Alen Ziver MALHASOGLU's Microsoft Commerce Server Blog

Book Exchange

2011-06-10T14:39:00.000+01:00

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Book+Exchange

Randy Pausch and "the last lecture"

2011-06-10T10:00:00.000+01:00

Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch^[2] (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American professor of computer science andhuman-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Pausch learned that he had pancreatic cancer in September 2006, and in August 2007 he was given a terminal diagnosis: "3 to 6 months of good health left". He gave an upbeat lecture titled "The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" on September 18, 2007, at Carnegie Mellon, which became a popular YouTube video and led to other media appearances. He then co-authored a book called The Last Lecture on the same theme, which became a New York Times best-seller.

Pausch died of complications from pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008.
ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Really_Achieving_Your_Childhood_Dreams

Faceted Search Solutions

2011-06-09T15:19:00.000+01:00

http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/en/us/default.aspx
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/product/capabilities/search/Pages/Search-Server.aspx
Of course best of breed solution is Microsoft's Enterprise Search which was formerly known as FAST Search

http://solrsharp.codeplex.com/
SolrSharp is a library that interacts with the Solr search engine. Solr (http://lucene.apache.com/solr) provides an operational framework around the Lucene search engine and runs on both Windows & Linux. SolrSharp provides an easy way to interoperate with any solr server implementation on any platform.

Lucine.NET
http://incubator.apache.org/lucene.net/

The Battle of Jericho

2011-06-06T01:31:00.000+01:00

Lyrics

http://www.zam.web.tr/lyrics/Hugh_Laurie-Battle_Of_Jericho.htm

The Battle of Jericho - Moses Hogan - The National Lutheran Choir

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovZ1oHItNPQ

Info about the song

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jericho

DNA Computers

2011-06-03T15:34:00.000+01:00

DNA computer 'calculates square roots'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13626583

Enzyme-Free Nucleic Acid Logic Circuits
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/314/5805/1585

Windows Phone "Mango"

2011-06-03T11:59:00.000+01:00

"Mango Helps Microsoft Make Inroads in Mobile Market",

"Mango is an evolutionary release. Multitasking and the addition of a better browser in the form of IE9 add functionality that was sorely lacking in the initial release of Windows Phone," said Will Croft, an analyst with Wireless Intelligence. "Arguably, these were always table stakes given the maturity of the current smartphone OS market, so elements of catch-up are in play here."

ref http://www.pcworld.com/article/228629/mango_helps_microsoft_make_inroads_in_mobile_market.html

Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 'Mango' update to get IE Mobile 9

ref http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-windows-phone-7-mango-update-to-get-ie-mobile-9/8680

Windows Phone Mango: Microsoft shows off update

ref http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/may/24/windows-phone-mango-microsoft

What is De jure and what is De facto?

2011-06-02T04:48:00.000+01:00

De Jure means as by law and De Facto means as in fact, as there are situations when the legal position does not correspond to the actual situation. The best example is where there is a revolution or a coup d etat in a country. To overthrow a government by force is illegal. Therefore the new regime is de jure invalid but is still the de facto government. Other governments have to decide whether to recognise the new government and, when they do, the new government becomes de jure.

A typical example would be the Military Coup in Portugal in 1974. It is obviously against the constitution of any country for the armed forces to seize power but in this case it was the only way to free the country from oppression and hence all governments recognised the new state. Thus the de facto government by virtue of being recognised bacame de jure...

ref http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_De_jere_and_what_is_De_facto

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_jure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_facto

Microsoft Commerce Server 2009 R2 - Release Candidate was released.

2011-06-01T14:04:00.000+01:00

You may download the RC by clicking this link.

As Microsoft Commerce Server 2009 R2 Release Candidate was released, let's have a quick look at what issues were resolved.

978466 Error message when you use the Commerce Server Staging service in Commerce Server 2007

979172 Site terms are imported incorrectly into the Commerce Server Data Warehouse

968757 A hotfix is available that enables the Commerce Server Data Warehouse analysis reporting feature to support SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

980075 Marketing searches that use the CampaignItemManager.Search method take a long time when the Contains member is specified for the ExplicitComparisionOperator enumeration in Commerce Server 2009

980074 A Commerce Server 2009 site responds slowly when you use the PrimaryParentCategory parameter in a product query

979528 You receive a System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException exception when you browse a Commerce Server SharePoint Web site

2319603 Error message when you run a website that executes the Advertising pipeline on a server that is running Commerce Server 2007 or Commerce Server 2009: "HttpContext.Current is null"

968758 You cannot target advertisements or discounts to specified page groups by using the Discount Ad Web Part in Commerce Server 2009

969372 The Commerce Server 2009 SharePoint Commerce Services Configuration Wizard cannot create Web application when both the IIS Web site and the Extended IIS Web site are configured to use host headers and port 80

969877 Commerce Server 2007 Staging Services does not replicate modifications or deletions of multiple choice catalog property definitions

969768 In Commerce Server 2007 and in Commerce Server 2009, the decimal type value for a variant property is saved incorrectly in Catalog Manager if the decimal separator for the computer uses a period (.)

971188 You cannot use the Foundation API to manipulate data in a database column that has a weakly typed property in Orders System of Microsoft Commerce Server 2009.

971377 The Commerce Server 2009 Product Provider Web Part does not include all product relationships

971763 Site users are not identified as registered users in the RegisteredUser table after you import the Web server log into the Commerce Server 2007 data warehouse if you use the CommerceDataWarehouseAuthenticationModule class in your Web site

975116 You obtain unexpected rows when you run a query against a virtual catalog in Commerce Server 2007

973970 Error message when you export a virtual catalog in Commerce Server 2007: "Line 0: Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint 'PK__#Relationships____<string>'. Cannot insert duplicate key in object 'dbo.#Relationships'"

975553 You cannot import product catalog data into a data warehouse in Commerce Server 2007 SP2 or in Commerce Server 2009

975117 The variant rank is reset to the default value after you perform a base catalog incremental import operation if the catalog XML file does not include a variant rank attribute in Commerce Server 2007

974321 You cannot disapprove a campaign or a campaign item in Marketing Manager in Commerce Server 2007 or Commerce Server 2009

975086 You cannot retrieve the latest inventory data by using Commerce Server APIs for the Inventory System in Commerce Server 2007

975603 Error message when you open a Commerce Server 2009 Web site that is integrated into SharePoint when the SQL Server and the Commerce Server are installed on different computers: "Server Error in '/' Application"

975859 Error message when you access a Commerce Server site that is hosted on a computer that has hyper-threading enabled on two quad-core processors: "There are too many processors on this computer"

975996 In Commerce Server 2007 SP2 or in Commerce Server 2009, the Web Server Log Import DTS task shows all log files that you import and does not exclude log files that you have imported already

976555 You receive an error message when you log on to or log off from a Commerce Server 2007 SP2 site

976753 Results take a long time to be returned when you query a category for a product list by using the Foundation API in Commerce Server 2009

976815 You intermittently receive an error when you visit a Microsoft Commerce Server Web site that runs the Basket pipeline

957596 The sequencing information is not exported when you export a virtual catalog from Commerce Server 2007 Catalog Manager

961178 The product rank is overwritten as "0" after you perform the base catalog incremental import operation even though the catalog xml file does not include a product rank attribute in Commerce Server 2007

962913 Commerce Server 2007 product relationships may not be visible in Commerce Server Catalog Manager if the "Display Out of Stock Items" value is set to zero on the inventory resource

968534 Catalog import operations into Commerce Server 2007 Product Catalog by using an XML file fail when you transact the import process

976523 An update is available that updates the user-agent reference data to generate accurate site user reporting in Commerce Server 2007 and in Commerce Server 2009

977980 You receive a System.AccessViolationException exception in the Commerce Server Profile Service when you visit a Commerce Server 2007 SP2 or Commerce Server 2009 Web site

977779 You cannot create products by using a product definition that contains many multilingual product properties in Commerce Server 2007 or in Commerce Server 2009

2396957 A deadlock error may occur when you use Commerce Server Staging or BizTalk Adapter for Commerce Server Catalog to try to import catalog data in Commerce Server 2007 or in Commerce Server 2009

2280532 Virtual catalog search issues occur when you use the CatalogSearch class in Commerce Server 2009

970717 Error message when you try to import a virtual catalog in Commerce Server 2007 and in Commerce Server 2009: "You should create the category before using it as a parent category"

982554 An MSCSProfile cookie is not assigned to client computers that visit a Commerce Server 2007 site

2380266 Catalog caching is not used when you use the CategoryConfiguration class together with the CategoryConfiguration.ChildProducts.SqlWhereClause property in Commerce Server 2009

2161566 You cannot remove line items from the basket on a Commerce Server 2009 website

2492805 Line Item ordering may not work correctly when you use the UpdatePurchaseOrderProperties method to partly update an order in Commerce Server 2009

2421670 The configuration data is lost for Commerce Splitter pipeline component after you add a pipeline component to Total.pcf by using 64-bit Commerce Server Pipeline Editor

2484543 The DateModified property of a catalog product is not updated when you update the category associations for the product in Commerce Server 2007 or in Commerce Server 2009

2421688 Error message when you use Microsoft SharePoint Commerce Services Configuration Wizard to create a site: "The job creating the profile encryption key has timed out"

2448145 Pup.exe does not add Web services when you run the tool at a command prompt in Commerce Server 2009

2452528 You cannot use pipeline components to retrieve credit card numbers in a Commerce Server 2009 environment

2479846 Multilingual product properties for a product variant are not updated after you perform a base catalog incremental import operation in Commerce Server 2007 SP2 and in Commerce Server 2009

932395 How to update Commerce Server 2007 and Commerce Server 2009 for the changes to daylight saving time

2492466 Performance decreases on a Commerce Server 2007 SP2 or Commerce Server 2009 site when you periodically run a Transaction Data Import DTS task

2492964 Invalid URL when you use the EncryptionHelper class to encrypt a URL that is displayed on the Discount Ad Web Part on a Commerce Server 2009 website

2498781 Error when you search multiple products in Commerce Server 2009 if the SearchCriteria.CategoriesClause property is configured for multiple category searches

2503997 "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error message when you use Commerce Server adapters for BizTalk Server from Commerce Server 2007 to receive orders

2513798 It takes a long time to import a catalog file by using the Replace import type if there is an existing catalog in Commerce Server

2519830 You receive a "Timeout" or "exceeds the maximum" error message when you try to import or export a product catalog in Commerce Server 2009

2516181 Values in the ChannelConfiguration.config file are lost after you deactivate the Commerce Server Channel Configuration feature on a Commerce Server 2009 website

2532193 The list price of a newly added variant product is set to the original list price of the product after you perform a catalog import and a category association change in Commerce Server 2009

2423489 An update for Commerce Server 2009 is available to fix a potential cross-site scripting (XSS) issue in Commerce Server 2009

2528973 You cannot stage marketing in Commerce Server 2007 or in Commerce Server 2009 if lots of marketing data exists

PIC Programming Tutorials

2011-05-31T12:47:00.000+01:00

PIC Programming With MPLAB And Assembly Language Tutorial 1: Downloading MPLAB And Data

http://www.mhennessy.f9.co.uk/pic/
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~kws23/tutorials/PICTutorial/PICTutorial.html
http://www.winpicprog.co.uk/pic_tutorial.htm
http://www.webring.org/hub/picmicro

London property prices and London crime map

2011-05-30T23:17:00.000+01:00

http://www.londonpropertywatch.co.uk/avg_prices.html
http://www.housepricegraph.com/
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/mortgages-and-homes/house-prices/article.html?in_article_id=440369&in_page_id=57

properties on the map
http://www.nestoria.co.uk/plaistow/property/buy#dyn:/coord_51.535666,0.024337,51.524987,-0.004374/property/buy

London crime map

http://maps.met.police.uk/

http://www.met.police.uk/crimefigures/

http://maps.police.uk/view/city-of-london/

http://www.spotcrime.com/uk/london

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12336381

What is StreamInsight

2011-05-26T10:14:00.000+01:00

"Microsoft StreamInsight™ is a powerful platform that you can use to develop and deploy complex event processing (CEP) applications. Its high-throughput stream processing architecture and the Microsoft .NET Framework-based development platform enable you to quickly implement robust and highly efficient event processing applications. Event stream sources typically include data from manufacturing applications, financial trading applications, Web analytics, and operational analytics. By using StreamInsight, you can develop CEP applications that derive immediate business value from this raw data by reducing the cost of extracting, analyzing, and correlating the data; and by allowing you to monitor, manage, and mine the data for conditions, opportunities, and defects almost instantly."

ref http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee362541.aspx

StreamInsight Dashboard Sample Published

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/streaminsight/archive/2011/04/20/streaminsight-dashboard-sample-published.aspx

SQL SERVER – Brief Note about StreamInsight – What is StreamInsight

http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2010/02/09/sql-server-brief-note-about-streaminsight-what-is-streaminsight/

School Success Rankings in Greater London

2011-05-26T10:05:00.000+01:00

What is the ranking of schools in bromley, and in other boroughs

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/displayPopup/0,,67194,00.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/leaguetables/6980711/GCSE-league-tables-private-schools-attack-flawed-rankings.html
http://www.getbracknell.co.uk/news/s/2006872_borough_shoots_up_gcse_ranking
http://www.university-list.net/uk/rank/school-100016.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Certificate_of_Secondary_Education
http://www.youngacademic.co.uk/features/young-academic-school-report-london-dominates-again-450

Lending your own ebooks, is it possible?

2011-05-25T10:43:00.000+01:00

"Amazon has finally decided to give users more authority over books they purchased for their Kindle. Users can now lend eligible Kindle books to their friends for a term of 14 days. Not every book can be loaned right now, the privilege comes from the author and/or the publishers. During the loan period, the original user would not be able to access or read the book."

ref http://techie-buzz.com/tech-news/you-can-now-borrowlend-kindle-books.html

"The feature is available to registered users of the retailer’s Kindle devices and apps in the USA."

http://thenextweb.com/media/2010/12/30/amazon-now-lets-you-lend-your-kindle-books-to-others/

"Yes you can read epub format books on the kindle but you need to do a slight tweak to the kindle first. You can read how to do it here: http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/2009/08/million-free-google-books-in-epub-for.html"

ref http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-borrowing-digital-library-books/forum/Fx3C8AXT0CT78B7/Tx33IFRQR5HRLRI/1?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B0010B0C9C

How to do .Net development on Iphone and Android platforms

2011-05-25T10:30:00.000+01:00

Would you like to develop applications for Android and Iphone using your .NET skills?

Have a look at MonoTouch for .Net development on Iphone http://monotouch.net/

Have a look at MonoDroid for .Net development on Android http://mono-android.net/

Proxy SMTP Servers

2011-05-24T17:11:00.000+01:00

AboutMyXApp SMTP proxy server: http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/SmtpProxy.jsp

"DeleGate is a multi-purpose application level gateway, or a proxy server which runs on multiple platforms (Unix, Windows, MacOS X and OS/2). DeleGate mediates communication of various protocols (HTTP, FTP, NNTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, LDAP, Telnet, SOCKS, DNS, etc.), applying cache and conversion for mediated data"

http://www.delegate.org/delegate/

Sword Making History

2011-05-06T14:20:00.000+01:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_sword

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age_sword

Rube Goldberg

2011-05-05T16:10:00.000+01:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg

http://askville.amazon.com/Rube-Goldberg-machine-performs/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=68484743

http://www.eksisozluk.com/show.asp?t=rube%20goldberg

UK Recovery is stalling, BoE keeps the interest rates at 0.5%

2011-05-05T13:13:00.000+01:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8494677/Bank-of-England-holds-interest-rates-as-UK-economy-suffers-biggest-drop-in-growth-since-Lehman-collapse.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/05/interest-rates-held

Voting Systems

2011-05-05T11:48:00.000+01:00

How the alternative vote works – interactive guide

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/interactive/2011/apr/08/how-alternative-vote-works-interactive

AV+
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Vote_Plus_(AV%2B)

Single Transferable Vote

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote

Various links about UK 2010 elections re "what if it was done with AV system"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/may/10/proportional-representation-general-election-2010

http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=142514

CMS and E-Commerce Platforms Which are Using Microsoft .NET technologies

2011-05-04T11:47:00.000+01:00

SiteCore e-Commerce: A Microsoft .NET based Enterprise Content Management System, and E-Commerce Foundation with many capabilities such as marketing, profile system, personalization, ... etc.

http://www.sitecore.net/en/Products/Sitecore-E-Commerce.aspx

"In the near term, the Orchard project is focused on delivering a .NET-based CMS application that will allow users to rapidly create content-driven Websites, and an extensibility framework that will allow developers and customizers to provide additional functionality through module extensions and themes."

http://www.orchardproject.net/mission

http://www.orchardproject.net/

Survey Generation Sites

2011-04-27T18:38:00.000+01:00

http://www.surveymonkey.com/

Free EMail Servers for Windows

2011-04-21T10:26:00.000+01:00

IIS SMTP

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/library/iis/92379c18-36e5-43a9-892f-6347b674078f.mspx?mfr=true

hMailServer

http://www.hmailserver.com/

MailEnable

http://www.mailenable.com/standard_edition.asp

Free Smtp Server
http://www.softstack.com/freesmtp.html

Making sense of Sharepoint Errors

2011-04-15T13:48:00.000+01:00

Below two pages describe how to enable the required keys in web.config to be able to see the actual error message in Sharepoint solutions.

Enabling the SharePoint Safe Mode Call Stack, Disabling Custom Errors and Enabiling Compilation Debugging

http://alonsorobles.com/2008/06/09/enabling-the-sharepoint-safe-mode-call-stack-disabling-custom-errors-and-enabling-compilation-debugging/

Making sense of SharePoint errors

http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2007/02/01/5935.aspx

Yet Another File Sharing Site with an Upload Application

2011-04-15T10:11:00.000+01:00

There are popular file sharing sites like Rapidshare, Yousendit, ... etc Today i have found DropBox, a file sharing site which provides you an application that eases your upload operations. I recall a similar service was being provided by Microsoft as "Live Mesh".

Acronyms

2011-04-15T09:39:00.000+01:00

Technology related abbreviations www.techexchange.com/thelibrary/acronyms.html

Scheduling an event and charging easily

2011-04-14T14:10:00.000+01:00

Eventbrite

http://www.eventbrite.com/

Easy scheduling, Free of charge and without registration:

http://www.doodle.com/

Text everyone using your data line with WhatsApp

2011-04-12T14:02:00.000+01:00

"WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. WhatsApp Messenger is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Nokia and yes, those phones can all message each other! Because WhatsApp Messenger uses the same internet data plan that you use for email and web browsing, there is no cost to message and stay in touch with your friends."

http://www.whatsapp.com/

ASP.NET PDF Viewers WITH or WITHOUT Acrobat Reader Installed on Client

2011-04-11T11:20:00.000+01:00

WITHOUT Reader installed

ASP.NET PDF Viewer User Control Without Acrobat Reader Installed on Client or Server

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/webforms/aspnetpdfviewer.aspx

PDF Viewer Control Without Acrobat Reader Installed

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/applications/PDFViewerControl.aspx

WITH Reader installed

Display a PDF Stream in Browser Demo

http://www.auctionimaging.com/DisplayPdfBytes.aspx

abandoned shopping cart conversion service: SeeWhy

2011-04-11T10:10:00.000+01:00

"Last week at the Conversion Conference in San Francisco I had the pleasure of interviewing Tom Davenport. Tom, is a Babson College Distinguished Professor, and research/faculty leader and co-founder of International Institute for Analytics."

http://seewhy.com/blog/2011/03/22/tom-davenport-competing-on-analytics-in-ecommerce/

This service is also integrated with MS Commerce Server.

Merging PDF Documents for free :-)

2011-04-07T19:37:00.000+01:00

Merge PDF Documents Easily and for Free !

http://www.mergepdf.net/

languages...

2011-04-06T13:46:00.000+01:00

http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/quickfix/

Working Days Calculator

2011-04-06T13:37:00.000+01:00

http://www.work-day.co.uk/

http://www.qbn.com/topics/566902/

What Not to Store in SharePoint

2011-04-04T13:36:00.000+01:00

What Not to Store in SharePoint
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/joelo/archive/2007/11/08/what-not-to-store-in-sharepoint.aspx

What does A/B Split Testing mean?

2011-04-01T12:08:00.000+01:00

What does A/B Split Testing mean, in e-commerce world?

"A/B Split Testing is when customers receive a message, email, or webpage view, and a different version is randomly served to different visitors or customers. Typically A/B split testing consists of two nearly-identical versions of the given source material, but with each version having one element that is different. The two "versions" are randomly served, and tracking tactics are then used to monitor the resulting actions to determine which version is most effective in generating the desired reaction."

ref: http://www.developer-resource.com/what-is-ab-split-testing.htm

Introduction to A/B Split-Testing for Your Webpages, by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

http://www.wilsonweb.com/wct7/splittest_intro.htm

A/B Testing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/B_testing

A/B Split Testing

http://sitetuners.com/a-b-split-testing.html

export import sites from MOSS2007 to SP2010

2011-03-29T17:12:00.000+01:00

> SP2010 export/import using Powershell:

http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/Roji.Joy/3925/

> SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: How to Migrate a SharePoint 2007 Site to SharePoint 2010 Using Database Attach

http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/sharepoint-2010/archive/2010/11/02/sharepoint-2010-cookbook-migrate-a-sharepoint-2007-site-to-sharepoint-2010.aspx

* migration with db may be done, and db can be associated with the site using the command:

Stsadm.exe –o addcontentdb –url “enter your url” –databasename “enter your db name”

Quiz Software

2011-03-15T16:16:00.000Z

Online Quiz Application - Open Source - Microsoft Platform

Online Quiz

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/applications/xmlquiz.aspx

Creating a Quiz Web application using SharePoint designer:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/brenclarke/archive/2009/04/14/creating-a-quiz-web-application-using-sharepoint-designer.aspx

Creating Dynamic Web Quizzes using C# and ASP.NET:
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/mgold/dynamicwebquizzes02152007043229AM/dynamicwebquizzes.aspx

MyQuiz: Quiz engine project in ASP.NET using C#:
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/x64bit/MyQuiz10102007024013AM/MyQuiz.aspx

Online Web Quiz II: Using the AccessDataSource to Query Microsoft Access in ASP.NET 2.0:

http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/mgold/WebQuizII05302007193820PM/WebQuizII.aspx

Online Quiz Application - Open Source - Non-MS Platform

Simple Quiz:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/simplequiz/

MyQuiz:
http://myquiz.sourceforge.net/

Flash Quiz:
http://flashquiz.sourceforge.net/

Quiz Service Providers

Online Quiz Maker:
http://online.quiz-maker.net/?gclid=CIK--Kj50KcCFUEb4QodUw4TEQ

Web Test:
http://www.ewebtest.com/features.asp

Online Quiz System - ASP Web-Quiz product details

http://www.calorisplanitia.com/online-quiz-system.aspx

Playing Video on a web page using Flash and Javascript

2011-03-15T11:14:00.000Z

Flash FLV Player

http://www.platipus.nl/flvplayer/download/1.0/

Open Source Player
http://www.osflv.com/Download.html

How To Play Flash Video Files In ASP.NET

http://www.beansoftware.com/ASP.NET-Tutorials/Play-Flash-Video.aspx

http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/

http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

Beautifiers

2011-03-11T14:25:00.000Z

HTML

"HTB 2.0 is a free, command-line utility to reformat HTML/XML/XSLT source code with an array of user specified options. The output is clean, consistent, and easy-to-read tagged markup code." http://www.digital-mines.com/htb/

JAVASCRIPT

"This beautifier will reformat and reindent bookmarklets, ugly javascript, unpack scripts packed by the popular Dean Edward's packer, as well as deobfuscate scripts processed by javascriptobfuscator.com." http://jsbeautifier.org/

TFS Tips

2011-03-07T13:17:00.000Z

"TFS 2010 doesn’t like cache files", by Gadi Berqowitz's Blog

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/gadib/archive/2011/03/02/tfs-2010-doesn-t-like-cache-files.aspx

Sharepoint Field Types

2011-03-03T14:17:00.000Z

SharePoint field objects – classname, name and types

http://vspug.com/tonstegeman/2007/07/23/sharepoint-field-objects-classname-name-and-types/

http://www.devcow.com/blogs/adnrg/archive/2007/12/14/sharepoint-escape-characters-extended.aspx

The Content Query Web Part, and Working With Lookup Fields in a Custom Web Part

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kaevans/archive/2009/02/23/the-content-query-web-part-and-working-with-lookup-fields-in-a-custom-web-part.aspx

calling moss ws from js using SPServices Library

http://www.dotnetfunda.com/articles/article1018-use-spservicesjs-for-code-less-customizations-in-sharepoint-sites-.aspx

http://www.itidea.nl/index.php/example-of-using-the-spservices-search-web-service/

Calling SharePoint Web Services From pure Javascript

http://sharepointkb.org/Calling_SharePoint_Web_Services_From_Javascript

howto move sharepoint sites

2011-03-01T10:42:00.000Z

Back up, restore, or move a SharePoint site, Applies to: Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-designer-help/back-up-restore-or-move-a-sharepoint-site-HA010069939.aspx

How to move a site from one subsite to another in Sharepoint

http://www.wareprise.com/2009/04/21/how-to-move-a-site-from-one-subsite-to-another-in-sharepoint/

SPMetal, Missing CreatedBy and ModifiedBy fields

2011-02-23T14:59:00.000Z

Itay Shakury's good post about making SPMetal generate CreatedBy, ModifiedBy including classes.
http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/itaysk/archive/2010/09/22/spmetal-default-fields.aspx

Creating and Calling WCF Services in Sharepoint 2010, and Querying them using JQuery

2011-02-22T11:01:00.000Z

Calling WCF Services using jQuery

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/jQuery_To_WCF.aspx

Creating a Custom WCF Service in SharePoint Foundation, using Visual Studio 2010

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff521581.aspx

Sample Codes: Beginning SharePoint 2010 Development, by Steve Fox,

http://media.wiley.com/product_ancillary/37/04705846/DOWNLOAD/584637c10_CodeDownload.ZIP

http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/Beginning-SharePoint-2010-Development.productCd-0470584637,descCd-DOWNLOAD.html

How to construct CAML queries?

2011-02-18T11:54:00.000Z

CAML Query Tools
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff648040.aspx

U2U CAML Builder
http://www.u2u.net/res/Tools/CamlQueryBuilder.aspx

U2U CAML Query Builder Feature. This is a SharePoint version of the U2U CAML Query Builder tool. It is installed as a feature; developers can use it to build queries directly inside of SharePoint.

Stramit SharePoint CAML Viewer. This is a Windows-based application that is similar to U2U CAML Query Builder.

CAML.NET. This is a .NET Framework assembly that provides an abstraction to CAML. Developers can use it to dynamically create queries with a set of .NET Framework classes.

If you still see removed webparts, delete them from Site's Webpart Gallery

2011-02-17T11:13:00.000Z

If you still see the deactivated / removed feature's webparts, you can go to the WebPart Gallery (/_catalogs/wp/Forms/AllItems.aspx) and delete them from there.

ref: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointdevelopment/thread/ff9338f2-89db-40a2-9b9d-ca4a32d8d573

If you still see the deactivated / removed feature's webparts, you can go to the WebPart Gallery (/_catalogs/wp/Forms/AllItems.aspx) and delete them from there.ref: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointdevelopment/thread/ff9338f2-89db-40a2-9b9d-ca4a32d8d573

Exposing Custom Properties in Sharepoint 2010 Virtual Webparts

2011-02-17T10:44:00.000Z

Exposing Custom Properties in Sharepoint 2010 Virtual Webparts

http://httpcode.com/blogs/PermaLink,guid,357e4853-9a75-4962-ad68-1e07bcf40bb8.aspx

What are Sharepoint Limits?

2011-02-16T14:48:00.000Z

SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management: Software boundaries and limits

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787.aspx

Diagnosing ASP.NET Apps

2011-02-16T10:30:00.000Z

Diagnosing Stack Overflow Faults in ASP.NET Production Environments
http://blog.tatham.oddie.com.au/2009/07/04/diagnosing-stack-overflow-faults-in-asp-net-production-environments/

Which way to go, Extensibility Kit or Custom Site Definition for Commerce on Sharepoint?

2011-02-15T09:36:00.000Z

Stelio Di Bello's good post about "Anatomy of a Sharepoint Project using Commerce Server 09"

http://ecommerceondotnet.blogspot.com/2010/06/anatomy-of-sharepoint-project-using.html

Creating Workflows with Visio 2010, for Sharepoint 2010

2011-02-14T16:04:00.000Z

Creating Workflows In Visio 2010 and SharePoint Designer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZFO5rJYWPs

Creating workflows for SharePoint 2010 with Office Visio 2010

http://blog.hagenberg-software.at/2009/10/creating-workflows-for-sharepoint-2010-with-office-visio-2010/

Creating SharePoint 2010 workflows with Visio 2010

http://www.wictorwilen.se/Post/Creating-SharePoint-2010-workflows-with-Visio-2010.aspx

Howto create My Sites on SharePoint 2010

2011-02-14T13:46:00.000Z

> Configuring My Site in SharePoint 2010

http://sharepointgeorge.com/2010/configuring-my-site-sharepoint-2010/

> SharePoint 2010: Activating My Sites

http://www.euri.com/Blog/tabid/85/EntryId/47/SharePoint-2010-Activating-My-Sites.aspx

> Set up My Sites (SharePoint Server 2010)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee624362.aspx

> Manage My Sites settings (SharePoint Server 2010)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee656740.aspx

Working with Virtual Catalogs

2011-02-11T11:14:00.000Z

Since CS2002 i have been actively using Virtual Catalogs in commerce server. They are very useful, if you are createing a campaign for a limited time, temporary catalogs like for Valentine's Day, Christmas, .. etc also they enable you to create country specific catalogs as well. However you need to be careful when you are designing your virtual catalog usage approach as you may experience some problems in the rebuilding operation if you use "materialized" virtual catalogs.

Materialization is a concept that has been introduced to increase the performance of virtual catalog queries. Normally virtual catalogs are like database views, they are not phisically available on the disk, but whene you "materialize" them using the catalog manger and tick the checkbox, behind the scenes the view becomes a table and all the data will be available on the disk providing you a better query perormance.

So far so good. when it comes to REBUILD the virtual catalogs normally there are no problems with non-materialized ones, but rebuilding a materialized virtual catalog takes more time and sometimes you experience deadlocks.

Ravi explains what to be aware of when using virtual catalogs and ehwn to materialize them.

Vinayak's post also guides you when to use materialized and when not to use non-materialized virtual catalogs.

Ravi Kanth Koppola's article "VIRTUAL CATALOG REBUILD HANGS"

http://microsoftblog.co.in/commerceserver/virtual-catalog-rebuild-hangs/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+CommerceServerBlog+(Commerce+Server+Blog)

Vinayak Tadas's article "Virtual Catalogs : To materialize or not to materialize"

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vinayakt/archive/2004/04/28/121961.aspx

How to use a predefined tracking number for placing an Order?

2011-02-08T11:53:00.000Z

Commerce Server 2007: How to use a predefined tracking number for placing an Order?
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nihitk/archive/2006/06/21/cs2007-predefined-trackingnumber-for-order.aspx

HOW TO AVOID DUPLICATE ORDERS NUMBERS IN COMMERCE SERVER

http://microsoftblog.co.in/commerceserver/how-to-avoid-duplicate-orders-numbers-in-commerce-server/

Howto copy/move a Commerce Server Installation among servers

2011-02-07T18:05:00.000Z

the supported, and automatic way of copying/moving a site from one server to another is by using Commerce Server Site Packager. Site Packager application can pack (create a *.PUP file), or unpack an existing PUP file to create another installation for the same code. Sometimes, creation of PUP file fails. So how should we copy/move all code and data and configure Commerce Server according to that?

Below are rough steps explaining how to achieve this goal by manual steps:

1) You can backup restore all the databases

2) which pup you have used to create the current site? StarterSite.pup, CharpSite.pup, ContemporarySiteWithData.pup, .. etc Take that pup file and unpup it to the new machine. Follow the same procedure when you have initially unpacked the file for current site's development. All the paths names should be the same.

3) Overwrite all the newly created databases in step 2 with the db backups in 1. Restore those dbs on the new created ones.

4) copy the code from original machine to the new machine. Overwrite all existing ones.

5) check the connectionStrings in web.config files in:

5.1) Site's web.config.

5.2) WebServices' web.config

6) go to Commerce Server Manager, and make sure that all the connection string settings are configured as pointing to the new databases which were overwritten.

------

If you are using Commerce Server 2007, on a IIS7 box have a look at the following article. It may be helpful if you remove FTP sites temporarily to make the packager work: Error when using Site Packager (PUP) on IIS7
http://www.victorocastro.com/2010/06/13/commerce-server-error-when-using-site-packager-pup-on-iis7-107/

Commerce Server R2 Architecture

2011-02-07T14:57:00.000Z

Fantastic "Commerce Server R2 Architecture" article by Ravi Kanth Koppala. In this article Ravi describles the new 3-tier approach that is introduced by R2 version of Commerce Server. This way the commerce installations can be on a seperate machine, rather then the front end web servers, hence increasing the performance.
http://microsoftblog.co.in/commerceserver/commerce-server-r2-architecture/

Previewing Commerce Server Marketing Campaigns

2011-02-04T15:09:00.000Z

How to preview your Commerce Server marketing data

http://www.gaelduhamel.com/how-to-preview-your-commerce-server-marketing-data/

Sharepoint Url Redirection

2011-02-02T13:12:00.000Z

Forum Question: "Best practice for SharePoint vanity url/redirection"
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1201180/best-practice-for-sharepoint-vanity-url-redirection

Redirection options in SharePoint

http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=48

SharePoint URL Shortener (Commercial App)

http://www.muhimbi.com/Products/SharePoint-URL-Shortener.aspx

SharePoint Smart 404 Feature (Free App)

http://sharepointsmart404.codeplex.com/ Install instructions for SP Smart 404 Feature http://sharepointsmart404.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=65515

Sharepoint Variations

2011-02-02T10:51:00.000Z

If you don't see the "Variations" link on your "Site Settings" below "Site Collection Administration" topic,

probably you haven't activated the "SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure" feature, after activating it you should be able to see Variations link.

ref: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointadmin/thread/3150f4d8-9fa7-4f98-b444-327f532bb823

"Interestingly enough, using variations and creating the heirarchy in Sharepoint creates links to the sites on the quick launch, but does not expose the Variations control, which you have to manually uncomment out in the VariationsLabelMenu.ascx page in ControlTemplates"

ref: http://insidesharepoint.blogspot.com/2009/01/sharepoint-variations.html

Variations in SharePoint 2010 – Connecting People with Content

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ecm/archive/2010/04/12/variations-in-sharepoint-2010-connecting-people-with-content.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/sharepointexperts/archive/2010/04/30/variations-in-sharepoint-2010-connecting-people-with-content.aspx

Best practices to build multi lingual solutions with SharePoint 2010

http://hermansberghem.blogspot.com/2009/10/best-practices-to-build-multi-lingual.html

Implementing multilingual solutions with SP2010, Spencer Harbar

http://www.harbar.net/presentations/spevo/DEV111%20Multi%20Lingual.pdf

Fun with Variations, MOSS2007

http://blog.falchionconsulting.com/index.php/2008/04/fun-with-variations/

Variations: Propagate Pages on Your Terms

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ecm/archive/2010/06/22/variations-propagate-pages-on-your-terms.aspx

Creating Multilingual Web Parts

http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2006/03/01/439396.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262055.aspx

Using C# in Powershell for Sharepoint

2011-01-21T10:30:00.000Z

"So it would be great if the existing C# code could be reused inside Powershell without a need to implement it as Cmdlet."
ref http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_gossner/archive/2010/05/07/using-csharp-c-code-in-powershell-scripts.aspx

How to create Managed Metadata column in SharePoint 2010
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/anavijai/4349/Default.aspx

A Brief Introduction to Enterprise Metadata Management for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Developers
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee832800.aspx

Managed Metadata Hierarchy Breadcrumb
http://blogs.pointbridge.com/Blogs/Sobiecki_David/Pages/Post.aspx?_ID=8

Basic Sharepoint Coding Tasks, code snippets
http://www.sharepoint-tips.com/2006/08/common-and-simple-coding-tasks-in.html

Sharepoint Metadata

2011-01-20T17:12:00.000Z

Managed metadata overview (SharePoint Server 2010)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee424402.aspx

Plan terms and term sets (SharePoint Server 2010)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee519604.aspx

Sharepoint Application Pages

2011-01-20T11:20:00.000Z

Custom application pages in the SharePoint 2010 Sandbox

http://www.wictorwilen.se/Post/Custom-application-pages-in-the-SharePoint-2010-Sandbox.aspx

SharePoint: Application page to display all sites a user can view

http://techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com/2010/02/sharepoint-application-page-to-display.html

MOSS 2007

http://weblogs.asp.net/soever/archive/2006/11/09/SharePoint-2007-_2D00_-_2F005F00_layouts-and-how-to-create-pages-that-run-in-site-context.aspx

WSS 3.0

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb418732(v=office.12).aspx

data mining lectures' videos

2011-01-18T10:12:00.000Z

reference: http://www.dataminingblog.com/data-mining-on-videolectures-net/

"An interesting aspect of the site is that you can contribute to it. Basically, you can add your own videos of lectures. In addition, you can also comment your videos or existing ones. Once you have five minutes, go there and check some data mining videos. Here are examples of videos from famous data miners:

Mining Heterogeneous Information Networks (Jiawei Han)

Statistical techniques for fraud detection, prevention, and evaluation (David J. Hand)

A Data Miner’s Story – Getting to Know the Grand Challenges (Usama Fayyad)

Saving Search results in Sharepoint 2010

2011-01-11T17:16:00.000Z

Steve Curren's answer in MSDN forums: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010general/thread/786e9838-83f7-453f-b21d-91f3ddeb2bc9/

"The searches are logged. You can view search reports under Site Settings--> Site Actions--> Site Collection Web Analytics Reports. Here you can see such things as "Top Queries". There are a lot of links about SEO optimization and SharePoint. You can start here. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/opal/archive/2010/04/23/sharepoint-2010-search-engine-optimization-seo-tips.aspx"

SharePoint Custom Search Results Page

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/SPCustomSearchResults.aspx

Sharepoint Search Autocomplete Textbox

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-us/sharepointsearch/thread/5782D5E6-3916-4913-8022-7CC5E062BC40

Sharepoint 2010 Accessibility Resources

2011-01-11T15:19:00.000Z

Sharepoint 2010 web standards and accessibility

http://www.slideshare.net/mavention/sharepoint-2010-web-standards-accessibility

SharePoint 2010 accessibility with WCAG 2.0 support

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/james_brown/archive/2009/10/19/sharepoint-2010-accessibility-with-wcag-2-0-support.aspx

Accessibility Kit for SharePoint 2007

http://aks2007.codeplex.com/

Sharepoint SEO

2011-01-11T14:53:00.000Z

ref http://www.ditii.com/2010/05/05/sharepoint-2010-search-engine-optimization-seo-tips-for-better-site-ranking/

"Use meaningful site names and page names to create “friendly” URLs.

Great Page Titles would be something like the site intro page title for e.g.: “SharePoint is Awesome – Trainings, Demos, Hands on Labs” or a sub site page title: “SharePoint is Awesome – Search Engines Optimization Explained”.

Accurate Meta Elements:

Up-to-date Sitemap.xml and Robots.txt, and even HTML sitemap with all links.

Search Engine Friendly Redirects

Search Engine Friendly Menus and Navigations

Faster Page Response Time

Better anchor text for links, alt text for images

Always provide Title & tags, and transcript to video/audio, or text alternatives to your Flash/Silverlight apps

Use Webmaster Tools to submit sitemap: Bing Webmaster, Google Webmaster.

Use meaningful site names and page names to create “friendly” URLs. Great Page Titles would be something like the site intro page title for e.g.: “SharePoint is Awesome – Trainings, Demos, Hands on Labs” or a sub site page title: “SharePoint is Awesome – Search Engines Optimization Explained”.Accurate Meta Elements: Up-to-date Sitemap.xml and Robots.txt, and even HTML sitemap with all links. Search Engine Friendly RedirectsSearch Engine Friendly Menus and NavigationsFaster Page Response TimeBetter anchor text for links, alt text for imagesAlways provide Title & tags, and transcript to video/audio, or text alternatives to your Flash/Silverlight apps Use Webmaster Tools to submit sitemap: Bing Webmaster, Google Webmaster."

Generate SharePoint 2010 Sitemap XML for SEO
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/en-us/bab64089-c820-4a59-b76c-734b717b63fa

Microsoft Perspective on SharePoint 2010 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
http://www.agileit.com/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=757

Free SEO Toolkit http://www.microsoft.com/web/seo

SEO Toolkit for SharePoint?
http://weblogs.asp.net/sharadkumar/archive/2010/11/10/seo-toolkit-for-sharepoint.aspx

SharePoint 2010 SEO Analysis with the IIS SEO Toolkit
http://tristanwatkins.com/index.php/sharepoint-2010-seo-analysis-with-the-iis-seo-toolkit/

source control systems

2011-01-11T11:58:00.000Z

Svn
http://www.visualsvn.com/server/
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

Git
http://kylecordes.com/2010/git-gui-client-windows
Hosted Service for Git & Subversion: http://unfuddle.com/about/tour/plans

The ‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′ provider is not registered on the local machine.

2011-01-10T16:12:00.000Z

If you are using a 64 bit operating system, applications that are compiled CPU TYPE ANY will try to locate 64bit versions of the libraries that are included in the application. If you don't have the library's 64-bit version you will encounter the following error message:

"The ‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′ provider is not registered on the local machine."

The solution to this problem is to compile your application to the same CPU architecture of your external libraries which you are using. If you have 32-bit version of the OleDb.4.0 Provider, setting the CPU type of your Project Build Option to 32-Bit (x86) will solve the problem.

Have a look at the referances below for screenshots:

Windows 7 – 64 Bit – The ‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′ provider is not registered on the local machine. http://dacosta9.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/windows-7-64-bit-the-microsoft-jet-oledb-4-0-provider-is-not-registered-on-the-local-machine/

ERROR on 64-bit Windows machines: The 'Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0' provider is not registered on the local machine. http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/aspnet-ajax/general/error-on-64-bit-windows-machines-the-microsoft-jet-oledb-4-0-provider-is-not-registered-on-the-local-machine.aspx

Windows 2008 / Windows 7 x64: The ‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′ provider is not registered on the local machine. http://blog.nkadesign.com/2008/windows-2008-the-microsoftjetoledb40-provider-is-not-registered-on-the-local-machine/

email sending limits per hour/day

2011-01-10T13:46:00.000Z

http://www.emailaddressmanager.com/tips/server-smtp-limit.html
http://www.emailaddressmanager.com/tips/email-rate-limit.html

http://forum.siteground.com/showthread.php?2010-Pre-sell-questions

http://www.webfusion.co.uk/support/answers/bulk-emailing-restrictions-805/

have a look and decide which one is for you.

http://www.easyinboxmailer.com/purchase.htm

http://www.americaint.com/email-broadcast-software/bulkemail-senders-massemail.html

have a look and decide which one is for you.http://www.easyinboxmailer.com/purchase.htmhttp://www.americaint.com/email-broadcast-software/bulkemail-senders-massemail.html

Infopath forms & Sharepoint 2010

2011-01-10T10:36:00.000Z

InfoPath Form Web Part!
http://www.chakkaradeep.com/post/SharePoint-2010-InfoPath-Form-Web-Part.aspx

SharePoint 2010: Howto start customize list form (New/Edit/View) using InfoPath Designer 2010
http://blog.libinuko.com/2010/03/21/sharepoint-2010-howto-start-customize-list-form-neweditview-using-infopath-designer-2010/

InfoPath 2010 - Customize a SharePoint List Form

http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/NickDallett/InfoPath-2010-Customize-a-SharePoint-List-Form

Writing and Selling Components for Common Needs

2011-01-09T22:57:00.000Z

http://www.sobolsoft.com/ is a website that provides so many components which you can buy and ease your life. There are so many components varying from Excel tools to Gmail email address extractors. Good stuff...

Store BLOBs in the NTFS File System in SQL Server 2008

2011-01-07T15:22:00.000Z

Using FILESTREAM to Store BLOBs in the NTFS File System in SQL Server 2008

http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1489

Managing Files with SQL Server 2008's FILESTREAM Feature

http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/40812

FILESTREAM Storage in SQL Server 2008

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc949109(v=sql.100).aspx

Removing "on behalf of" tag from your emails

2011-01-05T22:44:00.000Z

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/07/remove-on-behalf-of-from-messages-sent.html

In summary, if you send your email from another account Gmail puts the statement there, but if you send your e mail through non-gmail domain's email server, you will not see the "behalf" message.

Coupons, Vouchers and Gift Cards

2010-12-30T15:10:00.000Z

reference http://searchwarp.com/swa658081-Difference-Between-Coupons-Vouchers-And-Gift-Cards.htm

"Coupons usually have an expiration date and they are associated with a discount on a specified product... Coupons are often published in newspaper, magazines and sometimes even in the books. Usually you cut them out or use the number imprinted on it to get a discount."

"Vouchers also have an expiration date. Unlike coupon, voucher entitles you to receive a certain product or service, such as a night in a hotel room... While coupons require certain level of participation by its owner, voucher does not need such a thing, therefore vouchers are much more valuable and desirable for everybody."

"Gift cards are usually of a certain amount: for instance a gift card of $1000 at Victoria's Secret or Victoria Secret printable coupons. This means that if you go to the store, you can receive products up to $1,000. ... You can find hundreds of sites over the Internet that offer gift cards for various brand for free or in exchange for filling out a survey."

"Gift cards have 2 big advantages. The main advantage gift cards is that they are not limited to a certain product. If you have a gift card, you usually can get any product at a store, while in case of vouchers and coupons your choice is limited to specific goods or services."

Originally published on SearchWarp.com for Elliot Clark Monday, November 22, 2010
Article Source: Difference Between Coupons, Vouchers and Gift Cards

How to backup all your facebook data including profile and pages?

2010-12-29T10:06:00.000Z

Backupify http://www.backupify.com/personal/tour

An article about facebook data backup
http://digitalmarketinginstitute.ie/2010/12/13/how-to-download-and-backup-your-facebook-personal-profile-and-facebook-fan-page/

Useful tips for SharePoint 2010

2010-12-17T17:45:00.000Z

Broadcasting a PowerPoint Presentation with SharePoint 2010 « Social-Point.

SharePoint 2010 Correlation ID in error messages: what it is and how to use it

Troubleshooting MSDTC Connectivity Issues in Commerce Server

2010-12-17T12:15:00.000Z

Sometimes MSCS shows errors regarding the MS DTC. This is because of connectivity issues mostly, another cause of this problem may be the authentication of the DTC service.

Following errors can be seen when you have a DTC problem:

"Component Execution failed for component[0x1] hr: 0x8

ProgID: Commerce.RedeemPromoCodes
Exception of type 'System.EnterpriseServices.TransactionProxyException' was thrown.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: Component Execution failed for component[0x1] hr: 0x8
ProgID: Commerce.RedeemPromoCodes

Exception of type 'System.EnterpriseServices.TransactionProxyException' was thrown."

When you encounter such a problem, try following to solve the issue:

1) Stop-Start DTC service try transaction again.

2) Turn Off your firewall, try transaction again.

3) If above steps does not work, investigate the issue using DTCPing utility which is described at the following MSDN article:

DTCPing: Troubleshooting MSDTC Connectivity Issues - Florin Lazar - Consistency Checkpoint - Site Home - MSDN Blogs.

How to troubleshoot MS DTC firewall issues

[Solved] Exception of type ‘System.EnterpriseServices.TransactionProxyException’ was thrown

Lessons learned with Distributed Transaction Settings

Sharepoint 2010 Features' Name and GUID List

2010-12-16T17:41:00.000Z

Features and their GUID’s in SP2010

Other sources

http://blogs.glenture.com/archive/2010/09/17/how-much-powershell-do-you-really-need-to-know-with-sharepoint-2010.aspx

http://snahta.blogspot.com/2010/06/sp2010-feature-ids.html

http://justsharepoint.com/2010/SitePages/EnterpriseFeatures.aspx

-----

Using Powershell for Sharepoint Feature Operations

Installing or Uninstalling Features

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms442691.aspx

SharePoint 2010 Powershell Feature Cmdlets

http://www.sharepointanalysthq.com/2010/09/sharepoint-2010-powershell-feature-cmdlets-2/

PowerShell Commands To List SharePoint Features

http://www.glynblogs.com/2010/08/powershell-commands-to-list-sharepoint-features.html

Creating an Auction site using MS Commerce Server

2010-12-16T09:38:00.000Z

In this article i will abstractly describe howto create an auction site using microsoft commerce server.

Either you look at the Cs2009 RtmSamples or to other sample codes of MSCS you will see that product is added to the shopping cart with its price. However when Total.pcf and Basket.pcf pipelines are run the catalogQueryInfo pipeline component will try to get the latest price from the catalog system. There are two ways to achieve this:

1) We need to delete this component and write a pipeline component that goes and retreves the product information from catalog system, but the price from a different source, let's call it auction system. We will try to look at how to create a basic auction system in MSCS later in this article.

2) As an alternative to method 1, we can override the price property after the execution of the QueryCatalogInfo, RequiredProdInfo, and Microsoft.CommerceServer.Inventory.CheckInventory pipeline components.

How to Create a Basic Auction System?

Profile system can be used to create any kind of business entities that will be used together with the other commerce subsystems such as marketing, orders, ... etc. Here in our case we can create Auction and AuctionBids entities. Let's briefly describe the functionalities of those entities.

Auction Entity This is the main entity that will store the begin-end date, max, min prices, and bid increase steps. Auction owner, status and winner of the auction.

AuctionBid Entity This entity will store the reference to the auction entity, bidder user id, bid, and date.

According to the info on the Auction entity, the code will chose the most appropriate bid from the AuctionBid entity and will give the permission to buy that item from the winner bid price.

Currently there is no code to share but to give you an overview howto implement such a scnerio this post can be a good starting point.

Please have a look at articles about how to extend the profile system. Also following article is worth to have a look at:

Commerce Server 2009 Whitepaper - Integrating Commerce Server Profiles with External Data Sources

Using Opensource as publicity

2010-12-13T06:29:00.000Z

reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimdim

"Dimdim is made available primarily as an enterprise edition and as a Virtual Machine appliance, but an open source community edition has also been made azamvailable to developers under the GNU General Public License (GPL), giving them the option to install and host Dimdim in their own networks. The most recent open source version, released in December 2008 and hosted at sourceforge.net, is V4.5 "Liberty". Distributives of the system for the installation to several OSes, Virtual Machines and the corresponding documentation are available in several archives on the SourceForge.net Dimdim site^[6]. Dimdim can be integrated with the e-learning platforms Moodle, Claroline and Docebo, the collaborative suite Zimbra and the CRM software SugarCRM. Unlike Dimdim's web-hosted services, the Dimdim open source server does not restrict the number of attendees or simultaneous meetings allowed.

Dimdim has come under heavy criticism lately by a large section of the community for not releasing an open source version after the 4.5 version. It has been accused of using open source as a means of publicity but never actually being committed to the community. The lack of a proper public repository and no communication between the developers and the community further questions the intent.

Currently (December 2010) searching through the dimdim site there is no download for the Opensource version and the only way to download it is from the SourceForge.net. Except for the forums section, there is no mention of the OpenSource version on the new site"

Have a look at alternatives!

BigBlueButton
http://www.bigbluebutton.org/
http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/BigBlueButtonVM

Skype Beta with Video Conference Calling Now ready for Download http://go.zam.web.tr/1c

Magic Quadrant Reports

2010-12-09T15:36:00.000Z

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management, 19 August 2010

"I feel, Forrester focus heavily on business-user drivern ecommerce implementations vs developer and IT driven implementations. I.e., it placed greater emphasis on a self-contained application solutions (rather than framework).Forrester also lacks heavy focus on understnading and evaluating that many retailers and applications of B2C are focusing on cross-channel (multiple devices). I would recommend to go through Gatners report which covers existing ecommerce trends and how the products are performing against that."
reference: Ravi Kanth Koppala"s opinions at MSDN CS Forum on Forrester's results

Sample Discount Campaigns

2010-12-09T13:57:00.000Z

Today at lunchtime i went to a supermarket to buy some ready to eat food. I 've found the product and went to the self-checkout machine to pay. The self-checkout machine gave me two coupons which had the following discounts on them:

50p off, when you spend £2 on your next visit, valid until 16/12/2010, excludes fuel,
terms and conditions apply

£1 off, when you sepend £4 on your next visit, vaild until 16/12/2010, exludes fuel,
terms and conditions apply

Then i thought "How can i implement these scenarios in MSCS?"

You create a discount in Marketing Manager. As you know marketing manager limits the user to create specific types of discount, those discount types are: summarized on following MSDN pages:

How to Create a Simple Discount

How to Create a Minimum Purchase Discount

How to Create a Buy N, Get 1 Free Discount

How to Create a Paired Discount

How to Create a Paired Set Discount

How to Create an Order Discount

Lets explain those discounts:

Simple Discount type Buy a product at a reduced price.
Example: Buy two backpacks and get 25% off the price of each.

Minimum Purchase Discount Type Buy a minimum quantity of a product, get a reduced price.

Example: Buy at least three CDs and get $1 off the price of each.

Buy N, Get 1 More Free Type Buy a minimum number of an item; get one more of the same item free.

Example: Buy 5 ties, get the 6th one free.

Paired Discount Type Buy one product and get a price reduction on another product.

Example: Buy a bicycle, get a helmet at 15% off.

Paired Set Discount Type Buy a specified quantity of a product, get a price reduction on another product.

Example: Buy 6 bottles of wine, get a wine rack at $10 off.

Order Discount Buy a specified total amount, get a price reduction on the order total or on the shipping cost.

Example: Buy at least $500 worth of services, and get 20% off.

The supermarket discounts can be created using Order Dicount type. Thus we can create the campaigns without writing code in MSCS. Below are the steps to create the coupons in Marketing Manager.

[gallery link="file" columns="4"]

Cryptography in .NET Framework 4

2010-12-08T16:28:00.000Z

Application of Cryptography in .NET Framework 4

http://www.pisa.org.hk/event/dotnet_crypto.pdf

---

Hashing : MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512

Symmetric : DES, RC2, Rijndael, TripleDES

Asymmetric : DSA, RSA

reference: MSDN page: "System.Security.Cryptography Namespace"

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/9eat8fht.aspx

Online book: Introduction to data mining

2010-12-08T15:38:00.000Z

This online book was created by The Data Mining group was established in November 2000 by Dr. Saed Sayad in a collaboration with Professor Stephen T. Balke in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto.

Data Mining is about explaining the past and predicting the future by means of data analysis. Data mining is a multi-disciplinary field which combines statistics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and database technology. The value of data mining applications is often estimated to be very high. Many businesses have stored large amounts of data over years of operation, and data mining is able to extract very valuable knowledge from this data. The businesses are then able to leverage the extracted knowledge into more clients, more sales, or greater profits. This is also true in the engineering and medical fields.

See the full data mining map and online book at

chem-eng.utoronto.ca/~datamining/dmc/data_mining_map.htm

howto learn Entity Framework 4

2010-12-08T15:03:00.003Z

Code-First Development with Entity Framework 4 (huge tutorial about Entity Framework 4)

Entity Framework 4.0 – How To POCO

Getting Started Entity Framework – MS Quickstart Tutorial

ms tutorial – Model-First in the Entity Framework 4

Microsoft Entity Framework 4: extending your DDL generation by adding indexes on Scalar Properties

Webcast: Entity Framework 4, oData and PDC10

howto learn Entity Framework 4

2010-12-08T15:01:00.000Z

Code-First Development with Entity Framework 4 (huge tutorial about Entity Framework 4)

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/16/code-first-development-with-entity-framework-4.aspx

Entity Framework 4.0 – How To POCO

http://devtalk.dk/2009/05/22/Entity+Framework+40+How+To+POCO.aspx

Getting Started Entity Framework - MS Quickstart Tutorial

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386876.aspx

ms tutorial - Model-First in the Entity Framework 4

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff830362

Microsoft Entity Framework 4: extending your DDL generation by adding indexes on Scalar Properties

http://blog.ehuna.org/2010/07/microsoft_entity_framework_4_e.html

Webcast: Entity Framework 4, oData and PDC10

http://www.ditii.com/2010/10/22/webcast-entity-framework-4-odata-and-pdc10/

Self-Tracking Entities in the Entity Framework

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/efdesign/archive/2009/03/24/self-tracking-entities-in-the-entity-framework.aspx

Audiences in SP2010

2010-12-06T14:17:00.000Z

How to do enable Target Audience in SharePoint 2010?

SharePoint Enterprise Search

2010-12-03T16:53:00.000Z

Configuring Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010
http://sharepointgeorge.com/2010/configuring-enterprise-search-sharepoint-2010/

SharePoint Enterprise Search

2010-12-03T16:50:00.000Z

Configuring Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010
http://sharepointgeorge.com/2010/configuring-enterprise-search-sharepoint-2010/

creating sharepoint themes

2010-12-01T15:47:00.000Z

Create a custom site theme and make it available to others

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/GetThePoint/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=122

Customizing SharePoint Themes with SharePoint Designer 2007 and IE8

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kaevans/archive/2009/03/08/customizing-sharepoint-themes-with-sharepoint-designer-2007-and-ie8.aspx

creating sharepoint themes

2010-12-01T15:46:00.001Z

Create a custom site theme and make it available to others

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/GetThePoint/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=122

Customizing SharePoint Themes with SharePoint Designer 2007 and IE8

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kaevans/archive/2009/03/08/customizing-sharepoint-themes-with-sharepoint-designer-2007-and-ie8.aspx

using operationSequences instead of pipeline components

2010-11-30T10:08:00.001Z

Commerce Server 2009 OperationSequenceComponent Extensibility, Part 2 - E-Commerce Product Architecture - Site Home - MSDN Blogs.

How to implement Custom Shipping Methods in Commerce Server

storing large scale of data

2010-11-12T12:33:00.000Z

ref: http://horicky.blogspot.com/2009/11/nosql-patterns.html

...we see an emerging data storage mechanism for storing large scale of data. These storage solution differs quite significantly with the RDBMS model and is also known as the NOSQL...

NOSQL Patterns

http://horicky.blogspot.com/2009/11/nosql-patterns.html

NoSQL GraphDB

http://horicky.blogspot.com/2010/02/nosql-graphdb.html

NoSQL Wiki Page

Windows Azure Resources

2010-11-10T17:32:00.000Z

Creating your First Azure Service – Azure Quickstart

http://codeinthecloud.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/creating-your-first-azure-service-azure-quickstart/

Rapid Developer Deploy to Windows Azure

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jnak/archive/2010/10/29/rapid-developer-deploy-to-azure.aspx

Windows Azure fundamentals & services

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsazure/dd439432.aspx

how to highlight and beautify posts with source code

2010-11-10T11:09:00.001Z

Syntax Highlighter for Blog Posts

http://alexgorbatchev.com/SyntaxHighlighter/manual/api/autoloader.html

Wordpress Plugin for Syntax Highlighter

do you need your own ecommerce website or just ebay is enough

2010-11-04T12:53:00.000Z

I was wondering why people need to have a e-commerce site, rather then advertising on ebay, craigslist, amazon, ...etc Those sites have already got so many users searching for goods to purchase. However when you look at the major huge companies they have their direct selling channels as well, for instance www.dell.com , store.microsoft.com , shop.vodafone.co.uk , ... etc

Then the conclusion is whether you have an popular e-retail site (ebay, amazon, ..etc) shop or not, you should have your own online shop in order to provide your users direct sells, mayse some other products you can sell with cross sell scenarios. Indirect channel will cost you more, then selling direct to the actual consumer, and you can provide discount or loyalty programmes to the consumer to drive traffic to your online store.

The only glitch in having your direct channel is the payment confidence of your visitors. Since nobody wants to give credit card information to a website that has not been heard much, then you should find an alternative payment method to gain users' condifence in your site. This can be achieved using PayPal or other online payment processing systems. The user enters to the checkout process and when the payment transaction will be made , you can redirect the user to payment processor, after the payment is processed on the commonly trusted site, the checkout will be completed on your site. After gaining some transaction volume in your site, you can offer direct credit card transactions, or bank transfers to your companies account, by those payment methods user can get an additional discount compared to the external payment processor payment type, and you can avoid paying any comision to the payment processor by this way.

Some interesting links about having an ecommerce site of your own:

Best Alternative Auction sites to ebay
10 Easy Steps to a Horrible Ecommerce Site, By Jason Chance
The 25 Best E-Commerce Sites
How-To Create an eCommerce Website with WordPress in under 5 minutes
Best Alternative Auction sites to ebay
10 Easy Steps to a Horrible Ecommerce Site, By Jason Chance
The 25 Best E-Commerce Sites
How-To Create an eCommerce Website with WordPress in under 5 minutes

MSCS09 code name "R2" - Sept10 CTP

2010-11-04T10:34:00.001Z

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=e18a582f-1c25-469f-9bcc-8a71773270e9&displaylang=en

What's New: The following are new features that have been introduced since the Commerce Server 2009 "R2" May 2010 CTP release:

Storefront and component Web Parts are now designed for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010.
The SharePoint Commerce Services Configuration Wizard has been updated to enable IT Personnel or developers to deploy Commerce Server solutions to SharePoint 2010 and upgrade existing Commerce Sever 2009 Web Parts.

Important: The Microsoft Commerce Server 2009 code name "R2" will no longer include Microsoft SharePoint 2007 based solution storefront and component Web Parts.

Note: Given the pre-release nature of this release, not all functionality is currently available. The release is for evaluation purposes only and is not intended to be used in a production environment. The September CTP will stop functioning on December 31, 2012.