Tech Blog

.NET formview edit mode problem

frank — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:45:24 +0000

I encountered problem with the formview not switching to edit mode using the standard commandname=”Edit” for a linkbutton. It turns out the problem was with the way I bind the data source to the formview through code behind. I changed that to defining the formview tag with the attribute of datasource while defining the data source on the page code and everything worked just fine. Go figure.

PHP header redirect

frank — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:32:01 +0000

Something to remember when using header location to redirect a page from a server-side script. The output is redirected to the new page, but the logic on the original file will continue to execute. Therefore, if there are database calls the changes to the data will still be made even though a header redirect was issued.

To solve the problem, make sure to issue an exit() command after a header location command.

Information Ideas built Google Maps for Terradex to receive award

frank — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:28:16 +0000

We have been building a few applications for Terradex over the past year that have received Environmental Achievement Awards using Google Maps API. The service pulls environmental contamination data from various environmental agencies and uses Google Maps to display their locations. The interface uses a non-page refresh AJAX technique to dynamically pull data as the visitor navigates through the map.

Google LatLng Blog
EPA Achievement Award Winners

Apple’s new iPhone causing lines to form by chance?

frank — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:22:38 +0000

I was speaking with a friend this weekend about the new iPhone and he was surprised that Apple with all its technical abilities could not setup a better system for all their fans to get a hold of the new iPhone than to have everyone stand in line for five hours to purchase one. Well, that was not by chance. Steve Jobs wanted the launch to be so inefficient. There are lots of benefits to having people wait five hours to buy one.

First and most important of all is PR. Every newspaper I read had an article about the iPhone craze. All the people walking by the line will certainly notice the launch. The bragging that happens after a fan has stood in line for five hours to obtain one is going to be more than five months of non-stop blabbing (probably through his new iPhone).

Secondly when someone exerts so much effort to getting his hands on the device, he will love it more than life itself for a certain duration of time. That love for the new iPhone will translate to an irrational love for Apple and resulting in Apple sell more products to these iPhone owners.

The launch was very well orchestrated. Well done, Steve!

Useless content on the web

frank — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 07:37:50 +0000

The web is full of information that nobody cares about. So many sites just throw content up as quickly as they can trying to gain the precious keyword indexing advantage on big search engines. As a result, this is also the reason why search engines are a necessity in order to get any valuable information online these days. But what all these sites are forgetting is that getting visitors to their pages is not the final goal. It is important to keep them consuming more pages and revisiting the sites over and over again. In order for that to happen, sites need to provide real value. What can they do for the visitors to help them solve a problem? If they focused on that aspect of their sites more, they would be having more success.

How to find a SEO expert?

frank — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:25:30 +0000

I was chatting with a colleague the other day when he found someone who claimed to be an SEO expert in LinkedIn. He was complaining about how that guy did not know jack about SEO and there are so many SEO quacks out there just ripping off their clients. Certainly, I have no arguments there as I totally agree that the SEO industry is just full of posers. However, the interesting thing is my colleague did find this so call poser through the web out of the millions of other SEO experts. So in a way, this poser already proved himself to be an expert.

So the next time you want to find a SEO expert, just Google “seo expert” and the one that comes up first is probably your guy.

Visualization Of Data

frank — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:58:31 +0000

I’m sure Tufte would be all for this. Sometimes, we have so much data that it is just overwhelming. Generally, we do statistical analysis on data to get the underlying story behind it. But what about visualizing it. ManyEyes is a data visualization tool built by Martin Wattenberg at IBM that does just that. (Full disclaimer, I do know the creator.) It allows anyone to upload a dataset and use any number of their visualization tools to view the data. It is amazing how looking at data from a different angle can result in new discoveries.

Very Interesting Explanation Of Design Pattern

frank — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:54:30 +0000

http://37signals.com/papers/introtopatterns/

It really simplifies the methodology of designing web applications.

Google Earth / Map Implementation Problem

frank — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:15:56 +0000

One thing that was not documented fully at Google for integrating Google Earth into Google Map is that the function, getEarthInstance, is only available in the newest version of the Map API. I could not find exactly which version so the best way is to use v=2.x like in “http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2.x&key=yourkey” instead of specifying an exact version. Have fun with this new feature.

Google Earth on Google Maps

frank — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:09:25 +0000

Google just added a new Earth plugin feature to Google Maps. Now we can have all the functionalities of Earth as one of the selections buttons on Maps just like Satellite view. This is a very exciting new development.