Booooooowwwwwwwwwlllllllll!

We bowled the other day.  It was when our friends from Switzerland were here...we had so much fun.  I'm going to get the hard part over with to start...that would be our scores...

Now, in my defense...my bowling score was really Bella's bowling score...however, for Ilaria...well, she has no excuse for her 75...  Before we ever started she told us all how she took bowling as a PE credit in college.  I'm pretty sure she failed that class.  ha ha ha.

This totally reminds me of the story about the guy in college who asked me on a date and took me bowling.  He killed me.  I had a score probably not too dissimilar to this one...He scored a 290+ or something like that...it was insane...and when its all over and done with he informs me he's on the University bowling league. 

Who does that?  He knew he was going to kill my score...maybe he was trying to show off?  Either way...that was the one and only time we went out...not because of the bowling issue, but because the next item on our "date" was for him to take me to the deep dark caverns of the music hall on campus where he proceeded to sing and play on the piano the love song he'd written for me.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.  I was so not into that. 

Ok...back to our scores...

Bella was the little queen of the bowling alley.  She watched us all do our thing and then came up with her very own bowling stance that she would do before rolling the ball down the alley...  I usually gave it a push to help it get to the bottom...the one two times I didn't we had to walk the gutter to roll it in...so in all reality...my score is missing a whole frame of scores because the machine reset when our ball didn't make it all the way down...

And then is Madmad whose FIRST ball was a STRIKE!  I was very impressed...she didn't even bounce it off the gutter rails!  She's doing a little dance in that second one... Cute girl.

Apparently the knee up/toe on the floor is the socially acceptable way to pose with a bowling ball.  I love this shot of Maddie and Aurora.  So cute...

And since I'm sure you don't really want to see our pitiful scores again...I bid you a guten nacht...

Read More...

5 technology trends every software marketer needs to know about

You don’t build products, write code, design architectures, or fix bugs. So why on earth should you want to be aware major trends that are happening in the software development space?

Because these current trends are big, transformative, and are changing the nature of how software is built, delivered, and sold. As a B2B marketer in the software space, these trends will likely have a major impact on how you do your job, or whether your job exists in the coming year or two. These trends are crucial to understand in order to see potential new opportunities, anticipate competitive threats, and be in front of emerging trends.

Here are 5 new trends in the software development landscape that will likely have a significant effect on our role as marketers of software:

1) Development Speed:
Looking back at software development in ancient times – like the early 2000s – it was *much* slower than it is today. This is not a “back in my day” rant, it’s just the nature of the business. Software, in many ways, works like Lego. You work with building blocks to create something. However, much like Lego, the building blocks evolve over time, and new pieces are developed that snap in quickly to do a task that used to take many weeks of coding.

Note for Marketers: Expect new capabilities in your space to pop up, fully formed, much more rapidly than they did just a few years ago.


2) Selling without Transactions:
Once you convince someone that your product is worthy, the “transaction” part of the sale has always been real work; taking credit cards, establishing AR departments, dealing with credit scores. However, major platforms like the iTunes purchase network that sits behind iPods, iPhones, and iPads makes this disappear. Sure, Apple gets a hefty cut, but a software developer does not need to build any “transaction” capabilities.

Note for Marketers: Brainstorm on how your business model might be attacked by a new entrant, with very low costs, selling $0.99 transactions.


3) Devices Everywhere:
The proliferation of high-end mobile devices like the iPhone, Droid, and iPad means that developing location-aware, mass-market software is, for the first time, very viable. Expect these capabilities to challenge the way in which we think about the “standard set of capabilities” of the markets that we are in.

Note for Marketers: Analyze whether your technology could benefit from location-awareness in any way. Someone will be trying this angle.


4) Connections Everywhere:
While we have heard about technical stuff like Web Services, APIs, and REST for a long time, it has always been squarely in the realm of the technologists. The important trend to be aware of now, as marketers, is that finally this trend has reached critical mass. Nearly all major platforms now have robust ways of hooking into each other quickly, easily, and seamlessly. Think about how prevalent the Facebook “Like” button has become as it is “snapped in” to websites around the world, bring a small element of Facebook functionality to those websites.

Note for Marketers: Assess whether a competitor might leapfrog you by “snapping in” capabilities from an ecosystem of providers. Assess whether similar opportunities exist for your team to leapfrog others in your space.


5) Innovating in the Cloud:
There’s been a lot of buzzword confusion when it comes to “Cloud” these days, as it seems like every vendor is renaming themselves a “Cloud” vendor. However, there’s one very interesting new trend to watch – the ability for developers to quickly create and deploy new applications on platforms like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, with only monthly costs, means that we can expect a faster pace of interesting new innovations in the SaaS space. While some of these innovations will be stand-alone software applications, many of them will be quick add-ons and enhancements to existing software.

Note for Marketers: Look for ways that your ecosystem of clients and partners can help you innovate and explore new areas and verticals through add-ons and extensions, rather than exploring this all in-house.


Things are changing rapidly in the development space, and while much of this change is not worth being aware of, these 5 major trends may have influences that extend well beyond the bits and bytes of software development. Read More...

Talented and Gifted...

You know those moms who insist on elaborating on every little thing their child did and making it seem like the most wonderfully marvelous amazing brilliant genius action ever?

"Billy is in a size 6 shoe!  I'm so proud of him!"

"Oh...you should have seen little suzy today!  She did 4 big poopies!"

"Jimmy can count to ONE!"

Now, I'm not saying that these events don't deserve a big round of applause...I just wanted to make sure you understand why I find MY daughter the most brilliant of them all...

It started this evening after her bathtub when she came stumbling in my room...banging into the door, the wall and my bed post because she looked like this...

"HI MAMA!"

Oh...mama is laughing really hard. Whatever she's laughing at must be really funny so I'll laugh hysterically too!

Mama! help me! I can't see! I want to know whats so funny!  Oh wait, if I pull down on this part it makes a place for my face!

Never mind, Mama.  I got it all figured out now.  I can see and breathe...

Ok..see you later...I'm off to play!

Read More...

The daddy book...

When John left I had created a hardbound book with photos of him with each of the kids that we titled, "The Daddy Book."  Its been a great source of comfort for Bella who reads it at least 3 times per day. 

Note at the end of the video that instead of saying "The End" she says, "Amen."  Cracks me up every time!

Read More...

Color! color! color!

I've got a little budding artist on my hands.  She loves to color!  And when she wants to color she runs around yelling color!  color!  color!  And then out comes the crayons and one of three coloring books - Dora the Explorer, My Little Pony or the Disney Princesses.

I've been fortunate up to this point to have her be so absorbed with the coloring books we haven't had to worry about this...

It would seem those days are over.  *sigh*  Today was the wall, a storybook, a table and a chair.  Time to pull out the "mama voice...." 

"Isabella!  We only color on the paper!"

Do you think it will work?

Read More...

Viva la Svizzera!

This past week I had the profound pleasure of hosting my most beloved friend, Ilaria, with her husband Benjamin and daughter Aurora, in my home.  Oh...and their dog, Daisy.  I can't forget her!

They drove 6 hours from Ticino (Switzerland) and spent a glorious 5 days with us.

We went on long walks,

played in the sunshine at the park,

reacquainted ourselves with a hula hoop,

talked until the wee hours of the morning...and then had to take afternoon naps,

gorged ourselves on fast food,

went bowling and shopping, slept in until late and did I mention eating?

Nom nom nom...I think I gained about 8 pounds this week! Read More...

Open all anchor links in new window

I believe this post is going to be very interesting to many people who read this post. Because the first question is what is the need to open links in new window? Is it a big deal to open links in new window? What are the advantages? Why we need to implement this in our sites or blogs?

Take my blog for example.  I have write big posts some times and place more links. I want the user to see the links to be opened in new windows as they are still reading my pages. If the link opened in the same page, then it will be a problem to go and come back and start reading from the position they were. That won't give good experience. I want them to be stayed on my blog page and open all the links in new window. So that user is always on my blog page and if they wants then they can move across pages. It's not bad at all.

How many ways are there to implement this?
1. Make all links in web page open in new window.
2. Only some part of the web page links will be opened in new window.

I have two options: Number 1,
Open all links on the web page in new window: Default HTML supports this.
Work around:
Add this line in the <head> tag of your HTML:  <base target='_blank' />

If I make all links needs to be opened in new window then home link, navigation links, search everything will opened in new window and it will frustrate user that whatever you click on the link it will open in new window. Dozens of windows in user system if you click 10-12 links. Not a good idea.

Option 2: Only specific region anchor links open in new window. This looks promising and good. But, how to. For example, in my blog, I like to open the content links only in new window.
I have a parent for all content inside a div with id='content'. Now, my goal is to add some logic to open all links in new window which are under content only.
Work around:
Add the below javascript to the <head> tag of the HTML.

<script type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[   
window.onload = function () {
        var links = document.getElementById('content').getElementsByTagName('a');
        for (var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {
            links[i].setAttribute('target', '_blank');
        }
    }
//]]>
</script>

This small function will do the trick. So, on window load, we are finding all the links in the particular division then adding the target='_blank' attribute to it. So, I found this is the only best solution to achieve this.
Once you add this to your page, then you will see all links inside content will open in new window and all others in the same window. This working perfectly to me. Try it on my blog by clicking on some link in the content.

If you are Jquery lover, then this is JQuery version,
$('#content a[href^="http://"]').attr("target", "_blank");

Great advantage is for blogs. All blogs needs this as there are lot of external links and other links in content. This will be the best and suitable solution. Read More...

ULS Viewer - SharePoint Log Viewer - A nice SharePoint Tool

In SharePoint, I know the big pain in development is if we get any exceptions or errors in the code we have implemented, then go back to log files and scroll or search to the exception or error details and try to solve it. The notepad file size could be in MB's. It's difficult to maintain and see what was caused the problem very easily. Most of times it frustrates to search and find the corresponding problem as notepad is very slow if log file size is huge. I am always think like, is there any better way to see and find the details without struggling a lot. One way I found was my previous post "How to see actual exception and errors directly on SharePoint web page". But, that won't help always to find the problem.

That is the reason I started to find a good solution for it. Luckily Microsoft understand this and developed a nice tool for us. That is called ULS Viewer. This is the windows application which takes the ULS log file as input and loads the log files very faster than notepad and shows us as grid of columns. You can do plenty of customization to it by sorting, filtering, searching, highlighting etc... You can find the problems in your code in very less time. I find this is one of great and superb tools every SharePoint developer should use. It surely decrease the analysis time on finding exception or error details.

For more details about the ULS Viewer: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ULSViewer
For free download: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=ULSViewer&DownloadId=7482

For complete documentation: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=ULSViewer&DownloadId=7483

So, use it and make your life more comfortable. Subscribe to all my posts and stay with me. I always try to share and help the devs to make development faster with the already existing tools. But, the things is we need to know about them, I will do that part for you. Happy SharePoint development. Read More...

new 2010 bugatti veyron

new 2010 bugatti veyron

new 2010 bugatti veyron

new 2010 bugatti veyron

new 2010 bugatti veyron

Read More...

SharePoint 2010 ECMAScript Intellisense in Visual Studio 2010

This post is a very big help to the SharePoint 2010 developers. We need the intellisense help to write code fast in our SharePoint applications. But, in SP2010 BETA I faced so many problems to find what methods a java script object has. After written a long post on how to get the java script intellisense working in Visual Studio 2008 this is now an easy for me to do the same on Visual Studio 2010. I just tried the same implementation in VS 2010 and that worked great. So, there I started and started using it in ECMAScript development. When I first see the intellisense working in VS 2010 felt very very happy and jumped into the air. Because, before to find the same methods in the ECMAScript object, I had wasted hours and hours. One of the example is this post "How to know all methods in SP object".

Solution:
By using reference tag everything possible.

1. Create a js file in VS2010.
2. Add the below script as the first line. /// <reference name="MicrosoftAjax.js" />
3. The MicrosoftAjax.js reference should be in the first line. What is it? why it is needed? I know the question are always in mind... This is the default js files which comes with visual studio. It has all the default methods for Sys.* available. More details here. "Make sure any dependencies are taken into account in the order of declarations. Most of the time, you will want "MicrosoftAjax.js" to be on the top." Some of the SP objects depends on this file.
4. Now, it's time to link SharePoint ECMAScript java script files linking. We need to add only debug.js files to the reference files to get intellisense working.
5. /// <reference path="file://C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Web Server Extensions/14/TEMPLATE/LAYOUTS/SP.core.debug.js" />
   /// <reference path="file://C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Web Server Extensions/14/TEMPLATE/LAYOUTS/SP.debug.js" />
6. SP.Core.Debug.Js and SP.Debug.Js files are the primary files needed to develop the ECMAscript. So, these two are the main and should be added to the js file after MicrosoftAjax.js reference.
7. Like this, you can add whatever debug.js files available in the SharePoint 14 hive layouts folder. For example, if you are developing on Ribbon then the reference will be 

/// <reference path="file://C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Web Server Extensions/14/TEMPLATE/LAYOUTS/SP.Ribbon.debug.js" />

All at once:

/// <reference name="MicrosoftAjax.js" />
/// <reference path="file://C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Web Server Extensions/14/TEMPLATE/LAYOUTS/SP.core.debug.js" />
/// <reference path="file://C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Web Server Extensions/14/TEMPLATE/LAYOUTS/SP.debug.js" />

Note: Add all other debug.js files depends on your requirements right after the 3 reference tags.

Once add the reference tags, write something and see the intellisense loads all the methods in the specific SP object as shown below.

Hope this helps you a ton and make your development on ECMAScript more faster and faster than ever. Read More...

6 Ways For Marketing to Help with Social Media

I can almost hear the comments already - shouldn't Marketing be "doing" social media, not "helping" with social media?

Yes.

Sort of.

But there's more to it than that.

The problem is that in many marketing teams, there's "marketing" and then there's "social media". The "marketing" group believes strongly in social media, and agree that it's crucial, but what they "do" is run events, launch promotions, spend ad budgets, and optimize keywords. The "social media" person manages the Twitter handle, the Facebook page, and the blog.

I might be oversimplifying, but this problem is one I've seen often enough to generalize.

The reason is that most B2B marketing teams are not set up to truly invest in social media. Most are organized more around "lightning strike" rather than "flywheel" investment patterns, and often marketing teams do not contain the real subject matter experts needed as content creators for great social media efforts.

This means that the "marketing" folks generally work with two major levers:

- A Budget for campaign spend (ads, search keywords, event promotions, show attendance)
- A Marketing Database of interested or potentially interested prospects

Because they don't fit into these two major levers, the "social media" person's efforts often feel a bit disconnected from the major promotions being run.

So what can be done?

6 Ways Marketing Can Invest in Social Media

Smart marketing teams are applying these two major levers to turbocharge their social media efforts in 6 ways:

1) Content as Advertisement: Instead of spending ad budgets to promote high level branding ad spots, smart marketers are spending ad budgets to share the rich content their team is creating with a much broader audience of potential viewers.

2) Social Content as Nurturing: Rather than creating separate content for each nurture campaign or newsletter, leveraging the best content that the team has created (measured by the number of tweets, for example) gives you a sure win in terms of audience engagement, and lets your content be discoverable by the broader audience in your marketing database.

3) Hiring for Content Creators: If the subject matter experts in your organization are not creating a steady stream of rich content, hire a journalist to facilitate the process (credit for this idea goes to David Meerman Scott). A daily stream of interesting and inspiring content should be no problem for a professional.

4) Sourcing Data for Insight: If the ideas for what to write about are running dry among your content creation team, fund a survey to provide data and insights on topic areas that they suggest. Most organizations surprise themselves with how much mileage they can get out of unique and interesting survey data.

5) Fanning the Flames of Engagement: When your subject matter experts do write content, the marketing team can fan the flames of engagement. Sharing and promoting each new piece of content in the networks it's relevant to (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Delicious, etc) helps build awareness, and motivates your subject matter experts to continue creating more great content.

6) Leveraging Search to Showcase Content: Rather than use your search marketing budget to drive traffic from the same set of terms to the same set of landing pages, leverage your search budget to help each blog post, video, or eBook "get found". The content on each post is very likely long-tail or niche oriented, so the traffic volumes for each one will not be large, but the relevance will be very high.


Done well, the marketing team facilitates the growth of a healthy and vibrant community that is aware of and engaged with the rich, relevant content your subject matter experts and social media team are creating.

While the flywheel vs lightning strike dynamic is a real challenge, these investment options allow marketing teams to work in a coordinated fashion towards true social media success.

What have you done to get the "marketing" and "social media" people on your marketing team to operate in a more coordinated way? Read More...

detect request is from iPhone in ASP.NET

Read More...

Why use one...

Why use one when you can use two?

Read More...

Happy Father's Day!

This year for Father's day we spent some time a week or so ago putting together a Father's Day package.  Unfortunately, he didn't get it on time....

We STILL wanted to do something in honor of him so we spent the day making cookies with Miss Dawn.  We had a GREAT time.  We can't wait to do it again....and don't they look YUMMY?

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY JOHN.  WE LOVE YOU!

chocolate oatmeal chewies...

oatmeal raisin...

Miss Maddie hard at work....

Miss Dawn helping Bella spoon the dough....

And when I turned around she darted back into the kitchen...the little sneaker knew exactly what she wanted!

Read More...

My Soldier Update...

This being the first of the updates I'll post regarding John's time in Afghanistan I just want to remind you that his location will not be posted here and the names of his coworkers have been modified to Rank + First initial to protect them.  FOB stands for Foreward Operating Base.  KAF stands for Kandahar Air Field.  We don't have photos yet - his camera chip is "in the mail" so when he gets that package he'll finally be able to send some of them to me. 

I woke up at 3:00 am Monday for a helicopter ride from KAF to FOB *name deleted for security*. I was excited to get out of the dirtiness and disorganization for the relative calm of my new home. It took us quite some time to get to the passenger terminal and even longer to get our bags weighed. It was 7:30 am before our helicopter landed and we crammed all of our gear on. It was funny that we were riding in a Evergreen helicopter.. there were air vents and a no smoking sign, just like in an airplane. We waited until 8 before we took off and were on our way.
The ride was uneventful and I dozed off and on. Since I was riding backwards I didn't get to see much of the scenery (not that there was much anyhow) but what I did see was pretty amazing. I saw steep, cave-ridden mountains, entire villages made of straw and mud, flocks or goats and herds of cattle. The flight took us 45 minutes and when we started to land at the FOB, I was amazed at how small (and vulnerable) it was.

We took our bags to our rooms.... the guy that was in mine looked like he had just moved out without cleaning any of his crap up.. Let me tell you how disgusting this room was. First of all, there were two matresses. One was on an Army cot and the other was laying flat on the ground. There was a thick coating of dirt (not dust - dirt) on the ground. There were personal effects strewn about; tooth brushes, socks, gel caps, papers, live ammunition, and this isn't even counting the trash.

Needless to say, I wasn't going to sleep in a room that could possibly swallow me up while my eyes were closed, so I got to work. Sweeping, dusting and tossing trash.. repeat. The worst was when I tried to move the mattress on the ground, it was stuck.. not wedged, but something on the bottom of the mattress was making it stick to the floor. After prying it up, I cleaned the cot the best I could and laid out my sleeping bag. Everything else stayed in the bags.

I ran to the PX and got some cleaner, some light bulbs, and a clip lamp. I cleaned some more and called it quits for the day. That is when Capt S called out "is this a camel spider?" I am not much of a spider fan, but I couldn't miss this opportunity. Sure enough behind the nightstand in her room, there was a giant spider. CW2 K killed it with a broom, but it gave us all the creeps for the rest of the day. It was hard to sleep that night as I imagined spiders dropping from the ceiling onto my face and me yelping and waking everyone up. I was more worried about that then I was about the spider.

 

(This is a photo of a Camel Spider that I pulled off the web...actually, its two camel spiders hanging onto each other...ewwwww!  They are technically not spiders...they do not have a poisonous bite, but their jaws are so big that when they do bite there is a huge issue with bacteria and the wound can get very infected.  How'd you like to find one of these in your bedroom?!)
 

There are always helicopters flying in and out.. it is pretty cool because we are so close to the flight line that we can feel each on as it lands and takes off.

The base is pretty small, but I should get to know my neighbors pretty well after a while. I have been just about everywhere on post (it is pretty small - duh) and I can say that I am still happier here than when I was in KAF.

The weather is hot and dry, but we did get a sprinkling of rain a few evenings ago. I have run around the perimeter twice and it is a rough mile and a half.. the nice thing is that if I run in the morning, I can pretend I am running on a hot Oregon summer day..

I have only seen a few instances of wild life since I have been here.. One camel spider, lots of flies, and these crazy ants that run with their rear ends high in the air.

I have learned a few phrases in Romanian and feel like I am on the cusp of learning much more. I am not interested in learning Pashto at all.

There was a bazaar on the FOB two days ago - every Thursday. They have everything, but youhave to be pretty shrewd to deal with these guys. They all haul their goods up in these giant wheelbarrows, get their photo taken for a temporary badge, then set up shop. They all have similar things.. The name brand stuff it all pirated from Pakistan or China, but it looks authentic (until you examine it closely). I found a pair of Wiley X Goggles just like mine and wanted to buy a backup pair so I could take the strap off and make mine in to glasses again. When I opened the bag.. there were my goggles.. exact replicas - except for the Oakley logo on them. I asked how much and he said 10 dollars (might be worth it for the missing pieces) but the next vendor said 6 dollars. I didn't buy anything but might next week. There were also some very beautiful pieces of art, chess sets, scarves, belts, drinking impliments, etc. I think I will get some of those too.

We have been incredibly busy. Because there is limited space here, and lots of room at KAF, they are holding everyone back until they can get some more tents set up. That means me and CW2 K are doing all of the work. Not only all of our work, but all of the work of the 15 cats that aren't here yet. I am getting behind so plan on spending extra time at work the next few days to catch up. There are also very exciting things going on as well.. It makes me glad I picked this field to work in.. I could do this all of the time.

There is also a bunch of drama and it is starting to be irritating. It is all from outside our shop, but is one of the reasons that CW2 K and I are working so hard. None of the operators are where they are supposed to be and the old operators are going to leave without conducting a proper handover.

Chief D (a guy from my WO classes) is here - up north, but in Afghanistan and he and I talked. He is doing my job but at two eschelons above mine, so I have a mentor (and a friend in a high place) to rely on if things get tough.

The power went out today - it is the second generator that I have seen go out in the week I have been here. there is also lots of construction going on. So much that I am not having too much trouble finding spare materials to build my room.. The problem now is time...

*breaking in from the peanut gallery.... there will be more to come another day...* Read More...

Dress up

There she was just a-walkin' down the street, singin' "Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do"

Snappin' her fingers and shufflin' her feet, singin' "Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do"

I remember those days of playing dress up...maybe I should join them next time... Read More...

automotive car

Read More...

Friends, Avatars, Countrymen, lend me your ears

David Meerman Scott had a great post the other day on “I do not friend logos”. Very well put, and I agree with him.

As you know we’ve been doing a lot of experimentation with the best way to apply social media in the B2B marketing realm, and David’s post hit on one of the biggest challenges we’re all facing – what to do about Facebook as B2B marketers. The numbers are undeniable, the active population on Facebook is huge. However, the challenge we’ve all faced, as DM Scott puts so well, is that companies are not really “friendable”.

So, how about a personality… in our next B2B marketing experiment, we’re exploring the idea of a corporate “personality” in the social space. For anyone who is part of the Eloqua community, you may already have met Drake. He now has a Facebook page, a growing bunch of friends, and a personality.

Having a personality is a good start, but how can one translate that into real market traction? For one, a personality opens up more avenues for having fun than a corporate logo does. As the first example, Drake has launched his first contest – take a photo with him, and you might win an iPad. Not something that would fly with a corporate logo.

Is this taking the idea of “personas” a bit too far? Will this crack the code on B2B marketing on Facebook? We’re not sure, but you’ll be the first to know. Well, maybe not the “first”; that honor might go to David Meerman Scott – he is, after all, friends with Drake on Facebook. Read More...