Memory Board

Free Live Chat

2010-03-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

If you want to provide live support, then a quick and easy way to do this at no cost is via Google Talk.

If you have a Gmail account or a Google Application account, you can simply install the chat software. And add the following code snipet to your site, or create a badge

CTRL ALT DEl on a MAC with Parallels

2010-01-08T08:25:00.000-08:00

Quite simple when you know how.

Simply press: fn+ctrl+alt+back delete

Start / Stop Coldfusion Service in a Mac

2009-12-30T12:28:00.000-08:00

There is an app for that! Use the spotlight tool to look for "ColdFusionLauncher". Then click the application to launch the jrun launcher console. You can use this console as a GUI to start & stop the CF service & admin.

It Works! No It Doesn't!

2009-12-30T06:34:00.000-08:00

Not sure why this is but in Apache 2.2, I had "NameVirtualHost *:80" in the httpd-vhosts.conf file. This was seemingly randomly making the virtualhosts point through to the htdocs root. Updating this to "NameVirtualHost localhost:80" has fixed the issue.

Not sure what the cause is, just glad to see the back of it.

Email Marketing Safe List

2009-12-30T05:47:00.001-08:00

Top tip is to send new subscribers an autoconfirmation with tips on how to add your domain to their white list.

Add "@YOURDOMAIN.com"as a safe sender in your e-mail client.

Here are the directions in Microsoft Outlook:
1) Start Outlook.
2) On the Tools menu, click Options.
3) On the Preferences tab, click Junk E-mail.
4) On the Safe Senders tab, click Add.
5) In the Add address or domain dialog box, type the e-mail address of the person who you want to trust, and then click OK.

Mac wireless airport problems

2009-12-24T12:36:00.000-08:00

Not sure if it local to the following:

Mac OS X 10.4.11
Airport 2
Belkin Routers

but there appears to be a drop in wireless connection intermittantly when WPA/WPA2 is used with the AES encryption technique. I suggest using TWIP/AES or probably best to upgrade the OS.

Restart Apache Server In Mac OSX

2009-12-21T04:24:00.001-08:00

Depending on the location of the apachectl file the following syntax will restart Apache from within terminal:

sudo /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/apachectl restart

Getting Apache RewriteRule to work

2009-12-07T01:54:00.000-08:00

No intro or background, to get the RewriteRule to work in htaccess you need to activate it. This is specifically for Apache and not ISAPI rewrite on IIS.

Open httpd.conf
Look for MULTIPLE occurances of AllowOverride None
Change to AllowOverride All
Un comment this line #LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
Save & restart the apache server

Couple of note worthy points:

Apache recommend not using htaccess for peformance reasons. There are other methods for nice urls.
This is a Dev environment. I've not check out if the above has any security issues, for live servers.

Publish your LinkedIn profile to the web

2009-10-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

Make your linkedIn profile readily available to others. Simply:

Login to your profile
Click "profile"
Click "customise your URL"
Click "Promote your profile with Customized Buttons"
Pick a button, copy the code

Most effective protection from copy/paste

2009-10-01T05:28:00.000-07:00

Ever had a client ask for their content to be protected from copy/paste, or specifically tables of data? Well with Coldfusion you've a great head start.

The usual steps for doing this are to:

Disable copy/paste
Prevent drag/drop of text blocks
Remove right click & file bar
Prevent print

But this still leaves, the information available in the source code and as soon as you've downloaded that page you can do what ever you want with it...

Here's the clever bit.

A good way to get round this I thought would be to send this information in via ajax so it's not in the source code. CF steps in with cfgrid which can bind itself to a CFC for remote AJAX calls. Not only do you get an instantly cool looking grid you get the AJAX power grid.

Now, normally this would still leave the ajax call prone to a direct call to display the information, but with CF when you try to call the CFC directly you get the CFIDE login screen. Pretty sweet.

There are obviously ways to still surpass this but I would hazard a guess that even most web savvy people won't be able to get this data and it would require some of us with a little more know how.

Sales Techniques

2009-09-25T08:02:00.001-07:00

Sales are simple, and that's why I'm going to keep this post very simple. 4 Key points to help you on your way with sales are:

Control the conversation
Listen to the customer
Give them a reason to buy
Ask for their custom

That's it! (but I'll expand a little on each point)

Control the conversation
Lose control of the conversation and you'll lost the customer. Sales is a journey. You know the beginning and the end so you just need to ensure you keep the customer on the same journey.

If the conversation starts to stray pick up on what they are saying, emphasise, relate, and bring it back to your journey. It can be the most unrelated simily, it doesn't matter, your back in control. Dumb sales people are often the best, they don't care if it doesn't make sense as long as they keep control.

Listen to the customer
On your journey your customer will talk and give you clues. Pick up on these and make a mental bullet point list. It will arm you to help them make the best choices. Drip feed these points back to them, use it to qualify your customer and remove potential obstacles when you come to close.

Give them a reason to buy
That's great, thanks for that I'll be in touch... SALE LOST. If the customer has no reason to buy now, generally they wont'. Incentivise them. Greed & fear are common tools of the salesman.
Reasons to buy now can include:

limited stock
waiting lists
opportunity from a "cancellation"
Special offers
etc etc

Ask for their custom
You've done everything right so far, you've given your pitch they've listened and you've come to an agreed service offering and price, now what? Sign them up. That's it again, very simple.

You'll be surprised that once customers start to give you details they open up and become much more open to closing. Start asking their details, fill in an order form and ask them to sign. Don't be shy about asking for money, don't ask for money, ask how you'd like to pay and they will do the rest.

Lastly, an extra tip, customers who start by telling you "they are not ready to buy now" are telling you the exact opposite, don't get disheartened you will be able to convert them.

Good luck, now go get some sales!

Twitter Experiment

2009-09-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

I've noted lots of people have started to add me to the list of followers just after a post. I'm assuming these are happening from keywords in my posts, which begs the questions:

a) why
b) how

One can only assume that the why is because if I follow you there is a good chance you will follow me. This can lead to an inflated ammount of followers but are they really useful? I guess if you have enough followers (aka listners) it could be deemed a powerfull tool and not just an ego nursing exercise. So I think I'll test this with a new twitter account on a subject which is more of a hobby to me than anthing else right now, poker. Rightly or wrongly I'm probabley just going to leave this as an automatic update system for now but I think it will be interesting to see how many followers I can get from using a service such as twollo (the how).

Twollo was supposedly developed in a day for $150 but appears to be a paid for service after a free trial, so this may be a pretty short test, but none the less I think its with a twirl.

ps. next I'll be testing out OutTwit

Handy Google keyword analysis tools

2009-09-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

Handy Google keyword analysis tools

Not looking good for CF, but this could be misleading with all the other CFML providers out there now.

Stink'ernet

2009-09-16T15:33:00.000-07:00

Smells trigger memories but can memories trigger smell.

I've known that distinctive odours can trigure distant memories for a long time, but recently while working on the internet it happened to me again, which got me thinking, if you could brand your site or provide a sales message with an image i.e. an orange, would that sales message be triggered each time oranges were smelt?

Just a musing right now, and not even sure how to sensibly test it but one I may like to revisit at some point.

Thesis Word Press

2009-09-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

There's a lot to be said for research but a lot of the time you can go with your gut and impulse buys can come up trumps.

On this occasion I've earmarked Thesis for future blogs. I'll test this on a couple of projects I've got lined up and may or may not convert this blog too.

Yahoo Query Language YQL

2009-09-16T13:57:00.000-07:00

This is new to me but sounds pretty sweet. I've read that Yahoo is now providing an SQL interface into their data services. There's already a handy coldfusion package over at riaforge.

Off the top of my head, obvious opportunities are:

built in natural language searches on sites
SEO reporting tools
News feeds
Auto image displays

Adapting software start up

2009-09-16T12:25:00.000-07:00

This can easily be done by editing the properties of a desktop short cut icon. Simply edit the target value to pass in parameters as you would do in command prompt.

i.e. shortcut > target > C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe ColdFusion Builder>cfbuilder.exe -data c:\workspace\cfbuilder

Planning

2009-09-16T07:32:00.001-07:00

Fail to plan, plan to fail. But is there anything to be said for too much planning... having a plan b is this a good thing or a sign that you don't trust your plan A and that it's doomed to fail??

I'm going to be writing a few business plans for my interests and want to make I don't make repeat mistakes. Now my plans aren't to raise capital or gain favor with the corporate bank managers, more for a guide of approach and goals.

There are some (to be read) good titles to some help guides but I need to ensure my plan works for me.

Initial thoughts, are that it needs to be short enough to be read. Clear focus on the goals that I would like to obtain. Structured strategy and timelines. And for a change perhaps a little pessimistic (or realistic). Pretty standard stuff, but I'd also like to ensure the overall plan is good plan. "The plan is good, so stick to the plan". That's not say that we can't adapt our stratiegies but the primary goals of the plan should remain consistant.

Time to get writting.

Google Keyword suggest

2009-09-15T04:51:00.000-07:00

Can never remember where to go for this Keyword suggest tool

Photoshop skills

2009-09-15T04:18:00.000-07:00

There's a lot more to photoshop and designing than having a good idea and eye for design. A lot can be said for knowing your software. Check out this post on creating a visually stunning poster.

Blogger vs Wordpress

2009-09-15T03:54:00.000-07:00

I'm a creature of habit so I've opted for blogger for my memory board, but I do hear loads more about wordpress than I do blogger so I reckon that I've probably gone for the lesser option.

I've read a lot about the SEO benefits and plugins for wordpress and have recently came across this post with tips and tricks to improve your wordpress site.

At the moment this blog is really just ment to as a place to search when I forget something I've worked on before, but if I ever make it more public I think I will upgrade to wordpress... watch this space.

Cool jQuery image plugins

2009-09-15T03:28:00.000-07:00

I've just read and seen the demos on 7 plugins for jquery relating to images. The post at sitepoint covered the following plugins:

jParallax and jCrop both look very good although jParallax is likely to be more fluff than functionality

How to Add Twitter (Retweet) Button to Blogger Posts

2009-09-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

Navigate to Layout >> Edit HTML >> Expand Widget Templates

Search for and paste the following codes just before or after it. Adding the code before will show the Retweet button on the top of your post while adding after will show the Rettweet button on the bottom of your post.

For Digg like Button, use the following code.

Retweet this button on every post blogger

Social bookmarking

2009-09-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

Social bookmarking with regards to blogs is a bit of a must and very easy to do.

There are serveral methods for implementing this, some of which will come with lots of additional mark up (code bloating) . I've read that an easy an efficient way to implement social bookmarks is Add this.

Simple steps for blogger are:

Go to Add this
Use the 4 step wizard to create code
Click instal to blogger
Use the blogger layout wizard to place the code

Kuler Colour Palette

2009-09-11T06:51:00.000-07:00

Stuck without a designers help, and need to pick a colour scheme? Adobe Kuler colour palette sounds like a quick and easy solution to your problems.

There a good how to guide here but all in all it seems pretty self explanatory.

Feedburner

2009-09-09T06:52:00.000-07:00

It's got a bit quiter here for the moment as colleagues have left for a late lunch, so I'm finally getting through some non-essentials that I wanted to tick off my todo list.

I've wanted to add a feedburner rss feed to my blog.

It's quite simple in blogger and these are the exact steps I took to set it up in a minute (or so):

In blogger: Settings > Site Feed > Clicked "Feedburner"
Logged in on the right hand side to my Google Account
Typed in blog address and followed wizard steps
Next clicked: Publicize > Feed count
Save and activated

This last step auto added the feed to the blog, very smooth and easy.

twitterfeed.com

2009-09-09T06:39:00.000-07:00

OK, I've found a quick easy way to automatically integrate blog posts into twitter. Not sure why I want to do this but seems to be popular at the moment.

Its a service aptly called twitterfeed. All you need do is pass in an RSS feed, set up an account and integrate it with your twitter account.

TinyURL

2009-09-09T06:27:00.000-07:00

OK everyone already uses this, especially those that twitter so I thought it time to jump on the band wagon and have added tinyURL to my firefox brower.

No data transfer utility with SQL Server Management Studio Express 2005

2009-09-01T03:01:00.000-07:00

That's correct, with the express version there is no import/export facility.

There may (or may not be) this facility with the developer edition, think there is though, but seeing as I'm running a new install I was going to go with 2008.

However, had fun with that last time so I'm going to try something new, with the DTS tool which I read about.

STEPS TO ADD DTS WIZARD WITH SQL SERVER MANAGEMNT STUDIO EXPRESS

1. Try "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\DTS\Binn\DTSWizard.exe"
If it worked, you already have the DTS Wizard. Start using it right away.

If it will not work, continue to step 2

2. Download the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Toolkit (223.9 MB) from

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=65111
select all components to install

3. Run "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\DTS\Binn\DTSWizard.exe"

Thats it.. Now you can transfer data using the the great DTS wizard.

Follow the steps If you want to integrate it with the Sql server management studio express UI .
1. Open sql server management studio express.
2. Select Tools -> External Tools
3. Add a Title and Browse C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90 \DTS\Binn\DTSWizard.exe for the Command field.
3. Click OK

SQL Express 2005 Configuration Manager - Cannot connect to WMI provider

2009-09-01T01:37:00.000-07:00

It seems like the list of querky behaviour from database's never ends.

Came up against this problem with a fresh instal of SQL server 2005. I found the solution with a quick google leading me to this forum thread that had had the same issues.

This was the command prompt solution:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared>mofcomp "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\sqlmgmproviderxpsp2up.mof"

Setting up BT Business Hub for webserver access

2009-08-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

Go to the user interface. go to settings > firewall > pinholes and dmz.

on there step 1 choose the pc you want to port forward. wait for page to refresh

go to step 2 select the webserver save and your done

Disable Directory Browsing in Apache

2009-08-21T04:57:00.000-07:00

Open the config file and change this line:

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks

To this:

Options FollowSymLinks

MySql Backups

2009-08-21T02:22:00.000-07:00

There appears to be a few different ways to do this. One of the most desirable ways appears to be via MySQL administrator but this appears to be only active for enterprise users.

There a few discussed on both the MySQL site and devshed. The most popular option seems to be to use command line with mysql dump.

I've adapted this shell comand to store a backup copy
"C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 7.0\bin\mysqldump" -u root -p sugarcrm_dbo > "C:\Documents and Settings\SOME DIR\mysqlweekly.sql"
and
"C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 7.0\bin\mysqldump" -u root -p sugarcrm_dbo > "C:\Documents and Settings\SOME DIR\mysqldaily.sql"

My reasoning for two files is that I think it pheasible that the DB could get corrupted during an update, killing both the DB and the backup.

Problem with doing this is you need to store the password in the bat file to fully automate and that is pretty insecure. Further investigating will need to be done before going ahead in this manor.

I then store these two bat files and then need only use windows scheduled tasks. To open Scheduled Tasks, click Start, click All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Scheduled Tasks. Then simply follow the add wizard.

For debug purposes of the bat file use: cmd.exe /k "the .bat file" so that the window stays open, allowing viewing of any errors.

UPDATE: I appear to be wrong, you can update using public MySQL administrator. You simply need to create the project 1st. Note, to run as scheduled tasks it needs to be done via a stored connection within the connections manager. Why this didn't come up in a search on google or be updated on the MySQL site is beyond me.

Importing data from SQL Server to MySql

2009-08-20T05:30:00.000-07:00

You'd think it'd be an easy import from one of the tools right, well it doesn't appear that way... although I may well be wrong.

There were a few different migration tools so I weighed up all the options and just went for the first one in the list MSSQL2MYSQL. Straight away I encountered problems, I tried to run via a VB app (Word can do this supposedly), and I hit a runtime error. A little bit of digging and it becomes appartent this is a classic VB error and the activeX dll needs registering or there is something wrong with my VB runtime. I install the latest copy of VB and do a restart.

I then spot that there is a MySQL migration tool kit that would appear to do all I need. It is a very easy to use GUI editor.... thumbs up to the MySQL team!

Installing MySQL

2009-08-20T04:47:00.000-07:00

It's an easy enough install one point to note, don't run the install without adding a root user.

If you do you'll probabley need to un-install and re-install

This blog post maybe of help. Specifically, this command line:

To permanently remove the old mysql service, execute the following command as a user with administrative privileges, on the command-line:

C:\>sc delete mysql
[SC] DeleteService SUCCESS

And this thread may help with adapting root level user if lost or forgotten.

There are couple of additional tools that can be installed, I've opted for Gui-Tools and Workbench

Flex Designs

2009-08-20T02:37:00.000-07:00

A new toy has been beta released by Adobe called Flash Catalyst. Being beta software its not got the full feature set but it is free to use. As I'm not a Flex developer, free software for occasional use is ideal.

I'm going to assume that it won't be free for long so I'm going to save the download in my dropbox account.

Supposedly, you simply create your design in photoshop or illustrator, then import it into flash catalyst and then it make it very simple to create your designs layers for your flex app.

Update: Here's a handy post from SitePoint about using Catalyst and Twitter
Update2: Serial codes for the beta

Windows — 1395-1003-6369-7619-0587-6556
Macintosh — 1395-0008-4467-2145-8771-1212

SugarCRM and SQL Server 2008

2009-08-20T02:06:00.000-07:00

There is currently no support for SQL Server 2008 within the sugarCRM. This is quite frustrating as I've spent the best part of a weeks free time getting this going only to see it be v.buggy and unusable.

There was a blog post that it was available for the 5.5 beta version, and even had an update in the user documentation to the affect. However, the blog posts date was after the file update date, and when attempting the instal with this SQL server was not appearing as a database option. I always thought open source, not re-inventing the wheel was supposed to be quicker!

So, my plan is now to instal and run off of MySQL, which will be a new thing for me. Hopefully should work ok otherwise I'm in danger of becoming a right miserable git.

Google Voice

2009-08-20T02:03:00.001-07:00

Google voice, only by invite only in the US but must make a note to instal when it comes over this side of the pond. Looks pretty cool, love the fact that it reads voice to text for messaging.

Changing the datasource for Sugar

2009-08-19T01:31:00.001-07:00

Sugar CRM was set up to run localy off of my PC but use a remote SQL Server datasource.

Not knowing much PHP it was a pretty easy instal. Things rarely run according to plan even when they appear to have been running smoothly. PHP didn't appear to maintain connections to the SQL server and was seemed to be gobbling up the CALs causing other sites to baulk.

New plan is to run off a local datasource that doesn't provide website's to other companies so that only sugar would be accessing. This would allow me to fully test out sugar without fear of killing a live site.

Step 1 is to open the config.php file in the root of the sugar system.

Within this file there are 3 points to edit

dbconfig array
host_name
site_url

You will also need to ensure that if you are importing the data from another database that the database owner remains as dbo. This can be scripted afterwards but is quite time consuming if I recall correctly.

Update: There is a way to create a script to alter the DBO.

Simply update this SQL: SOMEDBONAMEGOESHERE

SELECT 'ALTER SCHEMA dbo TRANSFER ' + TABLE_SCHEMA + '.' + TABLE_NAME
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = 'SOMEDBONAMEGOESHERE'

And it will create all of the desired scripts... sweet!

Talon Screen Capture

2009-08-18T01:51:00.000-07:00

Testing out a new plugin for firefox called Talon. Seems a pretty nice and easy to user screen capture software that has a nice editing facility for adding comments.

saasu vs sugar

2009-08-17T06:21:00.000-07:00

I've yet to look at saasu yet, but it seems as though it could be an ideal replacement for sugar and potentially freshbooks.

Dropbox

2009-08-17T06:17:00.000-07:00

Today I've heard of a new file sharing service that allows syncing and backing up of computer files across multiple computers. It's called dropbox and runs as an install on both mac's and windows.

It has a nice entry level service of 2GB for free and the additional amounts seem quite reasonable too.

I'll be testing this out and seeing what I think.

Setting up SQL Server Express 2005 or 2008

2009-08-07T03:27:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I've got lots of old files related to SQL on my desktop and a recent attempt at an install didnt' work correctly. I think the best thing to do is to start a fresh.

I've removed all files relating to SQL Server 2005 from my desktop. Control Panel > Add remove programmes. I've noted that SQL server 2005 files don't have the 2005 included unlike 2000 & 2008? I've removed all SQL Server files accept for the VSS writer one which was associated with 2008.

Next, I've run the install and just follow the step on the wizard. I've ensure that when I got to the feature selection screen that I selected all the client components.

Grrr, just had the install blocked due to 2008 being on there. Now have to un-install that lot too. Can't just install as said is running, and couldn't just end the service via task manager as can't locate the instance.

Being dumb, the SQL Server 2005 install was stopping the 2008 un-install. Have cancelled the install and now run the un-install. Takes a while so go and have a coffee.

Great, now lets re-do the 2005 install.

I've opted for mixed installation mode within one of the screens to set up a user now rather than later.

Oh joy, again the install has failed... must have some thing else that needs removing.

Tried a new install with a new instance name, early indications bad :(

Further investigation reveals that there can be issues from the registry keys. So I've run regedit and gone to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\ and I've tried to delete what I can.

This still didn't work... so I left it for a couple days!!!

Right fresh start. First I removed all traces of SQL Server from:

Add/remove programmes
Programme files
Local users settings
and registry as indicated on this site

I then decided to install 2008 instead.

Make sure you install the express version with tools as otherwise you get a lot of extra agro trying to get SQL Server Management Studio installed.

To summarise:

Try to upgrade in normal way if not work use the following:
Remove programmes
Remove files
Delete registry keys
Install 2005 or Install 2008
Update Config Settings to allow TCP/IP and correct port etc.

This was a nightmare and not somethign to be undertaken lightly unless your well versed in this subject.