Perception

Like most people I know these days, I spend a lot of time online.  In the recent months, I have also become immersed in social networking.   Like most internet based communities,  it is possible for individuals to masquerade as someone other than themselves howver, what is more intriguing about social networking is not the possbility that Jane Doe is in fact the 63 yr old John Doe but rather the image that your long lost friends wish to portray. Read more of this post

Defense seeks dismissal in MySpace bullying case – Los Angeles Times

Wall Street Journal Blogs

Defense seeks dismissal in MySpace bullying case Los Angeles Times - 3 hours ago An attorney for Lori Drew says the government has overstepped its bounds in trying to charge the Missouri woman in the case where a 13-year-old committed suicide. Dismissal of federal Internet suicide case sought The Associated Press Woman Accused in MySpace Suicide Case Seeks to Have All Charges … Washington Post CNET News - The Tennessean - San Francisco Chronicle - San Jose Mercury News all 124 news articles

DotNetNuke: To build an empire

While the name is a bit scary, the product seems to have some real staying power.  In the real world, I work in higher education within the Development department.  I was recently involved in a process to evaluate Online Communities.  Having a background in web development, I was intrigued by what I saw in the onlone community applications.  So with that in mind, I began to play. Read more of this post

Apple TV… Runs Hot but Works Great!

I have been anticipating the arrival of the Apple TV since it was first written about in the pages of MacWorld Magazine. When Steve Jobs announced that the Apple TV was availalbe for pre-order, I eagerly secured my advanced copy as I watched the keynote.

Well, it arrived on Friday (the 23rd) and it was like Christmas at my house! I took about 10 minutes to get the unit set up, connected to the LCD TV and on the wireless network. iTunes had no problem finding the unit once I got it online and I was synching content within 15 minutes of opening the package. The intial synch did take some tim to ocmplete but in the meantime, I was able to stream my music and videos while it completed the load.

The one thing that I noticed is that the unit itself was extremely hot. I was not sure it was normal until I read other posts at the Apple site where users have all reported the same thing. At least one post refers to the design in which Apple uses the case as part of the heat synch which is why the untis gets hot. I am not sure if this is true or not but it would explain the heat.

Overall, I think the unit and the ease of use deserves a “10″. The design as usual has extremely clean lines and is very compact. The streaming has worked fine over my 54mbps wireless network as well. The user interface is much like Front Row and feels like the Video iPod.

The only down side I have seen thus far is that you have to re-encode your ripped video’s to work with iTunes. I have been using HandBrake to do this and it works well (on iMac G5). You have to encode the movie at 320×240 which is the Video iPod format. The good thing about doing this is that not only does it safe space on the hard drive bu it alos allows you to bring it to your iPod also. the downside is that it takes about an hour per movie.

The other limitation that I see in the unit is that the hard drive space is not very large for the types of things you want to use it for. I sent over my music collection (15.8GB) and my pictures (2 GB) and finally a couple of movies at 2.7 GB. I have 12GB free but in the scheme of things, this is not a lot of space.

My hope is that in the future, the USB port that is on the unit will be used for an external drive. My other hope that you will have the option to surf the net and purchase directly rom iTunes.

Overall, it is worth the price of admission! I would even entertain a second unit for my bedroom TV if all goes well with this one!

Oracle – the new frontier

It has been a while since I last posted to the blog, my time has been consumed with all things Oracle and Open Source. At work, I have been placed on a team that will be leading the implementation of a new fundraising system form SunGardHe called Advance. As a result, I am leaving the world of Microsoft to develop my skills in Oracle. The product is running on Oracle 10g with an ASP.Net front end application.

In order to get “comfortable” with Oracle and specifically PL/SQL, I have been setting up a testing environment at home. The plan was to set up a Solaris box with a development version of Oracle 10g running that I could then play with and test without upsetting the dba’s at work. In theory this was a great idea however, it has proven to be somewhat daunting.

The problems started with the Solaris install. I downloaded the iso files only to find out that the DVD files that I downloaded were not liked by Toast on the Mac as it insisted they were CD files and refused to write them to my DVD. After losing much time with this task, I decided to set up a Win 2003 server and use the Windows version of 10g (not XE). I set up the server and implemented the necessary server settings. All was well.

Next, I downloaded and installed in on the Win server. Problems re-occurred. Days pass. Problem researched, solution found… or so I thought! After re-running then install several times, I decided to scrap the 10g set up and move to 10g XE. Becasue I was making this move, I decided it would be a learning experience to install 10g on the Mandriva Linux distribution (Limited Edition 2005). I downloaded Linux, installed and configured it. I then became familiar with Linux.

Next, I downloaded Oracle 10g XE for Linux, took me a couple of times to realize I needed the rpm version of the file. Got the right file and all is well. I ran the install and was abruptly met with a libaio error saying to install a version >= 0.3.98 or something to that effect. After much searching (it was not available from updates) I found a version (0.3.104), downloaded it, installed it and re-ran the install for Oracle 10g XE.

Error still there. Can’t get the correct version of libaio to satisfy Oracle, can’t get Oracle installed… so…

I nthe meantime, I tested a Windows Oracle install (10g full version) on a Win Media Center pc and all went well. New problem though is that I can’t get the listener to work…

New plan you say? I am thinking of going back the Win Server 2003 and installing the Oracle 10g XE engine on the server. I have this running on my XP laptop for work and it seems to work quite well.

Next new problem, Java Creator Studio and web deployment to my web hosting provider. I am new to Java leaving .Net behind and I am finding that the sites I create in Studio require Tomcat or some other java server component in order to run properly. If anyone knows if this is the case or not, please let me know!

I have plenty of Microsoft experience in both asp, VB, Windows/Networking and .Net however, the open source world of PHP and Java is calling… I only wish I had the patience to figure it out! Help a newbie!!!!

Little known search engine secret

So, you have your business site up and running and now you need to get it into the search engines. While many of the large search engine sites such as Yahoo and Google offer free submissions, some sites do not. In addition, the free submission may or may not get your site listed in the directory. There are literally thousands of search sites on the internet all have some varying degree of success and use. The idea for increasing your visability is to get your site in as many engines as possible and then work the keywords and site description accordingly.

What you may not know is that there is an open directory called DMOZ (http://www.dmoz.org) that will allow free site listings. Why should you care about this open directory? The answer is simple, this open directory allows users to download its data for use in your own search sites. So what you say? Consider this. Most search engines including Yahoo and Google utilize the dmoz data in some way. It may be that your site is not indexed in the engine and you perform search. The result set may come from another directory which is most likely updated from the dmoz.

This is a nice way to list your site once and get it picked up by several search engines without paying a service or spending hours submitting your site over and over.

Keep in mind, this does not mean that your site will show up in the top 10 listings, it only means that your site will have the potential to be viewed in the search results. Getting your site listed in the top 10 results takes money and time these days. It can be achieved without spending a dime, it will just take time to get your page tuned and to build links, fine tune keywords and your site content which ultimately increase your rankings through the complex algorithms that search companies use to rank your pages.

Be sure to check out the great collection of eBooks on this topic from our eBook store. Don;t see the store? send us and email and I will send the info you are looking for.