.html.

Mike Snell is being pulled away for a business meeting, but Geoff Tewksbury will fill in for him.  Geoff will be presenting an overview of the new features in SSRS 2005, and an overview of Windows Workflow Foundation.  Same time (6–8 pm) and same place (Communifax).

Wally McClure has posted a very timely ASP.NET podcast, entitled "Building Section 508 Compatible Applications with ASP.NET".  This is very timely because a blind advocacy organization has filed suit regarding the accessibility of websites.  The news broke yesterday; full story at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,224617,00.html.

Now, CYA and go get you some more Wally!

I've heard of Orb, but wasn't fully aware of its capabilities.  Seems like a good way to access photos and such from your home PC, but if you have a Media Center or record video to your PC, you can stream that to your Treo 700w as well. 

Orb is both the name for the service and the software itself. You install it on any Windows XP-based computer, and it transforms your computer into a powerful solution for serving up your media from any browser, anywhere – including the one found in your Windows Mobile device. The service was initially fee-based at launch, but is now free and advertising supported. Orb is made even more useful when installed on a computer with a TV tuner as I'll explain below, but will work fine without one.

Full story at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/articles/orb.mspx.

Orb also gets a mention in an episode of Hanselminutes (http://hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=11).  If Hanselman uses it, it must be good.

CleanTown USA is Pittsburgh’s favorite car wash.  It’s an amazing 16,000 sq ft facility, with two giant conveyor belts that move your car as a team cleans the interior.

The first website was a highly stylized design that provided a retro-futuristic feel, but took forever to load, and the navigation was not very user friendly.  It was also a pain to update, since every page was created by slicing apart Photoshop files and touching up the HTML in Dreamweaver.

To provide greater functionality, better navigation and quicker load times, we decided to use DotNetNuke as the basis for the new website.  The included calendar, photo gallery and blog functionality are nice additions to the site.  Gift card sales are enabled by CATALooK .netStore Pro, and custom information forms are handled by XMod.  We compromised on the design to provide layout flexibility, and the default blue skin fit the company perfectly.

You can see the upgraded site at www.CleanTownUSA.com.

You’ll see some changes to the skin in the coming days.  I need to get a better design anyway, plus I’ve joined the Hidden Network.  What is the Hidden Network?  I totally ripped off the following text from the website, but it’s the best explanation.

Hidden Network Defined

According to the Society for Human Resource Management, seventy-five percent of employees are seeking job opportunities at a different company. Thirty-five percent rely on tools such as job boards to find opportunities. The rest utilize their professional network of colleagues and choose from the opportunities that come to them. These "networked employees" rarely, if ever, look for a job on the market and represent the best of their profession. They are the Hidden Network.

Hidden Network Established

Hidden Network was established in 2006 by Alex Papadimoulis and his company, Inedo, LLC. Its goals are not revolutionary: help strong organizations find excellent talent. Its methods of achieving its goal are what truly set Hidden Network apart.

Hidden Network Accessed

Prior to the Hidden Network, top talent was accessible only to organizations with the financial resources to acquire it. The $20,000 fee assessed by many placement firms for a strong software developer is indicative of just how difficult this search truly is. The Hidden Network puts top-talent within reach by advertising job listings through a network of high-quality on-line publications ("weblogs" or "blogs") written by professionals for professionals.

Why Blogs?

Professional blogs are quickly becoming the new venue for trade news and articles. The authors ("bloggers") behind these publications are generally experts in their field who use their free time to write about their field. They are driven by the same motivation as their readers: a passion for their industry and profession. Our ad serving technology prominently places appropriate local and national job listings throughout our network of professional blogs.

Why Inedo? We Know Employers

We know firsthand how challenging it is to find good talent. Not only are we an employer ourselves, but one of our primary goals at Inedo is to help organizations develop software better. To develop excellent software, a company needs excellent people and Inedo works closely with our clients to find and assess candidates. We've found that the truly excellent candidates are the ones who are passionate about their work and keep up to date with technology through blogs and other publications.

We Know Bloggers

Alex Papadimoulis (the principal member of Inedo, LLC) is a well-known blogger. As the editor of The Daily WTF, Papadimoulis shares stories of poorly written computer code, poorly designed computer applications, and ignorant programmers with an estimated 300,000 readers. Papadimoulis is also the author of another blog where he writes about .NET and other technology topics.

It’s back to The Waterfront this time.  That means PF Chang’s take-out for wifey’s dinner!

Three cool topics—VS for Database Professionals, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Expression Web Designer.  Full event information at http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032306677

When users register, the profile page asks for a Unit, right above the Street.  A better label would be "Apt/Unit", since this is the place to put in an apartment number.  You can't change this label in the Manage Profile Properties, so you need to do a little editing.

There are at least 4 places you can change this text, but the only one that affects the public view of a user's profile is ~/admin/Users/App_LocalResources\Profile.ascx.resx.  Edit this file in a text editor, find "Unit:" and change it to "Apt/Unit:", then save it.  Your registration and profile pages will now show the new label.

The label in the Manage Profile Properties won't change (and I haven't found that edit yet), but your registration and user's Manage Profile pages will all show this change.

I keep telling people how much the Treo 700w rocks, but here's more proof:

Scott Wilder, a cameraman for the network, had been about 20 blocks away on another assignment when the crash occurred. Wilder ran uptown and reported live from the scene using a hand-held Palm Treo smartphone that uses the existing mobile network to transmit video to the Fox News control room. From there, Fox News sent it out live on TV to supplement other video being shot by local traffic helicopters

...

CometVision runs on a Palm Treo 700-series PDA via the Windows Mobile operating system. The technology is able to transmit video over non-3G networks, using much less bandwidth than would normally be needed, Comet CEO Howard Becker said.

Full story at http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061013/wr_nm/treo_dc.

I'm finishing up a DotNetNuke site, and am using CATALooK.netStore Pro for the first time.  I've used a number of shopping carts in my days--PDG Cart, LaGarde Storefront and Candypress come immediately to mind, but there are a couple whose names escape me now.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that CATALooK is one of the better carts I've used.  It it packed with features, and handles configurable products better than any other cart I've used.

Once you have your DotNetNuke site, installation is fairly easy.  Ignore the install.htm file; instead, use the admin guide in the documentation folder.  It's written much better, and illustrated with screenshots.  CATALooK installs a number of modules.  Some are public modules, some are admin only.  Some can go on the same page, but some must go on separate pages.  There is an extremely helpful table in the admin guide to sort this all out.

Once you get the pages created and modules installed, it's time to configure the cart.  One of the limitations of DotNetNuke is that multi-page forms just don't happen.  Ths is often simulated by changing the visibility of different panels on a page.  This works fine for simple user interface forms, but the administrative pages are a different story.  Some of them are long, and look very intimidating.  After you set up one or two products, you'll learn to ignore the sections you don't need, and the setup is much easier.  I strongly suggest running through the example of a configurable product in the admin guide before you set up any of your own products--it's very helpful and takes only a short time.  In addition to a very advanced component relationship ability, simple text attributes are supported, and are pretty flexible.

The look of the public modules is somewhat controlled by module settings.  For most cases, this is all that is required for the look to be "good enough".  Without the source code, you have some ability to change the layouts and hide elements.  User displays are comprised of a number of controls, some of which can't be hidden, but removing them from the page will cause errors.  For complete control of the design, you'll need to purchase the package with source code and do some editing.  Modules can be skinned, and a couple are included in the package.  A few more are available from Snowcovered.

Importantly, CATALooK has the ability to swith the sensitive pages into SSL mode (you need to buy an SSL separately) if that's required  CATALooK integrates with a number of payment gateways, as well as .netCharge, so an SSL isn't always required.  The feature list is extensive, but some of the major ones include referral tracking, product import, coupons and discounts.  Language packes are available for several languages.  Follow the link below for the full list.

So where does CATALooK fall short, IMHO?  I think there are a couple of shortcomings, but nothing that can't be fixed in an upcoming minor release.  However, if any of these points are deal-vreakers for you, you may want to contact the developers to make sure they're on the radar screen.

1. The "Your Cart" graphic is terrible.  I think it's a magnifying glass looking at your cart, but it looks like a blob eating a shopping cart.
2. If you use Text Options for your product, when the user chooses an option, a postback is triggered, and it's not very noticeable.  If the user clicks the "add to cart" button quick enough, they won't notice anything, and the item will be added to the cart.  If they sit still for the duration of the postback, they'll see the product price get updated.  If they wait just long enough to click the add to cart button, they'll get a message that there are no items in their cart.  I'd like to see this updated to something AJAX-y so there's no postback.
3. You need to use Public registration, since a user account is created automatically.  A random user name and password is assigned if the user leaves them blank, or if you hide them on the checkout form.  You can't use Private registration at all.  If you use Verified, your user will have to receive their e-mail and log in between the billing and shipping information forms.  Ideally, there would not be a login required so Verified could still be used, but allow users to complete the checkout without logging in.
4. Once the checkout is complete, redirect to a non-SSL secured page.
5. Although pages are secure by SSL, the links to images or included files on these pages are not rewritten, so your user gets a "Show insecure items" warning.
6. You can create custom shipping rules, but there is no option to use only the custom rules.  They must be used with some other service.  Although the admin guide says the custom rules are checked first, I still received an error that USPS could not be contacted.

Nothing truly serious, but can be confusing or annoying to the end user.

If you're looking for a shopping cart for a DotNetNuke website, check out CataLook at http://www.snowcovered.com/Snowcovered2/Default.aspx?tabid=242&PackageID=3445&r=bf37884a72.  I've been pleased with my experience.