Good thought process. I know you probably don’t want to reveal too much, but try to narrow down the exact market you are focusing on. I think too many people say “well the XYZ industry is $50 billion a year” when in reality the exact market they are focusing on is just a small subsegment of the overall market.
Also, remember that there are a lot of companies that outsourced their web site to some other firm and all of these firms will someday need a mobile site – non mobile-enhanced sites usually look pretty crappy on smart phones. Good luck.
I wanted to keep it pretty vague… I don’t want any other aspiring entrepreneurs to know what I am up to!
The text in this entry was written exclusively for the blog… none of it will be doing into my business plan write-up itself, but the research itself is going to find its way into it.
One more thing… I cannot figure out how to turn these goddamn adsense ads off! This template kicks ass but I don’t even have an adsense account! What the hell!
Quick comment… I’m currently working on a very sophisticated data layer for my facebook application, and I can tell you, I recommend the Facebook Developer Toolkit, the one that Microsoft endorses. I tried using Facebook.NET and I had a ton of trouble getting it to work properly.
The Facebook Developer Toolkit has DOCUMENTATION, which Facebook.NET does not, although the examples could be bit more extensive. I also highly recommend going with FBML over the iFrame approach for reasons I will explain in a subsequent post once I begin testing the business layer of my app.
I am just under development of facebook app. And i can tell.. facebook and toolkits and everything are fully of bugs. If u are asp.net developer, well, u will need to go for a custom CSS (copy paste and decorate original). FBML maybe looks like easy solution but not so usefull in .net enviroment (actualy in any). Clarion did a poor job.
Yeah I ended up figuring this out within a couple of days of writing that previous comment; iframe is definitely the easier, more intuitive way to go. I haven’t done a lot of extensive testing with the Clarion product so I’m not sure what bugs you might be running into; could you please list a couple major issues if you’ve run into anything significant?
If you’re using an iframe I’d imagine you’d have to make your own duplicate copy of the Facebook CSS code, as I don’t think you’d be able to inherit the CSS properties on the Facebook page opening the iframe itself. According to the facebook developer’s wiki you’re not allowed to reference external stylesheets but I assume that this is only for FBML applications. Correct me if I am wrong.
If you are, in fact, not allowed to use an external stylesheet for Iframe applications, I suppose you could always just create a server-side include that writes a style element to the header of your HTML output.
if u look at url rewriting there are many perspectives.. personaly i prefer http://www.urlrewriting.net/ and http://urlrewriter.net/. Both work same way.. i prefer urlrewriting.net because it has better documentation.
Also, I would like to tell, that google understands query string – and differs page as separate. Why i did on one website was total urlrewriting of everything which ended as complete mess (i have multilingual content – with multilingual urls)! Also u need to watch for not to have duplicate content, which will be punished by gogle if it does appear. Today 50% of web is done by url rewriting – so i guess, search engine will not vaule document name as they did before.
My suggestion for best practices is to make nice url database. Not for google, rather for persistent urls.
If u are advanced developer. url should not concern u too much. Coolest thing i saw lately is castle project and subsonic. Take a look at that.. This is complete framework.. Not just url rewriting. This is REST for .net.
Thanks for the comment vjeran. I’ve been closely monitoring my stats via Google Analyitics and it looks like URL rewriting has not affected my ranking much at all (something like 700 unique users in the 3 weeks since I launched the site). Duplicate content is absoultely a major no-no.
I spent a lot of time trying to develop a URL rewriting application without using any ISAPI filters and it turned out to be a waste of time, given both the results and the difficulty involved. IIS 7.0 should have a greater level of integration between the HTTP Handlers interface and the server level request routing so I anticipate that in the future URL rewriting will be able to be handled without any ISAPI filter tinkering; nay, I HOPE that in the future this will be the case haha
Hello, I am not using my real name nor regular email address here, nor is that a real site… BECAUSE… I am not sure if this goes public as soon as I post. That said, I am a real person with a real opportunity to monetize through a facebook application. I’m looking for a development partner who can work with me to get it off the ground ASAP. I have it all packaged nicely with a demo. I’m located in Los Angeles. Please email me at the email address posted and I’ll get back to you with my name and number hopefully we can get this going ASAP.
well.. i was also workign with ajax on one website adriaticvilla.com. Well it is cool but u had to watch. My designer gave me nontableless html and i couldn’t shift back – anyway.. it looks that some controls have problems in ajax with tables – like accordion. I resolved this by making div tables.
Another issue where validators but this is repaired.
Still, there are some things that would be nice to work different way. Like, update panel needs to have trigger button in itself. When u look at digg.com and email button (you must be loged)- you will see how does it looks from outside – much better! This is one of things why i like jquerry.
Most of other things are very good and usefull. Mixing some other stuff can still cause problems, but this are other issues (i tried to move viewstate to bottom of the page).
Hehe they are cool. I use croatian webhosting service which are really outstanding with service (u don’t need to call admins) – and this is the best mark for quallity. and they are cheap – 40 € whole year! 100 sql servers, 100 mysql, unlimited subdomain and the best stuff – plesk control panel and full trust mode! find me hosting good like this.. they also support php, phyton, cgi and asp on same machine. Very good. http://www.inside.hr
@aaron: i’m reconsidering my style of commentary & blogging based on your comments & introspection.
while i don’t feel uncomfortable stating my opinions (and occasionally my emotions) freely, i’m sure at times my “transparency” is viewed as offensive by others. i recognize that objectively, but my subjective behavior is not always so easy to change… that is, should i choose to do so.
in general, people who know me seem to enjoy my style of blogging / candor / swearing, altho a few are sometimes a little surprised at the level of intensity. i guess i’d observe that i tend to blog the way i drive — that is to say, a bit more aggressively than i would normally be in a face to face conversation. but even in person, i probably state my opinions & swear without feeling like i’m particularly attacking anyone. maybe the “attacking” part comes out more online, or maybe sometimes when i feel like i’m responding to being attacked. certainly that was how i felt about the TechDumpster stuff. i felt like i’d been punched, and i punched back.
perhaps this is due to my upbringing / family cultural behavior — my mother’s side of the family tends to call top-of-your-lungs yelling an “italian conversation”; my father’s side is just plain WV hillbilly — but regardless i’m probably quicker to anger and quicker to forgetting about it than most people. i also was taught to stand my ground for what i believe in, even if occasionally i need to later admit i’m wrong.
in hindsight, i could probably stand to benefit from turning down the volume on both the highs & lows. it’s always a tough issue for me, and i don’t like to think i’m compromising on my opinions by doing so. however perhaps it’s worth some occasional introspection & reflection.
Thanks for the comment! I love reading TechDumpster and Uncov so keep up the good work; I could never do it as well as you.
@Dave,
I’m flattered. Thank you for reading my post and I’m glad it was able to be of interest. Unfortunately I do not know you in real life so when I read your comments online the only thing I have to judge you by are those said comments. Bear this in mind if you’re looking to draw in new readers.
A habit that I myself have fallen into is writing for my friends rather than writing for my intended audience; I have to think about my writing style as I write the post and when I review it before I publish it. My “speaking” style which I use to communicate with my friends is not the same as my “writing” style, which I use for writing this blog; I don’t think I would be nearly as credible if I dropped a “dude” every two sentences like how I do when I’m surfing with my friends.
Regardless, I’m flattered that I was able to make a difference for you. Thank you.
One of the posters from the ASP.NET forums recommend that I share this very, very detailed graphical tutorial on Data layers with you. It’s a dense read but if you’re really interested in the nuts and bolts of a good data layer then I’d recommend reading the data layer tutorial
I would suggest to anyone to revisit this. I was first in croatia for 2 years and still, in most crucial terms like SEO and web page development, without having almost any link from external websites. How? 1. content – title, h1 (header tags), keywords in text, and links which are most important (other is most like sugar). http://www.cepolina.com/freephoto/tips2.html
I was using star configuration. Well, it is not the best, but it is very easy to develop and still it gives good results. So, url rewriting will not give so good results as respecting math, logic and common sense!
Thank you for your comment! I did not do a good job making that clear; I went ahead and adjusted the title of my blog entry accordingly.
I really like BlogEngine.NET but I’m going to make a full comparison against Wordpress. Regardless, it’s good to see a really great .NET blogging tool available for free.
I haven’t seen the pingback from my BlogEngine.NET test come back to this entry yet but regardless I did a comparison today between Wordpress and BlogEngine.NET on how they handle pingbacks and trackbacks.
That comment you left me regarding how BlogEngine.NET detects spam from trackbacks and comments was fantastic by the way; sounds like a really neat and novel way of tackling the spam problem!
Here’s the first set of comparisons I’ve made so far… Wordpress has been acting funky with the pingbacks lately… It hasn’t been allowing me to pingback from within my own blog regularly. I might have to revise my BlogEngine.NET and Wordpress comparison on trackbacks if this keeps up.
you got some interesting perspective there. Good job. As for ad sense, don’t worry about ad polluted profile box, since it’s against thx facebook TOS to put any app on the app profile box. As for the canvas page adsense, it’s possible to trick the system by putting the ad in an iframe and populate it with relevant meta data. Keep those good writings coming.
You have an error in your otherwise helpful article.
When a user selects to remove your application they are not sent to the ‘Post-Remove URL’ as they have removed the application and so will have no further contact with it. A POST request will be sent to this address in the background however containing the uid of the leaving user.
Great to hear you’re looking to Facebook.NET … I am certainly open to any and all feedback about bugs, ideas, suggestions etc. to make sure Facebook.NET continues to provide a solid base for building Facebook apps. I’ve set up the CodePlex project partly to create a nice channel for folks like you to participate in the discussion/issue forums.
I’m very impressed with Facebook.NET so far; I redesigned my entire application using its FBML approach and I am proud to say that my application finally started working. The Facebook Developer’s Toolkit simply hid too many undocumented behaviors “under the hood” for it to be trusted, whereas your framework allows for very abstract and simple, yet elegant methods to approaching a Facebook application in .NET.
I am very happy with the tool and I will continue to use it. I will even be posting the full source code for my application once it’s finished so other Facebook.NET developers can have more resources to look at.
Thanks for making a great tool; I will be posting more about it in the future.
While your post was very interesting and informative, I was distracted at the outset by your beginning the article with the conjunction “so”. Speakers, and now writers apparently, have been misusing this word in the past few years. It has become as common and as irritating as that other misused conjunction, “like”. But somehow it is now accepted and spread by otherwise educated people who would rail against the similar misuse of “like”.
“So I attended the Facebook Garage…” should be preceded by a related idea, as in, “My wife was out of town this weekend, so I attended…”. Of even more common use than this example, however, is the use of the misunderstood “so” to start the answer to a question. I frequently hear the following type of exchange at meetings:
Q: “How’s your project coming, Jane?”
A: “So I met with HR this morning…”
I anticipate the day when I ask a co-worker the time of day and am responded to with “So, I’m looking at my watch and the little hand is on the three…”
Thanks for your comment. I’m perpetually interested in improving my writing form and style, thusI will add “look for the misuse of so” to my list of checks I perform each time I write an article. I posted an article today on Dumb Little Man about weight loss and lifestyle changes (I did not mention it on this blog because it’s not relevant to the subjects I write about), and I my grammar was also criticized there. If you have some feedback on how I can improve upon that article also I would love to listen to it.
Great Blog Article and an overall awesome blog in fact. It’s funny, we have the same theme on our wordpress site and are both looking at blogengine.net as a replacement for wordpress.
Hehe.. yeah dude! look at this now:
for example i have, in my app call that returns facebook user object, from some ID. 10 o’clock at night.. and i am in debug mode. My app starts to break everywhere… then i noticed that (in Immediate window) when i write object in direct way, while in break point, it returns null??? while 5 time, it returned correct data with same call?!? So, webservice timeout…and we have problems..
No i am wondering, maybe this facebook toolkit is missing it’s point – in architecture way – maybe something like jquery or YUI Ext would be much better for this issues.
Yeah I think the basic problem with the Facebook Developer Toolkit is the fact that it’s just too rigid. Facebook.NET is very flexible and I think this will ultimately prove to be a better approach to .NET-driven facebook applications given that the platform will likely be subject to changes down the road, especially the FBML syntax.
The only issue I have with Facebook.NET is that the application has to be either a FBML or Iframe application running within facebook. I can’t figure how to create a stand-alone app that just authenticates. The facebook toolkit seems to be designed for stand-alone apps first then integrated apps second.
I’d switch if Facebook.NET had a stand-alone option. I think I saw a comment that it’s in the works
Razman, not sure if you’ve looked at everything inside the Facebook.NET package – but if you do, you should see Facebook.Desktop.dll – it has the ability for client apps to show a login dialog to create a Facebook client session, and then you’re off and able to use all the APIs… or you can use an infinite session as well, if you have one and don’t want the user to login.
If you don’t see it, and have questions I’d recommend using the discussion forum on CodePlex rather than simply letting your questions/thoughts go unanswered/unaddressed.
Aaronontheweb, sorry for using your comments form for this, but I just thought I’d take the opportunity to point Razman to whats there.
Thanks for the cool list. I do a weekly or bi-weekly picks of Firefox extensions if you’d like to check out. I should update my favorite extensions page (linked to my name) soon.
Sorry for all the link plugs but you asked about my favorites.
Thanks for the list. I rarely have time to go and check every new plug-in myself, so lists like this (and from a trusted source) definitely save my time.
I checked out your list of Firefox extensions; very cool! And no I absolutely do not mind people plugging content on their own blog when it’s relevant to what I’m writing about!
Sleeping Dude,
No problem. I’ve been using these extensions for helping run my site for a couple of months now. SeoQuake is by far the most valuable out of that entire list. I’m recommending it to all of my clients and friends who run websites. The second most valuable out of all of them is probably FireFTP.
All are pretty good points. I don’t think MS is going to go dead any time soon. The problem with people screaming MS is dead is that they don’t find the things MS does exciting. Most of MS products are so tied up within themselves that it turns off the majority of geeks. Can you name any single MS product that runs on Linux? Its their lack of openness that brings about so much hatred towards them.
Thanks for your comment. I agree with your interpretation about why people like to scream “MS is dead!” I also think a lot of it has to due with a very small number of very vocal people who fundamentally do not agree with the concept of proprietary software.
Why should MS products run on Linux? They already run on all Windows and OS X machines, why spend resources on the 1% of the market share that doesn’t believe in paying for software in the first place?
One of the best articles I’ve read regarding this issue. I am too a MS evangelist in some way, and I face the same criticism from people over and over.
Your article should be a punch in the head to any fanboy anti-M$.
Thanks for the comment! Yes, we face more criticism than we deserve, frankly. I’ve used oodles of open source technology but I still prefer .NET and the MS line of development tools over anything that the open-source community has to offer.
Hopefully posts like this one will help bring an end to the Linux and Apple fanboys running sensationalist prophecies about Judgment Day for Microsoft.
So, TripAdvisor’s purchase of “Where I’ve Been” turned out to be true after all? Last I’d heard, both parties were denying the rumour.
I still don’t understand that purchase, given that TripAdvisor already had there own widget which was incredibly similar to “Where I’ve Been,” called “Cities I’ve Visited” aka: “TripAdvisor Travel Map” (which, in my opinion, is a better application than “Where I’ve Been” anyway, albeit by a very slight margin).
I had heard in person at the event that TripAdvisor indeed purchased it for an undisclosed amount, but it turns out that whoever said that didn’t have their facts straight either.
Of all that extensions I’ve got 1 installed, download toolbar, and that’s not specifically for developers. From all the others, I can only see the use of IE view. You must be a different kind of developing thing than I am.
My list of recommended addons for developers would be:
1.) Firebug. This is *the* plugin for developers. Don’t leave home without it.
2.) Web developer toolbar. Disable JS, disable/clear cookies, rulers and guides. Just a bundle of useful stuff.
3.) Tamper Data. See the HTTP strings and get the possibility to modify them, how cool is that.
4.) Selenium toolbar. Test automation right in your browser. I don’t like pressing the same 10 button 50 times, do you?
5.) Johnnycache. Stop caching for your own projects without disabling it for the entire net.
Other nice addons I have include User agent switcher, Quick locale switcher, Fire encrypter, Firefox showcase and Timestamp convertor.
I’ll check those extensions out and build a new list in the near future.
As for the intended audience of this list, it’s really more for website proprietors and operators than developers, now that I think about it. Some of the stuff on there is for CSS and session management but mostly it’s tools for leveraging and promoting your own blog or website and metrics for measuring the effectiveness of your promotion.
I’ll give more thought to the title in the future.
The thing that makes me laugh whenever folks say that Microsoft missed the Web 2.0 boat (and similar) is that I’m curious where Web 2.0 would be without XmlHttpRequest… an object which debuted as an ActiveX extension to IE produced by MS and copied by everyone else…
why spend resources on the 1% of the market share that doesn’t believe in paying for software in the first place?
This is a misunderstanding of the position of most “free software” advocates; “free” here means not “gratis” but freedom to use and modify the program as you wish, and people choose non-proprietary programs and operating systems for many important reasons besides not “believ[ing] in paying for software”. Although most “free software” programs happen to be available gratis, open-source advocates will and do pay for “free” software — software that’s vastly more valuable because it is future-proofed against any particular company/developer ceasing to support it, modifying it to invade users’ privacy, or other undesirable outcomes.
Although most “free software” programs happen to be available gratis, open-source advocates will and do pay for “free” software — software that’s vastly more valuable because it is future-proofed against any particular company/developer ceasing to support it, modifying it to invade users’ privacy, or other undesirable outcomes.
I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean by the first part of that sentence; would you mind giving me an example of “free” software that open-source advocates pay for? And I’m not talking about service contracts, I mean they pay for a software license.
A group of unpaid volunteers will outlast the most profitable company on Earth, is that what you’re saying? What’s the lifespan of the average open source project?
Software that’s vastly more valuable because it’s open source? I’d like to see some open source video games that are worth anything, and no, Return to Castle Wolfenstein/Enemy Territory does not count. Proprietary software that gets its source code published has nothing to do with projects that begin as open source.
How come the open source movement hasn’t produced a video game that’s “more valuable” than what proprietary software developers produce?
Is it because proprietary companies do a better job institutionalizing their “secret sauce” because they have an economic incentive to do so?
Or is it because open-source organizations do a poorer job institutionalizing knowledge because they rely on altruistic incentive to develop software?
I’ve downloaded the Web Developer toolbar, and it’s come quite in handy. My favorite feature of it is the resize function; it’s useful when you’ve turned off the “allow scripts to resize your windows” option for Javascript.
Another extension that I’ve installed which comes in handy is SearchStatus – it’s another way to get PageRank, and it also highlights nofollow links, and shows you the rank for compete and alexa.
How about Firebug? It regularly saves my rear end as I try to debug xhtml/css-based layouts (”Why is that 5px margin there? How come the rules I just wrote aren’t being rendered properly?”)
Wow a lot of comments just started rolling in; must have something to do with that lifehacker article.
@Vuz,
I used screen grab for a long time on this computer (two years) and didn’t really find it to be that useful. I could see the value in it given that it can render an image of the entire page, beyond what I can see with the active pane of my browser, but rarely did I ever need to use it. I just press the windows key plus print screen to take screen shots of content that I later crop for my blog entries.
@Sephyroth,
I used an older version of the web developer toolbar for a long time and removed it as a result of some incompatibility issues when I upgraded to Firefox 2.0. I’ll take another look at it.
I’ll also take a look at SearchStatus, although I am VERY fond of SEO Quake.
@Ruthie and everyone else asking about Firebug,
I just installed it; it sounds great, and I can’t wait to check it out. Thanks for recommending it!
Hi. These are all good extensions, BUT… As a long time web developer you forgot THE most important one of all.. Way more useful than the ones listed… As mentioned in a previous post, it is the Web Developer toolbar. By far the most useful.
Isn’t session manager built into Firefox 2.0? I think I used the Session Manager extension in Firefox 1.5, but after upgrading to 2.0, I don’t think it is necessary. BTW, I can recommend a few more extensions (and info about problematic extensions) at http://alekdavis.blogspot.com/2007/05/recommended-firefox-add-ons.html
I’m not sure; Firefox 2.0 might automatically restore sessions after crashes, but it won’t give you the option to explicitly store sessions like how session manager will. I’ll save specific sessions when I need to save a series of tabs side by side.
i would like FIer fox to give an add on that will collect information on me the user and will send it automatically to outer space
- take a pause and save yourself for ever- perhaps you will find a better life in outer space-
Upload a file to http://www.beinspace.com give it a name a and a link to your site
And this information will live for ever in outer space.
Although I like your listed add-ons, most don’t seem to me to really be developer add-ons.
How can a top ten not include either Firebug or Web Developer? That’s crazy, dude. Hell, Web Developer has been the premier webdev extension/add-on since before FF 1.0 was officially released.
And regarding “session manager”, I do believe all FF releases since 2.0 have had “session-restore” built-in, making the add-on you recommended completely irrelevant (so far as I can see).
Another add-on that I use for developing, as well as other stuff, is a wonderful add-on called “Signature”. It was originally intended to give the user right-click context menu options in text fields that allow you to auto-include a limitless number of custom “signatures”… (i.e., you right-click, and get to choose signatures that you’ve custom-written for forums and blogs and such). The wonderful webdev aspect of this is that you can create code snippets instead of sigs if you want. Less typing always = good in my book.
Non-webdev add-ons that come in handy are the following:
“Answers.com” – Alt+left-click any word on any page and an iframe pops up with the answers.com synopses definition of the word from various sources, such as wikipedia, etc… and it also gives you a link to the answers.com page with the full listing of results.
“foxytunes” – if you browse the web and listen to music at the same time, don’t even ask any questions – DL this add-on ASAP. It was voted best add-on of ‘06 and just continues to get better. Newest release includes a greasemonkey-esque feature that places a nice little icon under text-fields (i.e., blogs, comments, etc…) so that you can auto-insert a “what I’m listening to right now” sig that includes a link to the song’s “foxytunes planet” page which shows you song/artist info from youtube, wikipedia, flickr, lastfm, etc… all on one page.
And
“Tab Scope” – Allows you to see LIVE previews of pages when you hover over their tabs. Meaning, instead of just seeing a screen cap, you see a tiny preview of the actual page including scrolling and refresh capabilities (inside the tiny preview) making tab navigation so much more enjoyable.
Sorry I’m too lazy to actually include links, but Google isn’t. All of these are easily searchable by using their name (which I’ve put in quotes) and the word “add-on” as Google keywords.
How can you forget or not list Firebug extension which I believe is the foremost extension in the the list of web developers. I can not imagine working without this extension whether I am writing javascript based code or css based code.
I missed firebug, but also live http headers (i agree firebug has some functionality in that area as well, but still like live http headers…
For the download status bar: doesn’ t seem so useful to me. When i download something with firefox, I do ctrl J to open downloads window: I then right click any of the downloaded files and choose ‘open containing folder’, so opening file explorer and hunting down that dir.
And to the previous commenter’s assertion that APC based PHP will be twice as fast as Phalanger, the 190% speed improvement in the referenced article seems to support that.
Also, the Phlanger PHPbb test is little off. It was run on a pentium M 1.8Ghz laptop using windows XP. It’s not exactly the environment most people will use when running PHP (which can be seen pretty clearly by the paltry 6 requests per second it pumped out). Also, everything was run on the same box (including the test harness itself).
Great comment! I’m simply comparing traditional PHP execution using the Zend interpreter against the .NET methodology using Phalanger; the comparison stands as valid (rather than Apples and Oranges) from that point of view.
I did not write the article with the intention of determining what the absolute best performance system for PHP is, given that this is a .NET blog. I happen to like PHP and I saw Phalanger as an exciting opportunity to incorporate it into some of my .NET projects.
When I wrote the article I was aware of different PHP compilation techniques, but I simply was writing about PHP compilation in the scope of .NET.
And what you say about the bench-marking is also true; I think this merits some more thorough bench marking on the behalf of the Phalanger developers, don’t you?
You say that it is an apples to apples comparison but you have a very old version of php and no byte cache running against an optimised native executable.
My insticts would tell me that .NET should be faster but PHP is definately no slouch when set up properly, all you have done is basically hyped a half truth in a true Microsoft way, well done.
And I definately won’t mention anything about .NET being platform independant considering it runs on exactly 1 platform and no mono doesn’t count as it’s definately not ready for large scale applications.
If you can point out how my article is only telling half the truth, please do so. Is it not true that PHP compiled in .NET runs twice as fast as Zend interpretation according to the Phalanger group?
A half-truth would be if I claimed that Phalanger was the fastest available platform for PHP, which I didn’t.
In addition, if you read my article all the way through, you would have read the area where I addressed platform dependence
A half-truth would be if I claimed that Phalanger was the fastest available platform for PHP, which I didn’t.
Stating “Attention: PHP executes twice as fast when it’s run on ASP.NET” implies that it is faster then PHP and the assertion is it is for all aplications even though one is given as a token example.
If you stated that PHP was run in an non-optimal setup on a webserver that is far from friendly to PHP not to mention the old version then it would be alot more factual.
If you re-run these tests with a fair testing environment (linux/apache/op cache vs IIS/.NET or even just an op cache on IIS) and it is still faster then I’ll be the first to say ‘wow well done’, untill then it is complete utter FUD.
In addition, if you read my article all the way through, you would have read the area where I addressed platform dependence
Well this is a start, there is more to platform indepedance then hosting options
The world doesn`t need more people advertising FUD on both sides get an ounce of skeptiscism and don’t be a puppet.
I didn’t run any of these tests; I reported on what the Phalanger group did. You should tell them to rerun those tests on a fair environment if you have a problem with how they did it.
If I wrote a headline saying that “Attention: Under Windows IIS PHP Can Be Compiled with Phalanger to Run at Approximately 100% Faster Speeds Than it Can Under Traditional Zend Interpretation” do you think anyone would read it?
Blogging is just as much about writing effective copy as it is about providing sufficient cause to start discussion. Titles like this one draws enough interest to spark the discussion necessary to ultimately produce better information for my audience.
Look at the valuable information that the comments for this article has yielded; now people who are really interested in learning about not just .NET, but about increasing the performance of PHP, have a list of resources they can turn to for doing just that. The criticism that some of the visitors to my site have provided via comments ultimately improves the quality of information on my site.
Blogging is not about the original writer being right or wrong, but it is ultimately about gathering the most complete and best information; I alone couldn’t possibly gather all the possible ways you can optimize a PHP application. Readers like you and others who leave feedback complete the information gathering to one location.
I’ve not cast FUD on anything (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt; I had to look it up.) If anything I’ve objectively directed my readers to the facts on codeproject and the Phalanger website, regardless of what some readers may think of said facts. I’ve entertained criticism and discussion in a fair and respectful manner; I could choose to moderate comments or ignore criticism entirely, but I haven’t because criticism of my articles ultimately makes for better information, which is my objective. If it takes a controversial title to acquire such information, then so be it
I really don’t care much about what my readers think of me personally, but I care a lot about writing on subjects that they enjoy and I care a lot about having the best possible information, even if it’s provided from readers, other bloggers, or my harshest critics.
I’d be more than happy to write a subsequent post about PHP optimization/bytecode caching techniques should the readers of this blog want to read it. I even have a catchy title thought of for it already
If you link to an article and then add supplimentary comment supporting it then you are in fact supporting the original assertion.
You seem like a fair person and all I’m trying to get at is that pointing at something that will lead to a flame fest and saying ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ is not going to stop people commenting on your article.
You either support something, not support something or be fair and present both sides and let the discusion take place a fourth option I do not believe exists but maybe wrong.
I guess you are just ‘link baiting’ to get visitors which is a real shame, there is so much FUD out there you could use your powers for good not ebil! (that isn’t a mis type).
By the way the article was nicely written even if I don’t agree with the content
I am supporting the original assertion that Phalanger speeds up traditional PHP execution, to be clear. The facts of Phalanger’s tests support this assertion. However if you wanted to demonstrate that original PHP could be improved with bytecode compilation to such a level that it’s indeed faster than Phalanger, that’s an entirely separate issue from comparing the two as they run out of the box with no modification. I would encourage you to run your own tests.
I am very supportive of comments; it seems to me that there’s some interest in other technologies for improving PHP performance, technologies that I was only vaguely aware of, and from these comments I can potentially produce another post on the subject.
Do you think I am being unsupportive of comments? The only reason I’ve replied is to more or less clarify why I produced the article in the first place, for the sake of having my readers understand my blog’s intent. I’m by no means trying to stifle discussion, only stifling attacks against my blog’s integrity and intent
I don’t think your stifling the comments at all which is good, well done you get a cookie but at the same time you do not seem open to the fact that the article is based on an incorrect assuption.
Your support for it is IMHO misplaced and I hope the you do redress it maybe with another article about the Phalanger Project (perhaps an interview with them addressing what I and other posters have said).
Your integrity and that of your site is directly related to how you handle the facts and in this case your defending a flawed article, this is what is known as FUD or to put it another way ‘throw enough mud and it sticks’.
Do you want to be known as just another shrill/fanboy ? or someone that is trustworthy it is up to you.
I’d encourage you to check your email, if you’ve been using a real one.
I’ve had no problem handling the facts; it’s not my fault that you don’t like them.
PHP runs faster when it’s compiled with .NET than it does running on Zend interpretation; this is a fact and its integrity has been weakly challenged but not disproved by any stretch of the imagination.
No one has presented any data demonstrating that out of the box Zend interpretation runs faster than Phalanger binaries. Go ahead and try it; inform us.
In the email I sent you I’ve given you an opportunity to throw some of your own ideas about PHP out there in a full post that i will publish on this site. If you want to use the opportunity to demonstrate methods in which PHP will execute faster than it does with Phalanger then that’s up to you.
Apple has a third-party company called Corporate Services that handles that stuff. The content is served up by their servers, and not Apple themselves.. the /promo/ URL is just virtually there, and not actually hosted by Apple.
Attention: PHP executes twice as fast when it’s run on ASP.NET
BAD TITLE, MISLEADING and you know it
Naturally compiled code executes faster then any interpreted code on any platform. That said, there are many ways to speed up php execution on windows or any platform, probably the best is to purchase a copy of Zend Encoder: http://www.zend.com/products/zend_guard
First time I hear about Phalanger so its an interesting read but a title like: compile PHP code on ASP.net would be *much more* honest and interesting then reading about misleading titles/statements on execution time.
While I think the comments regarding the misleading title are unjust (it’s supported by facts, what more do you want? An Apache group endorsement?), I like your suggested title, as I think it conforms better to the spirit of AjaxNinja’s readership.
There, I submitted the article to reddit, which I have never used before, with the new headline. Let’s see if you’re right about the other title being better, given that it did pretty well on DZone with the original one.
Thanks for your comment! I love getting feedback, positive or negative, from my readers, and I’m glad that you found this list helpful. I added you as a friend on StumbleUpon and I gave you a review. Good luck on your quest to become a top stumbler!
No problem. I’m using the IBusinessEntity interface in my Facebook.NET application right now actually. It’s hard for me to imagine programming with out it after I read about it!
Yes your suggestion would definitely be a better way of doing things; less room for error if I use key/value pairs. I will implement this in the future.
Great article. I couldn’t agree more about putting thought into your headlines. I read that same article on Copyblogger and have tried to use its advice throughout my blog.
I think you’re missing the point of the power of Digg though. It’s not about getting to the front page of Digg, it’s about being able to leverage it’s power for higher ranking in Google. See Google likes Digg and will list Diggs up fairly high in the niche listings. So if you are blogging about ‘underwater rats’ and your blog is ranking 500 (are there that many searches for this?) and you get one of your articles dugg, that article might come in at the #13 listing on a Google search, therefore indirectly driving readers to your blog. Social Posting is not about the network you’re posting on as much as how well Google likes that network.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the style of parameter naming you did on the SnapQuery constructor (with PascalCase and a trailing underscore)…is that your own convention for params that just get assigned to properties (that have a leading underscore)? That’s kind of interesting….
Besides what has already been mentioned, the only thing I’m not comfortable with is the positional dependency in User.Fill. It’ll be duplicated in the sql command that’s responsible for pulling the data.
If you use stored procs, I guess there’s no way around that. But if you’re using SELECT statements, an additional ColumnNames[] array on the IBusinessEntity could be used by both the Fill method and whatever is constructing the Sql statement. Or, just enforce a standard of column name == property name and use the property name instead of position.
I’d also probably (optionally?) wrap all the SqlCommands in WriteDataItems in a transaction, since you probably aren’t going to know which one failed. You open yourself up to locking issues there, but I think the semantics are cleaner.
Also, if con.Open() throws an exception in your try blocks, then con.Close() will as well in your finally block. the using construct will take care of that.
I’d probably ditch the WebConfigurationManager reference as well (since it requires System.Web) – though if you only deal with ASP.NET that may be less of an issue for you.
All in all, though, pretty nice and concise general purpose DAL.
Thanks a lot for the information. I currently use firefox and I have not utilized it to it’s fullest extent. I will go through and get all those plug-ins you have gone through. Thanks again.
Very good points. I’d like to add that if a social network for your niche doesn’t exist yet then why not start your own with Ning? http://www.ning.com/
Even if it doesn’t become the next Digg (or even the next Netscape, I mean Propeller) it’s worth it for some links.
Again, great point; the only problem is the chicken and the egg with social networks – you’ve got to have some momentum to get the thing rolling. It’s not impossible but it may be time-consuming.
That convention is something I picked up at University; I taught by an embedded systems Professor that we were always supposed indicate private data members with a trailing underscore, although the capitalization is something I threw in to make the names more readable.
Your point about the fill being dangerous makes sense; on my GetDataItem<> function I’ve had to modify it since.
Using an atomic transaction also sounds like a good idea.
Unfortunately I need to keep the System.Web.Configuration reference as that’s where I load my configuration string from, plus I work primarily in ASP.NET, as you said.
FWIW – for those of use doing both client and web development –
the System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager class (in System.Configuration assembly) works with both app.config and web.config for readonly access. For a more general purpose DAL, I’d much rather a System.Configuration dependency than System.Web.
I gave up on Digg/Programming a while ago. At first it was okay, but something happened in the last year or so and all programmers must have just went over to reddit, DZone, DNK, etc.
Thanks for sharing some of those strategies, Aaron . I still don’t feel I’m writing strong headlines, but perhaps this piece and the Copyblogger article will help me boost my skills in that area a bit .
All good comments, in fact I gave up on Digg for health and medical news because it was all so broad and not broken into categories and started another site with some friends (meddlinks.com). I’m guessing we’ll start seeing a rise in niche social networking sites, but nothing like what Digg is.
I agree with the gardener example. My first thought would be that he sold me the mower for his best interest not mine. It would be the last advice I would take from him again.
Nice post,
but there’s 2 things that bothers me here.
1. you can find an affiliate program for just about any product.
so I don’t see why you wouldn’t benefit from linking to a product you
believe in. As long as you don’t believe in products based on payout
2. there’s 2 kinds of blogs, the one just selling stuff to an audience
that is not aware of it. And the other one … IMO : http://www.joelcomm.com/ is a greeeeat example.
Firebug and WebDeveloper have proven the most popular extensions in my office for the past year or so, but seoquake and colorzilla look as though they could prove to be two equally massive timesavers.
One of those articles that I cited from DZone ended up kicking the shit out of my articles click-through wise, so I guess that show’s what I know :p
Either way, the authors who contribute to DZone and DotNetKicks are some of the most brilliant and painstaking engineers and bloggers out there, but I feel that if they spent more time working on making better headlines, more people will be exposed to their genius.
Thanks for the article! This is something that I have been struggling with for some time. I hope this post sinks in when writing my next article! Keep up the good work!
Thankfully i googled onto your “Starting your First Facebook App”. Learned more in 5 minutes than i had in hours elsewhere. (What a difference a “slash” makes!!!!) I look forward to reading your stuff. I am an “old horse” programmer – started with COBOL and dbaseII – (I know …. way before your time) . I got dragged kicking and screaming into .NET and love it. Only been doing it for a couple of years, so have a lot to learn (and un-learn ;-> ) I’ll try and do my part in the revolution! Keep up the excellent work.
This was a brilliant blog post and I’ve added you as a friend on Digg…!!
I think part of the reason for your observation is that .Net companies haven’t really been bought since all the “big buyers” out there (Google in the front) are purchasing about everything ELSE than .Net companies (interestingly NOT Writely though which WAS a .Net company) which again makes PHP and other “non-.Net” languages get a bad reputation in Sillicon Valley from which most of the Social Media Web2.0 companies arises from…
This makes most bloggers and such (trying to drive traffic to their sites) learning PHP, Ruby and Java etc which again makes the .Net world focus way too much around MSFT…
In fact if you look at the spread of languages you’ll see that .Net has about 25-30 % of the world EXCEPT in the “Valley” where they have like __5%__ of the developers….
This makes the .Net world be WAY less visible, but you’re not alone…
This is truly way sad since especially the last 6 months Mono has truly become an AMAZING platform making .Net FAR more than just a “Microsoft platform”…
I think a lot of it has to do with the quality and price of available toolkits. Let’s take RSS – you won’t find a better feed parsing library than feedparser.org. It rocks, it’s built in python, and it’s free. Databases? Let’s see, do I spend thousands paying for SQL Server 2005, et al, or do I just download mySQL for free and be done with it? Most startups don’t have + cash~. Many don’t have funding. Paying for software sometimes just isn’t an option. (Neither is piracy)
Non open source technologies are simply not hip. The main reason for that is that developers who are passionate about their work like to invest in technologies that feel more like their own. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll open the source code, but you can, or that you’ll fork it to shape it to your own taste, but you can.
I personally find it a total waste to invest my time in anything Microsoft.
I agree that .NET is a great technology and it gets basically disregarded by a large number of developers. I used to pretty much be a Java fanatic until I really started using .NET. I really like it a lot now but I still write code in other languages.
I think it’s important to know the other technologies and use whatever one makes sense in the context — It really depends. I do believe Zack is right when he mentions that a lot of the popularity of other options comes down to the price tag. It does help that options such as mono and xsp are out — as well as the express versions of the visual studio IDEs.
I’ve been working with .net since the first betas in 2001. It’s gone down hill since version 2.0 of the framework.
I’m actually embarrassed to say I work with .NET. It’s over bloated, takes more code, doesn’t have close to the vibrant communities other platforms have. It’s essentially another pitiful Java.
Normally I don’t get involved in language discussions, as I rarely find much of substance said by any side. But I figured in this case to as least try and eloquently convey my personal beliefs in working with Linux and Java. For me it comes down to who do I want to support. If I put massive time and resources in building an application on a platform I choose to consider who else will benefit from my efforts. I choose to work with open platforms, because I know that by drawing attention to those platforms that this will draw resources to them and those resources will produce a better platform that (because it is free) will be available to everyone else. If I put basically the same amount of effort in a closed platform I am only empowering the provider of that closed platform to become even more powerful which time has shown is the case with Microsoft.
Now I admit to being pragmatic with this philosophy, after all as soon as I was able to afford a copy of Office 2003 Professional I ditched Open Office, but then comes the fact that platforms like Linux, Java (the JVM and the language), Apache, MySQL etc. really do provide compelling value beyond what Microsoft has created. Just try and do something like Amazon’s EC2 with Windows (the licensing model alone makes it unrealisitc). EC2 is an indispensable aspect of the analytical engines in my software now, and my years of Linux experience made the transition seamless. Mono has not been a realistic option in bringing .NET code to non Microsoft OSs so far, so this has a huge impact on considering any other Microsoft technology in my stack. As for some of the cool things that the .NET CLR is working on (like LINQ), I don’t see enough to convince me to switch from a platform that has kept pace with my needs for several years now. Anything I have seen LINQ do, JPA, Hibernate and home grown persistence frameworks have done, and as Ruby gains strength I can take comfort in knowing that the JVM was designed for more than one language in mind from the beginning (in fact they are up to over 200 now), so my question back to .NET advocates is why does Microsoft think .NET is anything new?
I Hope that this post isn’t scrutinized as much as it probably deserves to be.
.Net suffers from a number of problems, the main one is that it is by Microsoft. MSFT has one goal, and that is to sell copies of Windows. They give .net away for free (including the express IDE) for a reason. To sell copies of Windows. Anything and everything MSFT does is to promote their platform, lock people in, and control it all. For them, getting people to upgrade their PCs is their ultimate goal, and .net is their means to that end.
The problem .net developers have is that by adopting, and advocating .net, you are essentially helping, supporting and siding with their position even if it is implicit. By creating products that require .net 2.0, you are forcing people to updgrade to XP SP2, or Vista or later. Next, people will be forced to upgrade to vista to use .net 4.0. Additionally, I like to get religious about my languages and tools, which is hard to do when the sole owner, creator and controller simply sees it as a way of twisting arms to OS upgrades.
Additionally, how long before .net is defunct? Anyone remember Microsofts DNA platform from 2000? When .net 7.0 is virtually the same as .net 8.0 and nobody sees a reason to upgrade, how are microsoft going to force people to upgrade then? By creating a brand new platform for developers and users alike to buy into.
Now, I’m not a typical anti-Microsofty, they can do what they want and I don’t really care, but I don’t want my development platform determining which OS I’m going to be using, now or in 5 years time. (I’m still on Win 2K on personal machines).
However, Microsoft completely missed the boat by not making .net multi-platform. Multi-language is ok, but irrelevant, if they had pushed the multi-platform side they could have fared much better. Nobody wants lock-in, and even though we had the news hype about corel creating .net for linux, and even though mono is around, but always lagging, they still cannot be multiplatform which is in complete opposition to what they were “pretending” to be aiming for. They don’t want to compete to be the best OS provider for the .net platform, they want to be THE ONLY OS provider for the .net platform.
In terms of less political considerations, I found Java to be more OO oriented. .net is still about hooking up gui controls to cursors and performing updates, the type of faux OO applications that Delphi excelled at for years. Java is about true OO with many good ORMs, and a community that is well versed in OO principles, even if they don’t always practice it.
btw… “I spend thousands paying for SQL Server 2005″… ummm it’s FREE. You only need to upgrade for important stuff (dual proc support and 4GB+ db’s – the most important in my opinion). By default it is better than mysql.
You’re right on about this, it’s not just social networking though. Look at wordpress and show me the .net equivalent.
Here’s a question, has .net really made it any easier to solve your programming problems? I’m not so sure that everyone agrees that it has.
Also, licensing. If you want to get a new company off the ground and need 20-30 servers running sql server 2005 guess what that’s going to cost. A Ton! Not to mention the OS and other servers you’d need to power the web app on the IIS side.
I think most of the complaints about .NET/SQL Server licensing costs being a barrier to running a company are complete and utter bullshit, frankly, given that those products are free
As for the stab at ML, I only make fun of it because I had to learn how to program it.
Windows Server is cheap, chances are your start up is going to be on someone else’s VPS anyways until you start to get bandwidth issues.
A startup won’t need more than SQL Server Express’s capabilities, if your expecting to need more than 4 gb databases right away, then you probably have some venture funding, and can afford the license for the full version.
There is really no reason to not work in .NET aside from ignorant arrogance.
BTW, Windows Server 2008 and IIS7 are hands down the best server solution I’ve ever worked with, and yes, I’ve done plenty of stuff on LAMP setups too. Windows Server is going to completely dominate the professional market in a few years.
Want a good job? Learn .NET. Want to work for a poor development house? Learn anything else.
Hi,
I think one of the reasons is because MS stands behind it. Company that uses its monopoly position to drive others out of business and creates lock-in solutions while accepting (and crippling) industry standards when it likes. Real developer should care about interoperability and standards as it foster new innovation and creates communities. MS represents none of this.
Good post and great point noted. I also try and click on Dot net related article every where and try to my level to increase the knowledge of the framework in the community
You shoudl really look at using NHibernate. It take a little bit to get your head around, but once you have, it works a dream. I also use it with the SpringFramework.net as they have some nice base classes and http modules to get you going even faster.
Speaking as some one who actually started a company built out of software I programmed myself, I feel I can say with some authority that licensing costs are in fact not “bullshit”. Furthermore I can actually back that claim up. As Radio Mixtape was scaling up I went from some spare CPU cycles on a shared box (an Athalon 1600+ with 256MB RAM) to 3 dedicated web servers (Xeon 1.6GHz with 1GB RAM). These were all Linux boxes (running Slackware 10 at the time, now I am all Ubuntu), and load balanced through a proxy application called Balance. The total cost of the upgrade? $1,800 + shipping (Gateway had a promotion where they were selling 1U servers for $600 if you selected “no OS”) These three web servers operated with 100+ day uptime (occasionally I chose to upgrade key packages the required a reboot), handled scaling to over 30,000 users (with hundreds of thousands of downloads) and all with out paying anyone for anything other than hardware, power and bandwidth. For the price of the OS licenses alone I was able to increase my reliability (by having a dedicated load balancing server) and I had a platform that I could scale out as far as I needed.
Now that Radio Mixtape has run its course, but the same servers power my new company. They run the most current Ubuntu Linux release which is packed with even more value and functionality (remember what helps one Linux community helps all Linux communities), and all of this value has come at absolutely no cost. If I wanted to reap the value of Microsoft’s latest OS I would have had to purchase all new licenses.
Sorry if I come off sounding snarky, but I have spent the last 5 years of my life putting my money where my mouth is, so I feel more than a little bit obligated to chime in when people say that real business challenges are “bullshit”.
-Jason
No, I believe licensing costs are a legitimate issue for businesses, and that’s not what I meant in my comment.
I was addressing commentor vic and others who claimed imaginary licensing costs for the Microsoft products that we are talking about, and this is bullshit given that .NET, SQL Server Express, and even the Visual Studio development tools are all free.
There are costs for upgrades (as one reader pointed out in the comments) and for the OS itself, which ships standard with the web server already configured.
My point was that a lot of readers, like vic cite imaginary costs for .NET applications. Having designed and implemented large-scale systems myself I’ve saved clients I’ve worked for thousands of dollars by using the express editions of SQL Server on their WSE 2003 servers.
Your post however was very articulate and well thought out, and not in the same camp as those I was addressing. I think open-source and free technology is terrific, but the discussion here pertains to reasons why .NET isn’t publicly recognized more often, and when some readers site “IMMENSE LICENSING COSTS” for products that are free, that’s when I call bullshit.
Oh my bad then
And thank you for your honest response (you really seem to care enough about your blog to stay on top of comments that could quite easily get out of control, a hard task). I should admit to being quite impressed by .Net as a platform, I have just come on the other side of the argument (is there any?) in favor of what I feel if not just a capable and useful but also open platform. In my current company (not linked to my previous company) I am aware that at least one competitor is building their app on the .NET platform and leaning rather heavily on the cache that .net brings to their solution. I expect their offering (at least 8 months away from being publicly launched) to be formidable, but I think our offering will have them beat on scalability (assuming they are on equal footing in terms of functionality).
But I’ve been in this business long enough to remember what ASP and VB6 did to web app development, so it seems like I could be well on my way to barking at the young kids on my lawn for playing with the new fangled frameworks (wow, did I really butcher that joke). I am at least comforted by the fact while at least 3 generations of Microsoft development platforms have emerged Sun Java has kept pace with developers needs quite well. The way I see it (and yes that makes this just a personal opinion), as I have become a stronger Java programmer the Java language has evolved to give me more value, while my Visual C++ skills (I got my start developing COM/DCOM objects for IIS) and Visual Basic skills have become obsolete (and now my C# and VB.NET, are getting rusty).
It seems that Microsoft hasn’t yet shown the ability to introduce something with a long term vision. Their business model relies on locking someone in and getting them to repurchase and relearn in intervals. Granted they are quite successful in this, but open frameworks with open models have shown a tremendous ability to catch up and they aren’t subject to the same kind of fundamental weaknesses. When faced with thous considerations, a lot of hopeful developers will choose the platform that not only meets their immediate needs, but will grow with them.
Many of the technologies that we take for granted today were once proprietary, but over time the knowledge to create them became apparent and they transitioned into commodities, and from there they reached new heights because everyone was free to take what mattered to them and improve on it and thous improvements could be shared and grouped back into the main branch of code (or split off entirely to live their own life in their own community). I think what is happening now is that we are seeing the commoditization of the Operating System and the Platform. This process will always be detrimental to the company who’s value exists largely because the OS and the platform is proprietary, but the cat is out of the bag. Microsoft will try like hell to innovate in their core spaces, but I would guess that each round of upgrades will return smaller and smaller results.
I’m a bit behind on keeping up on my comments; I’ve had a large amount of exams this week and this article has produced a lot of comments both here and on DZone, so I’m a bit spread out trying to wrangle in the discussion.
I think you made an excellent point here:
“It seems that Microsoft hasn’t yet shown the ability to introduce something with a long term vision. Their business model relies on locking someone in and getting them to repurchase and relearn in intervals. Granted they are quite successful in this, but open frameworks with open models have shown a tremendous ability to catch up and they aren’t subject to the same kind of fundamental weaknesses. When faced with thous considerations, a lot of hopeful developers will choose the platform that not only meets their immediate needs, but will grow with them.”
That’s as good as reason as I’ve ever heard for not using .NET.
However, my response to that would be that given that Microsoft is trying to build their own operating systems on top of .NET (that was the original vision for Longhorn, which later became Vista), I’d speculate that there is a good probability that Microsoft plans on keeping .NET around for the long haul; the amount of development behind .NET is considerably larger than the amount behind ASP. .NET represents more than a development platform to Microsoft; it’s their vision for the future of software engineering – managed environments, common language runtime, and service-oriented architectures.
Personally I’m never going to work with C++ again; I worked on a research project where I was implementing a complicated network protocol using the ACE framework and managing the memory in my C++ implementation became a total nightmare. It was probably my lack of experience compared to people who have been doing network programming for longer, but the experience was enough to move me to stay either with JAVA or with .NET.
One thing we can agree on though is that a legitimate platform like J2EE or .NET is a step above simple scripting languages.
I am sorry I cannot not comment on some of the definitely wrongs given here in these blogs…
.Net is an OPEN platform…!!
Mono will at the pace their now keeping probably come out with C#3.0 BEFORE Microsoft will…
We have several paying customers running commercial apps on Linux and Mono *Gaia Ajax Widgets)
As a .NET addict coding in C# daily for a living and for fun after hours, I added you as a friend in digg
I’m already posting my articles to digg.com but I’ve noticed that .NET articles don’t seem to get many votes. My own article on string performance which is quite technical .NET content only got 5 diggs
Ah well, as long as I can enjoy my day to day job coding in my most favorite language, and manage to fill my evenings exploring all ideas I’m quite happy
These are the most naive comments I’ve seen in a while:
“Windows Server is cheap, chances are your start up is going to be on someone else’s VPS anyways until you start to get bandwidth issues.
A startup won’t need more than SQL Server Express’s capabilities, if your expecting to need more than 4 gb databases right away, then you probably have some venture funding, and can afford the license for the full version.”
Doesn’t take much to fill up 4 gigs buddy. Talk to a dba.
I don’t think any of these comments have been naive at all. Maybe I haven’t been reading them close enough. The comment you cite is actually right on though for two reasons:
1. If you’re boot-strapping a business with your own cash, running your start-up as a side project, like how many start-ups begin, then you’re not going to run out and buy a dedicated server, the kind where you have to pay for licenses, to begin with if your business is capable of being boot-strapped.
Why? Because unless you have some marketing channel that can direct a high enough volume of customers to merit having a dedicated server right out of the gate, it makes no sense to invest a huge amount of your own cash into dedicated servers. If you have no customers, then why pay for so much extra capability in advance if you have no way of guaranteeing that your business will grow rapidly, if at all?
You wouldn’t unless you had enough economic capital to render the cost difference between using a shared host versus a dedicated host irrelevant or a method of rapid user acquisition, like spinning off a start-up from an existing, successful operation.
The point of all this: worrying about licensing costs is pointless if you’re not buying a dedicated server because shared hosts already factor those costs into their service fees. As was already mentioned, the cost of developing in .NET is free thanks to express editions. So really, if you’re boot-strapping a start-up and you don’t have sufficient cause to anticipate rapid growth right out of the gate, what’s the point of buying a dedicated server in the first place?
2. If you’re running a funded start-up as a full time job, then it absolutely makes sense to plan ahead for growth and scalability by investing in dedicated servers, given that you have the capital and economic reasoning to justify the purchase.
Then the whole notion of licensing costs really comes down to whether or not the intangible benefits of the .NET framework, that is those that cannot be represented in dollars, outweigh the dollar cost of the licensing fees?
That question is really what’s at the heart of the manner. Simply citing the fact that LINUX/APACHE/PHP = $0 and .NET > $0 as a reason not to use .NET is irrational in that it doesn’t take the full costs into account.
This post has inspired me to write a new article sometime next week, in which I will get some quotes from IT professionals about the costs of .NET-based equipment for start-ups of various shapes and sizes, some thoughts on the intangible benefits of .NET, and most importantly, actual costs/benefits analysis of .NET against those of other systems.
It’s my pleasure. If you have any cool tricks that you’d like to see appear on a future list, please send me an email at jiive[dot]aaron[at]gmail[dot]com
I’ve been wondering the same thing as well. I love .NET but I admit I have not worked with any of the newer languages/platforms like ruby. If I remember correctly, every other post was about Ruby last year on Digg (not really but you get the point). I agree with some of the comments that said anything Microsoft is just not “cool” these days. I think that plays a big part and also perhaps many .NET developers are corporate types and don’t really get involved on the net and open source as much.
“The Firefox extension article was a back-burner article I had saved for a rainy day and it took me all of 15 minutes to write.”
Isn’t that funny! I haven’t had quite the same experience, but I have had a few really amazing Stumble-induced traffic waves. I was to the point of feeling guilty that the posts that generated any sort of waves for me were the ones that took the least effort on my part. I’m past feeling guilty about it now though. Obviously, people are enjoying those posts or see them as valuable, so I just try to write several of them at a time and save them up to post in between what I think of as my “good” posts
I was already a very active Java developer for a few years when i heard of all the hype of C# and .NET but what I keep asking my friends who brought me the hype was, “Just tell me one thing I can do with .NET that cant be done in Java”. and for God sake dont start with all those CLR this and that techie stuffs, clients dont care about those. IMO, Pushing VB away so fast I think was a big mistake in some ways. Take a look at my post on this
@dabar
Several years ago (during the .Net 1.0/1.1 period) that was probably true, .Net was just “another Java” with fever libraries and no portability. Today however that is not true, look at this e.g.;
.Net and especially C# is already a way more syntactic nice and rich language than Java (don’t start a religious debate now please ,) it’s a FACT)
In addition with the new stuff coming out in C#3.0 like anonymous types, LINQ, type deference, etc I think C# especially will definitely leap forward several generations beyond Java and thereby making the code way easier to maintain in the “long run”.
In addition with the Mono project basically going at the speed of light these days .Net is probably more portable (BINARY portable) than Java is for most platforms…
We’re building our Linux/Mono distro in Visual Studio in fact for our library (Gaia Ajax Widgets, follow my signature)
.Net truly rules and especially if you’re using the C# parts…
{But STAY AWAY from VB.NET!! }
Also with all the “n” projects; nHibernate, nUnit, nCover, nAnt etc .Net are almost having the same amount of library support these days as Java have so I think the only remaining reason to not switch is almost at the level of; “I know Java from before…”
hey Ur Blog Content is really very good. The stats are the best indicator of the quality of articles u publish.
I am looking forward to read as much as i can before i go to sleep.
Keep up ur gud work.
I am subscribing to ur feed
I think people who say that MS costs too much for a start up aren’t really in tune with what is actually out there.
I think the hosted benefits and inexpensive costs of .net were well covered above.
I have a website one step above that on a dedicated server….
I launched an online website 2 years ago (it was technically a relaunch of an existing website) using MS products after 3-4 years of SAP programming (ugh!!!!) It was my first exposure to asp.net however i was well versed in html and classic asp from the olden days.
Total money given to microsoft to launch my business and run it for two years (so far…)
1) Windows Server web edition (on dedicated dell hardware) $399
2) wait…. there is no number two….
I run sql server express and will never reach the 4 gig limit even with very active message boards because I don’t store any binary type stuff inside it.
So long story short, my site is very successful in my niche market and gets tons of pageviews (for my niche anyway around 800k a month) I have made a lot of money selling ads the past two years and quite frankly I spend more on my cell phone bills selling ads than I have given microsoft.
Fast forward I am involved in a new startup company where I am employed full time with private investment money. We are building an app that a niche market will run their entire shops off of our web site. We have a solid model and we have taken great pains to spend money on infrastructure so that we can minimize downtime.
We ended up with two server stacks that are identical, one for the production app and the other for a DR / failover / UAT situation. Again this is a fairly well funded start up but here is what went to microsoft:
2 msdn licenses (support instances, visual studio pro etc for our two developers) ~1600
4 Windows server licenses ~2800
2 SQL server licenses (couldn’t use express because of our failover situation) ~10,000
So microsoft has about $15k of our startup capital. Dell has a heck of a lot more than that just in hardware!!!
For the scale application that we are doing, if you can spend 15k and never have to build a kernal, never have to worry about things breaking etc its wonderful. Windows server / SQL is simply solid as a rock, it never breaks. If we do use our support instances it will be with ms themselves finding out what stupid code we wrote ourselves
Even if you only get a shelf life of 3 years on the OS (and I expect it to be more like 5) then you are talking a 5k per year investment that is already included on the 3 year dell lease anyway. Its not like we had to come up with the cash up front in that situation. So back to the point if we are able to build an app that can support a full team of sales people, developers, and helpdesk 15k over 3 years is nothing.
Supposing (I pray!) the company does well and I need to add more servers / db boxes. Great problem to have!!! The amount of money going to microsoft is a pittance compared to the money you are making at that point.
I am located in florida and from the view on the ground here I see more companies like Fidelity etc moving off of J2EE and going with .net. Ruby etc aren’t even on their radar. Actually most of the larger companies don’t use PHP for their web presence either.
I know the question of the article wasn’t about fortune 500 type companies but social media. I just wanted to follow in the M$ costs vien of the thread. I am more interested in being able to get a job in the city I live in and feed my family than debating which non-microsoft programming language is the most elite.
Java, Python, Ruby, etc embraces Open Source. Microsoft and therefore .Net does not. Open Source encourages participation and communities. Developers using Microsoft technologies are used to being spoon fed frameworks and tools from Microsoft – IDE, web framework, database, the whole shebang. I guess that it’s hard to foster a community around products that you have no say in, no ownership of. Microsoft could have embraced Nant, Nunit, NDoc, etc but have chosen not to do so. Is it really surprising that .Net gets it’s ass kicked in social media?
I develop in Java and C# for a living but I’d much rather code in Python, Groovy, Ruby, etc as they’re fun and I don’t need a huge frickin Wrox book to get started. There are a couple of disparaging comments about scripting languages, noobs, etc. First of all only noobs say “noobs”. Secondly, many scripting langauges support OOP just fine. In fact, I’d go as far to say that many are a lot more expressive and elegant.
Thanks for the article, didn’t even know about some of those other social sites, will check them out next week.
I’ve stopped going to a lot of those sites for the fact that most of them are filled with whiny ass people who have no maturity level. Try reading a thread on slashdot nowadays… worthless.
I’m a big user/promoter of SubSonic. If more projects like it crop up, .NET will get bigger.
DNK is also another awesome site, that’s how I found this blog.
Keep up the good work, we’re out here, we just don’t talk as much as some whiny Linux/Slashdot peeps.
whom you are fighting for?
you sound like you are crying for a battle
i’m a .net developer and i use php sometimes
yes, i can debate for hours about the advantages and disadvantages of .net and php and java
but i’m profissional enough to not consider programming laguages as a relegtion
No one is crying for a battle; I was asking why .NET doesn’t get represented more often in social media, and then I subsequently urged more .NET developers to publish their works/blogs on the subject.
“.Net and especially C# is already a way more syntactic nice and rich language than Java (don’t start a religious debate now please ,) it’s a FACT)”
I see, we cannot debate it, just take your opinion as fact? Tell me exactly how many key strokes do I save for the sake of clarity? If your code sample is meant to illustrate the richness of c#, then I think it fails terribly since it only demonstrates how so called features can really screw up clarity. Which do you think are the two biggest complaints about written code? Lack of richness in the language used, or a lack of clarity in the code that is written?
Regardless, it appears you are getting a list of customers and removing or keeping them if the name starts with Thomas? What’s wrong with a simple loop iterating through the customers? It’s about the same amount of code, and is far easier to read what’s going on. As for nAnt, nHibernate etc…yes, you are starting to get beta and first versions of java projects that have launched, become successful, and have now faded and be improved upon. hibernate-> hibernate 3.0 with JPA, ant -> maven etc.
We considered .net, but one consideration was that we would need 3 or 4 server licenses for our dev, test and production environments, and possibly one for training. There’s over a $1,200 there without getting into dev tool costs. As for Visual Studio being free, there is a reason for that, namely because it lacks capabilities provided in the professional versions. You may get by with it, but most pro developers won’t use a crippled dev tool as a basis for a new project.
There’s also a reason Microsoft is giving this stuff away, because once you are hooked, and have bought into their framework, you have no choice but to keep paying them for it, especially with SQL server where you are more likely to need a non-free version of SQL before anything else. The whole notion of ‘Hey if I have enough customers to need to pay for upgrades, then I won’t mind paying Microsoft’ is ridiculous. Why pay anyone when you don’t need to, and if you must pay someone, take a look at Red Hat who offers the same kind of subscription and services and if you fall on hard times, you can use the same software for free.
At the end of the day, you are like a kid choosing between two sweet shops. In one, 95% of everything is free and in the other 25% is completely free, 25% is purely commercial, and you can sample the rest for free, but you have to pay for them to use them. However, both sweet shops offer the same sweets.
Also, talking about hardware costs and OS costs, when you buy your hardware, 2 days later, you still have an asset that you can sell for…what 90% of the cost you bought it for? With Windows, I don’t think you can re-sell it, so the comparison is kind of apples and oranges.
The one are .net does excel in is the kind of hosting you can buy. You can buy budget asp.net hosting for $50 for a year. Java hosting has not caught up with that yet.
So if mono is beating Microsoft to a .net 3.0 implementation, can I assume that every .net app will run on mono then, or is it just the fact that mono can run hello world in .net 3.0 before Microsoft can? Bit of a red herring there. Regardless, there is still the patent time bomb, and Microsoft has no intention of allowing a more capable .net platform than windows.
Still, enough for me is that I don’t base my development tools around Microsoft’s OS sales schedule.
@Delphi’s Ghost
I actually pitty you so much I decided upon not to answer your comment since it’s obviously stuffed with religious quasi opinions, bit there is one mis-fact I cannot let go through here;
“So if mono is beating Microsoft to a .net 3.0 implementation, can I assume that every .net app will run on mono then, or is it just the fact that mono can run hello world in .net 3.0 before Microsoft can? Bit of a red herring there. Regardless, there is still the patent time bomb, and Microsoft has no intention of allowing a more capable .net platform than windows.”
We have several paying customers that uses Mono together with Gaia and MySQL. These are fully fledged applications which could be if you’re a little bit sober when implementing them be moved back and forth between Windows and Linux without thinking about it. Mono is 100% binary compatible with ASP.NET 2.0.
Also regarding the “patent bomb”;
This is FUD from MSFT just like the “patent bomb” about Linux and OpenOffice a couple of months ago. Should you stop running J2EE on Linux because MSFT says they have 230 patents broken in Linux and Open Office without mentioning which patents they are? The situation ios the same for Mono. MSFT has not shown which patents and they don’t want to show either, they just want to make FUD around a potential very threatening FOSS piece…
But I see you are an “angry man” with an unhealthy devotion for your favorite tools and that it’s probably impossible to argue against you. But please go back to your fan club, we were having a healthy discussion here about something you’re obviously not able to contribute to…
Wow, awesome post Aaron! This is something I think everyone should read and prepare for…and by everyone, I mostly mean the people that see an article like this and say ah, that’s never going to happen to me. Because as you mentioned, you never know what or when the magical traffic fairy is going to decide to tap your blog…whether it be through a direct link, stumbles, diggs, sphinns, etc. I’ve had some great Stumble Tropical Depressions and a few Tropical Storms or minor Hurricanes…still waiting for a tsunami…But my point being, it’s inevitably the posts that you aren’t expecting to be huge…so being aware and always being prepared is key.
Except in our cases, I would recommend stocking up on coffee, donuts and No-Doz instead of batteries, fresh water and canned goods
Ummm, I post something that seems reasoned and debateable, and am called angry, religious and fanatical in a post which is itself angry, religious and fanatical, and then goes on to re-iterate my own points as a rebuttle to…my own points. Twilight Zone-ish.
The patents are FUD from MSFT? But that would suggest that while everyone is trying to sell the idea of a cross platform .net, MSFT is busy trying to scuttle the very project that gives it the status of being cross platform….which would invalidate the idea of a cross platform .net given that it’s main benefactor is opposed to the idea on the basis that they want to run it solely on their own OS.
Yes, I know .net is binary compatible, that was my point. While Hello World might run on both .net and mono, it’s a bit of a mis-fact to suggest that .net is finally cross platform since binary compatible does not mean all the libraries are compatible. What about all those third party GUI components that rely on windows messages to function properly? I realize that it takes some foresight to create a truly cross compatible app, but then we are back to the old days of C++ cross compatible code where you had to write certain sections ‘per platform’. Not so with Java. (I know the java cross compatibility is not perfect but it is not non-existent).
Microsoft has given every appearance that it intends .net to be cross platform, from paying Corel to implement linux.net to having their skunkworks .net implementation project ( I forget the name) which gave the hint that it *could* be ported over. They dressed up C# / .net as a ’standard’ with the implication that there will be more than one implementation. They have given this whiff of cross platform-ness because they know java has it, they know users want it. Users know they want it, and Microsoft knows they cannot deliver it since it is at odds with generating revenues from OS sales.
I’ve seen .net advocates lament over the issue of cross platform compatibility, and lambast Msft for its singular platform stance. I’d love for .net to be absolutely cross platform compatible, heck, lets build OS’s built on top of it, and really have one true cross compatible framework, where apps will run on multiple OS’s without recompilation. Do you think Microsoft will support that idea?
I don’t think people get religious about .net for a number of reasons :
1) It’s Microsofts tool to sell OS upgrades
2) A portion of .net developers are forced to use it on the basis that it is the current Microsoft technology (nobody ever got fired for buying IBM syndrome)
3) It is far less open, open technology attracts the same kind of people that create communities and are more likely to get religious.
4) Microsoft is a lot less relevant that it used to be.
As for my preferences, I have none, except that I have been using Delphi for nearly 15 years, and as we are moving on, we considered .net and Java as options, and given Microsofts history, and the open-ness of Java, we opted for Java. This was in the last 6 months, so it’s not exactly like I have spent years getting attached to my new development tools.
Incidentally, I just noted that our host has a link to an article on “Designing a Great Data Layer in .net”. I’m certainly not disparaging our host, and I applaud the post, but this kind of layered design has been the foundation for Java application development for years.
Good OO design is the other reason I chose Java since it is ingrained from the API level up through 3rd party open source frameworks (unlike Delphi!). A lot of this stuff is absolutely beautiful from an OO perspective while .net is still forcing the same old Delphi strategy of quasi-OO with zero code re-use and simply thrusting the code wherever it is executed (Linq is another example of an achievement’ that makes it easier to do things badly).
My prediction is that in 5 years MSFT will have moved on to the next thing, and the .net jobs will be maintaining the spaghetti code created through visual studio promoting bad design.
I’m more than happy to trash linux (still not ready for the desktop despite claiming they are for the last 10 years), open source (how many notepad clones do you need) and java (memory hog) as I see fit. They are all ripe for criticism. However, the topic was about .net not having as much social media exposure, and my posts were based on that. .net doesn’t attract the kind of people that give social media exposure.
@Thomas
Still you havent answered my questions, what do clients care.
2. Some clients who bet thier business on VB series have liquidated. PHP will never die cuz its open active community, Java will not die cuz its now open source and it has a huge community, Phython Ruby etc because its built on a community free to express themselves and this people contribute fixes everyday. If M$ wants C# to kick ass, let them give it out to the community, then i can bet my future on it.
3. Come to think of it? Can your product become a future threat to another M$ product building on thier technology? What if Google was entirely running on C#? If Mono will promote applications on Linux increasing the adoption of Linux, Will M$ smile and be happy? Dont sell your future for some code sugar
@dabar
I don’t really know how to answer your question when you obviously don’t want to listen to my answer… http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mono+C%23&btnG=Google+Search
Mono is an OPEN SOURCE project, it’s got hundreds of thousands of users and it increases like a rocket in it’s userbase every day…
It’s maintained by one of the largest SW companies in the world with more than 25 years of history (Novell which also owns the SUSE and have a long term commitment towards Open Source) and there are lots of people working on the project and many of them even have it as a full job…
And Mono is built on a 100% standardized language and platform, to say that this is “MSFT’s property” is just like saying that the x86 architecture is “IBM’s property”…!
Regarding Google and .Net, Writely is written entirely in .Net (don’t know if it’s Mono or Microsoft.NET though)
And also I am not saying that “Java will die”, the only reference towards Java I’ve ever had (in this blog) is that C# is a more expressive language with features that Java does not have…
If you’re going to argue then first get the facts dabar…
Hi, well i would add to this other topics which are if u ask me, much more important.
First and most important – by my experience is customer support – not simple one – simple answers u can find over FAQ db, advanced one.
Second is medium trust. Much of existing free components and code doesn’t work under medium trust, so best is correctly modified full trust mode – u will make your code far more quickly – that cost much more money then any hosting.
Third is direct SQL manager access – that is almost must have – and many hosting providers support it.
Fourth is good control panel – i love plesk which i believe is the best choice. It also supports – above all things like subdomains and folder permissions (must have), scheduled tasks – which will help u, a lot, for batch jobs.
Fifth are separate application pools – some hosting use one app pool for all accounts.
To add to your point #3, watch out for hosts who register themselves as the owner of your domain name rather than registering you as the owner. This is used by some bad hosting companies to lock you into their service or to make you pay through the nose to switch. I’ve seen this done most often in hosts who provide services to a specific industry, for example, real estate.
Great checklist, Aaron. Recently I had been looking for a new ASP.NET host and DiscountASP.NET was my top candidate as well. I am not going with a host who offers “unlimited transfers” again . Chinh
Those features are absolutely important, but I produced this list more or less with the intention of educating beginners on what criteria they should use to evaluate hosts. App pools and trust levels are more advanced areas. I will be writing a post covering ASP.NET-specific features and perhaps PHP-specific features.
@Frank C (of VBNotebook fame),
Thanks for stopping by! And yes your point is a good one; for that reason alone I never register my domain names through my host, simply because I don’t want any company to be able to claim ownership over my intellectual property. While most hosts do not register themselves as the owner, some shady ones do, but I usually buy my domain name before I buy a hosting package (the domain name usually identifies the intellectual domain of my site) anyways. Great point none the less.
@Chinh,
Thanks! DiscountASP.NET is fantastic. The only part of my list that they violate is that they charge additional fees for setting up databases, meaning that databases are not included in the base rate. Still, their support and the quality of service is outstanding; well worth the additional dollars if you ask me.
The comments are getting a bit inflammatory; while I still consider the level of discussion healthy and productive, I would like to ask that we do not allow this argument to explode into a flame war.
In addition, the Akismet spam filter has been picking up false positives like crazy lately; I’ve had to painstakingly sort through mountains of spam to retrieve legitimate comments left by readers such as Delphi’s Ghost, so if any of you are concerned that I am deleting your comments, please do not be. It’s simply that some comments are being scooped up by the Akisment spam filter for reasons that are unknown and I have to check every day or so to release the false positives.
Honestly, and I don’t mean undue offense to anyone, I think it’s because more ASP.NET centric developers have real jobs. Working 40, 50, or 60+ hours a week on a corporate development effort (where .NET is very much more strongly represented) just about completely precludes any significant time spent on social media sites or developing side-projects.
At least, that’s my excuse. I barely have time to write a blog post every few weeks.
I’m with godaddy, and was disappointed to find out that they don’t offer multiple logins to databases – this makes it more difficult to secure the database properly.
I would love to see this advanced topics – i had so much troubles with some hosting providers – that i lost weeks on them. If u have ever been working with godaddy u will know what do i mean.
I think one of the most underrated metrics is the number of sites on a single box. You will find a ton of hosts who oversubscribe their servers, which eventually results in performance issues on your site.
@Dave
i’ve the same problem too
i’m starting to think that most open source developers are amature programmers whom have really “big” extra time between there hands to spend on developing software for free
@Fady
It’s very dangerous to generalize!
You’re certainly to some extend correct but look at e.g. RedHat, Trolltech, MySQL, eZ Systems and us…! (Frost Innovation – Gaia Ajax Widgets)
We’ve got a complete full development department of full time (good payed) and very skilled developers working on products all day long…
Though I may agree on that full time jobs might be some of the reasons to why .Net is less presented on SMO, in fact the only reason I participate at ALL is to be able to spread the news about our product (in addition to 10% reasons is to “keep up” with what’s moving out there…
But to say most FOSS developers are “script kiddies” with too much spare time is an exaggeration of magnitudes…!
In fact the FOSS economy is increasing at _four times_ the speed of the closed source economy…!
Though we’re .Net AND Open Source, so there definitely exist FOSS projects of importance in the .Net (and Mono) world too…
execuse me, but i’ve never seen enterprise projects depending on FOSS
most of FOSS have usability and design problems, making FOSS hard to integrate with any other system
for example i’ve never seen a FOSS using SOA
i’ve never seen anyone using Mono for real in an even small project
thats why i’m saying most of FOSS developer are amatures whom don’t know the most basic concepts of design
@Fady Anwar
I have a couple;
* Window 95
* Windows 98
* Windows Millenium
* Windows NT, 2000, XP
In fact the ONLY Windows OS that does not entirely build it’s sockets on BSD Sockets are Server 2003 and Vista…
I think in fact most of the REALLY large Enterprise Systems are built on FOSS including Google as Aarontheweb says…
Others are YouTube.com, Digg.com, Slashdot.org etc…
In fact about 90% of the really large Social Websites today are built on some sort of FOSS Framework/Platform…
Linux has about 55% of ALL servers in the WORLD today and MS has about 35% I think that about nails the last piece into the coffin…
do you have any proof that support your claims? or these are just your mere opinion?
btw
Linux is spread on servers because it’s “FREE” and convenient for “small” projects
i’m talking about the “enterprise” projects
youtube, digg, slashdot doen’t fit the enterprise category
if you are so good at mentioning FOSS coffin nails
please mention for me a single FOSS application that uses SOA, if you understand what is SOA
First of all SOA is a hype word invented my MSFT to sell BizTalk and get folks to use WSE to lock them into MSFT products with stuff like AD and whatever idiotic crap people are using these days instead of the open protocol of SSL and TLS…
Second, Google Apps then, is that “enterprise enough” for you?
Or does the code have to crappy too…?
Third; *plonk* !!
@Thomas Hansen
First SOA is not a hype it’s a design pattern standard
and unlike you here is my refrences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture
Second
you didn’t come up with any refrences to back up what you are saying
Third
your way of descussion irritates me, and i can’t afford time to continue such debate with somebody like you (whom use his openion as his only refrence)
seems like have extra time between your hands, so i advice you to read about SOA to know it’s not a hype and it’s the future
It’s a mistake to compare enterprise software with high traffic sites. Those are completely different animals. Regardless of development platform, a good enterprise development crew could churn out a Digg clone in days. The software behind most popular sites is no feat of engineering.
Also, where in the world did you get the idea that SOA was Microsoft centric?
@Dave
True, I still mentioned Google Apps, now if the stuff they’re doing with GMail, GCal, Writely etc is a “weekends job” for an Enterprise Development crew I’d very much like you to show me that crew…!
I’ll pay them ANY price to get them in my staff…!
Regarding SOA and MSFT I overdid it a little bit, partially unintentionally. But the basic fact is that MSFT sells SOA as if it was better than sliced bread and almost _none_ of the guys telling you that they actually DO SOA even KNOWS what SOA IS, they just do it because MSFT talks about the Railroad industry telling people about the importance of standardizing the message exchange format and have support for long transactions (which also none of the guys telling you they “do” SOA knows what is)
Most developers I’ve spoken to tells me either that SOA is WSE, some tells me it’s BizTalk and some even claims that it’s CAB (Composite Application Blocks) due to the fact that it have plugin nature…!! :S
Then when people starts to struggle MSFT first sells you BizTalk to “integrate” your different systems together and when they’ve sold you BizTalk and you’ve spent a year trying to figure out how to make that dog bark you’ll end up paying for SharePoint and throwing “SOA” and “BizTalk” out the door. It will be interesting to see what will cure people’s SharePoints problems…
I’ve even seminars that had “Configuration as the alternative to Programming in a SOA Environment” as the header for a SharePoint SysAdmin talk…!!
So I am sorry for getting a little bit of confused here…
I mean a system that require Server 2003 and AD just to hit F5 in your debugging environment…
@Fady – FOSS _does_ get used within the enterprise however very rarely in .Net based solutions.
I totally agree that many FOSS products are of poor quality, poor documentation and poor support. You could say the same for many closed source products.
What you forget is (or probably don’t realise is) that there are some extremely well run FOSS projects that turn out top notch software such as the Apache Foundation (HTTPD, Tomcat, Ant, Struts, Axis, log4j, etc), OpenSymphony (Quartz, SiteMesh, OSCache, etc), Eclipse Foundation (Eclipse), etc. Many of these projects are supported by software vendors such as IBM, Sun, Oracle, etc. These products are often based on J2EE. If you’re .Net only then there’s a chance that you’re not aware that Open Source pervades J2EE.
And then there are the commercial Open Source offerings, many with VC backing. Here are some examples:
RedHat – Linux is most definitely Enterprise grade. Many large corporation run mission critical applications on Linux in preference to or beside Windows.
Alfresco – probably the best example of an ECM that is built on FOSS projects such as Spring, Hibernate, MyFaces, Lucene, etc. It’s comparable to Documentum and MS SharePoint. http://www.alfresco.com/customers/.
JBoss – An enterprise grade application server comparable to WebLogic, WebSphere, etc. JBoss also maintains the Hibernate and jBPM projects. http://www.jboss.com/customers/index.
There are loads more – SugarCRM, Liferay, MySQL, SocialText, Xen….
Then of course there are the commercial products that use FOSS software. Documentum, Oracle, WebMethods, etc.
And finally there are the languages – Perl, PHP, Python, etc. You’ll find scripts written in these languages acting as the glue for a wide variety of systems (NASA, Google, etc).
Commercial software isn’t necessarily better or worse than Open Source. Microsoft for example makes some of the best software out there – Office, .Net, etc but at the same time are unable to better existing Open Source efforts – e.g. NDoc, log4net, MBunit, Nant.
And while I’m at it – a word on SOA. Of course it’s hyped – just like CORBA and SOAP were. Now we get SOA, which is just an architectural style, not a design pattern like you stated. We’re still stuck with imperfect interop technologies but at least we’ve got a nice buzzword to sell services and software with. FOSS projects that cater for SOA include Axis, CXF, Fuse, Mule, ServiceMix.
I would be interested in seeing you install word press using phalanger. I’ve been meaning to do this myself, but would love a blog post on your experiences doing such!
I’m planning on launching a WordPress.NET package complete with a Windows Installer in the next week or so assuming that there isn’t a complete and total log jam trying to get the thing running.
I think FOSS is making some strides in .NET as well. I’m sure there are some enterprise level solution that utilize solid .NET FOSS projects like SubSonic or perhaps DotNetNuke. Those two stand out in my mind as the most prominent and excellent .NET FOSS projects.
It is great to see interviews like this and to see that .NET is employed in innovative web applications. Similar to Greg’s experience, we’ve found that using .NET and MS technologies has enabled us to focus more on the application rather than on all of the areas of expertise required for FOSS use.
It is great to see interview like this and wants more to come up, we are also developing a New .NET Startup (Growing up company) , but lack of knowledge on Servers and licensing issues makes us not comfortable but .NET Proves itself my first choice among all and i appreciate the initiative taken by Aaronontheweb . keep it up man … we are all with you …
ok guys, i confiss. i wasn’t really realistic about some stuff
but the question is why?
well, here comes the unexpected answer
i’ve been in the FOSS field for years before i start using .net
i used to develop in PHP under Linux and i’ve met every usual problem that you will meet when you start working with FOSS
when i switched to the .net world, things became deferent and specially when i started working with enterprise applications
most FOSS that i’ve used didn’t stand a chance when came to comparison with closed source producs
most of them lacked the most important thing, the ability to scale up
when you call red had enterprise that doesn’t mean it became enterprise
enterprise software is where the money is
yes i used to promote open source software and still, but open source software just doens’t solve every problem you meet in your career life
why?
because open source software mosly is developed without an integration design in mind
lets take for instace microsoft products
the office is integrated with the browser and the browser is integrated with the active directory authentication protocol which is supported by the iis
have you ever seen any product in the FOSS that looks like AD?
have you ever seen any product in the FOSS like the biztalk? or office? or MOSS?
lets face
open office sux and is too slow
apache doesn’t stand a chance when compared to iis, have you ever though about clustering or load balancing using apache?
have you ever tried to configure a sing web site on apache using it’s httpd.conf? how much time did it took you?
mysql? i would use a flat database and still come with the same results
have you ever tried to use constrains or relations in mysql?
and yes, PHP, a coctail with various functions with no namespacing that make a functiionality like intellisense in visual studio is an impossible to do
no decent IDE to php till now
and oh yea, the php spaghiti code, html within code
and what about security? have you ever heard about remote inclusion? it only exists in php
have you ever tried to read a big file using php? try this and see what happens
open source software is not bad, it’s good because it’s free, but FOSS won’t solve your every day problems for free
Ok I stayed out of this debate for a while (largely because I was busy working on what people have insisted here must be a fictitious enterprise app that is written in Java, on Linux and Apache with MySQL) but Fady I have to address some points you made.
First, what part of Active Directory are you so enamored with? Because Samba is a Free/Open Source application that can actually act as a co PDC or Backup DC directly alongside a Windows domain controller. That would seem like a reasonable measure of code maturity and enterprise reliability. But I admit to not being that much of a Windows networking guru.
Open Office is slow, but it has become a lot faster (fans of the application recall using it back when it was called Star Office), and it is trying to accomplish a much different goal (run on Windows, Mac and Linux) so they have to make different design choices. Some of these might come at the cost of deep system integration, but that line is moving closer and closer to Microsoft levels, and being free and open source anyone who is inclined can (and has) contribute changes that make it do more of what users want. Open Office is much more interested in being an office productivity platform that others build applications on top of than a productivity app. This is the same goal Microsoft has but they want to be the ones profiting form that platform. How successful would the web have been if Tim Berners-Lee was the only guy licensed to build web pages and everyone else had to pay a royalty? This is a BIG project with lofty goals, but if the Open Office Community team succeeds it could create a platform many times more powerful than anything a closed source team could produce.
The last time I checked my linux distribution came preloaded with Apache, and loading PHP support was as easy as checking a box in my package manager (or running ‘apt-get install php’ if I wanted to install from a command prompt). And yes I have considered load balancing, I setup a load balancing proxy that simply asked for the IP addresses of the boxes that were a part of my “farm”. One paragraph of documentation later I was up and running. If I wanted to get more complicated that that I could have used Linux Virtual Server and set up watchdog timers and heart beat monitors. All of this was controllable remotely from SSH, and worked with out issue (or reboot) for 100+ day uptimes (occasionally I would run ‘apt-get upgrade’ and all of my installed packages would get upgraded to the newest stable versions automatically, and I would reboot, though most of the time the reboot as totally unnecessary because Linux can distinguish between a user process and a system process, and there for rarely requires rebooting to replace versions of software.
As for MySQL. I don’t think you understand what MySQL is. MySQL is more like the AVI file format. It is a container for other storage engines that handles common subsystems like authentication (which is also pluggable). Underneath MySQL is MyIASM, MEMORY, InnoDB, BerkeleyDB, CSV, ndbcluster and IASM, and once MaxDB though SAP bought that, so its not part of the Free version. Each have different strengths and weaknesses. And in a single Database you can decide which table engine fits your needs on a table by table basis. 99% of the time a website just needs InnoDB (this is why Oracle bought the team that created that engine, though because it’s Open Source that means the engine is free to be maintained by other talented developers). But a database administrator is free to migrate their data as needed. The point is MySQL is a powerful platform that is capable of many things, this helps explain why they made over $40 Million in 2005 (http://www.news.com/MySQL-fills-Oracle-consumed-hole-in-database—page-2/2100-1012_3-6058930-2.html)
As for PHP intellisense, it has been a part of Zend Studio (The company that created PHP) for quite some time (and that program is written in Java), and works great. Now it’s a part of Eclipse and NetBeans, so it sounds like the community has responded to that need. As for code style. I completely agree that inline logic with HTML is messy, but you know that you don’t have to code that way (and ASP developers are often quite guilty of the same thing). There are template engines and even PHP compilers that helps you separate your code into clean display and business logic layers. If you code better applications you tend to see issues like large file handling get addressed.
I personally have found Open Source technologies very integratable. And while it might require more work initially (though in most cases I haven’t found that to be true), the reward has time and time again proven to be greater. Microsoft technologies haven’t always had a stellar record integrating with each other, but they have gotten better. However in the same time the Open Source community has been hard at work solving real business challenges and addressing needs like scale and security. The Open Source model means companies like IBM who get real benefits out of a stronger Linux OS (they make their money consulting and selling hardware) can devote serious money and developer time, and everyone else in the community can benefit. It also means people like myself who utilize Open Source software to build my business can make the kind of changes that meet my business needs without waiting for a larger company to address them and ask me to pay them for the upgrade.
And thats all I have to say, I really need to get back to my work.
No I guess not. Not sure what the problem is with the comments. I haven’t made any modifications to Wordpress’ comments engine. Can you shoot me an email if an error message is getting thrown?
The problem I have here is that there are a lot of questions unanswered by the person who sent you the e-mail as far as what resources he has available to him and what his actual plan is.
It seems like the person is looking for only one person who will fill every technical role of the new startup and that is a pretty tall order, particularly if the position isnt full time. The reality is, most technical people who have interactions with people who arent technical get ideas thrown at them pretty regularly.
Im an IT director who works in a field full of people who arent that technical and I have to tell you I get, on average, about a pitch a week from someone who has no programming skills but who thinks theyve discovered the next big thing. So unless you have a significant amount of money to start its going to be an up hill battle.
By “significant amount” I mean enough money to pay yourself and the technical person (full time) for the first few months bare minimum.
If you dont have that all I can suggest is that you put yourself out there and hope for the best. If you really do have a great idea you might be able to get someone to sign on in their spare time and help you out. Though even that is tricky because you dont want to share your idea too liberally for fear that someone you interview might decide to take it for their own.
Either way, if you do find yourself in a place where you have candidates to choose from here are my suggestions as far as criteria is concerned…
Look for experience: I have to say that Ive honestly stopped looking at degree information at this point. Dont get me wrong, as a programmer you can learn a lot from a University program but it certainly isnt guaranteed. Ive literally interviewed people who had a B.S. in Computer Science and yet had never worked on an actual usable program before. Bottom line is that a person who has worked on an actual production system of some kind is worth 5 guys who just have their degree.
Meet with the candidates personally: Ive known several people in my life that could code in ways that made my jaw drop but who couldnt articulate an idea to another person if their live depended on it. If you are looking to get some kind of funding you are going to have to present both a business and a technical assessment which means the person you choose is going to be as visible as you are in the funding process. So though some people might be able to write great code they may not be what you are looking for.
Look for people who code in their spare time: If the person you are looking at has worked on something in their spare time such as an open source project or even a technical blog that reflects well on their commitment and their ability to get the job done. Open source projects are the best in that someone who doesnt know what they are doing wont last long in a group open source project which makes it a great way to vet candidates.
Wow, this turned out to be a long one. Hope it helps!
One additional comment from me on PHP intellisense. On my Phalanger article a reader pointed out an intellisense plug-in for Visual Studio which I have since installed onto my development workstation. I haven’t had a chance to play around with it thoroughly but it looks promising for VS 2005:
It might work with the free express editions of Visual Studio but I am not sure; I have the academic editions of VS 2005 so my experience has been based on that.
@Jason Sperske
you can’t compare Samba to AD
i’ve used Samba and in my job i perform several network administration tasks that i’m sure that Samba can’t do
Samba is all about file sharing
@Jason Sperske
yes in open source projects like Open Office it’s possible it would have lots of features in the futures, but guess that? because of the FOSS non centric development there will be no integration within these features and within any other FOSS products
for example you want be able to use open office within firefox like we can now use microsoft office within IE
you can’t use RMS in open office because simply it can’t be integrated with any other service like AD
you can’t have CMS document libraries like the one in MOSS that use open office to edit there documents
what really lacks FOSS is “integration”
for gods sakes i’ve not seen till now any decent installer rather than RPM packages
@Aaronontheweb
that wasn’t intellisense
that was debugging
btw that was VS 2005 which is a closed source application owned by microsoft, i’m sure you can notice that
Fady, If I had to choose I’d take propreitary software over open source 9 out of 10 times. The PHP intellisense/debugging suite that JCX produces is ALSO propreitary. I’ve spent a lot of energy making the case for proprietary software on my blog.
They mouse over variables in PHP and extricate current values during debug, just like how you can with a quick watch. Yes. But everywhere on JCX’s site they list numerous examples of their INTELLISENSE support, like on their blog
When I make my WordPress.NET port I’ll even include some of the intellisense screenshots from that. However, if this isn’t enough proof for you that JCX’s product does what it says it does, then I give up.
I don’t think open source is really the issue here, is it? I would strongly consider using something like SubSonic in a corporate app. I have no problem with solid open source projects. ASP.NET AJAX is open source, for that matter.
The major difference that I see when it comes to the topic of the post is a divergence in long term factors.
If you’re developing an application to be used in a medium or large business, you know from the start that it will have a large user base and must be maintainable for the long haul. With this in mind, you’ll almost certainly go for Java or .NET, probably depending more on the existing IT infrastructure than any difference between the platforms (as they are very comparable).
However if you’re developing a startup application, your user base could be anything from 5 users to 5 million users, depending on the mood of the Internet when you release. In that scenario, a looser, cheaper platform will always be more popular. Something like Cake or Rails becomes a nightmare to maintain and scale, but brings you to market much quicker, cheaper, and easier.
@Aaronontheweb
you brought me the wrong video, it’s not my fault it’s urs
and it seems you didn’t understood my comment about lack of namespacing in php
as ofcourse know in php there is no namespaces unlike any other OOP language like java or .net
so when ever you type the first charachters of your the function you are intending to use the IDE will show you “ALL” of the php know functions that begins with these charachters. so you will end up typing the whole name of the function you want to use specially in php lots of functions have the same prefix
@Dave
you are right
i’ve always said that php is good for small and agile fast paced projects
but when it comes to big enterprise integrated large scale applications, you to use the right tool and php is not an option
@Fady
It was perhaps foolish of me to attempt to address your points about Active Directory (as it is not a part of my job, or even within my range of computer interests). If anyone is keeping score, then point to you good sir.
Often times it isn’t fair to address multiple (and separate) points of contention in a blog post, as it makes it hard to hold the individual discussions that they require.
My point on system level integration is that the Unix model (everything is a file, originating from the command line) works better for the kinds of system administration I do. From my perspective, it really doesn’t matter how well Microsoft can connect multiple GUI apps, because the kinds of things I’m interested in doing are made much easier for me in Bash scripts. Now I know that .net exposes access to the MMC (is that what it is called?) and allows me in .net to script a lot of system functions, but in the time that I have been working with computers that is still a relatively recent development which only serves to bring Windows (and all of its related technologies) up to the level of quality that Linux has always been (for me, can’t stress enough that this is my personal opinion).
Other people will come from other backgrounds, and they will be interested in other things. Microsoft being better or worse than any one else isn’t really that important to me at any given moment. The fundamental argument is can Open trump Closed. You can replace each side with any company or community can get a different answer. Is MySQL better than Oracle? Or is Open Office better than Microsoft Office? These questions might lead a lot of rational people to say many different things. I don’t think it really matters because none of these products (or their teams) is ever done, and so any advance one has over the other is likely to change anyways. But a common trend among people who start successful businesses is their ability to adapt to challenges that they do not initially foresee. This causes them to consider the long term impacts of what languages they choose or how they choose to build their product(s).
So the choice is between an accessible but closed platform or a challenging but open platform. I say that Microsoft is only marginally more accessible, and much more closed, than the free Open Source applications that I rely on. But then thats just me (and a hack of a lot of other people). I’m not totally clear on why I’m still involved in this conversation as I accept that making anyone agree with me won’t make my life any easier and might even send good hard working people down the wrong track. I guess I just wanted to address why something that is as powerful as .NET can be considered “un cool” and why that might not ever change.
One thing seems clear at least, that Open Source projects and their contributers wont back down from this. Their efforts are enriching computer science, and allowing future generations to find new and original ideas and capitalize on them. Richard Stallman (a man who I have had the pleasure of meeting on more than one occasion) believes (and I agree) that ideas shouldn’t be proprietary. This is the heart behind GNU which forms the basis behind most of the Open Source movement. Closed platforms (even if they contain Open components), in my book, are relics of a past era where computers were a mystery to 99.999(and then some) of their users. Linux, GCC, Apache, even Wikipedia are great examples of the masses ability to self govern and collaborate. They are not perfect models, but they show tremendous promise, and have produced tremendous value.
Ok Thats enough grand standing, really I need to finish this Ajax component serialization function (Don’t worry Thomas, I’m not after your Gaia Widgets market, I still think your library is cool).
Sorry but I still find myself disagreeing with some of your comments.
>because open source software mosly is developed without an integration design in mind
lets take for instace microsoft products
the office is integrated with the browser and the browser is integrated with the active directory authentication protocol which is supported by the iis
have you ever seen any product in the FOSS that looks like AD?
have you ever seen any product in the FOSS like the biztalk? or office? or MOSS?
MS products tightly integrate with MS products mostly by using proprietary technology (i.e. not open standards). This is fine if you are a MS shop and don’t mind the vendor lock-in. Commercial competitors often use this approach as well. For an alternative to AD see Fedora Directory Server. For Biztalk, see Mule. For MOSS, see Alfresco. For Office, there’s nothing come to think of it there’s no commercial competitor either.. lol.
>lets face
open office sux and is too slow
apache doesn’t stand a chance when compared to iis, have you ever though about clustering or load balancing using apache?
I agree that Office > OOo but then OOo isn’t complete crap – it’s just not as good as Office in the same way as alternative commercial products. IIS isn’t the only app server that can load balance or cluster but I agree that IIS6 is pretty neat.
>and yes, PHP, a coctail with various functions with no namespacing that make a functiionality like intellisense in visual studio is an impossible to do
no decent IDE to php till now
and oh yea, the php spaghiti code, html within code
All fair comment until you realise that PHP was/is a hell of a lot better than ASP. Things have moved on, .Net/ASP.Net are now here but by the same token we also have J2EE, Ruby, etc. PHP has improved as well. It’s possible to write fairly nice PHP using one of the many frameworks that are out there now (CodeIgniter, Cake, Smarty, etc). It’s possible to mix logic with markup in ASP.Net so it’s possible to write spaghetti in ASP.Net.
VS.Net is pretty good but I still prefer using Eclipse and IDEA. VS.Net only becomes usable for me with add-on products like Resharper, TestDriven, etc.
>open source software is not bad, it’s good because it’s free, but FOSS won’t solve your every day problems for free
Free as is beer is definitely appealing but I love the fact that you have the freedom to inspect/modify FOSS source code. FOSS _can_ solve everyday problems, but not all problems. You seem to have a problem with FOSS. Perhaps you’ve just not used any decent FOSS software. Since you’re a .Net developer perhaps you’d be interested in one of the following – Rhino Mocks, NHibernate, Castle Project, MbUnit, etc.
If you had moved from PHP to J2EE rather than .Net I would guess that you would have a different opinion of FOSS. The one thing that I think that Microsoft have done well is simplify some aspects of development by providing the entire stack in an easy to use package. Commercial Open Source companies seem to be waking up to this now as the end products are getting better and better – see Zimbra, Alfresco, RedHat, etc.
From their rebates website after a failed rebate attempt. Not only are they using .net, but a buggy script to boot.
Server Error in ‘/’ Application.
Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster.
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.Web.HttpException: Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster.
Source Error:
[No relevant source lines]
Source File: c:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files\root\98cc0722\64100bcc\App_Web_omnmlqb4.0.cs Line: 0
[ViewStateException: Invalid viewstate.
Client IP: 166.70.80.84
Port: 11442
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/312.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/312.6
ViewState: /wEPDwUJMjI4MTU0NDAyZGR+gn8J5EPZ7V11xlExQCu8l+5QKQ==
Referer: http://applepromotion.corporatesvcs.com/(S(55y1e03wdeu5wi45xiishq45))/Default.aspx
Path: /Default.aspx]
[HttpException (0x80004005): Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster.]
System.Web.UI.ViewStateException.ThrowError(Exception inner, String persistedState, String errorPageMessage, Boolean macValidationError) +116
System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.Deserialize(String inputString) +251
System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.System.Web.UI.IStateFormatter.Deserialize(String serializedState) +4
System.Web.UI.Util.DeserializeWithAssert(IStateFormatter formatter, String serializedState) +37
System.Web.UI.HiddenFieldPageStatePersister.Load() +220
System.Web.UI.Page.LoadPageStateFromPersistenceMedium() +83
System.Web.UI.Page.LoadAllState() +35
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +6953
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +154
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest() +86
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestWithNoAssert(HttpContext context) +18
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) +49
ASP.default_aspx.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) in c:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files\root\98cc0722\64100bcc\App_Web_omnmlqb4.0.cs:0
System.Web.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +154
System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +64
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.42; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.42
I believe my idea is well thought out, despite my technical deficiencies, however, my research online has shown me that approaching investors with an idea and a dream is simply not enough.
My problem is that I do not need, nor want to hire someone to start programming right away, before any type of funding has materialized. I need to find a technical individual, that would be willing to sign an agreement with me and effectively become a member of my team.
I would only require that his expertise would be able to help me determine:
The feasibility of my idea
Comment on any other options that may enhance the idea
Scalability of the idea
The optimal means of delivering a live product
Once this is accomplished, we would work together on a presentation and then submit it to various venture firms.
All this I believe could be done remotely.
“IF” the idea is able to secure significant funding, the individual would then have to work on the project with me fulltime.
So I guess – the individual I need will have need very little time comittment pre-funding.
Sorry if any of you were subject to a half-read article. I hit the publish button by accident half-way through writing it. I’ve spent the entire morning trying to get DotNetNuke, MojoPortal, and Community Server Express to function on my laptop as a new blogging platform for a project I will be releasing over the weekend.
In addition my Facebook application development is proceeding along smoothly and I will have a couple of articles about that posted over the weekend.
@Jason Sperske
i’ve used Linux for about 6-7 years, developed with Perl, PHP and MySql
also i’ve used java (but so much)
i also have worked within software development teams using strict quality policy and a team of quality control to test our products
so when it comes to Linux quality as you mentioned i’m sure if i applied my point of view of quality then we will find out that Linux is missing several things
1- usability
2- documentation
3- maintainabiltiy
and thats why it’s still used “only” by ppl whom have a technical background
and this is one of the day to day problems that FOSS didn’t solve “yet”
but this is not the only problem with FOSS in general, FOSS methodology as we all know is based on ppl contributions and these contributions are numerous and vast “but” they are not organized by any centric organzation that can set targets like integration for usability
thats why we can’t see FOSS products talking together transparently like Microsoft products do
put your self in the place of regualer average user, should the understand how OS works and how to use shell scrips and command lines to run mp3?!!!
common it took me a whole hour to figure out how to run mp3 on fedora, considering me as a software developer what about the normal user?
@Jason Sperske
yes i agree with you that FOSS caused a major development in the software industry, in fact companies like Microsoft would not even try to improve it’s products and make things like Vista, MOSS, VS2005 if there was no Linux, dropal, phpnuke and netbeans out there for free and open source
wikipedia is my favorite place to read and gain knowledge about alot of stuff but have you ever tried to use there editor? if you did then try to compare it to MOSS Wiki template
which is easier to use?
which have more features?
which is integrated with other products the user use?
i always used to say PHP compared to ASP.NET is more like a little knife compared to a big electric saw
you can’t cut big tree with the knife but you can use it to make artistic crafts
php is good for small cool ideas, but when it comes to enterprise software and scalability things get messy
have you ever heard about 3 tiers in PHP?
do you think you can handle ERP systems with PHP spagheti code? or mysql that can’t support transactions?
I think Technorati tags are still worthwhile because for every post/page you author you still have to take the time to supply <meta> tags for good-ole SEO. A lot of the time you can reuse many of those SEO keywords as your technorati tags. I actually do the opposite; I come up with about 5-7 technorati tags for each post then I add those to my bank of <meta> keywords, and then usually I’ll add in another 4-5 keywords, ones that would never do well on technorati but might prove helpful in search engines.
Have I ever received a lot of traffic from technorati? No. I think the reason why Technorati’s Alexa ranking is so high to begin with is because of bloggers routinely checking the site over and over again to see if their authority has gone up. I don’t think nearly as many use it for searching; someone documented about a month ago just how screwed up technorati is
If there’s someone out there who has managed to yield mountains of traffic from technorati without gaming the “what’s hot” section of the site then I am all ears.
Thanks for the comment, and it’s no problem; I really like your starter kit! Sorry for spelling your name wrong (which I just corrected); I wrote the article in the wee hours of the morning my spelling took a bit of a nose dive, so my apologies!
Are you kidding me with the statement that Microsoft is going towards open source road? This claim is much more shallow than the allegedly shallow claims of Robert and Marshall you are quoting. Come on!!
Oh wait, there isn’t one. “Putting its foot in the open source door?” Ok, if releasing the source code isn’t the first step towards becoming open source, then what is? Does the statement indicate that Microsoft is going to become fully open source? No, it leaves it quite open.
My article passed ZERO speculation on what Microsoft is going to do, it simply reported a canvas of opinion including mine.
If you’re going to get into the Slashdot bitchfest semantics of what constitutes open source, spare us.
Exactly my analysis Aaron. Whomever wrote that RWW article clearly has absolutely no understanding of .NET – or probably any development stack. I left some comments for them regarding that.
As for Scoble – he’s clearly losing his marbles and credibility over the last year. I’ve unsubscribed to him and find none of his ramblings of any value.
And for the framework being open – it may help debugging ~ but it’s not going to do much for 99% of M$ developers out there…
Krish – you are just being stupid – sounds like a linux fanboy to me…
Nice article. This was released mainly to assist debugging it would seem. IMHO however, it’s kinda like a laptop dancer… you can play but you can’t touch
Lol I really liked your post Dana; I have that problem a lot myself. I find that most bloggers are addicted to the instant gratification of publishing their latest work of genius, but it takes some experience and discipline to know when to hold off and to save an article for the best possible time to publish it.
Lol sorry the first title was crappy. The post evolved away from the subject of my original title and I changed it to reflect the true spirit of my the content :p
When I decided to start VB Notebook For .NET earlier this year I had originally planned to stick exclusively with VB.NET material. However, early on I found that I wanted to add in general software development topics. This eventually had the effect of making my traffic two pronged where I get a lot of DZone traffic for general articles and a lot of search engine traffic for VB.NET tutorials.
On my new blog, OpTempo I’m taking a wide open approach with no set topic. Anything goes there, aside from programming topics that fit with VBNB. I had done a few other topical blogs but I felt they were too constrained so I’m experimenting with having very few constraints plus writing as fast as possible. I started it on the 5th of this month and I’ve set the goal of having 200 quality posts by Nov 1. It should be interesting.
I actually agree with most of your post but you hit a nerve with me when you started talking about Facebook’s market position. For the record, Facebook is not the “market leader” or the “biggest social network”. In fact, not by a long shot. Malik’s article shows that Facebook has Unique Visitors in the area of 30 million vs Myspace which floats around 70 million.
As a matter of fact, from the same blog post, if you take Facebook’s growth from Feb ’07 (its lowest point on the graph) to now you get a jump of about 12 million unique visitors. In that same time frame myspace grew by about 4-5 million unique visitors showing that myspace, while not keeping pace, is still going strong. In fact, while going into Facebook’s decline of 9.3% the Malik post also points out that myspace went up by .1% in the same time frame.
Finally, and this is just one those “out of no where points”, but if you want to look outside the U.S. you’ll also see that MSN Spaces (of all things) is huge in Asia. As a whole, Spaces dwarfs Facebook with an estimated 120 million unique viewers worldwide. So while Facebook is growing fast that’s mostly because its pretty tiny in comparison to everyone else.
The reason this all agitates me is that you seem to be in the right frame of mind in that you realize that most of the blogosphere is drinking the Facebook kool-aid. Yet simply by being bombarded by the hype you’ve been tricked into drinking the kool-aid as well by having your perspectives shaped by all this unrealistic Facebook talk.
Your comment is absolutely true on all counts, but to clarify, I threw the “market position” talk out there namely for the sake of argument, not so much as to enter it into the canon of social media facts. I’m aware that MySpace still has a significantly larger audience, but again, the Facebook reference was for the sake of argument. In addition though, MySpace still doesn’t have a widget platform out yet, and Facebook’s platform has been garnering a lot of attention. I guess that would make Facebook the biggest social network that’s currently widget-capable with an in-house API.
Maybe I should call Facebook the “buzz leader” instead
I’m an American college student who’s been on Facebook for three years, so my perspective has largely been shaped by my own extensive experience as a user, as a developer for the platform, but I never would have started developing for it were it not for the hype.
Your points about what’s popular in other areas of the world and in other demographics rings true as well. I read the other day that Google’s Orkut is actually the market leader in parts of South America and elsewhere. I’ll have to see where I stashed that article.
absolutely… as soon as MySpace & Google & LinkedIn launch, will likely be worth checking them out & placing ‘bets’ on those platforms.
but for the moment, Facebook is the only platform that has a real API for development.
that appears likely to change next week with the rumored launch of MySpace’s new platform offering, and in November with the rumored launch of Google’s social platform. (both rumors reported by TechCrunch)
When I see a title “AjaxNinja” I think you’re going to be writing about Ajax. Reading about blogging about blogging seems to be too many layers of navel-gazing. Please do more techo stuff.
Like I said before, I did agree with most of your article. I guess the difference between us is that I think Facebook’s “buzz leadership” is mostly hot air and that they’ll have very little to offer once the aforementioned Myspace Platform materializes. So while I think your points are valid I think that it will be the Myspace platform that will become the defacto standard (if there is one at all).
Quick Disclaimer: I like Facebook a LOT more than Myspace which I absolutely hate. But based on my experience, as unique visitors go up each subsequent million is 5 times harder to get than the last million (I only have about 8 years on you age wise but that’s enough to have been recruited at 19 during the first boom so I know a little something about Web based companies and traffic). I think that puts Facebook at a significant disadvantage.
Also, on the topic of Myspace vs. Facebook, I’d assume that about 70%+ also have a myspace account making Myspace even more compelling.
I mean, for you it’s probably best for you to aim for Facebook no matter what just because that’s what you know and that’s where your passion is. But I think the best decision for most people would be to target a Myspace platform (again assuming it materializes at all)
Though, and I should preface this by saying I have no experience with the Facebook platform. The entirety of my Facebook development experience consists of reading your posts on the topic That said, from what I do know I can’t help but think that porting will be pretty easy between platforms. Assuming most of the business logic is going to be identical and most of the interface work will be carried over completely I’d think a good modular design will make a port pretty easy. I mean, all you’re really getting from Facebook is profile information right? So I’d think you could literally get by with just having different classes for each social network and keep 95% of your code unchanged.
Well thanks for stealing my thunder for tomorrow’s article Tom. :p
I’m going to get into detail on how to design a Web 2.0 Middleware that encapsulates a lot of the common business objects into an identical set of classes for each API. That’s my solution to the future problem of “which platform?”
Take a look at the ACE framework, which is a wrapper facade between POSIX and Windows. I’ve performed research for the Professor who invented it (Douglas Schmidt, world renowned middleware and embedded-systems expert) and I think a lot of his concepts are applicable to these social network platforms.
In addition though I think a lot of the buzz about Facebook is just hot air too. Some of the shit people are saying is just fucking insane. It’s going to kill google? There aren’t enough drunk pictures in the world to take down Google.
P.S. Yeah wordpress chokes on random characters sometimes… Single tick marks have been the cause of the problem before, as have been three periods. I don’t know why.
My big idea: aggregators a la news aggregators: have authentication aggregators (and maybe optionally authorization aggregators as well)
So also similar to the little toolstrips that say (digg,reddit,google,etc) we will be able to cross-authenticate to all the social and other networks using a single-sign-on type of front end.
For apps that are ad-based as opposed to license based, about the only thing you need other than uniqueness would be age-verification which every service would like to be able to offload responsibility for but reap the rewards of.
So I could send an invite to my latest great FB app to folks who are *only* linkedin friends, yet they could still seemlessly access my app. That way only I the app-developer would need to utilitize the aggregator, simplifying life for the poor linked-in-only users, and additionally I could get the extra revenue from the enlarged audience without trouble for the new subscriber.
I know OpenID (http://openid.net/) is one approach to the “authentication aggregator” idea. I don’t know how widely adopted it is. I know DZone (http://www.dzone.com/), the developer’s Digg, uses it.
SQL Server Express isn’t going to do it for something that requires SSIS and sure IIS comes with Windows but show me how that’s free the OS is not free.
I have to say this has left me confused as to whether I need to downlaod the developers toolkit or not. I’ve done it, but there’s no instruction afaics as to where the source and binaries need to be extracted hence no Facebook related tools in my toolkit.
If you want to use Facebook.NET you do not need to download the Developer’s Toolkit. The Developer’s Toolkit is a separate interface for designing Facebook applications with ASP.NET. I’m afraid, however, that I do not entirely understand your post. No Facebook-related tools in your toolkit? What do you mean?
I meant having seen a video transcript elsewhere of a facebook app being created, the Asp.net toolkit list in VWD 2005 contained some controls under a Facebook heading in the list. So I took it that to appear in this list the binary files had to be unzipped to a particular location.
Anyway, as I don’t need the Toolkit I tried Facebooknet but find myself stuck. All seems set up correctly with my callback url set to my workstation 123.123.123.123:3179/facebooknet for example but it fails to connect every time. I switch off the firewall in case that causes the problem but no change.
I try it also on my server which I know is configured for asp.net 2.0 because I’m running Dotnetnuke on it, but the server response indicates an error, suggesting that the web.config settings are changed to create an error log file.
We’re actually developing a digg alternative as we speak. It’s been live for just over a month now and has actually had over 300,000 unique visitors thus far. The site is http://www.tagsum.com
We’re focused on making social media more social. Digg added it’s social networking features, but really they just made it easier to game the system (seriously, just by adding hundreds of friends and shout spamming I got over 20 articles on the front page of digg in a one week period).
Anyhow, we don’t want to do what digg has done. Everything is tag based so you can create the narrow niches that truely fit your submissions. I nthe control panel we have friend feeds so you can keep an eye on what your circle of friends is doing on the site. We have a full featured private messaging system, and real profiles complete with a drag and drop photo gallery system. Keep an eye on our site over the coming months as we continue development (oh, and we actually have a picture section unlike digg )
The default FBML is what will appear on the user’s profile page unless you make a call to the Facebook API to set the user’s profile FBML explicitly. Do you make any calls in your application to render the user’s profile FBML?
Can you show a bit of the source if are making calls? It’d make it easier to help!
I sent you an email too but I figured I’d reply to you here also. I went ahead and signed up and I’m going to submit a couple of things. I have a quick question though, is Tagsum ONLY for submitting news items exclusively? What about just popular items that regular users might be interested in, like how-to and do-it-yourself articles? It seems like Tagsum is directed more towards news.
Thank you for joining up and giving me some feedback.
As far as the content goes, you can submit anything you like. The members that are there have been submitting quite a bit of mainstream news, but we specifically designed the site to use tags instead of categories so our members can submit anything they are interested in, and keep it easy to find. Doing a quick tag search in the search bar for DIY returns these for example http://www.tagsum.com/news/search?q=diy&t=tags . We have a feature coming soon where you will be able to subscribe to tags that interest you. So for example if you are only interested in football, cars, and diy projects, you will be able to subscribe to those and have that info delivered straight to you.
I’ve actually found WordPress to be pretty rock solid. If you were seeing database errors under load, it’s likely that your host just put you on an overloaded MySql server.
Don’t get me wrong; I love WordPress. It simply had a lot more problems out of the box than BlogEngine.NET has. DiscountASP.NET limits me to 10 open MySQL connections at any given time, which isn’t much. Luckily WP-Cache solved the problem.
No, I don’t plan on migrating anytime soon, and I’m still not sure when I’m going to upgrade to WordPress 2.3! I feel like I have a good thing going on AjaxNinja with WordPress, but I wanted a different experience with my other blog, thus I went with BlogEngine.NET.
The process of migrating from WordPress to BlogEngine would be really nasty; I’m not sure if I’d be able to get all of the original WordPress URLs to point back to their corresponding units on a BlogEngine.NET deployment, and I really can’t afford to lose all of that Google/Del.icio.us/StumbleUpon traffic on those existing pages.
yes, that’s the same problem I face here. It’s always a kind of a pity to run a PHP blog if you’re an ASP.NET developer, but back then when I started blogging there hasn’t been stuff like BlogEngine and I assume the same situation counts for you.
I’m looking forward to Windows 2008 Server with PHP deeply integrated by Zend and Microsoft, then I can at least move my Wordpress Blog from my Linux Server to my Windows Server without loosing the current URL Rewriting structure..
Interesting… Now, I wonder what answer Telligent would give as to why CS2007 uses up so much memeory? Couldn’t they optimize it to have a more minimal footprint?
Aaron, I really appreciate you posting this and the other accounts on CS Forums. That seems really high, as Chris says, but Dave Stokes says its normal (on a CS Forums thread you added to), so I believe it.
I’m currently on a VPS, but before I was on WebHost4Life for at least two years, with CS almost the whole time. No 100MB limits there.
That’s the premium you pay when you follow the BUZZ and not the business. Then again, Microsoft is the world’s most profitable company for its size, so it can do what it wants with its capital. If I were an investor who’s counting on dividends though, I might be a tad pissed.
I have to admit, I felt pretty warm and fuzzy after I read about OpenSocial, knowing that I had “called for it.” Hopefully OpenSocial won’t be a disappointment. I just read on TechCrunch this morning that OpenSocial was hacked within 45 minutes of its first application’s launch.
If all your users are being logged out, you should probably specify a machineKey in your web.config. An app pool recycling should never cause users to be logged out, however if no machineKeys are set at the application or server level, then it will randomly generate them. In that case, the recycling would cause new ones to be generated. If you just specify them in the CS web.config, the issue will go away.
That’s too bad. If they allow you access to your web.config, you have access to your machinekey. It’s a single line. You generate a key, stick it in the web.config. Here’s a CS Bit on it.
Your right, those discountASP people did the same thing to me. They are just being generally scumbags. I’m sure they do have other users running CS without a problem, but those users are undoubtedly running some much older versions. I’ll likely put up a similar blog post and cross link you here.
Hey Aaron
Would you happen to have an example of how you “implemented strongly-typed master page references to access controls on the master page via the .aspx pages”?
I have to agree with aaronontheweb, “BAD TITLE, MISLEADING”.
I’ve developed in pascal, basic, delphi, classic asp, vb, vb.net, c#, java, php, and ruby. Been paid for most of those languages. Point being, anyone who’s ever touched php knows you run with a opcode cacher or whatever they’re calling themselves these days. And the things have been around for more than five years.
Which is why the recent announcement that MS is working with Zend on fastcgi is so interesting.
To further this thread, what’s interesting about php on .net that you didn’t have before is large corporations which standardize on a particular technology (like .net as a platform) now have the ability to run php within their own guidelines. Windows admins, notable for being poor at picking up anything not written about on msdn, should be able to deploy, administer, and support a php app on .net without even knowing it’s written in php.
I found this comment on debugging FBML on Nikhil’s blog
———————————-
JustinM
Posted on 10/22/2007 @ 7:14 AM
Manjit,
Yes you can debug locally with fbml apps. What I did is get a free dynamic dns (gotdns.com), port forward port 80 (actually in my case port 8080, as some other machine is using 80) directly to my development laptop that has IIS running (Vista Ultimate, note the Application Pool may need to be set to “classic”). Then made a local dns entry in windows\system32\etc\hosts file to have the dns entry point to 127.0.0.1 for resolving url’s that point directly to my site (images). Everything works fine.
I still think that DiscountASP.NET provides a high-quality hosting service and I’ll continue using them, but they really do need to stop advertising that they support a platform which they clearly do not.
David,
The machine key fix will act as a work-around for the login/logout issue caused by the application pool recycling so thanks for the great resource! However, it won’t fix the performance problems caused by having the app pool recycled every 5 minutes. The website was unbearably slow when I ran it.
If you use templates offered by business graphics software like Visio or SmartDraw it really makes it a lot faster to develop computerized business graphics. On top of that, it’s impractical to share hand-drawn graphics with other members of your project. For a back-of-the-envelop mock up, pen and paper makes sense, but for actual design documents, I strongly encourage that you use real business graphics software.
I felt bad that we couldn’t get you the machinekey fix earlier, but you’re right that app pool recycling would have to cause some performance issues. Thanks for following-up.
nice! also, just wanted to point out i really like the add a comment link in your RSS feed. most of them dont do that, and it saves me typing in two more fields so i really like it
I have seen this happen time and time again. Unfortunately when I stumble I make sure to properly categorize the post but not everyone is doing so and in the long run it hurt the author …
Sorry it took me so long to get back to your comment! Are you trying to authenticate your requests through your web browser (i.e. are you connecting directly to 123.123.123.123:3179/facebooknet) or are you making the requests through the Facebook.com proxy (http://apps.facebook.com/APPNAME/)? Facebook.NET won’t authenticate you unless you direct your traffic through Facebook, simply because Facebook.NET needs access to the Facebook session data which is created at the proxy.
There is an option you can enable on the <fb:Application> control called “enableExternalBrowsing” you can set this to true then give that a try if you’d like.
Yeah that’s how I feel Alex; if I’m unsure about the category I’ll sometimes drop the stumble altogether. Stumbling .NET pages is odd for instance, because if I stumble it under Web development, a ton of people who want to hear about CSS design will end up reading it and voting it down; if I file it under Windows Development then a bunch of people looking how to develop for Windows desktops, rather than web services, will see it and vote it down.
It can be a bit awkward at times, but for the most part properly categorizing is easy and an even greater compliment to the author.
I’ve tried to use many tools like ms project, but at the end, i found that best one are mind manager – very simple and very usefull and old school ms word! hehe funny but true. I found that complex one are usefull only when u work on big projects with precise timing – but all of that can be done in ms word + xls at the end. I would like to mention Borland CaliberRM which is best and very unique – and far more better then anything – specialised for soft. dev. projects.
The older versions of CS used to work on our hosting system. From my understanding, when CS 2007 came out we tested it and it worked on our system. Our tech team re-tested the latest CS2007 version and the base install does hit the high memory usage limit – so we took down all content about CS on our website.
Aaron, This is how far I get without writing any code. Just using the facebooknet template which now seems unchanged with or without the enabalextarnalBrowsing property:
Server Error: 501 Not Implemented
Operating System Error Nr:6: errno = 0×6
Did you supply the correct API key and SECRET in the Web.config file? It looks like you’re getting an authorization error from the Facebook REST servers.
Yeah that is what sucks about Stumble and it will happen the majority of the time like you said.
What I do if that happens is changes the Slug URL in wordpress, 301 redirct the old one and then resubmit it through a good account. Most likely the first post didn’t go anywhere anyways so no one will see it as a duplicate.
On the iframe page itself (i.e. the page hosted on your own server) you can still use external stylesheets, just not on pages that render any FBML.
For my FBML applications I actually use an external stylesheet that gets parsed by a User Control into tags by the file system at run-time.
I then use declarative output caching (2 hour duration, shared across all HTTP requests) to decrease the number of hits to the file system to a negligible number (the file system is hit only once every 2 hours regardless of the number of HTTP requests).
When Google purchased double click, this line of thinking crossed my mind as well. Control the Ads, control the Internet.
I think that the next logical progression for Google will be for them to expand on their offering of ad types and styles. While the typical text based classic AdSense ads are performing well, conversions are going down.
I think that you’re dead on with Google’s larger goal of pageviews and eyeballs.
Great analysis. I think they should leave Wikipedia alone but from a business perspective, it makes sense for Google. In the last year or so, I have seen Wikipedia at the top of the search result for most searches.
I think Google runs the risk of incurring the wrath of a very pissed off horde of contributors who weren’t interested in donations in the first place. In addition, how will Google determine which ONE of the many editors receives AdSense impressions as a result of his or her contributions to Knol? Isn’t the point of WikiPedia collaborative editing, meaning many editors all add their thoughts and additional insights for the altruistic sake of contribution itself?
Google might end up pissing off a lot of people by threatening WikiPedia. I guarantee you that when Knol launches Google will adjust the PageRank scores in order to bump WikiPedia further down the search listings. That kind of monopolistic conflict of interest is the sort of behavior that could potentially land Google in front of the DOJ Anti-Trust unit, ala Microsoft. For a company whose motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” they sure seem to be carrying themselves about in a very heavy-handed way with Knol.
My understanding is typical LAMP installations with no modifications to PHP are just Zend interpretations, yes. XAMPP is a good product for giving it a try if you want to see the performance of traditional PHP in action.
I’ve tried getting Phalanger to work on VS 2005 and it’s a lot harder than it sounds to get that sucker started. I’m running on Vista Ultimate on my new Dell XPS and I’ll be using Visual Web Developer Express; I am confident that Phalanger won’t work for that suite.
I agree with what Aaron suggests. I am trying to put up an app on FB and it is quite overwhelming to choose apps even as a user because of the number of apps out there.
But I have to slightly disagree with Aaron on the users being fickleminded because if you see the rankings list on Adonomics, it is the usual suspects and the early birds who are still in the top 20 or 30.
I am not sure if users will discard an old app to accomadate a new app.
Any thoughts?
Those top applications will not be easily dislodged due to the fact that they are networked services; the value of those applications (especially SuperWall/FunWall) increases with every additional user added. Users will reject NEW applications if those applications are unable to draw large numbers of installers who are connected via friendships on Facebook.
In my opinion though, applications with large numbers of users aren’t necessarily the most profitable.
Hello Aaron,
Thanks, for the increased font size, also email doesn’t have any subject, FeedBurner’s Email il appeares with (NO Subject), Also i like the new avatar of AJAXNinja very much good work keep it up.
Man FeedBurner doesn’t have a default title for their email subscriptions either? Ugh lol. I went ahead and fixed that too. Man I wish they would have warned me about that when I turned the service on lol!
Thanks for the heads up! I appreciate it (and I’m sure the other email subscribers do too.)
Yeah Amazon needs to expand to Europe; Europe’s becoming a hotbed of startup activity in web-based domains and Amazon is missing out on an opportunity to capitalize on those new organizations.
@Rob,
Haha! I read through your blog entry (which I liked; I had ready about the CD Baby fiasco before) and a bunch of the comments; they weren’t as negative as ones you’d see on a Digg comment thread, but yeah there were a lot of them.
I find that when techies disagree with you about whether or not a programming language is “good,” most of them try to split hairs with your argument or complain that “this is nothing new.” I don’t know why so many techies treat their programming language as a religion, then again, I don’t know why so many of them have egos about the quality of their code. Personally, I use whatever tools will help me get the job done in the least amount of time with the best results for the time spent.
I think the buzz around “Cloud Computing” may shift to distributed computing on your own infrastructure as a slew of tools are released which easily provide the same level of performance and scalability w/o the vendor dependence.
Who cares what Zed Shaw said/says? He’s just a furious programmer that get no job becuase he can’t cooperate with people – today that’s a no-no no matter how smart you are if you can’t cooperate with (other) programmers. Einstein was no douch nor a whining baby. According to some psychology experts to be smart is to manage your environment – does he really? He’ll regret that statement, because even if he got a lot of d*ckriders they need to ask theirselves if they dare to put him in an organisation – you know…where people collaborate.
Rails 2.0 is now realeased and I expect more people to go in that direction. To start up ASP.NET- or Java-website is time consuming and things are moving fast today (Web *VERSION_NR* days), so better use a framework that makes it natural to write DRY and self explainable code – Ruby is a more humane/semantic syntax – and ethics like testing and RESTful. Even more interesting frameworks like Merb will problaby gain popularity 2008/2009. I think the reason you got ROR on your black list is that you have chosed side a long time ago – your .NET-skills might not be so interesting in the future eh?
.NET has more tools available to it than Rails does. I want an instant DAL, I’ve got SubSonic. I want instant error logging, I’ve got ELMAH. If I want to do unit tests, I’ve got MBUnit, NUnit, and other frameworks. If I want to set up an instant membership management system, I’ve got the Roles, Membership, and Profiles API. If I want access to powerful debugging tools and the most rich IDE on earth, I’ve got the entire Visual Studio product line. Hell, I even get JavaScript debugging with Visual Studio Express 2008. Not to mention the great developments coming down the pike, like SilverLight development for rich media experiences that take less time to develop than common AJAX implementations, the MVC framework, ALT.NET, and the Dynamic Data controls.
The best part is, if I wanted to incorporate Ruby into any of my .NET projects, I could do so by using IronRuby. The .NET Common Language Runtime and Dynamic Language Runtime offer a pretty wide variety of development options with the .NET framework.
A quick FYI, unlike most programmers, I don’t attach myself to a particular programming language for dogmatic reasons, so I never “chose a side.” I chose the tool that would enable me to increase my personal productivity most, which is why I switched from PHP to .NET three years ago. I’ve never looked back, and frankly, .NET is just getting better and better. It’s highly scalable, comes with a great IDE for free, offers rich page handling and composition, and has a great open source community that, as far as I know, doesn’t start community-wide flamewars like the ones Zed described.
I understand your dissatisfaction, but this seems a little like complaining about the mall owners who built a mall and then charged people to set up shops there. The existence of the mall brings customers, customers shop at the stores, so who has something to complain about?
Facebook (and others) are providing a venue. They “allow businesses to connect with their customers on Facebook similar to the way they connect with their friends.”
How do I use ? can I use this in an IFrame? I’ve made my application using Steve Trefethen’s Visual Studio.NET starter kit for Facebook.NET as a base. I’d like my Canvas page Menu to be built using the VS 2008 Menu control and sitemap and anyone done this let me know?
How do you use the starter kit? You can use it in an IFRAME, and that’s absolutely the best option for building your first Facebook application given that it’s much easier to debug Facebook.NET applications when they’re running as IFrames.
The Canvas Page can be built using the menu control and sitemap; you may have to do your own custom subclass of the menu control in order to make sure that the rendered hyper links are all compatible with the Facebook-domain for your application though. You can probably roll up Facebook.NET’s control into a custom menu control in order to take care of that automatically.
I’m actually a very satisfied Facebook user; it’s a great service and all of my fraternity brothes and classmates use it. I just think that Facebook doesn’t really have the right to sell my personal information at a premium.
Your analogy of mall is flawed. A more correct comparison would be if you were allowed to shop at the mall but the mall collected all of your shopping data and transferred it between merchants. What if I went into the mall, headed to Sam Goody and purchased a pornographic DVD; after lunch I head over to GNC to buy some vitamins, but since GNC knows that I just recently purchased a porn DVD, the salesman on the floor greets me by name (since I used a credit card and photo identificated to purchase the DVD, the mall has my name and face on record) then promptly introduces me to some sexual enhancement / erectile dysfunction drugs.
Would that constitute a breach in privacy? Yes. Person-identifiable data transferrence between parties without consent constitutes a breach of privacy regardless of the nature of the data being exchanged.
Man…. PHP programmers and Ruby-on-Rails programmers really get the shaft over in the U.K. on the payscale… Maybe I should brush up on my JAVA a little bit lol.
I have got it working from your article. However, I can only publish news feed and mini news feed to the owner (actor), but not friends. My news title and news body are constructed randomly by a user input.
I have looked at Register Feed Story Templates but to no avail. Any ideas ?
Not to be rude to anyone but the difference between $99 and free to any company on the face of the earth is negligible. Even at $399 (which I assume will be their final price post-Beta) the price is pretty much nothing. For any business over 9 people that is the cost of a business lunch at Applebees.
So when I see someone jumping up and down over the price not only do I not want to get my support from them but it makes me think they’re in a job where they have virtually no responsibility (which in turn reflects badly on them if they are an adult).
Finally, and this is just my personal experience but I’ve found that most companies are more comfortable buying something than they are getting it for free. There is something inherent in “free” that just seems to make people nervous.
Hi Aaron, funny, I also blogged about Grafiti when they released Beta 1 with a pretty catchy title. Some of the comments were really interesting – and expected to be that way. I also think it’s perfect for commercial and professional use.
You are right about Digg. I just tried to Digg your lead article. It asked me 5 times to enter the silly set of bitmapped characters to prove I was a human. 4 times it rejected them. Finally it believed me and then decided my subission was a duplicate (So the fuck what!) and gave me a list of clearly non-matching submissions. I clicked to override their opinion and Digg then decided to reject my submission entirely. Nice work!
If you make it so difficult to submit anything no one will do it.. and what’s with the categories: “Business and finance” now there’s a specific label. How about “marketing”, “Sales”, “Finance”, “management”… you get the idea – but perhaps that might encourage people who are interested in making money to use it “Yuckkk”.
I am having trouble now. I managed to use
.Service.Feed.PublishMiniFeedStory
to post a story. I made a feedstorytemplate, as well as feedstory object, putting in the target UserID’s as a List.
I can only manage to post a news feed and mini-feed to the originated User only, but not to the user’s friends at all.
Huh? The Graffiti homepage states: “Whether it’s your personal blog, the family Web site, or the primary Web presence for your small business…”. No mention of big business/corporations there. I agree that yes, it’s gotten the Graffiti name out there but it’s an ineffective campaign: instead of “hey, did you about that great product, Graffiti?” you’re already hearing “hey, did you about that CMS Graffiti– the one that bashes Wordpress?”.
I don’t care for either of the 2 platforms one way or another but as far as I can tell there’s nothing that Wordpress can do for my “personal blog, the family Web site” or my small business that Graffiti can.
P.S. ajaxninja.com? -1 for a totally lame domain name
this is working as intended. When you publish an item to a user’s mini-feed there is a possibility that Facebook may aggregate the story and publish it to a select number of the user’s friends’ news feeds, but there never has been a guarantee that it will show up on the friends’ feeds.
I think your post is a pretty fair assessment but I think you underestimate its value in a professional enviornment.
I run an IT department that maintains a little over 200 computers at this point. Using those computers are different levels of employees. Administrative positions need Microsoft Office, there’s just no doubt. I’m not going to put a finance person on Google Docs. But many of the positions that actually do the functional stuff only use the computer for basic word processing and never print out their work (they e-mail it). For them something like Google Docs is ideal.
So taking that into account consider this. We spend about $800 per PC when all is said and done and a lot of that is on software. I’ve been moving all our custom software to ASP.NET for several years now to the point that we’re about 90% there. So if we could find a Web Based alternative for Office we could move all of those people to cheaper Linux PCs that last longer (because they require far less horsepower than a Windows PC running Office 2003) and cost about $300
If we could use Google Docs on just the light office users I think it would save us about $173,000 every 5 years. That’s pretty darn significant and we’re just a small-to-midsize business. Corporations could easily save millions.
Unfortunately that great plan is thwarted until there’s a local version of Google Docs (think the Google Search boxes). I won’t have our corporate data on a Google server given the terms Google Docs give. (and yes, for the record I’ve thought of Zoho but with Google Docs breathing down their necks the way they are I just don’t have enough faith in the company’s survival to plan my strategy around them)
You raise an excellent point in regards to trimming costs for departments that don’t need the full functionality of Ms Office. In addition the notion of Google owning whatever documents you place on Google Docs is another concern that I overlooked. The point of my post was mainly speaking from my experience as a student (I only big limitation that Google Docs imposes on my professional work is the file size; I can’t read any big powerpoints or Word docs) trying to rely exclusively on Google Docs.
In addition, I’m not going to put anything on Google’s servers that I don’t want them to read, such as any financial data. Great comment overall, Tom.
Google do have several good apps, but not all of them I would advice to use someother office suite like eDeskOnline or Thinkfree. For example, their Projects tool is too buggy and needs a lot of fixing. I choose to stay with eDeskOnline It’s got a perfect feature set and it works very well and also lets me Collaborate with others without any problems as it works (Infact) faster than Google.
Hi Aaron, Sorry to hear about the experience with Google documents. Was interested to read your report on this as I sometimes use google docs in conjunction with the notebook. By the way, thanks for being a Dell customer. Hope you like the xps m1330
Forgot about Windows Workspaces… On both of my older Windows machines I used Office 2003 so I never got to play around with any of the Live! stuff. I’m going to get the academic version of Office 2007 so I’ll get to put my meathooks on that feature soon!
@kalivd,
I did not know about those services; very cool! How do all of those compare to MS Office though?
@richardatDELL,
My XPS M1330 is like owning a brand new Camero; I get compliments on how cool it looks on a pretty regular basis. One time my professor stopped midsentence during a lecture, came over to my chair, looked at the laptop for about 30 seconds and went “niiiiiiiice.” In addition I can’t imagine living without Windows ultimate now that I’ve used it for a couple of months; being able to use the Dell TV tuner to record my favorite TV shows while I’m off doing work is pretty cool. unfortunately I filled up my entire 120g hard drive within four days of recording TV shows; I guess I need to find a good external hard drive!
You overlooked another good alternative to MS Office – OpenOffice… And that’s a good tip for the guy from the IT department – OpenOffice works great on cheap Linux boxes
Re. your laptop – I consider it as my next laptop, the only problem that I see is that it doesn’t have a docking station …
@Aaron = Yeah, I think part of my point (that I badly articulated) what that, until technology like Silverlight or Apollo really blossoms I don’t think a power user is going to be able to switch in any meaningful way. I think its a solution only for the lower level users right now (which is essentially what you said just from a different slant). That said, you’d be amazed at the usability test results I get and how much they go up with online alternatives. The lack of features actually seems to improve the user experience for people who don’t like technology in the first place.
Oh, and thanks for the subscribe, but don’t expect much The thing that has been most shocking to me is how hard it is to actually publish what you intended to. For instance, I really expected to have more code-based posts from the get go but I’ve found that I have to put myself on a schedule to make that happen. Anyway, it is not yet what I hope it will be.
@Arik – Thanks for the suggestion, we did look at OpenOffice and found that it didn’t offer enough of an advantage to switch. If I’m going to put people on a Linux box its going to be one where the experience is entirely browser based. If the end result of doing this is adding Linux to the products I have to support users on than it won’t be worth it.
I didn’t want to compare all of them, just Google Docs. OpenOffice might be a cool alternative though… Is StarOffice still around? And as far as the docking stations go, I don’t really use one anyways just because I’m up and off so much at college. I carry the laptop on me virtually at all times. When I’m sitting at my desk in my apartment though I have a big desktop with a GIANT LCD monitor that I use for a lot of casual browsing while I do gaming or coding on this laptop.
@Tom,
Yeah, I can understand Google Docs increasing productivity as a result of the lack of distractions compared to Office, but a lot of college professors and students (especially engineers) are heavy power users. Even my English professor is a total stud when it comes to using the Word editing/marking features, which in my opinion is a more powerful form of collaboration than what Google Docs currently provides.
As far as your blog goes, I understand that concern too. I originally bought the domain name AJAXNINJA.COM because I had anticipated that I would be writing a lot of .NET and AJAX code. I still showcase my Facebook.NET code every chance I get but really I’ve just grown more fond of talking about trends in the tech industry and doing some marketing analysis. In fact, I bought the domain name MARKETING-NINJA.COM and I will probably start rebranding this blog using that domain name, just so that way people aren’t surprised when they don’t see much AJAX on a blog called AjaxNinja. My current content and style won’t change though, plus I’m going to keep the AjaxNinja domain name since I get a fair amount of traffic going down it.
@Aaron – I’m just like you, carrying my laptop with me virtually at all times. But when I’m at home (/office) I connect it to a larger screen, keyboard & mouse. I though of buying a desktop computer for my desk, but it seemed to me less convenient than using one computer (the need to keep them in sync).
I understand that issue with having two computers; keeping them in sync can be a problem. I typically do all of my work on my laptop computer and have all of my leisure stuff on my desktop (my music collection, video games, etc…) Having a docking station is a must for your situation though. What model do you use currently?
Currently every time I get back to my desk I just plug in all the cables myself (power adapter, monitor, USB hub and line out for audio). It’s more mentally frustrating than a real problem, I guess
As for your work style – don’t you prefer to write code on a bigger monitor?
What resolution your laptop monitor supports?
I kicked your article. Great job. I personally like the ad campaign. They got Buzz around a beta for a product that most people would never have heard of otherwise. Sounds to me like a good marketing team.
Thanks for the kick! Yeah the campaign managers did a great job getting the word out about the product; the best part is I’m pretty sure the angry WordPress community is going to keep following the Graffiti story and continually publish more information about it as it comes out. Graffiti couldn’t have asked for a more cost-effective PR campaign.
I also checked out VistaDB (only briefly;) can it really do XCopy DB deployment?
My resolution is a wide-screen one; it’s 1280*800, on my laptop anyway. My desktop monitor is enormous; it’s got something like a 24″ diagonal. I prefer to write code on the laptop simply because my Desktop has Windows XP Home edition and can’t do a lot of the .NET stuff, plus the way it’s situation on my desk is a bit awkward for programming. It works great for playing video games though!
That’s funny because I’m just the opposite. I can’t write code without two monitors at this point. In fact, I travel with an LCD monitor just so I can extend my desktop when I’m traveling.
To me it boils down to two things. One, documentation is a vital part of programming and I love to be able to just look over and have it there. Two, I love having the ability to keep the old version of a site open as I code the newer version so I can see what I’m changing side by side with what used to be there.
Wow…I just realized this comment is completely off topic in regards to the actual post
I’ll look up documentation on my desktop sometimes from MSDN, 4GuysFromRolla, or whoever and do the actual coding on my laptop. The desktop resolution is enormous so it’s pretty easy to just glance over real quick at a screencast or something. However, a lot of the times I have to copy and paste code samples when I’m working with 3rd party components so in those instances its more convenient to have the documentation on the same machine as the one I’m coding on.
@Aaron – my laptop resolution is the same as yours, but I prefer to work with larger resolution. Although I agree that coding on a 24″ screen might be not that comfortable either (my external monitor is 20″).
Dude thats insane. Good news. I wonder what their ISP providers _tell_ them when the cable is damaged, ’sorry, but you still have to pay us for the next two months?’
anyways, thats totally awesome for any us students.
hamy
ps. your picture has absolutely no margins or padding on this page, at least in FF. should prob take a look at that it looks like there is hidden text under it(there isnt, but its just really close)
I am from India – fortunatly this has not affected me. But I was really scared when I read the news in the paper. And yes – I am one of your subscribers
Glad to hear that you guys and your outfit are doing alright; what part of India are you located in? And I’m always glad that my subscribers haven’t gotten their service interrupted lol!
Today Morning when I’ve reading the Daily News Paper here in India, One headline on the FrontPage is “Microsoft makes $42B bid for Yahoo” make me wonder that one of your predications are now Real.
Hope now you’ll get start predicating common men’s future also lol
My batting average on those predictions has been pretty good thus far. Maybe I should take up fortune-telling in addition to blogging about web-based technology lol. Glad you remembered my predictions. Have you guys been able to get your Internet back up in India? How’s that situation looking?
Well said. I’m surprised you didn’t go ahead and call a drop in the GOOG stock price. I assume that could have been inferred from the negative outlook. I think you’re right though and I think Google is concerned about the long term. If not then why are they shouting anti-trust? Correct me if im wrong but, They seem to have become a bit too comfortable, granted, they still make a lot of money but have never had such threatening competition.
Wow! An epic and concise “Hatorade” on Google! Loved it. I broke out laughing on the Wsock32.dll wild card… it took me by surprise. I look forward to their response.
So i am loving the articles, but quick suggestion…
i remember you saying sometimes you just dont have rainy day articles, or you dont have something ready to post about. I would love to see a page where visitors could list stuff they would be interested in hearing your opinion of
I’m glad I could entertain you lol! I wanted to bring up how lame my experience was with Google Desktop but I just didn’t feel like it merited its own post; this was a good opportunity for me to vent.
@Hamy,
You can always email me via my contact page with topics for articles, but what is it that you had in mind as far as that page you described? Also, if you have any topic ideas that you’d like to see me write about please let me know.
well i actually had in mind a page devoted just to users submitting their ideas for articles they would find interesting. seems similar to your recent ‘pre-post’ posting thing, but rather than specific dates or ideas just user suggestions and other users entries to either encourage you to post about those topics or not.
For example, you tried google docs out
I would be interested to hear your take on OpenOffice. I have been trying it out since i found myself needing a spreadsheet program in lab after i reformatted earlier that day. I downloaded the _torrent_ of the latest build, and within five minutes was working. I have not gone back yet, and i have been exceptionally satisfied. I especially like the google-docs plugin, which makes it super easy to have small files stored instantly online and on your computer with just ctrl+S
I’d recommend posting on my schedule posts with suggestions so I can slate them in the for the next week. I might go ahead and give OpenOffice a try if you think that’s something you might be interested in (hell, I’m interested too!)
I might post a review about my switch from Google Docs to Office 2007… I really like the new office a lot, although a lot of people seem to hate the new ribbon interface…
man, that really isn;t the best site. not only that its one of those sites so mess they load slowly even on broadband, but its so busy it is really hard to grab the relevant news.
really could probably use a complete overhaul. probably cheaper than trying to sort out what they have right now
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It starts with people. Who are they? Where do they live? What they care about? Why are they coming in the first place? Are they repeat visitors? How are they finding our site in the first place?
What I am about gets tactical but it will help build your strategy and maybe hit the payload on keywords.
The site already has Google Analytics and HubSpot (SEO) which provides a head start. Grab those reports and have a round table with your crew ASAP examining who from where is looking at what.
The insight gained from this and other Q&A with CountryHound should help create a powerful picture\profile of the CountryHound fans and people of interest. Then overlay them with trends of interest.
An example of trends of interest may be. You notice visitors from Tamworth, Australia a country music center, a few other country music hotspots internationally and in North America. You can then hypothesize that these activity hubs are looking for to Tennessee music scene for x, y, z.
Now here is the gold. For the identified locations. Get on the phone and start calling people. Call people locally, call people nationally and YES call people internationally!
Wow you are a caller from Tennessee, USA? What do you want to know?
Build structure and gathering methods around the conversations and convert response into “hot words” and needs. Then overlay with more likely scientific SEM tools,etc.
It’s bricks and mortar marketing but you may be surprised such insights a feedback loop can create for your SEM strategy…
Good post, I’ve found that by being funny, open, and honest, prospects are a lot more receptive to me. I start off making fun of myself and my industry and acknowledge that they probably get a 100 calls a week from people just like me. I tell them that we don’t take ourselves too seriously but we’re dead serious about what we do.
I sell myself as being high value, not low cost and that we look for clients who value quality over pinching pennies.
Works like a charm… I suspect it’s because I’m honest and upfront.
So are you a telemarketer then? I agree with all of your points – when a marketer comes across as honest and straightforward I’d imagine they do better across all disciplines.
I actually own a Chicago-based offshore development firm. Most of my marketing is via my blog and networking events. However, I do occasionally make cold calls and send emails to prospects and have found that leaving a funny, no-nonsense VM is incredibly effective.
I poked around on your blog a little bit; your article at the top of the fold on “Another Outsourcing Horror Story” was pretty informative. I definitely agree that project management is the most common point of failure for outsourced software design.
I’ve had to do some cold-calling myself, although when I did it it was for a political party in the CA 2002 Gubernatorial Campaign; I had to call up people who had volunteered for service and remind them what they had committed to do – I got put on the receiving end of some of the nastiest comments I’ve ever heard in my entire life, mostly from belligerent voters who had forgotten that they had committed to do community service for their party and wanted to get out of it.
I’m not sure how standard TM practices apply in that situation.
I have followed your post blog for many months now. I just happed across this post and thought I would share my experiences with you. Basically you cannot use ASP.NET to control the input url of WordPress with out integrated pipelines. Which is what you found above. However I was able to use a reverse proxy to actually request the URL from wordpress. The reverse proxy worked like the URL Rewriter, except it was making an extra call in a form that WordPress understood when running in IIS.
So you were actually able to get those URLs to work? Really? Hot damn! Nice work. I went ahead and added that first post of yours to my del.icio.us account.
In August i tred to get your second option (index.php/blah/blah/) to work but for some reason it didn’t…. maybe I should give it another try.
Anyways, thanks for the great comment! I’m going to revise my old “WordPress for IIS” page and add your links to it.
I think Facebook is headed down but I don’t think it has that much to do with “being cool” In my experience communication services tend to buck age-based trends (when AIM was popular it transcended age groups as just one example) because with those services its all about who you are talking to not how you are doing it.
I think the big mistake that people make with this stuff is to think that it somehow transcends the world of normal software. It doesn’t. More to the point software is cyclical and will always be replaced by either a new version or a better product.
Sure there’s a lock in factor involved but people have proven time and time again that they are willing to re-establish their social connections for the next big thing.
In fact, if you look Social Networking sites have actually seen a lot of turnover in just the last five years or so. Blogger was hot, then LiveJournal, then Xanga, then Myspace, now Facebook (and I probably left some out in that list). The question for me is “Does Facebook do everything a social network could do?” and the answer as far as I’m concerned is a resounding “no” That tells me that Facebook’s days are likely numbered.
I know for me, the killer app for Social Networks will be a service that actually allows me to keep up with what my friends are doing. I signed up an initial group of about 10 friends on Facebook. All people I think the world of but that I rarely get to see. I was hoping Facebook would help me keep up with them but other than letting me know when they’ve “become a vampire” its been fairly lacking in that area.
Yep indeed hubpages is growing much more faster. On my frist time on hubpages I saw its potential to grow more and more. It was a fun and enjoyable hubbing on hubpages. Glad money stayed hubbing. http://moneyhubpages.blogspot.com
You bring up a really interesting perspective coming from the “software cycle” standpoint. If we’re going to talk about Facebook as software then I think we should talk about it from the “feature bloat” standpoint. The news feed, which I originally hated, then loved, and now hate again, is a good example.
Back when I used to like it, it served as a rapid delivery system for updating me about my friends; oh hey, my cousin uploaded pictures from his wedding or my best friend broke up with his girlfriend and so on. Now it’s bloated with crap from people who are friends of my friends and I could care less about.
And do I really need to be turned into a ninja? A vampire? A zombie? A… RAIDERS FAN?
One of the points of the article I linked to is that exclusion is what makes these services hip at first but as you point out these services might die just because they get replaced with something newer, regardless of the reason. Maybe it’s just a systems upgrade or maybe it’s just more “chic.”
There is a critical fifth option that sits somewhere between “Do Little” and “Send in the Lawyers”, it would be “Secure Takedown” and would involve using the DMCA to secure either removal of the work from the host or from the search engines.
The process is very simple, does not require a lawyer and can be done in about ten minutes when you get the hang of it and have a good stock letter.
Honestly, it most cases, especially involving spam blogging, it is the best approach.
On that note. the final option could play into the hands of scrapers and thieves considering they love attention, any attention.
Hope this helps and thank you for drawing attention to this issue!
Somewhere, back when I was a misled youth, I participated in a SomethingAwful.com raid on Ebaum’s World for stealing copy righted SA material. That was my first dip into the pool of “flexible fair use.”
A lot of really shitty authors hide behind fair use as though it’s a cover-all for what is essentially complete and utter theft. Fair Use != stealing images and overwriting someone’s water mark with your own.
@Jonathan,
I tried to cover your point somewhere in the raise hell option (C&D for Cease & Desist) but I don’t know as much as you do on the subject. I looked over your list of DMCA contacts and I was really impressed at the lengths you probably had to go through to acquire all of that information.
I’m going to try to get in touch with you for a bit more information about leveraging DMCA to protect content; it would be a handy addition to my Field Guide for Social Marketing. I’m doing business travel all day tomorrow and Wednesday but I’ll try to shoot you an email between now and then!
Aaron: Feel free to shoot me an email any time you wish. I’ll be leaving town Thursday night to head to Dallas and WordCamp but I should be checking email the whole time.
Just drop me a line any time you’re available and I’ll help out any way I can.
And the DMCA contact information was a pain to create but I was fortunate in that I had amassed about half of it before I started. I’d created a personal rolodex of sorts before I decided to make it public…
And frankly, this is one of the reasons why I’m no longer on Facebook. I’m too damn old! At 35 I figure most of the “cool kids” are going to think “whos this old guy?”. And really, I had “old guy” intentions in joining–curiousity about their Apps platform for marketing reasons. I wasn’t on there to be social with my peops.
Aaron, thanks for bringing this up, but please allow me to explain how I use StumbleUpon to market my own website. I am a great fan of social networking sites, not only for the value they can bring to one’s own blog, but because of the value you get from the sites themselves too.
Firstly allow me to explain I not only connect with people or send a stumble requests to friends on my list. I also use the StumbleUpon advertising solution which provides potentially huge numbers of traffic depending on how much you’re willing to pay on a day-by-day basis.
I do not send stumble requests just for the sake of it and to everybody on my contact list. For each new ‘fan’ or ‘friend’ I get on StumbleUpon, I visit their profile and write down a short list of their interests, which StumbleUpon provides at the side of their profile.
If, in the future I submit a piece of my content to StumbleUpon which I feel is worth the attention of people on my friends list, I will send them the page with a short message which goes something along the lines of “Hey, thought you may be interested in this article on XXXX” – it is then up to the user whether he/she looks at the page and certainly whether they leave a vote or not. How do I determine if a piece of content is useful to people on my list? I Simply look at their interests which I have written down as described above.
Please understand that I do not use StumbleUpon purely as a marketing effort for my own websites. Whilst the site is one of my largest referrers, I also the site because of the useful content I can find their based on my topics of interest. I do a lot more stumbling of other peoples work than I do for any of my own. You can see that via the stats on my stumble profile. As a guide, at this moment in time I have voted for 808 pages, bearing in mind I only have about 35 posts on my blog, and probably only half of them has ever been submitted to StumbleUpon, so I feel I am a lot more generous in my Stumbles for other sites than I am for my own.
Of all the content of mine which has been submitted to StumbleUpon, I ONLY ever send a stumble request for my very best content. By no means do I send content just to get a thumbs up, because I know doing that can also bring the opposite effect. If you really start to bug people, 1, they either remove you from their list, or 2, they can give you a thumbs down.
Lastly, You also mentioned that I get a nice amount of traffic and comments etc, but StumbleUpon is only one tool in my marketing toolbox. Whilst it’s the only ‘social networking site’ I use to market my own work, I do paid advertising and a lot of guest-blogging at 5/6 other high-profile sites which also help bring in nice steady amounts of traffic and comments.
If you have any other questions or queries, I’d be interested in hearing them, and will be happy to answer any questions.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Stumbling yourself, per se. After all, you’re only letting others know that something exists for review. If it sucks, it won’t get any thumbs up, votes, etc. anyway.
However, you’re talking about sending stumble requests. I’ve experienced what your talking about on StumbleUpon and it feels more like begging. Nothing really wrong with that either if you only have a few beggars here and there. But if you accumulate enough “friends” and they’re all promoting their own stuff (because they rarely send stumble requests about other people’s stuff), then it starts to feel like spam. And that’s when StumbleUpon isn’t fun anymore.
Though I have to admit part of my reaction is based on me mentally scanning the last few months trying to see if I have been a smut, annoying jack ass about my iPhone. I’ll be the first to admit it has come to a point where I’m not allowed to take it out when I’m with my girlfriend and in public (an edict set down by her).
I mean…I don’t know what to say, the device has literally changed my life. I’m typing this very comment right now because of it (it’s so easy to browse the web on it that whenever I can’t sleep I reach over and read a few feeds off Google reader). It changes your perspective and it makes you a little fanatical. I’m actually on the edge of buying a Macbook Pro and learning Objective-C/Cocoa just to develop applications for it which is a lot of time and money to spend on one device with such a limited user base. What can I say? It makes you a passionate fan and I’m honestly not sure if that’s a bad thing or not.
Where I do think a fanatical fan base hurts Apple though is in the way it influences their actions. I made a post in November titled “Learning to be an Apple User” where I said (excuse the quote, but it says exactly what I wanted to here and I didn’t want to retype)…
I have to say that one of the most interesting things about owning an iPhone has been seeing firsthand how Apple treats its customers. Honestly, I’m not impressed.
Take today, my iPhone just updated itself to firmware version 1.1.2 and after looking around on the web for about 10 minutes I still have no idea exactly what was done to my iPhone. There’s certainly no official announcement so the best I have is picking up random discoveries from other users.
Now, say what you will about Microsoft they would NEVER get away with this. I doubt they’d even try. This experience just points back to that age old truth that Apple PCs and support really aren’t that great they just have rabid fans who will love them no matter what.
End Quote
The last few months have only deepened the feeling that Apple really doesn’t care what I think and will do to me whatever they please because they know their core fan base will always come back for more. They don’t need me and they aren’t afraid to let me know it.
Might seem harsh but that’s often how they come across when I deal with them in person, even the people who work in the Apple store.
“What can I say? It makes you a passionate fan and I’m honestly not sure if that’s a bad thing or not.”
That’s a great thing! There’s nothing wrong with being passionate about it; it’s the movement to try and convert every one else that ruffles some people’s feathers. But it’s not just the movement to convert people; it’s what they say when they’re doing it.
Take a look at the Mac vs. PC commercials, for instance; PCs are inferior, PCs break a lot, PCs are for dorks, and so forth. If Toyota ran commercials every day called “Toyota vs. Ford” where they featured a burly, masculine guy representing Toyota pick-up trucks and a skinny poseur representing Ford pick-up trucks and a bunch of “Toyota is better Ford sucks” messages, don’t you think there’d be a lot of people, and not just Ford owners, who think “well this is a little ridiculous?”
I think a lot of PC users have a similar sentiment; rather than being shamed into purchasing a Mac by an advertising campaign that tries to tell us that our current solution is inferior we simply reject the cult of smugness emanated by the Apple community.
I’m sorry but I haven’t played around with deleting SPs made with schemas other than ‘dbo.’ The query works by gathering all of the table names from the “sysobjects” table and flushes everything out. I’m not sure if there is a work-around for other schemas.
Does it deter sales? Obviously. There’s plenty of people like yourself who make purchasing decisions based on what other people might think of them. I can think of several other examples: wouldn’t buy a Hummer because people who drive them are jerks, don’t shop at Wal-Mart because only poor people shop there, buy Prada because some celebrity owns the same purse, buy a Prius so that people will think them environmentally conscious. There’s perfectly good reasons to do the opposite of each of those things but people like you paint everybody with the same brush.
What you buy is not who you are. I know that’s hard for a marketer to understand, but I own Macs because I find them useful computers. Just because there’s people out there who think that owning a Mac makes them better or more special or more cool doesn’t mean that I believe that. In other words, in judging a Mac owner based on your stereotypical view of how *some* Mac users behave is wrong. Not purchasing a Mac because you’re afraid of being judged by that stereotype is strikingly bizarre.
So don’t presume to know exactly what sort of person someone is based on a single purchasing decision. I own a Mac and I’ll recommend it to someone if they ask my opinion, but honestly I don’t care what anyone else does with their money. (For the record, I’ve met my fair share of PC zealots too.) The problem is zealotry coupled with materialism in my view: what I buy is good, what you buy is shit—even though they may both objectively achieve our respective ends.
“So don’t presume to know exactly what sort of person someone is based on a single purchasing decision.”
Bill, I know plenty of level-headed Mac owners; the problem is that the BRAND is what represents the culture, and the brand is defined by both the company’s advertisements (Mac vs. PC) and the way the ownership community represents itself in public.
If you read my language in the post you’ll see that I don’t paint all Mac owners with the same brush, just many of them. I have left some room for exceptions.
For the record, I buy PCs because they offer features that Apple machines do not, but even if Apple did offer the same functionality I wouldn’t buy it just because the brand leaves a foul taste in my mouth. I will be writing a
post tomorrow that outlines it. I could care less what OTHER people would think of me if I buy a Mac; I care about what a Mac represents, and in my own mind what I own is what represents me. It’s the same reason why I won’t buy a hybrid car.
And I’ll contest the “what you buy is not who you are” statement until I die. If you come to work every day dressed in wearing neatly pressed Brook’s Brothers and a nice pair of Ecco shoes, does that not say something about your sense of style, your affluence, or your job? If you drive a beat up old truck, an H1, or a hybrid, don’t any of those say SOMETHING about you? What they say is open to intrepretation, but whether you like it or not, they all say something.
So what “owning a Mac” says about you is open to interpretation; you interpret it as a just a functional tool that you work well with – and I respect that. However, I see a great many more people who believe that owning a Mac means that they’re part of some technologically superior, smug social movement where everyone wears pastel colors, dances to Bono, and video blogs all of it as though anyone else will care – that just isn’t for me.
What I was wondering is, am I alone in thinking that the perception of Apple as a “smug social movement” can actually hurt their sales?
One thing that you and I can agree on, Bill, is that iJustine is ridiculous.
Let’s pick your example of someone wearing a Brooks Brothers suit. How might various people evaluate him:
1) some corporate big shot who’s probably an arrogant jerk
2) a fashionable, successful man
3) some corporate drone hoodwinked into wearing a uniform
4) a guy who doesn’t care about the poor because he’s wearing a several thousand dollar suit
5) an eligible candidate for a relationship
6) he thinks he’s better than me
In reality, he may be all of those things, none of those things, or any of those things. But by basing an evaluation on that piece of clothing, you’re doing him a grave injustice. More importantly, you’re doing yourself a disservice because this guy might be a great friend, awesome boss, perfect husband, or fascinating individual. But you’ve got him pinned down by just knowing one fact about him.
In reality, these stereotypes (including yours) say much, much more about the observer than the subject. When you meet a person and find out that he’s a Mac user, you’re probably letting loose a mental sigh and preparing for an onslaught of Mac paeans. But what if that person was me? It would never come and maybe you’d never even bother to get to know me.
Anticipating a common reaction, you might reply that you certainly don’t judge people like that, that you wouldn’t care whether the person used a Mac or not unless they started the droning. So why do you think that every one of your fellow humans is different? In other words, you’re worried that getting a Mac would engender exactly that response in others even though you yourself would never behave like that. Give your fellow man some credit. Most people, in my experience, aren’t hidebound by stereotypes.
Why does the man himself wear the Brooks Brothers’ suit? He could buy similar looking clothing at a lower cost from Macy’s or elsewhere, but why did he choose Brooks Brothers? Probably because identifies himself with the values that that brand represents, in one form or another. There IS a reason; what you’re saying is that there isn’t one nor should other people assume that there is. Sorry, but that’s simply not true.
I wear BitTorrent T-shirts and jeans because I identify myself as a geek and I like feeling comfortable. What does that say about me? Some people might construe wearing a shirt that sponsors a product used primarily as a means for pirating music as anti-establishment or something bizarre like that. Frankly I don’t care what anyone else thinks about what the shirt means; to me it just means that I’m identifying with my geeky interests.
Truthfully, I do groan when I meet someone who introduces themselves as a “Mac user” because, from my experience, the next thing I get to listen to is a song of praise about some product that I don’t have much interest in. The fact is that Mac users themselves created the stereotype. If you don’t represent the Mac user stereotype then good for you, but until Mac users stop getting into people’s faces, people who reject the Cult of Apple are going to keep calling Mac owners “smug jerks.”
Again, I don’t care what other people would think about me if I use a Mac book in public; I run around with an XPS gaming laptop in public now. I care about giving my hard-earned money to a corporation whose values I don’t agree with – integrated design is something that has some merit, but not being able to shut up about it is not. So can you see that what other people think of me bears little into the equation? It’s the idea of owning a product from a brand that leaves a foul taste in my mouth.
Speaking of stereotypes:
“I know that’s hard for a marketer to understand, but I own Macs because I find them useful computers.”
What’s that supposed to mean? Isn’t that a stereotype of marketers? Why would you ask me not to stereotype Apple owners when you stereotype marketers ?
Back to the point though: how much harm can this “mac user” stereotype do to Apple’s sales?
Rather than attack the stereotype [it exists and it's not going to go away] attack my rationale for how I think that the stereotype can hurt sales. Can’t it also bring people in? How so?
Will the “Creating Meaning and Belonging” strategy affect sales. Yes. When you get brand manager’s making the switch into community development the coming groundswell will expose their game.
If you use MAC because of function – Hack your i-phone, scratch of apple and re-skin it. How do you feel now?
I like the parlor trick of attempting to point out my hypocrisy but it falls flat because you took my statement out of context. The previous line was “What you buy is not who you are.” Marketing is about convincing people that what they buy is defining. So my statement that it’s hard for a marketer to understand that is not a generalization about what marketers believe but a statement about what marketing is. Nice try though.
Regarding my Brooks Brothers example, you’ve completely missed my point. I said that he may fit all, none, or some of those evaluations. The motivation behind why he made the purchase is irrelevant to the stereotyper because the stereotyper “knows” why he bought it.
“I care about giving my hard-earned money to a corporation whose values I don’t agree with – integrated design is something that has some merit, but not being able to shut up about it is not.”
What values of Apple don’t you agree with? Integrated design, a simple buying experience, ubiquitous retail stores? You’re conflating Apple the company with Apple devotees. News flash: Apple has no control over Apple “cultists.”
What values of Apple don’t you agree with? Integrated design, a simple buying experience, ubiquitous retail stores? You’re conflating Apple the company with Apple devotees. News flash: Apple has no control over Apple “cultists.”
I find the Brooks Brothers example a tough fit because they, to the best of my knowledge, don’t go out of their way to bash the wearers of other suits in their Ads. That’s not true of Apple though.
Apple’s entire marketing message since I was 4 years old has been to portray Apple users as exceptional and PC users as mindless drones. From that original Superbowl Ad to “Think Different” and now with the “I’m a Mac” ads the message has always been one of inherent superiority.
So you can say Apple has no control over their zealots but the truth is Apple designed its marketing to (a) attract those people and (b) enforce their feeling of superiority (which I think is the behavior that Aaron finds unappealing).
If you want to see a lot of weird-looking Apple users with Apple tattoos then I highly recommend that video.
And Tom said it better than I could – Apple’s own messaging from Cupertino brought in those kinds of users so they really are in control over their image. Mac vs. PC sums it up pretty well.
I don’t see how I took your generalization about marketers out of context Bill; what context am I missing?
I’m not so much annoyed with the users as with Apple for marketing themselves as this cool brand that is your friend. I generally find that kind of marketing very patronising and I feel that Apple’s products are more often than not overpriced.
One thing to be aware of with StumbleUpon is that there is a diminishing returns effect. Each vote for a page on a particular domain carries less weight than the one before it. So if somebody is constantly asking for stumbles for the same site, over time those stumbles will become worthless.
Yeah that’s how I was starting to feel – like it was becoming a spam service and so forth. I understand the value of stumbling your own pages just so some clown doesn’t categorize your page under the wrong category. I’ve written about that before at-length.
@Caroline,
Yep, that’s definitely another thing to be wary of – however, a lot of people will riffle off stumble requests without stumbling the page first in order to get around that.
I agree completely. I’ve had a client for eight years and he’s refused to budge on this one until just last week. He’s finally come to realize that the only competitors that don’t already have his prices are the ones that would be too stupid to stay in business more than a month. Unfortunately, he’s lost a lot of business over the years trying to protect this rather public information.
Thanks for commenting, and for submitting this to BizSugar! I assume the big impetus for doing this, other than weak privacy as you mentioned, is to collect contact information from potentially interested parties.
If they wan to collect information, they should just have users fill out a web form first. There’s nothing really wrong with that. The number of downloaders will be smaller, but at least you can track and follow up with them.
This article is called ‘How to Publish an Item on a User’s Feed’ however it doesn’t actually describe that at all. It just talks about some of the pitfalls. Please can you update the article with a How To guide so that we can see literally – ‘How to Publish an Item on a User’s Feed’. Thanks!
I got a good laugh about the guy trying to pick up girls by flashing his iPhone. Reminds me of a guy I knew back in my single days who would always flash his “Beemer” key around in bars.
Yes, I think that certain products and the way they’re marketed cause them to develop an aura around them that can both attract and deter people. Cars have long had this.
Not surprised – the cost of spamming is so cheap, hence why it proliferates so many different services (blog comments, forum posts, email, newsgroups, and now social networks apparently)
Good luck. Twitter is definitely a flash point of some kind. I don’t use the service and I comment on it more often than I ever would have thought I would.
Though in fairness a lot of that is because I’m covered on Techmeme. The Techmeme algorithm is based on how many people link to you and I’m about as opposed to the other people covered by the service as anyone so I suspect I’ll be cast out eventually. But while the opportunity exists I feel a certain responsibility to be the “voice of the opposition” on topics where no one else is giving the other side.
Since everyone loves Twitter unconditionally on Techmeme that means a lot of Twitter commenting.
Anyway, I hope it works out for you. My only concern would be the phrasing. It’s hard enough conveying what you actually mean when you have unlimited characters to work from. Sending messages of only 140 characters to professional contacts seems a little scary to me. Most people aren’t easy to offend but I’ve found those that are look just like those who aren’t. So you don’t discover them until they’re offended by something they thought you said.
Kudos for taking the leap–I was reluctant myself, but when I finally got on I (like so many others) fell in love.
The truly great thing about it is that it’s a very simple, basic “medium”, and how you use it is entirely up to you. Purely social, marketing/lead development, broadcasting (some folks do this–Seth Godin in particular. I don’t find it particularly “in tune” with the medium, but hey, there’s no rule against it).
It takes a while before it to make sense to you, as it’s basically whatever you make of it, but hopefully you’ll find your stride with it and enjoy it.
I created a little Twitter app for runners on my site: http://www.hellasound.com/GoRun Creating the app was dead simple, and how folks use it is one of the things I’m looking forward to finding out.
I’ll follow you as soon as I hit submit on this comment
I think I accidentally invited you to Twitter when I was playing around with it the night I wrote this post – I was trying to see if you had a Twitter ID (I assumed you did given how much you’ve written about it) so sorry if you got an email from Twitter on my behalf.
Accidentally offending people with online communication has been a problem ever since AOL Instant Messenger – even back then you could correct the issue in real-time but the problem stems from the difficulty of communicating tone of voice. We don’t realize how big an impact tone has on our interpersonal communication until we have to do without a lot of it.
@John,
GoRun is an awesome idea – I just read over your description of it. The idea of aggregating subject-specific tweets makes it feasible to build a real twitter community around a specific area of interest. That’s a great concept!
I really enjoy the personal intercommunication on Twitter – one of my readers sent me a direct Tweet and I think it’s a good opportunity to get to know some of my own readers better. Blog comments are a good method too, but they’re not as personal as a Tweet is.
am using Iframe for Java aplication for intigrating in Facebook , facing problem while redirecting to the application page from Servlet , the page is occupying full Screen with change of Canvas url to call back url instead rendering in the facebook as an application if any body knows the solution plz reply to it
and how to post mini feeds in profile page if we use Iframe
Thanks for testing Trackur and providing your feedback.
I’d like to give some feedback on your last bullet points.
1. If you add “smartdraw.com” to the “does not include” filter list, and you won’t see your own results.
2. With reputation monitoring, most people find it more beneficial to find the “discovered” date. If a negative item, created 6 months ago, suddenly gets added to del.icio.us, you’d want to know about the discovery date. But I do take your point.
3. Saving your keyword search allows Trackur to start monitoring the web, instead of just showing a snapshot. I think two weeks is a pretty reasonable amount of time to test it out, but I’ll consider a longer period, if others request it too.
Please feel free to email me andy@trackur.com, if you have any other suggestions or if I can help walk you through some of Trackur’s features.
1. I didn’t realize the keyword filtering would also do URLs. I’d add a couple of examples below “Must Include” and “Must Not Include” boxes to make it clear that you can add URLs.
2. I think more people are interested in when the content was published, not when it was found. But I see your point though. Let’s say there was a blog entry written about an old version of the product – a bad review. If someone wrote a new comment about the CURRENT VERSION of our product on that blog post tomorrow would Trackur show an update saying that new content had been added to an existing item, would it be easy to discern that from the Trackur interface. THAT is something that I’d request for my job in a heartbeat.
3. I get how the saved keyword search works – understood that when I wrote the article, too. I’m just saying that you might want to allow for some saved searches during the trial to make for a more complete history of snapshots – give the potential customer a better set of results to look at than what you’re currently offering.
There is a definite need for reputation management software beyond Google Alerts; I just think Trackur needs some work.
Thanks for taking the time to comment – I’m a big fan of Marketing Pilgrim by the way.
We’ll keep on adding new features as we grow, and refine the current ones. For less than $200 a month, I think we have pretty robust and valuable solution–especially when you consider that the next jump up from Google Alerts would normally cost $1,000+ per month.
We just launch in Feb, so this kind of feedback helps us to grow and focus on what users want. You can also leave it at http://trackur.suggestionbox.com/
I’ll leave you with this final thought. Trackur notified me of your blog post.
That’s true – the cost of the alternatives is pretty steep. Either way, Andy, best of luck and I’ll subscribe to the Trackur blog to see what sort of improvements you make to the system. I have nothing but respect for your marketing talent and I appreciate your candor in discussing the issues with your product.
And I figured you’d find this via Trackur, given how quickly you posted your comment on my blog after the post went live :p
I’ve gotta say I’ve never even considered this to be an either/or decision. Each method provides rather different, but complementary benefits.
Coming from an old school marketing background, I’d have to say I’d create static documents first and support them with a blog. It’s what most people still expect. I couldn’t imagine going into a meeting without vendor documents to pass around. I certainly wouldn’t print out a wordy blog for a meeting. On the other hand, a blog gives me more insight into a company and its products. But that’s only if I’m interested enough to read the blog (most likely because I was interested based on the static documents).
My two cents: Under most circumstances, blogs are not meant to replace static documents.
It seems like the way to go would be the best of both worlds – publish a blog so that the smaller developers who crawl the net in their spare time find your product, and have easily accessible “real” documents on your blog in case a very busy professional comes in who simply wants the bullet points, not the whole term paper
On the ‘blogs are to sketchy’ note, I would say the blog has to be very well designed to lend a more professional look (not ad’s on two sidebars and the footer ) and must be well written, informal enough not to be a paper, but also not a ‘im to cool to care about grammar’ post
just my thoughts – interesting question though. Ill follow the comments
1. After doing some testing with some email campaigns – if you give customers a choice of Blog or Document, they overwhelmingly choose “Document.” My guess is that Blog is still a four-letter word in the vocabulary of many consumers.
2. The blog seems to do pretty well among people who prefer to do online “window shopping” before making a purchase.
Use the blog to build, develop, and nurture relationships and deliver up-to-date info snippets and show your unique difference to prospects and clients.
Use the content management capabilities of a WP blog to deliver those White Papers, e-Courses, contracts, blah, blah, blah that people “expect”. They want this stuff usually for credibility. For example, I have a blog within a blog. The Marketing Caddy is my front-end “public” blog. My “Inside the Ropes” sub-domain is my back-end e-course, pdf download, prospect sort and slice machine.
Finally, mix in off-line touch points as part of your marketing systems. Integrate phone contacts, voice broadcasts, auto-mated print mail… and finally, if it’s a big ticket contract, sit down face-to-face and sell ‘em.
The business perception surrounding blogs is funny. My brother, a partner in a CPA firm, swears he’s never visited a blog. I get on-line with him, and ask him to show me sites he uses. Most are blog platforms that “look-like” static sites.
A business blog doesn’t have to look like a blog.But, don’t call it a “blog”. The perception of “blogs” in the REAL business world is it’s not serious and lacks credibility.Credibility is a key thing in BTB. People in business are scared as hell of picking the wrong product/service and making a mistake
Finally, back to your original question…
If I’m starting a new marketing campaign, I’d always begin strategically. What is the pain or desire? Who’s my target or Ideal prospect? What emotional buttons can I push to move them along the marketing and sales cycle?
Once I understand these fundamentals, then I can determine and TEST which info delivery formats convert and sell best.
2. Calls to action were:
“read more on our blog” or “download our PDF on [subject of the email]
I think you’re right about not referring to our blog as a “blog.” We’re also considering experimenting with not giving our audience a choice of where to go at all; the new call to action would be “click here to read more” or something along those lines.
We had the same issues with CS and Disconasp. We tried and worked with them but no real answer could be provided to us. We moved to Server Intellect and installed the CS. Works perfect. No more issues.
I’m not sure if this counts as “one reason” but I’d think the tendency for bloggers to be unreasonable ranks pretty high. I still vividly remember how Amazon’s Kindle got panned for not having multi-touch (a feature Apple had introduced just a few weeks earlier).
I guess that might fit into your #3 but I tend to think it goes beyond that in many ways. To give an example, is it personal bias that Mike Arrington of Techcrunch hates any service that charges for music just because he believes all music should be free? It seems like that almost goes above personal bias to the point that it should be called something else.
The truth is, I’ve always been unsure to what extent marketers should embrace the blogging community. There’s really no way of knowing how they’ll react or what motivates them to react in the way they do and since they all link to each other you risk destroying your Google results if things go the wrong way. If you ignore them at least they can only bash you for that.
That makes sense if it was Arrington’s goal to drive numbers but it seems like his decision to bring Gillmor aboard was to help establish some legitimacy to TechCrunch’s brand. If you look at the original announcement to bring Steve Gillmor aboard it talks about Gillmor’s rich experience and his prestidge as a high tech journalist; you can read it here:
However, given how bad Gillmor’s execution has been it looks as though Gillmor is actually doing more harm than good to TechCrunch’s desired image of being a legitimate tech news source. Arrington has numbers and that makes him powerful, but if he’s trying to make TechCrunch a legitimate news source and not a sham like the big media outlets that he slams so often then his decision to bring Gillmor aboard has been nothing but counter-productive.
Also, Gillmor’s countroversy isn’t so much the subject of his writing as it is the writing itself – not the right kind of controversy if you ask me.
Looks like Gillmore should stick to Podcasts since his writing sucks…
Arrington’s bad? Gilmor’s posts do bring out lots of comments… and some of ‘em are pretty damn funny… since his writing is so horrible.
Not sure if it’s hurting the TechCrunch brand. I’m only a casual TC reader. Given the TC business model, Arrington sells more ads and attracts more advertising dollars when he bumps readership and comments. I recall Arrington’s comments in a recent New York Times piece about the relentless pressure for his blog to produce fresh, cutting edge tech news and content. This is one way to fuel readership without the “scoop” pressure. Yep, he’s taking a page out of MSM that he slams.
Tech Crunch is already a legit tech news source, but Arrington is forced to keep feeding the beast.
Plus, you gotta admit… it’s always a hoot when smart guys try to even sound smarter. They end up sounding like complete morons. In turn this let’s TechCrunch readers have a common enemy that makes ‘em feel good. Maybe not Arrington’s original intention, but will it hurt TC? Guess we’ll see…
Arrington’s bias against the music industry is a good example of my third point.
I thought of another one when I was driving home the other day – accoutability. If someone at a news paper writes a review that is false or obviously untruthful then your company can have its complaints heard by the publisher itself. When the propreitor is the same person as the author, like most bloggers, then the only people that you can hold the reviewer accountable to are the blogger’s readers and they probably can’t hear you in the first place.
I don’t know that I agree on the consumer point. The problem is, and I know how weird this sounds but bear with me, Apple is a complete novice at Marketing. I know how antithetical that sounds but think about it. There are many different components to marketing and the only ones Apple has shown proficiency for are branding and advertising.
They’ve never bothered with things like market research because they have a cult that will snap up almost anything they throw out there. The Apple Cube is the perfect example of this. I know for a fact Apple put no market research into the cube because it’s practically identical to the NeXT PC (http://www.sieler.com/vcf4/ex-next.jpg) that Jobs’ was trying to sell years earlier.
I really think it’s the great lie of Apple. Everyone assumes they’re products are perfect and that it’s just the price the keeps them from being mass market hits. But the truth is the price difference is usually only a couple hundred dollars at the most and most people buy computers on credit meaning a couple hundred isn’t going to matter. The reason people don’t buy Apple is because they don’t like them (as you found on this very blog)
The iPhone seems like the same thing to me. Sure it seems like it’s destined to greatness from the tech industry perspective (and I certainly love mine) but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I polled about 100 teenagers (remember my agency has a school attached to it) and they all said the same thing: Video and MMS (or the ability to message pictures as they put it) are deal breakers.
For that matter, text messaging is more important than calling for them which raises questions about the soft keyboard as well.
Apple very well may take over the consumer market but I don’t think it’s as cut and dried as people think and I again think it goes back to Apple’s inability to actually poll the market and find out what’s important to customers rather than just dictating what’s important to a cult that will take anything they offer.
Apple’s “inexperience with marketing” is something that we discussed in my last semester of college actually. When Steve Jobs released the video iPod he was asked “why will people use this?” His response? “I have no idea, but we figured we’d throw it out there.”
The MacBook AIR? Same example. Do people really want a laptop with a battery that is embedded into the motherboard just to save some space? Jobs had no idea but figured they’d throw it out there anyways.
I think Jobs has a clue when it comes to the iPhone, however – the addition of enterprise features, which Apple has had to license from Microsoft, are the result of customers demanding that this phone support more of the necessary services required to make it a feasible alternative to BlackBerrys and Treos.
As far as the youth market is concerned, if Apple is serious about targeting phone consumers in general and not just people who buy high-end smart phones then Apple will add those features as separate applications or minor add-ons.
I’m making the assumption that adding MMS will be trivial – if it turns out that the iPhone doesn’t have the cellular hardware (should have bought Qualcomm chips) to support it then you’re right – it might be a deal breaker for the youth market.
On the MMS I was with you a year ago but now that an entire year has passed I have to assume that its either (a) way harder than I think it is or (b) Apple is specifically not implementing it.
Which comes back to the problem of Apple. Its like the famous story of Jobs refusing to sign the students Mac keyboard unless he could pull off the function keys (which he apparently hates because they were borrowed from the PC). When Jobs doesn’t like something for whatever reason he’ll simply snub it and expect the world to deal.
(though ironically I guess he’s stuck with the function keys at this point)
I see nothing wrong with making money from your blog, as long as money making is not the main reason for blogging. If you provide useful and valuable content to your readers you can make an income from it as well by having some monetizing.
I agree – some of the ways bloggers go about making money on their blogs simply contradicts the “blogging ethos” that many endorse so self-righteously. That’s all that I was pointing out.
After thinking on it I think you’re probably right to an extent. I was probably to quick to put the last nail in PC Gaming’s coffin. I think on my part it was partly a result of moving on in life. Which is to say, PC Gaming is dwindlling, I’m getting older and gaming less which means not gaming on the PC at all, so I combined the two in my head to say that PC Gaming is disappearing completely.
All that said, I think you underestimate the Wii. Though you didn’t mention it specifically I’ve been more than a little impressed by Nintendo’s focus on the customer and on building hardward to meet the needs of the type of games that people want to play.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they captialized on a lot of the things you put in this post and eventually became a haven for different types of games.
P.S. One thing I picked out of your post though that is probably a topic for another time is the idea that “everyone needs a computer” Its a topic for another time but just for the record I know a lot of people who I work with who don’t have computers at home. They check e-mails and do their minor internet surfing at work so there’s no need for it. I was surprised by it at first but since then I’ve seen a lot of studies that say most internet traffic is during the week day so it might be mroe wide spread than any of us thinks.
I would have responded to you sooner were it not for the fact that I was migrating from DiscountASP.NET to Media Temple today. I didn’t want to have to repeat myself ;p
The Wii was the system I was thinking about most when I wrote this article – I think the Wii is the future of console gaming. It offers an experience that a computer would have a lot of trouble offering (it’s enough trouble setting up a network card, let alone motion sensors.) In addition, it makes gaming a social, in-person, experience; it’s different than XBox Live where you’re playing with other people over a network, just like how you would on a PC. Instead it’s great for when you have company over, parties, and so forth. It’s a fun, social way of gaming.
As for your point about not everyone needing a computer at home, I personally don’t know anyone who doesn’t have one. Well, except for the members of my family who are part of America’s Greatest Generation. Some of them don’t have personal computers.
Well said! I think that the kindle is pretty well-defined as a book substitute. Trying to make it into something else will not be to its benefit. Seth has identified a need for another kind of gadget, I suspect, for a different kind of consumer.
Yep, I’m aware of MyBrand but I had forgotten about it. Good thing that you brought it up! It’s a good idea for people starting new blogs to use a MyBrand-destination as the address for their feeds, but blogs who used FeedBurner without MyBrand for a while will still have their old subscribers subscribed to the FeedBurner address, and that’s still a problem.
Either way, moving all of your new subscribers to a domain created using MyBrand solves most of my concerns with FeedBurner, not all of them, but it solves the most important ones.
Thanks again for bringing up MyBrand – good call on that.
Just finished reading your blog article, Scott. It’s good stuff. I went ahead and got the ball rolling with MyBrand for my employer today. I might add it for my own personal blog soon.
FeedBurner’s data has never been that reliable; the subscribership data is a good ballpark estimate but it’s “reach” data is pathetic and grossly under-reported.
Do you mean the side nav on the profile? The only image that will show up there is the icon that you designate for your application which you can specify through the form mentioned in this post.
If you’re trying to build a side nav for a canvas page then you simply embed the image using any of the acceptable FBML/HTML markup.
I know exactly how you feel. About 3-4 years ago my wife bought me an ipod for as a present. At the time I was looking at other options. She bought an iphone shortly after they came out and now wants a 3g one. She wants to give me the old one. While it is an improvement over my current cell phone, I’m not sure I really want it( I don’t want to be an http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=idouche ). I would rather get an alternative (tilt), and even though we’re strapped for cash and I’m rather frugal, I will probably suck it up and just use her old one. She wants a mac, and I’ve told her to just get a copy of osx and I’ll just put it on her pc so we don’t have to pay a premium for the hardware. Speaking of which, it costs that much more for the same hardware as any pc, at least that’s my understanding and someone is more than welcome to prove me wrong. Something that I haven’t seen mentioned is about apply “fanatics”, look up the definition of fanatic, look at a definition. I would never want to be called one and would take offense, and they seem to take pride in being an apple fanatic. Every time I see any apple product I cringe and immediately think, idouche.
Yeah some people may not need the feature – I cover a broad range of stuff on this site and it doesn’t help that I used to write about technology before I migrated to covering marketing topics.
I’ve never had any of those PSA ads though; I guess that’s one benefit of having a broad range of potential contextual fits for advertisements.
Couldn’t agree more. Content dumping defeats the purpose of social media in the first place, but it’s easy to see how so many companies can fall into that trap. One-way communication has been the practice ever since the early days of advertising; it’s hard for some companies to shake themselves out of the habit and adopt two-way communication, whether it’s customer-to-customer (social network apps) or customer-to-business (blogs, forums.)
Either way, great post Jeremiah. Glad I found your blog (I’d heard Dave McCLure mention it before) and I’m glad to have you on the blogroll.
Not sure – I haven’t been following the new changes to the Facebook API much. Facebook.NET was by far and large the best API for .NET development and I’d say that that’s the one to look at – Nihkil is generally very good about keeping his API up-to-date.
Grrrrrr…the “Default FBML” field just ain’t workin’ for me. Nothing is ever displayed in the profile box (except for a “no content to display” message). I’m not writing profile FBML from my app, either.
1 million iPhone 3Gs sold in 3 days.
1.3 million new AT&T subscribers.
Did Apple not market as well as they should – maybe.
Is the pricing not a “deal” – probably.
Should Apple have been prepared for the high demand for their servers (iTunes, D/Ling 2.0 software) – absolutely.
This may have be a marketing problem, but it is a far cry from the Microsoft “Bluescreen” moment.
How can 1 million units sold be an “unmitigated disaster”?
Joe
PS – Show me a better all around cellphone/PDA with the equivalent to the App Store – there just is not any.
I think it’s indicative of a long-term strategic marketing failure. Apple’s situation, if you ask me, is actually worse than the bluescreen moment – the bluescreen moment was a PR flop, but Windows 98 still come off the shelves at a breakneck pace. It didn’t actually piss off millions of loyal customers at the time when it happened.
1 million iPhones (let’s say it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $300-350m in revenue – not everyone paid $199 for the hardware) is a nice windfall in the short run, but accruing it at the cost of shitting on their loyal fan base might have implications in the long run. How many people are going to run out and get locked into a more expensive contract, dump more money on the next iPhone? Speaking of which, what’s the next iteration of the iPhone going to offer? Can we expect to pay a few hundred bucks for the iPhone COPY N PASTE edition?
I’m a big picture guy – I’m looking ahead to how this release will affect the next iteration of the iPhone product line. Will the confusion, technical difficulties, and significant cost/value gap from the 3G release screw apple when it comes time for another upward sustaining iteration of the iPhone? I say “absolutely it will.”
FYI, Palm has had an application store for the Treo line of phones for about three years. Their applications might not have the “OMG APPLE <3″ buzz, but they’ve been around for a long time.
But Amazon does allow authors to respond! I assumes that was true for other products, but maybe not. If so, you should be able to counter misguided or uninformed criticism pretty easily.
I’ve searched for hours on end to try and find a way to respond to reviews. The only thing I can do, realistically, is write a comment on a review and that’s a pretty impotent way of addressing them.
Is there something that I am not aware of or have been unable to find?
I think we might have to agree to disagree on this one.
Without knowing the details of your particular deal I can’t tell for sure but it sounds to me like the person your company is working with is actually using your product. If that’s the case I’m not sure I’d consider that person an “influencer” under the common definition of “someone who influences merely by suggestion.” If a person is actually giving a demo, even if it’s given during an unrelated presentation, I think I’d consider that person more of a salesman (which is something I completely agree with).
But I will agree on one point, the Valleywag article is stupid. Even if Stock price was a valid indicator of a company’s overall health (it isn’t) you can’t necessarily fault marketing for the success of failure of a company. Beyond that there’s the question of their choice of sponsor. I’m actually one of the (seeming) few who actually have respect for at least some of what Scoble’s done but I can’t say I’ve met, spoken to or read the blog of many others who think highly of him. I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who thinks highly of his technical acumen.
The reality is in their rush to hire a spokesperson, any spokesperson, they lost sight of the 3M’s (no, I don’t mean they forgot their post it notes) but the 3M’s which may very well be replacing the 4P’s
* Market
* Message
* Media
For any campaign, now more then ever these three elements must be in alignment.
Where did the Seagate go wrong? Not all IT people are bloggers, and not all bloggers are hardware junkies. Robert Scoble was the perfect fit for a campaign to promote blogging software, but not the hardware that runs it.
I’m in agreement with you, Lorraine. Seagate did not have common ground (as I put it;) their 3M’s were clearly out of alignment (as you succinctly put it.) Blogging as a media may be fine for Seagate but they certainly got the other two M’s wrong.
@Tom,
It’s a shame that I can’t talk about this at length but I’ll give you the short version: essentially the influencers we’ve identified are acting as spokesmen for us and we’re both providing a consistent message to an active audience.
They aren’t salesman in that they’re actively pitching our software, but rather they’re saying that our software is an example of something that can handle a lot of the legwork in key areas of presentation design. It’s a bit more passive than direct selling and the best part is that it’s authentic: if the influencers we identified didn’t like our product or didn’t think it was suitable for their audience then they wouldn’t even mention it. I guess in that sense it’s a bit different than a sponsorship – if our product isn’t convincing enough to turn our own influencers into believers then we don’t pursue an outward-facing relationship.
I think Scoble is a nice guy, but I wouldn’t pick him as an influencer. He’s a bit too enthusiastic, too impulsive, and I think a lot of his audience feels that way too.
You provide a very well thought out advertising scenario. As the CEO of Twittad I would just like to give my take on things if I can.
Twittad knows that the background images on a Twitter users profiles are not clickable. Intelligent Twitter users know the same. Hence why you see the easy entry point prices being posted on Twittad. But I see Twitter evolving. My speculation is that if Twitter wants to gain more than just a simple 140 character business they will begin to develop their users pages more.
Allowing the users to upload applications, provide more than one simple link to a blog, the ability to upload photos, etc. This could be where Twitter is headed. Increasing the time a user spends on Twitter and having users viewing a profile page will increase page views, the time spent on the web version of Twitter, and bring in advertising dollars.
In addition to an Ad being seen on a profile background, when a user clicks on another user to send a Direct Message (DM) that users profile background image (with the Ad) is displayed. So one more spot for advertisers to gain a “eye”. If and advertiser wants to track effectiveness they could do so by displaying coupon codes and a different trackable URL, etc in their Ad.
I think you bring up some very good points, and they are all ones that were in our business model at the very beginning. It is our view that Twitter is in version 1.0. There are going to be many more versions of Twitter, and based on the amount of Twitter users signing up on Twittad..over 430 total as of today (9/3) people are open to this concept.
We are working on a lot of development and in the next few weeks we will roll out the second version of Twittad that will more effectively tie advertisers to Twitter users worldwide.
Thanks for responding to my comment. I totally overlooked the fact that those background ads are not clickable. Rather than provide you a full reply now I’m going to let the article air out for a bit before I get back to you.
Although I don’t think you intended to call my an unintelligent Twitter user, let me assure you that I use the service regularly. I totally forgot that you can’t even click on the background of the ads, and in my opinion that’s just another area of conversion that’s going to be added to the sales funnel. Based on the sample ads that I saw via TechCrunch I suppose the idea is to get Twitters to follow a “sponsored” Twitter account, i.e. one that belongs to a corporate blog and so forth. That idea has some merit to it – it uses basic permission marketing to get people to opt-in for updates from a service and I’m all about that.
However, how do you gauge performance for TwittAd then without CTR metrics? If your advertisers use TwittAd as the only method of promotion for a said Twitter account then measuring the total number of subscribers acquired makes sense as a metric, but what if they promote their account through other means, such as on the corporate blog itself per my earlier example?
I still think the idea is poor given the sales funnel – there’s just too much loss at any given step and the reach isn’t broad enough. However, I like your ideas about designing TwittAd to move alongside the evolution of Twitter and given that I left my crystal ball at home this morning I can’t speak to what Twitter may do and how it will be received by its user base.
Even if I don’t think the idea is good I still wish you the best of luck. Go get em!
Thanks for the follow up and I definitely was not calling you a unintelligent Twitter user. I have read many of your posts and have read Marketing Ninja before, all of which I have enjoyed reading.
There are a lot of things we are working on that I cant mention at this time with regards to ad performance on Twitter that comes from Twittad. But I will tell you that the #1 problem in our business plan is what everyone is talking about, the issue of not being able to click on a ad and gain the measure for the advertiser.
I will say that the Twitter community is a very intelligent and active audience. If a advertiser buys their profile I would bet many would promote that ad or service through their tweets or on their blog. Providing success for the advertiser not only comes from the views on the ad, but also the attention that comes from the purchase. Twitter users can mention the advertiser through Tweets and blog posts on the Twitter users website. To that degree, I will say we are working on something to solve this.
Microsoft recently (I say this loosely because I don’t have dates) released a series of videos – much like the Carls Jr. commercials – that shows users trying out a “The Newest Windows Operating System”. They christen it with a false name, and ask users to give it a test run. The Guinea Pigs have already expressed their distaste of Windows Vista, and start fiddling with this “new” system.
The users love it, they say it’s excellent, the speed, the performance is outstanding – only to find out what they just experienced was the Windows Vista operating system.
I believe the videos are only available online, I haven’t seen them on television – but why not? It’s a great technique to show how “word of mouth” has changed the entire perspective of users, some of which who haven’t even actually used Windows Vista.
I think it looks awful to submit your own sites to digg and reddit. Isn’t it all but shouting to the world, my stuff isn’t good enough for anyone else to want to submit so I submit it myself? Why not take a minute and actually engage in the wonder of social media, actually be social and make friends and take turns submitting each others stuff if it warrants submission.
I don’t come across many “marketers on foot”, I live in the Northeastern and maybe its different in CA. Although what we get alot of (at least in the Bean) are students working for non-profit organizations trying to scam donations from people. They’ll start off with, do you like trees? And, because I am now a veteran to their horrible canned conversation I just say, “Nope, in fact, I feel the world has too many trees”. Because if I don’t say that, they will literally demand I give them money. Oh we take $20s. No thanks, you’re not getting a 20. Ok, how about a $5. Nope.
Then they look at you like you’re a PoS. Thanks, like being broke isn’t painful enough.
“it makes me think that they lack the vision to lead this country, let alone objectively analyze a complex financial market.”
You think?
I don’t claim to know about the Austrian School of economics, the details of socialist market structures, or even why a private company is the “federal bank” but I do know that neither of these 2 bozos running for president understand economics any better than I do…
One thing that I probably should have done a better job pointing out was that while AIG has 1 trillion dollars worth of assets their net liabilities remain unknown, hence the speculation. I don’t think I did a good job qualifying that.
Ugh, I don’t want to write again about all of this financial market stuff but I think that Congress deciding that this problem is “too tough” and going back on vacation makes me want to do a follow-up. I’m thrilled that they’ve realized that all they can do is make the problem worse – however, I think there are a number of other issues that still require their attention in Washington.
Thanks for clearing up several matters for me, especially the use of trackbacks, which are something I am fond of using. It is a balancing act, which method to employ, but I like to use both trackbacks and pingbacks as ways to build authority. It seems to be working for me.
With facebook I like that you can target your adverts to certain age groups, and also have a picture. But as more businesses are using facebook to advertise, the minimum price is increasing in order to even have your advert show. The price soon adds up.
This is just a different perspective to your article.
The thing most people don’t realize is that a brand does not belong to them. The brand belongs to everyone else, and the brand is established by whatever people say about you and their experiences with you. All you can control is what you do and what you say, which directly affects how people perceive you (or your company). So Palin and Microsoft have a good opportunity to re-brand themselves.
I wish I found this post before I decided refer a client to DiscountAsp.NET. I was searching for information on how to resolve the exact same issue when using the Sitefinity CMS.
Please don’t think this is the case with ALL bloggers. I do product reviews. I never ask for money and I am honest with my reviews. I recently reviewed a game and I honestly thought it was too hard to figure out at first and I posted that in my review. I came out and said due to the complex nature of the game I wouldn’t recommend it for younger kids. I never got a dime from the review, just the game which I plan on donating to a local women’s shelter.
So not ALL bloggers are bad and not ever experience with a product review is bad either.
Sometimes simple links to good content elsewhere is a good service for your readers. I think that one man’s assessment of the economy is a very dangerous proposition to “bank on.” There are some equally qualified economists who think the economy is in for some long term pain.
Hehe funny thing about ruby! However, PHP still rocks and it will rock for a long time! Phyton is also cool and has some great concepts. I just knew about ruby when all fancy designers and people who don’t know anything about programming where talking .. ruby ruby (they allways do such things. hahaha), while when u take a look at Java and .net . heh. No comment (state of art 4 coding)
Before we where script kids, then we went to more serious stuff (me .net and OOP).. Then because of stupid MS-like people attitude (including developers and MS) i was feeling sad.
Still now when i had grow up, my mighty formula is this: no more webforms (i still program in webforms) – use ajax, no more DAL coding (codesmith rocks! if u know how to code), WWF – is something really cool – still noone mentions it.
LINQ – i don’t know it. Don’t use it.. And 4 me it’s more like, i dunno.. different approach and too much confusing in relation to “old school”.
Good thing about .net is that it has split itself into to parts: one is open source and the other are blind MS followers.
Phyton – heh. really cool. Old school and much more! Game programmers use it, google use it.. etc. Very powerful and unix.
Thank you for writing this article! I’m right now dealing with the same exact issue with DiscountASP,NET, but not with Community Server, but with Dot Net Nuke. Like Community Server, a Dot Net Nuke virgin install on startup will consume ~45 MB – 50 MB of memory, and with just a single user browsing it will consume about ~90MB – ~150MB of memory with no custom modules loaded. Even with all the standard best practices being implemented like disk caching vs memory caching, etc, to limit memory usage, a single default Dot Net Nuke install with a single user will use 100MB+ of memory.
Like CS, DiscountASP.NET has a whole advertising page dedicated to how “ideal” and “compatible” they are with Dot Net Nuke, which neither can be true unless you never want any users on your site at all…
Luckily, I’m still within my 30 day money back window, so hopefully I can get my full refund out of them, but I’m certainly going to be VERY vocal about this issue on blogs, news groups and web hosting message boards to hopefully help others from having this same issue.
Sorry to hear about that. DiscountASP.NET has great basic hosting for .NET applications, but they don’t offer anything sufficient for enterprise CMS systems.
You describe the callback URL – ending with a slash. Later you say FB adds default.aspx to it. How does FB know what to add? What if you have index.php and not an aspx?
Facebook will pick up the “default document” in your folder based upon the default document settings on your web server. So in IIS, the default document pecking order usually looks something like this:
If I have both default.htm and default.aspx sitting in my root folder and my callback url doesn’t explicitly say which one to link to, my web server will tell facebook that DEFAULT.HTM is the default document for that path, when what I really want is default.aspx.
As for index.php – if you set that up as a default document on your web server then Facebook will detect it.
I’ve always believed it makes most sense to target the “seekers” or the folks who log onto the internet in buy mode, as I say.
While it’s certainly possible to make money from people logging on for entertainment, you end up paying a lot in bandwidth and getting a much smaller return for the time invested.
I’m not a big follower of Facebook or MySpace but I’ll be interested to see if Twitter can figure out how to turn a profit.
It absolutely makes the most sense to target seekers, simply because they require a lower number of impressions and less persuasion to sell. Glad we agree.
I signed up for your eCourse by the way – your informal, personal style of writing is very engaging thus far. Color me intrigued.
Ok, wow. I goofed in a major way. “Command and Control” is not a corporate culture. It’s a management structure. Changed the article to reflect the changes. Damn the expediency of blogging!
The most insidious marketing to me is ‘lifestyle marketing’. Where is the devide between real culture and a marketing ploy. Harley Davidson would be an example. I own two older Harley Davidsons. Plagiarizm is encouraged by marketing.
I agree with you as well. The main problem that I and I think a lot of newer companies and marketers are facing is the question… “Which network will provide me the best results?”
Is it the network that has the most people in your niche? or just the most people altogether? Should a person have as many different social network accounts as possible and check them every day, or should they just stick to 1-4 of them and really put in an effort to communicate with everyone by posting comments, adding friends, responding to private messages, and building their brand recognition on those sites?
Something to consider in a large fleet is the availablity of parts / repair experience, as well as general reliability. None of these things can be satisfied by Carbon Motors. Also, how much will this vehicle cost? A new company is going to produce cars at a much higher cost. I would also argue that the generalized cookie-cutter cars are an innovation from the big 3. They are cheaper to build, easier to maintain, and more flexible. As a taxpayer, I don’t want my police department using far more expensive vehicles that are a little easier to clean.
“Something to consider in a large fleet is the availablity of parts / repair experience”
This is a good point.
“as well as general reliability”
This is not. Reliability is a major problem with the Big 3’s cars, along with general quality issues.
“Also, how much will this vehicle cost? A new company is going to produce cars at a much higher cost.”
Not necessarily – there is an entire network of third party suppliers who provide all of the parts to the Big Three. The Big Three don’t make many of their own parts anymore; they use toolers all along the Rust Belt and the Southwest. Part of my point in this article was that this infrastructure can provide a foundation for smaller, innovative car companies.
As to the cost, I have no idea what these will cost.
“They are cheaper to build, easier to maintain, and more flexible. As a taxpayer, I don’t want my police department using far more expensive vehicles that are a little easier to clean.”
Us taxpayers aren’t going to be able to do much from stopping a police department from buying something unfortunately, speaking as someone whose company sells to police departments routinely. Also, it’s impossible to do C/B analysis when you don’t know the cost.
It really shouldn’t be rocket science for these social networks to come up with a strategy – all it takes is a a bit of creative thinking. If they sat down and thought about the habits of their users, the answer would be staring them in the face.
People on social networks like to interact, so try to generate revenue from their interaction. There’s no point slapping on a one-size-fits-all revenue model and expecting the $$ to start rolling in.
For Facebook, apps are a big market, so why not look at monetizing that? I know they’ve got the verified app scheme, but that’s hardly going to produce the figures they are after. Maybe it’s time to face that not everything in the social network world can be free at the point of delivery. Either get the app developers to pay a subscription to use the FB platform, or charge the end user for using the apps. You might lose some users and/or apps, but that’s just sorting the wheat from the chaff at the end of the day.
I can’t believe that a company has not made a car already that is specifically targeted to law enforcement. It is good to see it finally come about. I think it will catch on and become mainstream.
Isn’t this the X Factor to any successful business, organization, group working together? Everyone has a different vision and many times, agenda.
Long term, quality vs quantity and content will always prevail.
Absolutely people need to work together – the issue that I’ve outlined here is part of that. The issue is that if you have too much cooperation with other departments in your organization you can accidentally kill the value of your content channel.
What needs to happen is that you need to say “no” to some things and reach a compromise with the rest of your organization. Strike a balance between good content and promotion. Does that sound like what you had in mind?
On balance I’m with you rather than Ms Mah. Certainly failure will provide a depth of experience that will benefit any entrepreneur that wishes to start again but it is wasteful of entrepreneurial energy and resources. Not to mention how you restore confidence in your close cohorts that you know what you are about.
Learning from “oh dear’s” and improving as a result of them is far better than dealing with the consequenses of an “oh shit!”
I’d say that it’s not just online marketers who fall into this category. It’s pretty much true of the bulk of marketers in general – which is good for those who actually do track results and adjust their marketing theories as they go. I’ve often said that the common sense is what most essential to successful marketing. Unfortunately, common sense doesn’t seem to be common any more.
Marketing Ninja–first of all nice site! It is refreshingly spare.
And b, I will bookmark you. I’m a marketing VP working at my first SaaS company, and learning hands on the world of online marketing. It’s a whole new world, and I agree that many practitioners are clueless. I’m lucky to have a couple of very talented people on my team who actually know what they’re doing, and have been doing it for several years, so we’re perhaps middle of the pack or better. I for one kinda hope that the big guys don’t figure it out very soon.
Do you think ‘they’ are clueless, or do you think that their bosses are clueless? I’ve found it pretty often that the marketer can be open to ideas, and may even have a few plans of their own when they first arrive at a brand and start trying to figure out how to really do things the ‘right’ way. Within a few months, their COO or CEO who is 20 yrs older than they are, have crushed the online life out of them, and just give in to the way their boss wants it, because they are tired of banging their heads against a wall that isn’t going to approve anything that wasn’t being done 20 yrs ago when the boss was in marketing/advertising?
“They don’t develop real plans with actionable, quantified goals.”
I feel that sometimes their goal is to bolster their own personal brand by looking cool and avant-garde rather than get any measurable results for their clients.
I have been in the online marketing business for about 10 years, in various roles, on both the client and the service provider side. I believe the biggest hurdle between good and great programs usually ties back to a perception problem in the organization. Online marketing is less expensive, and can be easily tracked for the most part. Decision makers see a profit of $10 dollars today, and decide that if they double the program it will make $20 tomorrow. I’ve met tons of talented marketers with great ideas who are stifled by the very thing that makes our space so powerful.
Of said dilemma, this is fundamentally due to the imperfections of marketing as a discipline. Over 20 years ago at a top business school I was already challenging the premises of marketing all the while going through the courses.
What you’re part of and witnessing is the unraveling of marketing as we know it for exactly all the reasons you’re uncovering by discovery
This is sometimes an opportunity to do some testing. In the past, I’ve been allowed to test on a small segment to prove my idea. Testing is something all marketers should be doing, and most of us know it. You can take advantage of not testing by grabbing a test-case. Good luck!
Excellent article. You definitely have to work to segment and target your market if you ever want to have a product people will be interested in buying. That being said I fear a step that will be missed is that you went to the engineers said can we do X,Y and Z and only after deciding it wouldn’t be in the companies best interest decided not too. What you’re advocating is making strategic decisions on who what groups you can most effectively serve not just doing things because a)that’s how they’ve always been done or b) we might be able to get one extra customer.
I’m glad that you liked this post – it’s an issue that my company still deals with constantly even though we’re not “young” in terms of years. We are still young in terms of Moore’s Chasm, however and this advice is based on our empirical experience.
We’re happy to have early adopters, but now that we’re gaining ground among the early majority we’re having to reject the input of early adopters more and more frequently. It’s hard to do, but ultimately necessary in order to achieve growth.
Thanks for this thoughtful post which I just found today. A few people contacted me after we introduced the Marketplace emails a few months ago with the perception the emails were unsolicited. The relationship between MarketingCharts (the publication) and its parent company (Watershed Publishing) was not known to all our subscribers at the time, so some thought these emails came out of the blue. Since then we have reviewed our subscription process to make it very clear in welcome messages (on the website and then by email) that we’d send occasional emails about relevant products or services, and who was Watershed. Originally that was stated only in our privacy policy – I realized it was not transparent enough because not everyone (by far) will review a publisher’s privacy policy before subscribing, or know about its corporate structure.
Just a comment on what “renting out” a list might mean. I’m sure you know this, but for the benefit of your readers, in this example we as a publisher don’t disclose any email address to the advertiser. We execute the dedicated email ourselves, no email address is shared in the process.
I love your emails and your publications – I just used you as an example of how people might go “OMG SPAM” when really it’s not spam at all. And yes, I saw that you guys recently updated your offer emails to include “You are receiving this email because you are subscribed to one or more Watershed Publications” and so forth. I think that’s great.
I wasn’t calling you guys out, just using you as an example. The reputation management is not necessary :p
Note: After writing this I noticed that I look at OSS only, not free (beer) in general. Anyway:
Yes. I agree that some parts of your list of questions are valid and very important. Support, for one, is something that I wouldn’t want to miss depending on the type of product. But for lots of commercial software you have to pay extra for that as well, so this is more a “Is payed support available at _all_?” question for me. Big OSS projects seem to be backed by companies offering a solution here.
I would like to challenge some points of yours.
2) Same issue with commercial stuff, _unless_ you tend to buy from one company only. Redmond? I agree that you can hardly beat that integration for “free”. But in general I’d argue that this point is moot.
3) Same. Most (serious) OSS projects offer reasonable documentation. Certification programs? Those are extra expenses for a limited amount of value (if any) imo. Books? O’Reilly, apress cover _a lot_. Bottom line: The techs have to learn new software. One way or another.
4) Good point. I _could_ argue against this (The famous “At least you would be _able_ to patch it yourself if you’d want to”), but that’s not really a serious option I’d consider for business stuff. Nice for personal things if you happen to be a developer, but as a company you want your stuff to just work.
5) This is really quite similar to 3 and I tend to give the same answer. No matter what the software costs, your users/admins have to learn to use it. Maybe (a biiig one) commercial documentation is better in general. I’d check this on a case by case base.
6) How is this related to free or not? This only applies if you want to _replace_ a commercial product with a free one. If you start fresh (Quoting you: “Recommend(ing) _new_ products and services at work”, emphasis mine) this is a non-issue. Of course: Don’t replace a working solution for something worse. But this point seems still strange.
7) Again, unrelated to free or not in general. Yes, sure. Compare all alternatives. Compare feature sets, risks, support and – price. This is nothing that should be handled in a special way for free software imo.
But to get back to the real question: Yes, I tend to favour the free (but preferable in both ways) stuff. That’s more an emotional/ideological thing though and includes my own commitment working hard to understand/master the software afterwards. Just because it is free/libre.
Hope my english is good enough to make my point. Got to this post (indirectly) via twitter and had to RT it. It’s a very interesting question!
Thanks for the ReTweet! I ask those questions for everything, not just free stuff – question 6 is relevant because a new, free system might be an improvement over an existing system simply because if it does all of the same stuff at a lower cost then that’s a cost improvement.
Same with question 7. It’s making an apples to apples comparison with free/commercial goods – when the dollar price of something is zero I have to convert the “time cost” of it into dollars.
In my empirical experience most free products have been more expensive to support and implement simply because they don’t have as many features, aren’t supported as well, don’t play nice with existing systems, and many other such reasons.
The other reason is support – many free products don’t offer much in the way of organized support at all, even premium support (MySQL is a big exception to this, as are some other high-profile open source projects.) It’s just something I’ve observed based on my experience with a VERY limited set of technological needs for my business – it could be totally different in a different sector.
What if the shopping mall was a third party organization allowing merchants to sell to social shoppers (social network users)? This means Facebook and MySpace wouldn’t own any of the searches or purchases within the third party applications/network and therefore, they couldn’t use that information for advertising purposes.
This third party organization wouldn’t share any information between merchants or social networks, so no worry about GNC knowing about your new porno, or about getting new penis enhancement advertisements.
I know target-marketing ads are Facebook’s future, but I strongly believe they should not take part within commerce (beyond virtual gifts). Too much power (or information) corrupts.
The problem with the classless society that we can surmise is the desire of these people attacking the rich class, is that it is just that: without class.
You never find a society of complete equals in all levels because the only way to accomplish that is to pull everyone down to the lowest common denominator. No one is allowed to be smarter, stronger, or superior in any way to anyone else. Which means we can only hope to attain the lowest of the low.
I don’t think anyone is calling for a classless society or one where everyone has equal outcomes. However i think what many are saying is that maybe its ok for Trump and others to have only 4 yachts instead of 5 if that’ll mean an extra few thousand kids can have health insurance.
I also have to question the premise/implication that the rich, upper class, investor class whatever you want to call them are not pulling their funds and stopping their investments because of the tax rates. It seems to me regardless of the tax rate if your dollars are generating funds for you through investment you will continue to invest if they’re not you won’t. Sounds simple, but the point is tax rate will only effect how much you make on your investment not whether you make it.
Lastly its easy to say look at the stock market, but most likely obama’s tax policy has much less to do with drops in the stock market (which i’ll add was already tanking) then a complete lack of consumer confidence and other factors.
@Isaac – It’s not just what the rich choose to do with their assets, but it’s also what they do with their business. The majority of the business owners I know have reduced the sizes of their workforces in anticipation of higher taxes, mandates for higher benefits, and so forth.
The mentality of “4 yachts instead of 5″ adds up – when you have 20,000 people who all have had 1 yacht’s worth of money taxed from them then that’s 20,000 less yachts that will be manufactured or purchased over a span of time – even if a yacht isn’t something that the average person can afford, the yacht-building industry is still one that employs a lot of average people – is our government going to create some sort of non-yacht job for those people?
In addition, most of the money accumulated by people like Trump is not spent on Yachts and houses and fancy cars – it’s invested into funds or stashed in banks, primary investment vehicles that keep the wheels of economic expansion in our country turning.
But who gets to say who is rich? What if I came to you Isaac and said “you know, you could probably get by with just one car instead of two – you and your wife should probably carpool – it would be better for the environment anyways.” Is that still ok?
“Lastly its easy to say look at the stock market, but most likely obama’s tax policy has much less to do with drops in the stock market (which i’ll add was already tanking) then a complete lack of consumer confidence and other factors.”
From the post: “the biggest problem with the economy is confidence, and this kind of class warfare is exacerbating a legitimate economic slump by attacking the class of people who are going to help get us out of it.”
Obama’s policies are compounding a problem that already gives a lot of business owners pause – this evidence is anecdotal, but a number of my family friends who own businesses have eliminated jobs simply because they have to assume a defensive posture as a result of Obama’s plan to soak their business. I imagine that it’s a precaution that a lot of other like-minded owners are taking.
Also – the point of my post wasn’t so much about specific policy as it was about a philosophy of aggressively attacking one economic class and using them as a piggy bank.
My conclusion is that smart companies are largely unaffected (at least directly) by what the business tax rate is. They make decisions on whether the person can bring in more then they pay them.
“My conclusion is that smart companies are largely unaffected (at least directly) by what the business tax rate is.”
Before I look at your formula, I’d qualify this with “depends on what type of company.” Public companies and privately owned LLC/S-Corps compensate management in different ways, some of which are affect more by taxes than others. All of the people whom I was referring to are S-Corp/LLC owners who make most of their living off of the post-tax profits from their businesses, so it does affect them more than a C-Corp president who’s paid a fixed salary along with a pre-tax performance bonus.
So I read through your math – in the example you gave ($1m/year business earning $100k/year in profit) a change in the corporate tax rate from 35% to 30% wouldn’t do much in the short run to create jobs given how small the profit margin is.
I prepared my own example that took me 30 minutes to write and was rather complicated, but I decided that it would be more effective if I just said this:
1. In good times when business is growing, the sole act of raising taxes would probably not cause business owners to have to fire anybody. It would decrease the amount of dollars that owners have to spend on themselves and it would decrease the number of dollars that they could reinvest into their business, which from a big picture point of view would make it more difficult to expand and grow the economy.
2. That being said, in bad times when sales are dropping, credit markets are tightening, and profits are falling, raising taxes adds another burden on top of businesses (I’m thinking more of S-CORP owners; C-CORPs are more complicated animals that I don’t understand as well) that are already struggling to make a sizable profit. S-CORP owners who depend on their businesses profit to pay for their mortgages, college funds for their children, medical expenses, and other fixed expenses can’t simply “cut down” on their own personal expenditures enough to make up for a 10,20,30% decrease in revenue. The cuts have to come from the business itself -and sometimes that means cropping the workforce.
So speaking in the here and now, consumer confidence has damaged the revenues of a lot of businesses by around 30% – that alone is cause for cutbacks. Decreasing profit by 5% by means of taxation makes the problem worse. More than anything else though, it also makes it harder to invest back into business to begin economic expansion again. The first thing to take a hit when profits fall is investment.
While your logic and thought processes are elegant, I really enjoy the way you use the English laguage. You almost sound like a poet talking about technology. Fascinating reading.
very interesting article, i suppose the challenge is incorporating links from twitter, niche sites etc, while also weeding out the twitter links from the free laptop people. I think Google’s got people smart enough to get it done though… if they tried.
You might want to also consider giving zembly a try. zembly (http://zembly.com) is a new kind of integrated development environment (IDE) from Sun Microsystems that offers developers streamlined, collaborative, browser-based development and cloud hosting for social applications, widgets, and web APIs. Zembly targets applications for Facebook, OpenSocial, meebo, and general web platforms.
Well I did a tweet about your blogpost. And it is an importan question so I made a little longer comment here.
I have done the same with bloggers who have bloged about news stories in our small swedish web science journal. Budget for such is 0 for marketing so bloggers who links something they liked is important.
It has a personal prize of some sort to allways contact when you notice a blog post so long periods I dont do it (so much other stuff to do – little time / small budget). But this usually works good and do not creep people out. It has focus on giving something back on a personal level and show a human face.
1. I read the blog.
2. I email if possible.
3. I say thanks. I explain that our budget is 0 so bloggers like you is important.
4. I tell about specific projects I have done to thank the bloggosphere in big (for example one site about using free picture, one about fact checking and a couple of more).
5. I give some examples of stuff I like with their blog. Like a blog post I feelt had a good point.
6. I make a suggestion in a positive way. Not something they have written that I feel is bad. More like a tips on finding a good picture + that they can have Blogger.com comment form under blog posts and such.
7. I suggest some similar articles on the same subject we have or other sites.
Good luck with your blog and Twitter-customer!
PS
I have only read 3 posts yet but your blog is quite good!
Im not sure that nofollow is the main reason in the situation for these site. I have thought from time to time to comment on in. But most likely never will.
Thought about something else to comment here. See this lazy blog post I did in a pass-time blog and the *third* comic. Wouldnt that one be usfull in the future for you discussion Wikipedia in your normal area of thoughts on the subject?
But Im rather fond on the comics from that site (www.marriedtothesea.com). They allow republishing but check the licens your self if you see anyuse of it.
I have no affiliate with marriedtothesea.com, business relationship, association or any other contact. So you dont missunderstand it as spam.
You are spot on using ROI internally for buy in and prioritising. What about the intangibles though? This “feels like a better project”, we like the “brand on this”, this is the “vision”. Look to make the intangibles tangible and prove ROI on these too. Today I helped someone prove ROI on membership in a chamber of commerce in a down economy when all they thought they had to offer was “a place to meet and get moral support”. Well just supposing these people meet, they “pump each other up”, they feel better, they go and make a more confident sales pitch, because the pitch is confident they get an order. Hey presto – feel better = confident = sell more = ROI on “just getting together”, OK simple example but get the idea? Make the intangible tangible and you can measure it.
Yeah I wanted something that’s somewhat minimalist and uncluttered. Although blogs tend to become cluttered over time by the vary nature of adding categories, tags, and posts I think this design comes off as pretty sanitary.
Good post, we hope you are right as we are putting a great deal of effort in developing a family of niche social bookmark sites. The first up are http://www.keecricket.com , for the cricket fan and http://www.keemedia.net for the Pr professional. Many more to follow
I totally agree with you. In fact id like to recommend a site dotnetshoutout.com which is similar to dotnetkicks as the name suggests for .net programmers.
I voted for doing nothing. Twitter is largely ephemeral it will probably mostly float by in the current. If it makes it into more permanent online pages then it’s there for a while. I don’t know what your software is but knowing that it’s regularly hackable is a new level of information that you don’t want to get out there either or marginal pirates might get tempted.
I don’t think it’s a time to make a point. When I was younger, I was more idealistic.
Our software isn’t hacked very regularly – it does happen every few years and creates some trouble when it happens. As our company has grown it’s become a bit of a bigger target, but we’re fortunate in that most people who pirate software aren’t in our target market to begin with so the damage is often minimal. Turbulent economic conditions like these however exacerbate piracy and can create problems for us.
My personal vote is also to do nothing. My voice as a member of the corporation is louder than any hacker’s is, and I would be loath use it to notify people that a version of our product has been hacked.
Being that this is against the TOS of Twitter – your well within your rights to notify them and have the account closed… no reason to publicly say why – Twitter should silently kill the account and move on.
Publishing hacked/pirated content should fall within one or both of these categories – http://twitter.com/tos – #5 and #10
It’s an a really interesting question. You do run the real risk of the Streisand effect as you call it but doing nothing doesn’t seem to be a great option either. I voted for other.
May a better solution is just to have their account shut down as @emailkarma suggested. If they pirate multiple products it would be tough to say you’re the one shutting them down.
Or maybe (and i’m just thinking aloud) there are other things you can do with social media that don’t directly attack the hacking. Perhaps the better approach is getting the message out to people looking for the pirated version about the value of your product and why the pirated version isn’t comparable (no customer service, no updates, etc).
Those may be awful suggestion since i don’t know the product or customer well enough. However the broader idea i think is use the tools to create relationships with potential customers and to attack piracy more indirectly than directly.
Thanks for this genuinely informative article on pingbacks and trackbacks. I always wondered what on earth they were. I recently set up quite a few wordpress blogs with the intention of turning them into valuable pieces of VRE and I think this will help me.
I’d be lying if I said I understood what they were right now; hell, I probably couldn’t explain it to you now if you asked me to. =p I had what looks like a suspicious blog pingback to a post I made yesterday… I mean, if he’s linking back to me, and giving me a free backlink, as long as he’s not spamming me, it’s ok to leave the pingback there, right?
Oh no wait… the main thing is that he’s leaving a link to HIS (or her) blog through the pingback… hmm… what’s the best thing at this stage you think, for someone who’s trying to get their own (white hat) blog “up there” in the blogosphere? Dump the pingback or leave it?
Thanks also for the info on technorati.com and the video. I’m checking it out now.
I couldn’t agree more. That is why landing pages are so important. You need to set it up so that if you are running CPC on your site the visitors will do what you direct them to do.
using publishTemplatizedAction
getting below error
This method can only be used to publish Mini-Feed stories to Facebook Pages. Its use for posting feed stories to user pages has been deprecated
The site I visited before this one hosted an open source project that does what you want on IIS. Search for “managed fusion” + rewrite and you will find it.
Good post… I run a blog that does no follow and it ranks very well. We try to emulate Wiki because of its strength on Google. But know with Bing I wonder what that will do.
I fully agree.
Unique visitors doesn’t mean anything unless we push them to a specific action on our site.
It also depends on the niche market your blog is about.For some niche markets, visitors come on your site for a specific action and it is easy to forecast what you can earn from your blog.
I disagree with your assertion about content. Let me be the first one here to say that I am an avid player of the mafia wars game application on FB… I would never waste my valuable and precious time on facebook but for that game… ( and I don’t use the game to communicate with friends except in the context of the game play). Quite frankly, FB communication vehicles are the most ardous I’ve ever encountered in my life. You’ve also overlooked something else, about monetization. In so much as that game holds my interest, I have been tempted to purchase relevant electrons (if you will) on the promise that the ‘game experience’ becomes heightened… Not on any hope that my communication is sustained or even improved. Finally, about 2998 out of the 3000 apps you mentioned are really just crap…plain and simple… It’s as though were in a giant cracker-jack box, but there is no candied popcorn and peanuts (no content) .. instead Its an empty box, full of useless prizes that you somehow correalte and confuse as motivational artifacts to get me to spend a dollar. Get real folks! THe way you’ve manifested your communication model (Face book’s dumbass error handling user penalties for abuse not withstanding) is simply not ‘all that’. How about adapting your model to include the “self actualized” at a reasonable price that isn’t gonna disappear in three months. (Can you imagine if your house was built on the principles you hoc here??)
If they were smart, and I certainly hope they are, they should try an actual real advertising service. They should really link up with this company Ive been using for a while now. http://adwido.com. They are Very reliable and prompt at getting my message out.
I think writing your own blog engine is a great idea. And the best part is that you don’t have to bother with someone else’s list of required features. You code it to your needs and leave the rest out. Then add more features as you need them.
I know a blogger who’s alexa is around 4k, around 450k-500k unique visitors every month. His monthly earnings = US $20k -25k
Actually it all depends on how effectively and page centered monetization has been done.
You are so right, Aaron. We just had this conversation this morning at our weekly staff meeting, where we were reviewing analytics on our blog and traffic counts, sources, etc. Everyone was much more interested in length of time on the site and page views, not so focused on number of visits. Bottom line – is the blog (or website) accomplishing the marketing goal? Who ever listed web traffic counts as a marketing goal? (Rhetorical question I guess).
Thanks for an excellent article.
Are there actual guidelines published by any government agency?
What is one of the criteria in what you call -Mail Marketing is not there (such as it is only unsolicited but has everything else)?
Is the number of actual emails sent a determining factor in what is called SPAM?
For example, let’s say all the criteria you mentioned is there- can one send out 50,000 emails in one day?
I just finished developing my 1st fb app (link in the “website” field). would be nice if you could tip me how to monetize that one. I hope that it will be popular.
am not able to find where this side nav url is. there are many fields that you have mentioned are not there in the form that I filled up for developing a sample facebook appn,,,,,,, do u know what the prioblem is?
Apple is like the freaking borg, I do not want to join them, thats why I don’t have any apple products, and probably never will ( that is until they stop “thinking different” ) and actually put out some competitive prices.
My two reasons for not buying apple products are, crazy weirdo fanboys, and prices that are two, and even 3 times higher than they should be.
Of the major reference sites (e.g. Wikipedia, yahoo answers, answers.com, answerbag.com) which depend on the public community to build their information database, it appears that most use no-follow. Are there still any that credit their contributors (allow links without putting on the nofollow attribute)?
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[...] October 17, 2007 Application Deficit Syndrome – or how many facebooks apps are enough? Posted by tbuesing under Advertising, NetX, Social Media, apps, facebook Now facebook apps are all the rage…with the clients. Via the back door of junior marketing people (who are entrenched in the social media scene), many marketing departments ask agencies like NetX to bring home the bacon. Namely, deliver a lasting engagement of users with their brand, product or campaign … inside their own social circles. While the entry barrier of using the f8 developer platform is set quite low, we simultaneously compete for limited real estate and user’s capacity and need for more apps. [...]
[...] problem under control I can go ahead and write up my smug, self-congratulatory post on how well my 8 Bold Predictions for 2008 are turning out. Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo! doesn’t sound so insane now, does [...]
[...] a final note, major props to Aaron Stannard of Ajax Marketing Ninja who called this a month ago. I'm sad to admit it but my first thought when I found out about this wasn't [...]
[...] solution was to form an alliance with all other networks not included in the F8 platform and launch the OpenSocial platform, pitting the might of Google against the buzz of [...]
[...] F8 was announced in the late Spring of 2007 and took off with a totally unprecedented rate of adoption among developers; I myself, who had never used any sort of Web 2.0 API before, was intrigued enough to give Facebook Application Development a go. [...]
[...] who is aggressively pursuing online real-estate to help them monetize the "second click" in addition to the first, scrambled to respond; after all, Google, an innovative company in their own right, is trying to [...]
[...] that google is releasing the applications built on Open Social API running on orkut. Google is loosing to social networks and there is a buzz that it wants to pick up Bebo for $1b. Myspace also unveiled it’s [...]
[...] thanks to Aaron Stannard for his valuable comments on my book. Here is the link: http://www.marketing-ninja.com/?p=317You can see more reviews on my book at: [...]
[...] Stannard of the Marketing Ninja blog writes in 7 Reasons Why Niche Social Media Outlets are Better Than Digg: Digg has an immense amount of traffic and getting landed on the front page will send a tsunami of [...]
[...] noticed a linkback to my 7 Reasons Why Niche Social Media is Better than Digg today, and then I noticed this great article on RW/W about how as Digg has become more mainstream [...]
[...] Over the past couple of weeks I’ve performed some social media consulting for SmartDraw, namely helping them use their blog. SmartDraw produces versatile diagramming software, which I have used for years; you can see some of the diagrams I produced with SmartDraw in my popular post “How to Use Diagramming to Easily Organize and Plan Projects.” [...]
[...] Headlines – “50+ Resources for Utilizing StumbleUpon Effectively” and “30+ Social Media Sites for Promoting Your Blog” are both good examples of [...]
[...] Headlines – “50+ Resources for Utilizing StumbleUpon Effectively” and “30+ Social Media Sites for Promoting Your Blog” are both good examples of linkbait that I’ve written [...]
[...] One of the things that I’ve been recommending to my marketing clients, and one of the things that I did for Marketing Ninja today, is to have a long-term brainstorming session where you determine what you’re going to write about and what you’re going to say to your readers. There are a number of ways of doing this, but I think the easiest way to get organized is to use a Mind Map. I’ve written about using Mind Maps before in the context of project organization. [...]
Organize Your Business’ Online Message with Mind Maps | Marketing Ninja
From the Page: “One of the things that I’ve been recommending to my marketing clients, and one of the things that I did for Marketing Ninja today, is to have a brainstorming session where you determine what you’re going to write about and what you…
[...] any of my contact info. Like that girl I met at that party and never called, my former coworkers, people I haven’t spoken to since High School, my college mascot, or my ex-girlfriend’s pet bunny. I can’t believe I ever got by with [...]
[...] about it recently. For example, today Aaron Stannard wrote a post on his blog entitled ‘Is Shameless Self-Promotion Using Social Networks Acceptable?‘. Regular Blogging Tips author Andy MacDonald had sent Aaron about 5 stumble requests via [...]
Are Most Customers too Old School to be Sold through a Blog? | Marketing Ninja
From the page: “If you were to start a new marketing campaign with the objective of educating small business owners, executives, and managers on the benefits of your product, whatever it is, will most of them turn deaf ears to a blog marketing medium …
Apple to Focus on Market Penetration instead of Market Skimming with 3G iPhone | Marketing Ninja
Apple’s announcement of a $199 iPhone that supports critical enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange indicates a windshift away from Apple’s traditional market skimming price strategy towards a market penetration price strategy.
[...] audience, but some people don’t get it yet. Maybe a lot of people don’t get it yet. Marketing Ninja also has a relevant anecdote showing a situation where people preferred static documents (e.g. Adobe .PDF files) over blog posts [...]
[...] tend to disagree with the Marketing Ninja’s idea that social media should stay out of the Kindle. Though I agree that: Reading the Book + Reading Thoughts of Other Readers = Polluted Reading [...]
[...] a little too much for me. I agree more with Marketing Ninja who calls this polluted reading, but I admit that I will probably change my mind as I become more neurotic (or less focused) in my [...]
[...] There is a good article over at Marketing Ninja which delves deeper into the discussion of monetizing Facebook applications. Not that there’s any debate over the rise in popularity of Facebook, here are a few [...]
[...] Yes, the potential is huge. But some companies have been disappointed with the results in their early efforts. They have some great ideas, but aren’t always sure how to monetize them. (Read this insightful article on the challenges of monetizing Facebook applications.) [...]
[...] plan & hardware of the original iPhone. I personally was planning on buying one (despite how much I hate the Apple fan boy culture) until I read article after article about the pricing discrepancies. I know there were plenty of [...]
[...] wrote a post on my personal blog about “How I Use Mind Maps to Organize Online Marketing Messages” a while back; in this post I’m going to write about how I use Mind Maps in [...]
[...] This is what I said in my original post about monetizing Facebook applications: apps that make it are ones that add new dimensions to the interpersonal experience of Facebook. [...]
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Comments 680
Good thought process. I know you probably don’t want to reveal too much, but try to narrow down the exact market you are focusing on. I think too many people say “well the XYZ industry is $50 billion a year” when in reality the exact market they are focusing on is just a small subsegment of the overall market.
Also, remember that there are a lot of companies that outsourced their web site to some other firm and all of these firms will someday need a mobile site – non mobile-enhanced sites usually look pretty crappy on smart phones. Good luck.
Posted 20 Jul 2007 at 4:16 am ¶I wanted to keep it pretty vague… I don’t want any other aspiring entrepreneurs to know what I am up to!
The text in this entry was written exclusively for the blog… none of it will be doing into my business plan write-up itself, but the research itself is going to find its way into it.
Posted 20 Jul 2007 at 5:45 pm ¶One more thing… I cannot figure out how to turn these goddamn adsense ads off! This template kicks ass but I don’t even have an adsense account! What the hell!
Posted 22 Jul 2007 at 1:45 pm ¶Blah was logged in as admin… I need my old account back!
Posted 22 Jul 2007 at 1:52 pm ¶Please don’t spam my blog with trackbacks that don’t mean anything, especially when you don’t link to my site.
Deleted.
Posted 26 Jul 2007 at 1:38 pm ¶Quick comment… I’m currently working on a very sophisticated data layer for my facebook application, and I can tell you, I recommend the Facebook Developer Toolkit, the one that Microsoft endorses. I tried using Facebook.NET and I had a ton of trouble getting it to work properly.
The Facebook Developer Toolkit has DOCUMENTATION, which Facebook.NET does not, although the examples could be bit more extensive. I also highly recommend going with FBML over the iFrame approach for reasons I will explain in a subsequent post once I begin testing the business layer of my app.
Posted 28 Jul 2007 at 6:54 pm ¶I am just under development of facebook app. And i can tell.. facebook and toolkits and everything are fully of bugs. If u are asp.net developer, well, u will need to go for a custom CSS (copy paste and decorate original). FBML maybe looks like easy solution but not so usefull in .net enviroment (actualy in any). Clarion did a poor job.
Posted 01 Aug 2007 at 8:24 am ¶I wonder do u make your CSS layer or do u follow facebook css.
Posted 01 Aug 2007 at 8:28 am ¶vjeran,
Yeah I ended up figuring this out within a couple of days of writing that previous comment; iframe is definitely the easier, more intuitive way to go. I haven’t done a lot of extensive testing with the Clarion product so I’m not sure what bugs you might be running into; could you please list a couple major issues if you’ve run into anything significant?
And thanks for your comment!
Posted 01 Aug 2007 at 10:17 am ¶If you’re using an iframe I’d imagine you’d have to make your own duplicate copy of the Facebook CSS code, as I don’t think you’d be able to inherit the CSS properties on the Facebook page opening the iframe itself. According to the facebook developer’s wiki you’re not allowed to reference external stylesheets but I assume that this is only for FBML applications. Correct me if I am wrong.
If you are, in fact, not allowed to use an external stylesheet for Iframe applications, I suppose you could always just create a server-side include that writes a style element to the header of your HTML output.
Posted 01 Aug 2007 at 10:43 am ¶Great article! That form is very confusing. It’s hard to tell what the result will be when you’re filling it out, so this helps a lot!
I’ve written a tutorial for getting started with Facebook using PHP:
http://www.merchantos.com/makebeta/facebook/facebook-php-tutorial/
I’ll add this article under the resources section.
Thanks!
Posted 01 Aug 2007 at 2:44 pm ¶-justin
This one provides an excellent monetization model…http://apps.facebook.com/thenewsroom
Posted 04 Aug 2007 at 8:58 am ¶if u look at url rewriting there are many perspectives.. personaly i prefer http://www.urlrewriting.net/ and http://urlrewriter.net/. Both work same way.. i prefer urlrewriting.net because it has better documentation.
Also, I would like to tell, that google understands query string – and differs page as separate. Why i did on one website was total urlrewriting of everything which ended as complete mess (i have multilingual content – with multilingual urls)! Also u need to watch for not to have duplicate content, which will be punished by gogle if it does appear. Today 50% of web is done by url rewriting – so i guess, search engine will not vaule document name as they did before.
My suggestion for best practices is to make nice url database. Not for google, rather for persistent urls.
If u are advanced developer. url should not concern u too much. Coolest thing i saw lately is castle project and subsonic. Take a look at that.. This is complete framework.. Not just url rewriting. This is REST for .net.
Posted 08 Aug 2007 at 2:28 am ¶Thanks for the comment vjeran. I’ve been closely monitoring my stats via Google Analyitics and it looks like URL rewriting has not affected my ranking much at all (something like 700 unique users in the 3 weeks since I launched the site). Duplicate content is absoultely a major no-no.
I spent a lot of time trying to develop a URL rewriting application without using any ISAPI filters and it turned out to be a waste of time, given both the results and the difficulty involved. IIS 7.0 should have a greater level of integration between the HTTP Handlers interface and the server level request routing so I anticipate that in the future URL rewriting will be able to be handled without any ISAPI filter tinkering; nay, I HOPE that in the future this will be the case haha
Posted 12 Aug 2007 at 2:59 pm ¶Hello, I am not using my real name nor regular email address here, nor is that a real site… BECAUSE… I am not sure if this goes public as soon as I post. That said, I am a real person with a real opportunity to monetize through a facebook application. I’m looking for a development partner who can work with me to get it off the ground ASAP. I have it all packaged nicely with a demo. I’m located in Los Angeles. Please email me at the email address posted and I’ll get back to you with my name and number hopefully we can get this going ASAP.
Thanks
Posted 13 Aug 2007 at 11:32 am ¶“Kevin,”
I sent you an email. Let me know what sort of help you need.
Posted 13 Aug 2007 at 12:49 pm ¶well.. i was also workign with ajax on one website adriaticvilla.com. Well it is cool but u had to watch. My designer gave me nontableless html and i couldn’t shift back – anyway.. it looks that some controls have problems in ajax with tables – like accordion. I resolved this by making div tables.
Posted 13 Aug 2007 at 5:14 pm ¶Another issue where validators but this is repaired.
Still, there are some things that would be nice to work different way. Like, update panel needs to have trigger button in itself. When u look at digg.com and email button (you must be loged)- you will see how does it looks from outside – much better! This is one of things why i like jquerry.
Most of other things are very good and usefull. Mixing some other stuff can still cause problems, but this are other issues (i tried to move viewstate to bottom of the page).
Hehe they are cool. I use croatian webhosting service which are really outstanding with service (u don’t need to call admins) – and this is the best mark for quallity. and they are cheap – 40 € whole year! 100 sql servers, 100 mysql, unlimited subdomain and the best stuff – plesk control panel and full trust mode! find me hosting good like this.. they also support php, phyton, cgi and asp on same machine. Very good.
Posted 13 Aug 2007 at 5:19 pm ¶http://www.inside.hr
Keep it up Aaron. There are far too many dumb bloggers in this world.
Posted 17 Aug 2007 at 1:22 pm ¶@aaron: i’m reconsidering my style of commentary & blogging based on your comments & introspection.
while i don’t feel uncomfortable stating my opinions (and occasionally my emotions) freely, i’m sure at times my “transparency” is viewed as offensive by others. i recognize that objectively, but my subjective behavior is not always so easy to change… that is, should i choose to do so.
in general, people who know me seem to enjoy my style of blogging / candor / swearing, altho a few are sometimes a little surprised at the level of intensity. i guess i’d observe that i tend to blog the way i drive — that is to say, a bit more aggressively than i would normally be in a face to face conversation. but even in person, i probably state my opinions & swear without feeling like i’m particularly attacking anyone. maybe the “attacking” part comes out more online, or maybe sometimes when i feel like i’m responding to being attacked. certainly that was how i felt about the TechDumpster stuff. i felt like i’d been punched, and i punched back.
perhaps this is due to my upbringing / family cultural behavior — my mother’s side of the family tends to call top-of-your-lungs yelling an “italian conversation”; my father’s side is just plain WV hillbilly — but regardless i’m probably quicker to anger and quicker to forgetting about it than most people. i also was taught to stand my ground for what i believe in, even if occasionally i need to later admit i’m wrong.
in hindsight, i could probably stand to benefit from turning down the volume on both the highs & lows. it’s always a tough issue for me, and i don’t like to think i’m compromising on my opinions by doing so. however perhaps it’s worth some occasional introspection & reflection.
in any case, thanks for the food for thought.
- dmc
Posted 17 Aug 2007 at 5:23 pm ¶@Jay,
Thanks for the comment! I love reading TechDumpster and Uncov so keep up the good work; I could never do it as well as you.
@Dave,
I’m flattered. Thank you for reading my post and I’m glad it was able to be of interest. Unfortunately I do not know you in real life so when I read your comments online the only thing I have to judge you by are those said comments. Bear this in mind if you’re looking to draw in new readers.
A habit that I myself have fallen into is writing for my friends rather than writing for my intended audience; I have to think about my writing style as I write the post and when I review it before I publish it. My “speaking” style which I use to communicate with my friends is not the same as my “writing” style, which I use for writing this blog; I don’t think I would be nearly as credible if I dropped a “dude” every two sentences like how I do when I’m surfing with my friends.
Regardless, I’m flattered that I was able to make a difference for you. Thank you.
Posted 17 Aug 2007 at 5:46 pm ¶@ Aaron
Thank you.
@ dmc
We all know you’re a smart guy and aren’t Duncan Riley or Scoble so I appreciate you engaging others in dialogue. Thanks.
Posted 17 Aug 2007 at 9:44 pm ¶Quick update:
One of the posters from the ASP.NET forums recommend that I share this very, very detailed graphical tutorial on Data layers with you. It’s a dense read but if you’re really interested in the nuts and bolts of a good data layer then I’d recommend reading the data layer tutorial
Posted 18 Aug 2007 at 11:35 am ¶I would suggest to anyone to revisit this. I was first in croatia for 2 years and still, in most crucial terms like SEO and web page development, without having almost any link from external websites. How? 1. content – title, h1 (header tags), keywords in text, and links which are most important (other is most like sugar).
Posted 18 Aug 2007 at 12:35 pm ¶http://www.cepolina.com/freephoto/tips2.html
I was using star configuration. Well, it is not the best, but it is very easy to develop and still it gives good results. So, url rewriting will not give so good results as respecting math, logic and common sense!
FIY, BlogEngine.NET is not a Microsoft product. It’s build by an independant third-party open source team with no relations to Microsoft.
Posted 19 Aug 2007 at 4:25 am ¶Hello Mads,
Thank you for your comment! I did not do a good job making that clear; I went ahead and adjusted the title of my blog entry accordingly.
I really like BlogEngine.NET but I’m going to make a full comparison against Wordpress. Regardless, it’s good to see a really great .NET blogging tool available for free.
I haven’t seen the pingback from my BlogEngine.NET test come back to this entry yet but regardless I did a comparison today between Wordpress and BlogEngine.NET on how they handle pingbacks and trackbacks.
That comment you left me regarding how BlogEngine.NET detects spam from trackbacks and comments was fantastic by the way; sounds like a really neat and novel way of tackling the spam problem!
Posted 19 Aug 2007 at 11:14 am ¶I’m really looking forward to reading your comparison. I’m sure you’ll come up with some interesting stuff.
Posted 19 Aug 2007 at 12:46 pm ¶Here’s the first set of comparisons I’ve made so far… Wordpress has been acting funky with the pingbacks lately… It hasn’t been allowing me to pingback from within my own blog regularly. I might have to revise my BlogEngine.NET and Wordpress comparison on trackbacks if this keeps up.
Wordpress vs. BlogEngine.NET Summary – August 21
Posted 21 Aug 2007 at 12:34 pm ¶you got some interesting perspective there. Good job. As for ad sense, don’t worry about ad polluted profile box, since it’s against thx facebook TOS to put any app on the app profile box. As for the canvas page adsense, it’s possible to trick the system by putting the ad in an iframe and populate it with relevant meta data. Keep those good writings coming.
Posted 22 Aug 2007 at 11:15 am ¶Well done, great blog and great posts!!!
Posted 25 Aug 2007 at 5:40 pm ¶You have an error in your otherwise helpful article.
Posted 25 Aug 2007 at 7:15 pm ¶When a user selects to remove your application they are not sent to the ‘Post-Remove URL’ as they have removed the application and so will have no further contact with it. A POST request will be sent to this address in the background however containing the uid of the leaving user.
Hi Aaron,
Great to hear you’re looking to Facebook.NET … I am certainly open to any and all feedback about bugs, ideas, suggestions etc. to make sure Facebook.NET continues to provide a solid base for building Facebook apps. I’ve set up the CodePlex project partly to create a nice channel for folks like you to participate in the discussion/issue forums.
Thanks, Nikhil
Posted 26 Aug 2007 at 10:16 am ¶Nikhil,
I’m very impressed with Facebook.NET so far; I redesigned my entire application using its FBML approach and I am proud to say that my application finally started working. The Facebook Developer’s Toolkit simply hid too many undocumented behaviors “under the hood” for it to be trusted, whereas your framework allows for very abstract and simple, yet elegant methods to approaching a Facebook application in .NET.
I am very happy with the tool and I will continue to use it. I will even be posting the full source code for my application once it’s finished so other Facebook.NET developers can have more resources to look at.
Thanks for making a great tool; I will be posting more about it in the future.
-Aaronontheweb
Posted 27 Aug 2007 at 2:36 am ¶While your post was very interesting and informative, I was distracted at the outset by your beginning the article with the conjunction “so”. Speakers, and now writers apparently, have been misusing this word in the past few years. It has become as common and as irritating as that other misused conjunction, “like”. But somehow it is now accepted and spread by otherwise educated people who would rail against the similar misuse of “like”.
“So I attended the Facebook Garage…” should be preceded by a related idea, as in, “My wife was out of town this weekend, so I attended…”. Of even more common use than this example, however, is the use of the misunderstood “so” to start the answer to a question. I frequently hear the following type of exchange at meetings:
Q: “How’s your project coming, Jane?”
A: “So I met with HR this morning…”
I anticipate the day when I ask a co-worker the time of day and am responded to with “So, I’m looking at my watch and the little hand is on the three…”
Posted 27 Aug 2007 at 10:54 am ¶Hey Dean,
Thanks for your comment. I’m perpetually interested in improving my writing form and style, thusI will add “look for the misuse of so” to my list of checks I perform each time I write an article. I posted an article today on Dumb Little Man about weight loss and lifestyle changes (I did not mention it on this blog because it’s not relevant to the subjects I write about), and I my grammar was also criticized there. If you have some feedback on how I can improve upon that article also I would love to listen to it.
Posted 27 Aug 2007 at 11:12 am ¶Harry,
You’re correct! I will make the appropriate changes to the article as soon as I can. Thanks for your feedback!
Posted 27 Aug 2007 at 11:25 am ¶Great Blog Article and an overall awesome blog in fact. It’s funny, we have the same theme on our wordpress site and are both looking at blogengine.net as a replacement for wordpress.
Jess
Posted 28 Aug 2007 at 8:34 am ¶Hehe.. yeah dude! look at this now:
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 2:54 pm ¶for example i have, in my app call that returns facebook user object, from some ID. 10 o’clock at night.. and i am in debug mode. My app starts to break everywhere… then i noticed that (in Immediate window) when i write object in direct way, while in break point, it returns null??? while 5 time, it returned correct data with same call?!? So, webservice timeout…and we have problems..
No i am wondering, maybe this facebook toolkit is missing it’s point – in architecture way – maybe something like jquery or YUI Ext would be much better for this issues.
Yeah I think the basic problem with the Facebook Developer Toolkit is the fact that it’s just too rigid. Facebook.NET is very flexible and I think this will ultimately prove to be a better approach to .NET-driven facebook applications given that the platform will likely be subject to changes down the road, especially the FBML syntax.
Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 3:29 pm ¶The only issue I have with Facebook.NET is that the application has to be either a FBML or Iframe application running within facebook. I can’t figure how to create a stand-alone app that just authenticates. The facebook toolkit seems to be designed for stand-alone apps first then integrated apps second.
I’d switch if Facebook.NET had a stand-alone option. I think I saw a comment that it’s in the works
Posted 30 Aug 2007 at 12:12 pm ¶Razman, not sure if you’ve looked at everything inside the Facebook.NET package – but if you do, you should see Facebook.Desktop.dll – it has the ability for client apps to show a login dialog to create a Facebook client session, and then you’re off and able to use all the APIs… or you can use an infinite session as well, if you have one and don’t want the user to login.
If you don’t see it, and have questions I’d recommend using the discussion forum on CodePlex rather than simply letting your questions/thoughts go unanswered/unaddressed.
Aaronontheweb, sorry for using your comments form for this, but I just thought I’d take the opportunity to point Razman to whats there.
Posted 30 Aug 2007 at 12:29 pm ¶It’s no problem Nikhil, that’s what blogs comments are for!
Posted 30 Aug 2007 at 12:41 pm ¶Thanks for the cool list. I do a weekly or bi-weekly picks of Firefox extensions if you’d like to check out. I should update my favorite extensions page (linked to my name) soon.
Sorry for all the link plugs but you asked about my favorites.
Posted 31 Aug 2007 at 3:24 pm ¶Thanks for the list. I rarely have time to go and check every new plug-in myself, so lists like this (and from a trusted source) definitely save my time.
Posted 01 Sep 2007 at 3:02 am ¶K-IntheHouse,
I checked out your list of Firefox extensions; very cool! And no I absolutely do not mind people plugging content on their own blog when it’s relevant to what I’m writing about!
Sleeping Dude,
No problem. I’ve been using these extensions for helping run my site for a couple of months now. SeoQuake is by far the most valuable out of that entire list. I’m recommending it to all of my clients and friends who run websites. The second most valuable out of all of them is probably FireFTP.
Posted 01 Sep 2007 at 1:12 pm ¶All are pretty good points. I don’t think MS is going to go dead any time soon. The problem with people screaming MS is dead is that they don’t find the things MS does exciting. Most of MS products are so tied up within themselves that it turns off the majority of geeks. Can you name any single MS product that runs on Linux? Its their lack of openness that brings about so much hatred towards them.
Posted 04 Sep 2007 at 3:19 am ¶Arpit,
Thanks for your comment. I agree with your interpretation about why people like to scream “MS is dead!” I also think a lot of it has to due with a very small number of very vocal people who fundamentally do not agree with the concept of proprietary software.
Why should MS products run on Linux? They already run on all Windows and OS X machines, why spend resources on the 1% of the market share that doesn’t believe in paying for software in the first place?
Posted 04 Sep 2007 at 12:56 pm ¶One of the best articles I’ve read regarding this issue. I am too a MS evangelist in some way, and I face the same criticism from people over and over.
Your article should be a punch in the head to any fanboy anti-M$.
Posted 05 Sep 2007 at 6:46 am ¶Korayem,
Thanks for the comment! Yes, we face more criticism than we deserve, frankly. I’ve used oodles of open source technology but I still prefer .NET and the MS line of development tools over anything that the open-source community has to offer.
Hopefully posts like this one will help bring an end to the Linux and Apple fanboys running sensationalist prophecies about Judgment Day for Microsoft.
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 12:27 pm ¶A quick note.
I forgot to cite the original stock image that I used to make that… decent… banner at the top of this post.
Thanks to analyser from sxc.hu for providing the original stock photo.
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 1:18 am ¶Extensions for bloggers not developers really.
Number 1 extension for a developer is Firebug
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 9:26 am ¶So, TripAdvisor’s purchase of “Where I’ve Been” turned out to be true after all? Last I’d heard, both parties were denying the rumour.
I still don’t understand that purchase, given that TripAdvisor already had there own widget which was incredibly similar to “Where I’ve Been,” called “Cities I’ve Visited” aka: “TripAdvisor Travel Map” (which, in my opinion, is a better application than “Where I’ve Been” anyway, albeit by a very slight margin).
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 2:57 pm ¶Hey Adam,
I had heard in person at the event that TripAdvisor indeed purchased it for an undisclosed amount, but it turns out that whoever said that didn’t have their facts straight either.
I’ll go ahead and gut that from my post.
It took a bit of refining since the Google search results regarding the TripAdvisor is still polluted with bad news, but I finally found out what in the hell is actually going on with “Where I’ve Been” from a CNet article about the app’s recent move to MySpace as a widget, dated September 6th 2007.
Now I need to go and get a different example
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 3:37 pm ¶And Dell has still not shipped my new motherboard to Vanderbilt ITS… I need to work on my apps damnit!
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 5:11 pm ¶Of all that extensions I’ve got 1 installed, download toolbar, and that’s not specifically for developers. From all the others, I can only see the use of IE view. You must be a different kind of developing thing than I am.
My list of recommended addons for developers would be:
1.) Firebug. This is *the* plugin for developers. Don’t leave home without it.
2.) Web developer toolbar. Disable JS, disable/clear cookies, rulers and guides. Just a bundle of useful stuff.
3.) Tamper Data. See the HTTP strings and get the possibility to modify them, how cool is that.
4.) Selenium toolbar. Test automation right in your browser. I don’t like pressing the same 10 button 50 times, do you?
5.) Johnnycache. Stop caching for your own projects without disabling it for the entire net.
Other nice addons I have include User agent switcher, Quick locale switcher, Fire encrypter, Firefox showcase and Timestamp convertor.
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 10:15 pm ¶Daniel,
I’ll check those extensions out and build a new list in the near future.
As for the intended audience of this list, it’s really more for website proprietors and operators than developers, now that I think about it. Some of the stuff on there is for CSS and session management but mostly it’s tools for leveraging and promoting your own blog or website and metrics for measuring the effectiveness of your promotion.
I’ll give more thought to the title in the future.
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 10:18 pm ¶The thing that makes me laugh whenever folks say that Microsoft missed the Web 2.0 boat (and similar) is that I’m curious where Web 2.0 would be without XmlHttpRequest… an object which debuted as an ActiveX extension to IE produced by MS and copied by everyone else…
Posted 08 Sep 2007 at 11:04 am ¶why spend resources on the 1% of the market share that doesn’t believe in paying for software in the first place?
Posted 08 Sep 2007 at 2:37 pm ¶This is a misunderstanding of the position of most “free software” advocates; “free” here means not “gratis” but freedom to use and modify the program as you wish, and people choose non-proprietary programs and operating systems for many important reasons besides not “believ[ing] in paying for software”. Although most “free software” programs happen to be available gratis, open-source advocates will and do pay for “free” software — software that’s vastly more valuable because it is future-proofed against any particular company/developer ceasing to support it, modifying it to invade users’ privacy, or other undesirable outcomes.
if it didn’t make to the top-10, your eleventh add-on should be
http://www.screengrab.org
really useful stuff
Posted 08 Sep 2007 at 3:34 pm ¶Although most “free software” programs happen to be available gratis, open-source advocates will and do pay for “free” software — software that’s vastly more valuable because it is future-proofed against any particular company/developer ceasing to support it, modifying it to invade users’ privacy, or other undesirable outcomes.
I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean by the first part of that sentence; would you mind giving me an example of “free” software that open-source advocates pay for? And I’m not talking about service contracts, I mean they pay for a software license.
A group of unpaid volunteers will outlast the most profitable company on Earth, is that what you’re saying? What’s the lifespan of the average open source project?
Software that’s vastly more valuable because it’s open source? I’d like to see some open source video games that are worth anything, and no, Return to Castle Wolfenstein/Enemy Territory does not count. Proprietary software that gets its source code published has nothing to do with projects that begin as open source.
How come the open source movement hasn’t produced a video game that’s “more valuable” than what proprietary software developers produce?
Is it because proprietary companies do a better job institutionalizing their “secret sauce” because they have an economic incentive to do so?
Or is it because open-source organizations do a poorer job institutionalizing knowledge because they rely on altruistic incentive to develop software?
Posted 08 Sep 2007 at 3:34 pm ¶I’ve downloaded the Web Developer toolbar, and it’s come quite in handy. My favorite feature of it is the resize function; it’s useful when you’ve turned off the “allow scripts to resize your windows” option for Javascript.
Another extension that I’ve installed which comes in handy is SearchStatus – it’s another way to get PageRank, and it also highlights nofollow links, and shows you the rank for compete and alexa.
Posted 08 Sep 2007 at 4:20 pm ¶How about Firebug? It regularly saves my rear end as I try to debug xhtml/css-based layouts (”Why is that 5px margin there? How come the rules I just wrote aren’t being rendered properly?”)
Check it out here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843
Posted 08 Sep 2007 at 4:36 pm ¶Wow a lot of comments just started rolling in; must have something to do with that lifehacker article.
@Vuz,
I used screen grab for a long time on this computer (two years) and didn’t really find it to be that useful. I could see the value in it given that it can render an image of the entire page, beyond what I can see with the active pane of my browser, but rarely did I ever need to use it. I just press the windows key plus print screen to take screen shots of content that I later crop for my blog entries.
@Sephyroth,
I used an older version of the web developer toolbar for a long time and removed it as a result of some incompatibility issues when I upgraded to Firefox 2.0. I’ll take another look at it.
I’ll also take a look at SearchStatus, although I am VERY fond of SEO Quake.
@Ruthie and everyone else asking about Firebug,
I just installed it; it sounds great, and I can’t wait to check it out. Thanks for recommending it!
Posted 08 Sep 2007 at 4:49 pm ¶Hi. These are all good extensions, BUT… As a long time web developer you forgot THE most important one of all.. Way more useful than the ones listed… As mentioned in a previous post, it is the Web Developer toolbar. By far the most useful.
Posted 08 Sep 2007 at 5:51 pm ¶Isn’t session manager built into Firefox 2.0? I think I used the Session Manager extension in Firefox 1.5, but after upgrading to 2.0, I don’t think it is necessary. BTW, I can recommend a few more extensions (and info about problematic extensions) at http://alekdavis.blogspot.com/2007/05/recommended-firefox-add-ons.html
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 12:26 am ¶1. Firebug
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 12:42 am ¶2. Firebug
3. Firebug
@Alek,
I’m not sure; Firefox 2.0 might automatically restore sessions after crashes, but it won’t give you the option to explicitly store sessions like how session manager will. I’ll save specific sessions when I need to save a series of tabs side by side.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 12:45 am ¶@Craig,
I’m using Firebug now for digging through my own CSS and I love it. Thanks for recommending it.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 12:47 am ¶You have similar design as mine and good posts.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 12:57 am ¶i would like FIer fox to give an add on that will collect information on me the user and will send it automatically to outer space
- take a pause and save yourself for ever- perhaps you will find a better life in outer space-
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 2:24 am ¶Upload a file to http://www.beinspace.com give it a name a and a link to your site
And this information will live for ever in outer space.
@Paul: good point.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 4:12 am ¶You might wanna include the following as well:
1. Aardvark Extension for Firefox as well.
2.X-Ray
3. Web Developer
if one is using the Web Developer extension,
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 5:43 am ¶Although I like your listed add-ons, most don’t seem to me to really be developer add-ons.
How can a top ten not include either Firebug or Web Developer? That’s crazy, dude. Hell, Web Developer has been the premier webdev extension/add-on since before FF 1.0 was officially released.
And regarding “session manager”, I do believe all FF releases since 2.0 have had “session-restore” built-in, making the add-on you recommended completely irrelevant (so far as I can see).
Another add-on that I use for developing, as well as other stuff, is a wonderful add-on called “Signature”. It was originally intended to give the user right-click context menu options in text fields that allow you to auto-include a limitless number of custom “signatures”… (i.e., you right-click, and get to choose signatures that you’ve custom-written for forums and blogs and such). The wonderful webdev aspect of this is that you can create code snippets instead of sigs if you want. Less typing always = good in my book.
Non-webdev add-ons that come in handy are the following:
“Answers.com” – Alt+left-click any word on any page and an iframe pops up with the answers.com synopses definition of the word from various sources, such as wikipedia, etc… and it also gives you a link to the answers.com page with the full listing of results.
“foxytunes” – if you browse the web and listen to music at the same time, don’t even ask any questions – DL this add-on ASAP. It was voted best add-on of ‘06 and just continues to get better. Newest release includes a greasemonkey-esque feature that places a nice little icon under text-fields (i.e., blogs, comments, etc…) so that you can auto-insert a “what I’m listening to right now” sig that includes a link to the song’s “foxytunes planet” page which shows you song/artist info from youtube, wikipedia, flickr, lastfm, etc… all on one page.
And
“Tab Scope” – Allows you to see LIVE previews of pages when you hover over their tabs. Meaning, instead of just seeing a screen cap, you see a tiny preview of the actual page including scrolling and refresh capabilities (inside the tiny preview) making tab navigation so much more enjoyable.
Sorry I’m too lazy to actually include links, but Google isn’t. All of these are easily searchable by using their name (which I’ve put in quotes) and the word “add-on” as Google keywords.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 7:00 am ¶How can you forget or not list Firebug extension which I believe is the foremost extension in the the list of web developers. I can not imagine working without this extension whether I am writing javascript based code or css based code.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 7:43 am ¶Without a doubt, FIREBUG should be #1 on the list.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 7:44 am ¶I missed firebug, but also live http headers (i agree firebug has some functionality in that area as well, but still like live http headers…
For the download status bar: doesn’ t seem so useful to me. When i download something with firefox, I do ctrl J to open downloads window: I then right click any of the downloaded files and choose ‘open containing folder’, so opening file explorer and hunting down that dir.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 8:27 am ¶i am doing what i promised and i am waitin for what you promised.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 8:48 am ¶Use APC, you will get C-based PHP runtime executes twice as fast as Phalanger.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 9:01 am ¶Do you have some benchmarks that can enforce that assertion? We’re all about objectivity here.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 10:35 am ¶What about firebug, webdeveloper, measureit !
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 11:12 am ¶screengrub an the other does not include Flash, for me this is important
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 11:13 am ¶If you’re comparing PHP without APC or another bytecode cache, you’re comparing apples and oranges here.
Check out: http://itst.net/654-php-on-fire-three-opcode-caches-compared
And to the previous commenter’s assertion that APC based PHP will be twice as fast as Phalanger, the 190% speed improvement in the referenced article seems to support that.
Also, the Phlanger PHPbb test is little off. It was run on a pentium M 1.8Ghz laptop using windows XP. It’s not exactly the environment most people will use when running PHP (which can be seen pretty clearly by the paltry 6 requests per second it pumped out). Also, everything was run on the same box (including the test harness itself).
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 12:32 pm ¶Dom,
Great comment! I’m simply comparing traditional PHP execution using the Zend interpreter against the .NET methodology using Phalanger; the comparison stands as valid (rather than Apples and Oranges) from that point of view.
I did not write the article with the intention of determining what the absolute best performance system for PHP is, given that this is a .NET blog. I happen to like PHP and I saw Phalanger as an exciting opportunity to incorporate it into some of my .NET projects.
When I wrote the article I was aware of different PHP compilation techniques, but I simply was writing about PHP compilation in the scope of .NET.
And what you say about the bench-marking is also true; I think this merits some more thorough bench marking on the behalf of the Phalanger developers, don’t you?
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 12:41 pm ¶I would defiantly say the Web Developer toolbar
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 1:51 pm ¶PHP runs five time faster when it is run under Java: http://www.caucho.com/resin-3.1/doc/quercus.xtp
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 2:08 pm ¶You say that it is an apples to apples comparison but you have a very old version of php and no byte cache running against an optimised native executable.
and no mono doesn’t count as it’s definately not ready for large scale applications.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 4:21 pm ¶My insticts would tell me that .NET should be faster but PHP is definately no slouch when set up properly, all you have done is basically hyped a half truth in a true Microsoft way, well done.
And I definately won’t mention anything about .NET being platform independant considering it runs on exactly 1 platform
@Anonamoose,
If you can point out how my article is only telling half the truth, please do so. Is it not true that PHP compiled in .NET runs twice as fast as Zend interpretation according to the Phalanger group?
A half-truth would be if I claimed that Phalanger was the fastest available platform for PHP, which I didn’t.
In addition, if you read my article all the way through, you would have read the area where I addressed platform dependence
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 5:16 pm ¶@Aaronontheweb
A half-truth would be if I claimed that Phalanger was the fastest available platform for PHP, which I didn’t.
Stating “Attention: PHP executes twice as fast when it’s run on ASP.NET” implies that it is faster then PHP and the assertion is it is for all aplications even though one is given as a token example.
If you stated that PHP was run in an non-optimal setup on a webserver that is far from friendly to PHP not to mention the old version then it would be alot more factual.
If you re-run these tests with a fair testing environment (linux/apache/op cache vs IIS/.NET or even just an op cache on IIS) and it is still faster then I’ll be the first to say ‘wow well done’, untill then it is complete utter FUD.
In addition, if you read my article all the way through, you would have read the area where I addressed platform dependence
Well this is a start, there is more to platform indepedance then hosting options
The world doesn`t need more people advertising FUD on both sides get an ounce of skeptiscism and don’t be a puppet.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 6:36 pm ¶@Anonamoose,
I didn’t run any of these tests; I reported on what the Phalanger group did. You should tell them to rerun those tests on a fair environment if you have a problem with how they did it.
If I wrote a headline saying that “Attention: Under Windows IIS PHP Can Be Compiled with Phalanger to Run at Approximately 100% Faster Speeds Than it Can Under Traditional Zend Interpretation” do you think anyone would read it?
Blogging is just as much about writing effective copy as it is about providing sufficient cause to start discussion. Titles like this one draws enough interest to spark the discussion necessary to ultimately produce better information for my audience.
Look at the valuable information that the comments for this article has yielded; now people who are really interested in learning about not just .NET, but about increasing the performance of PHP, have a list of resources they can turn to for doing just that. The criticism that some of the visitors to my site have provided via comments ultimately improves the quality of information on my site.
Blogging is not about the original writer being right or wrong, but it is ultimately about gathering the most complete and best information; I alone couldn’t possibly gather all the possible ways you can optimize a PHP application. Readers like you and others who leave feedback complete the information gathering to one location.
I’ve not cast FUD on anything (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt; I had to look it up.) If anything I’ve objectively directed my readers to the facts on codeproject and the Phalanger website, regardless of what some readers may think of said facts. I’ve entertained criticism and discussion in a fair and respectful manner; I could choose to moderate comments or ignore criticism entirely, but I haven’t because criticism of my articles ultimately makes for better information, which is my objective. If it takes a controversial title to acquire such information, then so be it
I really don’t care much about what my readers think of me personally, but I care a lot about writing on subjects that they enjoy and I care a lot about having the best possible information, even if it’s provided from readers, other bloggers, or my harshest critics.
I’d be more than happy to write a subsequent post about PHP optimization/bytecode caching techniques should the readers of this blog want to read it. I even have a catchy title thought of for it already
Regardless, thank you for your comment!
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 7:09 pm ¶@Paul: ha thats really an excellent point that never even occurred to me…Far ahead of its time.
Great article.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 7:34 pm ¶If you link to an article and then add supplimentary comment supporting it then you are in fact supporting the original assertion.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 7:52 pm ¶You seem like a fair person and all I’m trying to get at is that pointing at something that will lead to a flame fest and saying ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ is not going to stop people commenting on your article.
You either support something, not support something or be fair and present both sides and let the discusion take place a fourth option I do not believe exists but maybe wrong.
I guess you are just ‘link baiting’ to get visitors which is a real shame, there is so much FUD out there you could use your powers for good not ebil! (that isn’t a mis type).
By the way the article was nicely written even if I don’t agree with the content
I am supporting the original assertion that Phalanger speeds up traditional PHP execution, to be clear. The facts of Phalanger’s tests support this assertion. However if you wanted to demonstrate that original PHP could be improved with bytecode compilation to such a level that it’s indeed faster than Phalanger, that’s an entirely separate issue from comparing the two as they run out of the box with no modification. I would encourage you to run your own tests.
I am very supportive of comments; it seems to me that there’s some interest in other technologies for improving PHP performance, technologies that I was only vaguely aware of, and from these comments I can potentially produce another post on the subject.
Do you think I am being unsupportive of comments? The only reason I’ve replied is to more or less clarify why I produced the article in the first place, for the sake of having my readers understand my blog’s intent. I’m by no means trying to stifle discussion, only stifling attacks against my blog’s integrity and intent
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 8:44 pm ¶I don’t think your stifling the comments at all which is good, well done you get a cookie but at the same time you do not seem open to the fact that the article is based on an incorrect assuption.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 11:09 pm ¶Your support for it is IMHO misplaced and I hope the you do redress it maybe with another article about the Phalanger Project (perhaps an interview with them addressing what I and other posters have said).
Your integrity and that of your site is directly related to how you handle the facts and in this case your defending a flawed article, this is what is known as FUD or to put it another way ‘throw enough mud and it sticks’.
Do you want to be known as just another shrill/fanboy ? or someone that is trustworthy it is up to you.
I’d encourage you to check your email, if you’ve been using a real one.
I’ve had no problem handling the facts; it’s not my fault that you don’t like them.
PHP runs faster when it’s compiled with .NET than it does running on Zend interpretation; this is a fact and its integrity has been weakly challenged but not disproved by any stretch of the imagination.
No one has presented any data demonstrating that out of the box Zend interpretation runs faster than Phalanger binaries. Go ahead and try it; inform us.
In the email I sent you I’ve given you an opportunity to throw some of your own ideas about PHP out there in a full post that i will publish on this site. If you want to use the opportunity to demonstrate methods in which PHP will execute faster than it does with Phalanger then that’s up to you.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 11:26 pm ¶I have to agree with everyone who has expressed the sentiment Firebug, Firebug, Firebug. It has changed. My. Life.
Posted 10 Sep 2007 at 4:06 am ¶Yes, a compiled php is faster than an interpreted php – whats the news?
Posted 10 Sep 2007 at 6:16 am ¶firebug and webdeveloper toolbar
Posted 10 Sep 2007 at 11:24 am ¶You dont need measureit when you have web developer, it’s located in the ‘miscellaneous bar’ -> display ruler
Posted 10 Sep 2007 at 12:10 pm ¶Not quite.
Apple has a third-party company called Corporate Services that handles that stuff. The content is served up by their servers, and not Apple themselves.. the /promo/ URL is just virtually there, and not actually hosted by Apple.
Example: http://applepromotion.corporatesvcs.com/
FYI Apple uses WebObjects, not PHP/Apache.
Posted 10 Sep 2007 at 12:23 pm ¶Thanks for the comment!
I had read something along the same lines on Digg this morning. I’m surprised Apple doesn’t do their own web development though.
Posted 10 Sep 2007 at 12:28 pm ¶Display ruler does not support frames
Posted 10 Sep 2007 at 2:40 pm ¶Aaronontheweb,
Attention: PHP executes twice as fast when it’s run on ASP.NET
BAD TITLE, MISLEADING and you know it
Naturally compiled code executes faster then any interpreted code on any platform. That said, there are many ways to speed up php execution on windows or any platform, probably the best is to purchase a copy of Zend Encoder:
http://www.zend.com/products/zend_guard
First time I hear about Phalanger so its an interesting read but a title like: compile PHP code on ASP.net would be *much more* honest and interesting then reading about misleading titles/statements on execution time.
Posted 10 Sep 2007 at 6:39 pm ¶While I think the comments regarding the misleading title are unjust (it’s supported by facts, what more do you want? An Apache group endorsement?), I like your suggested title, as I think it conforms better to the spirit of AjaxNinja’s readership.
Posted 10 Sep 2007 at 7:05 pm ¶There, I submitted the article to reddit, which I have never used before, with the new headline. Let’s see if you’re right about the other title being better, given that it did pretty well on DZone with the original one.
http://programming.reddit.com/info/2nzuz/comments
Posted 10 Sep 2007 at 7:33 pm ¶Why are you working with frames? Do you link extra load for your server?
Posted 10 Sep 2007 at 8:01 pm ¶No, I´m only want to know I can measure whatever I like…
In the otherside… Gmail use frames.
If you say I cannot measure flash swf’s inside a page I can accept that for MeasureIt
Posted 10 Sep 2007 at 11:20 pm ¶@Paul,
Yes, fantastic point. Well done.
Posted 11 Sep 2007 at 10:26 am ¶Really great list! Several on there that I wasn’t aware of…going to have to check those out now!
Stumbled it
Posted 11 Sep 2007 at 1:45 pm ¶Dana,
Thanks for your comment! I love getting feedback, positive or negative, from my readers, and I’m glad that you found this list helpful. I added you as a friend on StumbleUpon and I gave you a review. Good luck on your quest to become a top stumbler!
-Aaron
Posted 11 Sep 2007 at 11:05 pm ¶I like the IBusinessEntity interface, I may borrow it in future projects. Thanks for posting.
Posted 12 Sep 2007 at 6:18 am ¶There is a vs.net plugin that provides intellisense – http://www.jcxsoftware.com/ – although I have never tried it!
Posted 12 Sep 2007 at 7:08 am ¶@Jrummel,
No problem. I’m using the IBusinessEntity interface in my Facebook.NET application right now actually. It’s hard for me to imagine programming with out it after I read about it!
Thanks for your comment!
Posted 12 Sep 2007 at 8:14 pm ¶Some good insights and all true.
dugg by me
Posted 13 Sep 2007 at 10:32 am ¶Thanks for the comment!
And for the Digg. Wouldn’t it be ironic if this article made it to the front page? I guess my next post would be “Well…. shit.”
Posted 13 Sep 2007 at 10:38 am ¶Update: within 30 minutes of digging we got our first overly hostile comment on Digg! Horay!
Posted 13 Sep 2007 at 11:09 am ¶Digg’s days numbered. There is way too many negative/know-it-all people over there… f-them
Posted 13 Sep 2007 at 11:21 am ¶Techcrunch posted a site that looks more user-friendly then Digg, and Arrington seems intrigued by it.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/13/mixx-to-take-a-new-look-at-social-news/#comments
Within minutes of posting, the first “diggnation” hostility came out, LOL. Drives home point #1 completely!
http://www.mixx.com is the URL
Posted 13 Sep 2007 at 2:52 pm ¶You could save a little space by changing your try/catch/finally to a using statement and getting rid of the boolean declaration for the return value:
public bool AddUserToNetwork(SnapUser user, String FBID)
Posted 13 Sep 2007 at 3:35 pm ¶{
using(SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(this.connectionString))
{
SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(”Snap_AddUserNetwork”);
cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;
cmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter(”@UserID”, SqlDbType.Int));
cmd.Parameters["@UserID"].Value = user.UserID;
cmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter(”@FBID”, SqlDbType.NVarChar, 256));
cmd.Parameters["@FBID"].Value = FBID;
try
{
con.Open(); //Open the sql connection
cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
user.UserID = (int)cmd.Parameters["@UserID"].Value;
return true;
}
catch (SqlException err)
{
returnValue = false;
SError error = new SError(”UserDB.cs”,
err.Procedure, FBID, (short)err.LineNumber, err.Message);
this.errorLogger.logError(error); //Log this error
}
}
return false;
}
Quick note, I just made it onto the front page of DZone again with “How to Design a Simple, Elegant Data Layer in .NET”
Posted 13 Sep 2007 at 3:46 pm ¶Would you not use a KeyValuePair for passing the command arguments? Two seperate arrays for name and value seems icky to me.
Posted 13 Sep 2007 at 4:23 pm ¶@Ryan,
Great optimization! Awesome comment, thank you.
@Ian,
Yes your suggestion would definitely be a better way of doing things; less room for error if I use key/value pairs. I will implement this in the future.
Thanks for the good suggestions.
Posted 13 Sep 2007 at 4:26 pm ¶Thanks for the link Bluedog! I went ahead and threw my two cents on TechCrunch.
Posted 13 Sep 2007 at 6:37 pm ¶Great to see examples of this put to use. It helps the rest of us duplicate your success in different markets.
Posted 13 Sep 2007 at 7:03 pm ¶Hey Michael,
I wish you the best of luck in duplicating my success, although I daresay it may be too soon to call my blog successful
!
In the future I plan on issuing a long term report on how these headlines have improved my traffic but in past week alone they’ve certainly helped!
Also make sure you subscribe to Copyblogger!
Posted 13 Sep 2007 at 7:18 pm ¶Aaron,
Great article. I couldn’t agree more about putting thought into your headlines. I read that same article on Copyblogger and have tried to use its advice throughout my blog.
Posted 13 Sep 2007 at 8:11 pm ¶I think you’re missing the point of the power of Digg though. It’s not about getting to the front page of Digg, it’s about being able to leverage it’s power for higher ranking in Google. See Google likes Digg and will list Diggs up fairly high in the niche listings. So if you are blogging about ‘underwater rats’ and your blog is ranking 500 (are there that many searches for this?) and you get one of your articles dugg, that article might come in at the #13 listing on a Google search, therefore indirectly driving readers to your blog. Social Posting is not about the network you’re posting on as much as how well Google likes that network.
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 6:11 am ¶I don’t think I’ve ever seen the style of parameter naming you did on the SnapQuery constructor (with PascalCase and a trailing underscore)…is that your own convention for params that just get assigned to properties (that have a leading underscore)? That’s kind of interesting….
Besides what has already been mentioned, the only thing I’m not comfortable with is the positional dependency in User.Fill. It’ll be duplicated in the sql command that’s responsible for pulling the data.
If you use stored procs, I guess there’s no way around that. But if you’re using SELECT statements, an additional ColumnNames[] array on the IBusinessEntity could be used by both the Fill method and whatever is constructing the Sql statement. Or, just enforce a standard of column name == property name and use the property name instead of position.
I’d also probably (optionally?) wrap all the SqlCommands in WriteDataItems in a transaction, since you probably aren’t going to know which one failed. You open yourself up to locking issues there, but I think the semantics are cleaner.
Also, if con.Open() throws an exception in your try blocks, then con.Close() will as well in your finally block. the using construct will take care of that.
I’d probably ditch the WebConfigurationManager reference as well (since it requires System.Web) – though if you only deal with ASP.NET that may be less of an issue for you.
All in all, though, pretty nice and concise general purpose DAL.
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 6:38 am ¶Thanks a lot for the information. I currently use firefox and I have not utilized it to it’s fullest extent. I will go through and get all those plug-ins you have gone through. Thanks again.
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 7:30 am ¶Very good points. I’d like to add that if a social network for your niche doesn’t exist yet then why not start your own with Ning?
http://www.ning.com/
Even if it doesn’t become the next Digg (or even the next Netscape, I mean Propeller) it’s worth it for some links.
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 7:37 am ¶@Stacy,
That is an excellent point.
@Anthony,
Again, great point; the only problem is the chicken and the egg with social networks – you’ve got to have some momentum to get the thing rolling. It’s not impossible but it may be time-consuming.
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 8:31 am ¶Hey Mark,
That convention is something I picked up at University; I taught by an embedded systems Professor that we were always supposed indicate private data members with a trailing underscore, although the capitalization is something I threw in to make the names more readable.
Your point about the fill being dangerous makes sense; on my GetDataItem<> function I’ve had to modify it since.
Using an atomic transaction also sounds like a good idea.
Unfortunately I need to keep the System.Web.Configuration reference as that’s where I load my configuration string from, plus I work primarily in ASP.NET, as you said.
Thanks for the great comment!
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 8:40 am ¶FWIW – for those of use doing both client and web development –
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 9:56 am ¶the System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager class (in System.Configuration assembly) works with both app.config and web.config for readonly access. For a more general purpose DAL, I’d much rather a System.Configuration dependency than System.Web.
Great article. This one should be on your list too. http://www.spinsnap.com
It’s similar to Stumbleupon, but depends less on power users and is more of a level playing field.
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 12:06 pm ¶Nice write up.
I gave up on Digg/Programming a while ago. At first it was okay, but something happened in the last year or so and all programmers must have just went over to reddit, DZone, DNK, etc.
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 4:17 pm ¶Thanks for sharing some of those strategies, Aaron
. I still don’t feel I’m writing strong headlines, but perhaps this piece and the Copyblogger article will help me boost my skills in that area a bit 
.
Posted 15 Sep 2007 at 5:31 pm ¶All good comments, in fact I gave up on Digg for health and medical news because it was all so broad and not broken into categories and started another site with some friends (meddlinks.com). I’m guessing we’ll start seeing a rise in niche social networking sites, but nothing like what Digg is.
Posted 15 Sep 2007 at 8:38 pm ¶Awesome advice!
I am picky at choose what articles to read and your new titles have caught my attention. Thanks for sharing.
John
Posted 15 Sep 2007 at 10:09 pm ¶I agree with the gardener example. My first thought would be that he sold me the mower for his best interest not mine. It would be the last advice I would take from him again.
Great blog, keep up the good work!
John
Posted 15 Sep 2007 at 10:22 pm ¶Nice post,
but there’s 2 things that bothers me here.
1. you can find an affiliate program for just about any product.
so I don’t see why you wouldn’t benefit from linking to a product you
believe in. As long as you don’t believe in products based on payout
2. there’s 2 kinds of blogs, the one just selling stuff to an audience
Posted 16 Sep 2007 at 10:00 am ¶that is not aware of it. And the other one … IMO : http://www.joelcomm.com/ is a greeeeat example.
Great advice. Headlines are something that I often get lazy on. I should start putting a little more thought into them.
Posted 16 Sep 2007 at 11:20 am ¶Nice list. I would also add the new social media extension.
Posted 16 Sep 2007 at 6:38 pm ¶Firebug and WebDeveloper have proven the most popular extensions in my office for the past year or so, but seoquake and colorzilla look as though they could prove to be two equally massive timesavers.
Thanks for the list!
Posted 16 Sep 2007 at 10:05 pm ¶Very good list. We are an outlet to consider as well.
Posted 17 Sep 2007 at 8:50 pm ¶Thanks for the Comments John and Michael!
One of those articles that I cited from DZone ended up kicking the shit out of my articles click-through wise, so I guess that show’s what I know :p
Either way, the authors who contribute to DZone and DotNetKicks are some of the most brilliant and painstaking engineers and bloggers out there, but I feel that if they spent more time working on making better headlines, more people will be exposed to their genius.
Headlines are everything!
Posted 17 Sep 2007 at 11:57 pm ¶Aaron, Congratulations dude, your writings deserve that!
Posted 18 Sep 2007 at 5:33 am ¶Thanks for the article! This is something that I have been struggling with for some time. I hope this post sinks in when writing my next article! Keep up the good work!
Posted 18 Sep 2007 at 10:18 am ¶Thanks for sharing!
John
Posted 18 Sep 2007 at 10:32 pm ¶Hey,
Thankfully i googled onto your “Starting your First Facebook App”. Learned more in 5 minutes than i had in hours elsewhere. (What a difference a “slash” makes!!!!) I look forward to reading your stuff. I am an “old horse” programmer – started with COBOL and dbaseII – (I know …. way before your time) . I got dragged kicking and screaming into .NET and love it. Only been doing it for a couple of years, so have a lot to learn (and un-learn ;-> ) I’ll try and do my part in the revolution! Keep up the excellent work.
David
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 12:55 pm ¶This was a brilliant blog post and I’ve added you as a friend on Digg…!!
I think part of the reason for your observation is that .Net companies haven’t really been bought since all the “big buyers” out there (Google in the front) are purchasing about everything ELSE than .Net companies (interestingly NOT Writely though which WAS a .Net company) which again makes PHP and other “non-.Net” languages get a bad reputation in Sillicon Valley from which most of the Social Media Web2.0 companies arises from…
This makes most bloggers and such (trying to drive traffic to their sites) learning PHP, Ruby and Java etc which again makes the .Net world focus way too much around MSFT…
In fact if you look at the spread of languages you’ll see that .Net has about 25-30 % of the world EXCEPT in the “Valley” where they have like __5%__ of the developers….
This makes the .Net world be WAY less visible, but you’re not alone…
This is truly way sad since especially the last 6 months Mono has truly become an AMAZING platform making .Net FAR more than just a “Microsoft platform”…
Check out my blog at; http://ajaxwidgets.com/Blogs/thomas.bb
Btw our library is also “perfect blogging material” if you’d like to write something about us…
Thomas Hansen
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 1:44 pm ¶I think a lot of it has to do with the quality and price of available toolkits. Let’s take RSS – you won’t find a better feed parsing library than feedparser.org. It rocks, it’s built in python, and it’s free. Databases? Let’s see, do I spend thousands paying for SQL Server 2005, et al, or do I just download mySQL for free and be done with it? Most startups don’t have + cash~. Many don’t have funding. Paying for software sometimes just isn’t an option. (Neither is piracy)
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 2:31 pm ¶Non open source technologies are simply not hip. The main reason for that is that developers who are passionate about their work like to invest in technologies that feel more like their own. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll open the source code, but you can, or that you’ll fork it to shape it to your own taste, but you can.
I personally find it a total waste to invest my time in anything Microsoft.
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 2:35 pm ¶I agree that .NET is a great technology and it gets basically disregarded by a large number of developers. I used to pretty much be a Java fanatic until I really started using .NET. I really like it a lot now but I still write code in other languages.
I think it’s important to know the other technologies and use whatever one makes sense in the context — It really depends. I do believe Zack is right when he mentions that a lot of the popularity of other options comes down to the price tag. It does help that options such as mono and xsp are out — as well as the express versions of the visual studio IDEs.
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 2:50 pm ¶I’ve been working with .net since the first betas in 2001. It’s gone down hill since version 2.0 of the framework.
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 3:12 pm ¶I’m actually embarrassed to say I work with .NET. It’s over bloated, takes more code, doesn’t have close to the vibrant communities other platforms have. It’s essentially another pitiful Java.
Normally I don’t get involved in language discussions, as I rarely find much of substance said by any side. But I figured in this case to as least try and eloquently convey my personal beliefs in working with Linux and Java. For me it comes down to who do I want to support. If I put massive time and resources in building an application on a platform I choose to consider who else will benefit from my efforts. I choose to work with open platforms, because I know that by drawing attention to those platforms that this will draw resources to them and those resources will produce a better platform that (because it is free) will be available to everyone else. If I put basically the same amount of effort in a closed platform I am only empowering the provider of that closed platform to become even more powerful which time has shown is the case with Microsoft.
Now I admit to being pragmatic with this philosophy, after all as soon as I was able to afford a copy of Office 2003 Professional I ditched Open Office, but then comes the fact that platforms like Linux, Java (the JVM and the language), Apache, MySQL etc. really do provide compelling value beyond what Microsoft has created. Just try and do something like Amazon’s EC2 with Windows (the licensing model alone makes it unrealisitc). EC2 is an indispensable aspect of the analytical engines in my software now, and my years of Linux experience made the transition seamless. Mono has not been a realistic option in bringing .NET code to non Microsoft OSs so far, so this has a huge impact on considering any other Microsoft technology in my stack. As for some of the cool things that the .NET CLR is working on (like LINQ), I don’t see enough to convince me to switch from a platform that has kept pace with my needs for several years now. Anything I have seen LINQ do, JPA, Hibernate and home grown persistence frameworks have done, and as Ruby gains strength I can take comfort in knowing that the JVM was designed for more than one language in mind from the beginning (in fact they are up to over 200 now), so my question back to .NET advocates is why does Microsoft think .NET is anything new?
I Hope that this post isn’t scrutinized as much as it probably deserves to be.
Cool Blog, I have enjoyed reading it.
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 3:13 pm ¶.Net suffers from a number of problems, the main one is that it is by Microsoft. MSFT has one goal, and that is to sell copies of Windows. They give .net away for free (including the express IDE) for a reason. To sell copies of Windows. Anything and everything MSFT does is to promote their platform, lock people in, and control it all. For them, getting people to upgrade their PCs is their ultimate goal, and .net is their means to that end.
The problem .net developers have is that by adopting, and advocating .net, you are essentially helping, supporting and siding with their position even if it is implicit. By creating products that require .net 2.0, you are forcing people to updgrade to XP SP2, or Vista or later. Next, people will be forced to upgrade to vista to use .net 4.0. Additionally, I like to get religious about my languages and tools, which is hard to do when the sole owner, creator and controller simply sees it as a way of twisting arms to OS upgrades.
Additionally, how long before .net is defunct? Anyone remember Microsofts DNA platform from 2000? When .net 7.0 is virtually the same as .net 8.0 and nobody sees a reason to upgrade, how are microsoft going to force people to upgrade then? By creating a brand new platform for developers and users alike to buy into.
Now, I’m not a typical anti-Microsofty, they can do what they want and I don’t really care, but I don’t want my development platform determining which OS I’m going to be using, now or in 5 years time. (I’m still on Win 2K on personal machines).
However, Microsoft completely missed the boat by not making .net multi-platform. Multi-language is ok, but irrelevant, if they had pushed the multi-platform side they could have fared much better. Nobody wants lock-in, and even though we had the news hype about corel creating .net for linux, and even though mono is around, but always lagging, they still cannot be multiplatform which is in complete opposition to what they were “pretending” to be aiming for. They don’t want to compete to be the best OS provider for the .net platform, they want to be THE ONLY OS provider for the .net platform.
In terms of less political considerations, I found Java to be more OO oriented. .net is still about hooking up gui controls to cursors and performing updates, the type of faux OO applications that Delphi excelled at for years. Java is about true OO with many good ORMs, and a community that is well versed in OO principles, even if they don’t always practice it.
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 3:15 pm ¶1) because there are more linux servers on the web (because its free) so noobs get started with it and never learn .net.
2) scripting languages are easier for noobs to learn than oop.
3) MySpace runs on .NET, and don’t forget about plentyoffish.com
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 4:46 pm ¶btw… “I spend thousands paying for SQL Server 2005″… ummm it’s FREE. You only need to upgrade for important stuff (dual proc support and 4GB+ db’s – the most important in my opinion). By default it is better than mysql.
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 4:49 pm ¶You’re right on about this, it’s not just social networking though. Look at wordpress and show me the .net equivalent.
Here’s a question, has .net really made it any easier to solve your programming problems? I’m not so sure that everyone agrees that it has.
Also, licensing. If you want to get a new company off the ground and need 20-30 servers running sql server 2005 guess what that’s going to cost. A Ton! Not to mention the OS and other servers you’d need to power the web app on the IIS side.
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 5:53 pm ¶As a commercial user of the excellent F# programming language (an ML for .NET), I found the statement “you
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 7:35 pm ¶edit: excuse me, I did not make myself clear.
I think most of the complaints about .NET/SQL Server licensing costs being a barrier to running a company are complete and utter bullshit, frankly, given that those products are free
As for the stab at ML, I only make fun of it because I had to learn how to program it.
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 7:48 pm ¶SQL Server Express is free.
ISS is free.
Windows Server is cheap, chances are your start up is going to be on someone else’s VPS anyways until you start to get bandwidth issues.
A startup won’t need more than SQL Server Express’s capabilities, if your expecting to need more than 4 gb databases right away, then you probably have some venture funding, and can afford the license for the full version.
There is really no reason to not work in .NET aside from ignorant arrogance.
BTW, Windows Server 2008 and IIS7 are hands down the best server solution I’ve ever worked with, and yes, I’ve done plenty of stuff on LAMP setups too. Windows Server is going to completely dominate the professional market in a few years.
Want a good job? Learn .NET. Want to work for a poor development house? Learn anything else.
Posted 19 Sep 2007 at 10:12 pm ¶Hi,
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 1:52 am ¶I think one of the reasons is because MS stands behind it. Company that uses its monopoly position to drive others out of business and creates lock-in solutions while accepting (and crippling) industry standards when it likes. Real developer should care about interoperability and standards as it foster new innovation and creates communities. MS represents none of this.
Hi,
Good post and great point noted. I also try and click on Dot net related article every where and try to my level to increase the knowledge of the framework in the community
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 7:42 am ¶You shoudl really look at using NHibernate. It take a little bit to get your head around, but once you have, it works a dream. I also use it with the SpringFramework.net as they have some nice base classes and http modules to get you going even faster.
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 10:19 am ¶Speaking as some one who actually started a company built out of software I programmed myself, I feel I can say with some authority that licensing costs are in fact not “bullshit”. Furthermore I can actually back that claim up. As Radio Mixtape was scaling up I went from some spare CPU cycles on a shared box (an Athalon 1600+ with 256MB RAM) to 3 dedicated web servers (Xeon 1.6GHz with 1GB RAM). These were all Linux boxes (running Slackware 10 at the time, now I am all Ubuntu), and load balanced through a proxy application called Balance. The total cost of the upgrade? $1,800 + shipping (Gateway had a promotion where they were selling 1U servers for $600 if you selected “no OS”) These three web servers operated with 100+ day uptime (occasionally I chose to upgrade key packages the required a reboot), handled scaling to over 30,000 users (with hundreds of thousands of downloads) and all with out paying anyone for anything other than hardware, power and bandwidth. For the price of the OS licenses alone I was able to increase my reliability (by having a dedicated load balancing server) and I had a platform that I could scale out as far as I needed.
Now that Radio Mixtape has run its course, but the same servers power my new company. They run the most current Ubuntu Linux release which is packed with even more value and functionality (remember what helps one Linux community helps all Linux communities), and all of this value has come at absolutely no cost. If I wanted to reap the value of Microsoft’s latest OS I would have had to purchase all new licenses.
Sorry if I come off sounding snarky, but I have spent the last 5 years of my life putting my money where my mouth is, so I feel more than a little bit obligated to chime in when people say that real business challenges are “bullshit”.
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 10:40 am ¶-Jason
Jason,
No, I believe licensing costs are a legitimate issue for businesses, and that’s not what I meant in my comment.
I was addressing commentor vic and others who claimed imaginary licensing costs for the Microsoft products that we are talking about, and this is bullshit given that .NET, SQL Server Express, and even the Visual Studio development tools are all free.
There are costs for upgrades (as one reader pointed out in the comments) and for the OS itself, which ships standard with the web server already configured.
My point was that a lot of readers, like vic cite imaginary costs for .NET applications. Having designed and implemented large-scale systems myself I’ve saved clients I’ve worked for thousands of dollars by using the express editions of SQL Server on their WSE 2003 servers.
Your post however was very articulate and well thought out, and not in the same camp as those I was addressing. I think open-source and free technology is terrific, but the discussion here pertains to reasons why .NET isn’t publicly recognized more often, and when some readers site “IMMENSE LICENSING COSTS” for products that are free, that’s when I call bullshit.
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 10:56 am ¶Oh my bad then
And thank you for your honest response (you really seem to care enough about your blog to stay on top of comments that could quite easily get out of control, a hard task). I should admit to being quite impressed by .Net as a platform, I have just come on the other side of the argument (is there any?) in favor of what I feel if not just a capable and useful but also open platform. In my current company (not linked to my previous company) I am aware that at least one competitor is building their app on the .NET platform and leaning rather heavily on the cache that .net brings to their solution. I expect their offering (at least 8 months away from being publicly launched) to be formidable, but I think our offering will have them beat on scalability (assuming they are on equal footing in terms of functionality).
But I’ve been in this business long enough to remember what ASP and VB6 did to web app development, so it seems like I could be well on my way to barking at the young kids on my lawn for playing with the new fangled frameworks (wow, did I really butcher that joke). I am at least comforted by the fact while at least 3 generations of Microsoft development platforms have emerged Sun Java has kept pace with developers needs quite well. The way I see it (and yes that makes this just a personal opinion), as I have become a stronger Java programmer the Java language has evolved to give me more value, while my Visual C++ skills (I got my start developing COM/DCOM objects for IIS) and Visual Basic skills have become obsolete (and now my C# and VB.NET, are getting rusty).
It seems that Microsoft hasn’t yet shown the ability to introduce something with a long term vision. Their business model relies on locking someone in and getting them to repurchase and relearn in intervals. Granted they are quite successful in this, but open frameworks with open models have shown a tremendous ability to catch up and they aren’t subject to the same kind of fundamental weaknesses. When faced with thous considerations, a lot of hopeful developers will choose the platform that not only meets their immediate needs, but will grow with them.
Many of the technologies that we take for granted today were once proprietary, but over time the knowledge to create them became apparent and they transitioned into commodities, and from there they reached new heights because everyone was free to take what mattered to them and improve on it and thous improvements could be shared and grouped back into the main branch of code (or split off entirely to live their own life in their own community). I think what is happening now is that we are seeing the commoditization of the Operating System and the Platform. This process will always be detrimental to the company who’s value exists largely because the OS and the platform is proprietary, but the cat is out of the bag. Microsoft will try like hell to innovate in their core spaces, but I would guess that each round of upgrades will return smaller and smaller results.
But time will of course tell.
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 11:34 am ¶Jason,
I’m a bit behind on keeping up on my comments; I’ve had a large amount of exams this week and this article has produced a lot of comments both here and on DZone, so I’m a bit spread out trying to wrangle in the discussion.
I think you made an excellent point here:
“It seems that Microsoft hasn’t yet shown the ability to introduce something with a long term vision. Their business model relies on locking someone in and getting them to repurchase and relearn in intervals. Granted they are quite successful in this, but open frameworks with open models have shown a tremendous ability to catch up and they aren’t subject to the same kind of fundamental weaknesses. When faced with thous considerations, a lot of hopeful developers will choose the platform that not only meets their immediate needs, but will grow with them.”
That’s as good as reason as I’ve ever heard for not using .NET.
However, my response to that would be that given that Microsoft is trying to build their own operating systems on top of .NET (that was the original vision for Longhorn, which later became Vista), I’d speculate that there is a good probability that Microsoft plans on keeping .NET around for the long haul; the amount of development behind .NET is considerably larger than the amount behind ASP. .NET represents more than a development platform to Microsoft; it’s their vision for the future of software engineering – managed environments, common language runtime, and service-oriented architectures.
Personally I’m never going to work with C++ again; I worked on a research project where I was implementing a complicated network protocol using the ACE framework and managing the memory in my C++ implementation became a total nightmare. It was probably my lack of experience compared to people who have been doing network programming for longer, but the experience was enough to move me to stay either with JAVA or with .NET.
One thing we can agree on though is that a legitimate platform like J2EE or .NET is a step above simple scripting languages.
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 11:57 am ¶I am sorry I cannot not comment on some of the definitely wrongs given here in these blogs…
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 12:04 pm ¶.Net is an OPEN platform…!!
Mono will at the pace their now keeping probably come out with C#3.0 BEFORE Microsoft will…
We have several paying customers running commercial apps on Linux and Mono *Gaia Ajax Widgets)
As a .NET addict coding in C# daily for a living and for fun after hours, I added you as a friend in digg
I’m already posting my articles to digg.com but I’ve noticed that .NET articles don’t seem to get many votes. My own article on string performance which is quite technical .NET content only got 5 diggs
Ah well, as long as I can enjoy my day to day job coding in my most favorite language, and manage to fill my evenings exploring all ideas I’m quite happy
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 12:22 pm ¶These are the most naive comments I’ve seen in a while:
“Windows Server is cheap, chances are your start up is going to be on someone else’s VPS anyways until you start to get bandwidth issues.
A startup won’t need more than SQL Server Express’s capabilities, if your expecting to need more than 4 gb databases right away, then you probably have some venture funding, and can afford the license for the full version.”
Doesn’t take much to fill up 4 gigs buddy. Talk to a dba.
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 3:01 pm ¶Thomas Hansen,
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 3:08 pm ¶Your comment alone, may be what it takes to get me off the Java wagon, Gaia Widgets is rather cool.
-Jason
I can’t actually digg any .net stories though, I’ve got a reputation to maintain
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 3:09 pm ¶@startuper,
I don’t think any of these comments have been naive at all. Maybe I haven’t been reading them close enough. The comment you cite is actually right on though for two reasons:
1. If you’re boot-strapping a business with your own cash, running your start-up as a side project, like how many start-ups begin, then you’re not going to run out and buy a dedicated server, the kind where you have to pay for licenses, to begin with if your business is capable of being boot-strapped.
Why? Because unless you have some marketing channel that can direct a high enough volume of customers to merit having a dedicated server right out of the gate, it makes no sense to invest a huge amount of your own cash into dedicated servers. If you have no customers, then why pay for so much extra capability in advance if you have no way of guaranteeing that your business will grow rapidly, if at all?
You wouldn’t unless you had enough economic capital to render the cost difference between using a shared host versus a dedicated host irrelevant or a method of rapid user acquisition, like spinning off a start-up from an existing, successful operation.
The point of all this: worrying about licensing costs is pointless if you’re not buying a dedicated server because shared hosts already factor those costs into their service fees. As was already mentioned, the cost of developing in .NET is free thanks to express editions. So really, if you’re boot-strapping a start-up and you don’t have sufficient cause to anticipate rapid growth right out of the gate, what’s the point of buying a dedicated server in the first place?
2. If you’re running a funded start-up as a full time job, then it absolutely makes sense to plan ahead for growth and scalability by investing in dedicated servers, given that you have the capital and economic reasoning to justify the purchase.
That question is really what’s at the heart of the manner. Simply citing the fact that LINUX/APACHE/PHP = $0 and .NET > $0 as a reason not to use .NET is irrational in that it doesn’t take the full costs into account.
This post has inspired me to write a new article sometime next week, in which I will get some quotes from IT professionals about the costs of .NET-based equipment for start-ups of various shapes and sizes, some thoughts on the intangible benefits of .NET, and most importantly, actual costs/benefits analysis of .NET against those of other systems.
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 4:56 pm ¶It’s my pleasure. If you have any cool tricks that you’d like to see appear on a future list, please send me an email at jiive[dot]aaron[at]gmail[dot]com
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 7:27 pm ¶I’ve been wondering the same thing as well. I love .NET but I admit I have not worked with any of the newer languages/platforms like ruby. If I remember correctly, every other post was about Ruby last year on Digg (not really but you get the point). I agree with some of the comments that said anything Microsoft is just not “cool” these days. I think that plays a big part and also perhaps many .NET developers are corporate types and don’t really get involved on the net and open source as much.
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 7:52 pm ¶Really nice post Aaron.
“The Firefox extension article was a back-burner article I had saved for a rainy day and it took me all of 15 minutes to write.”
Isn’t that funny! I haven’t had quite the same experience, but I have had a few really amazing Stumble-induced traffic waves. I was to the point of feeling guilty that the posts that generated any sort of waves for me were the ones that took the least effort on my part. I’m past feeling guilty about it now though. Obviously, people are enjoying those posts or see them as valuable, so I just try to write several of them at a time and save them up to post in between what I think of as my “good” posts
I’m looking forward to rest of the series!
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 7:46 am ¶I was already a very active Java developer for a few years when i heard of all the hype of C# and .NET but what I keep asking my friends who brought me the hype was, “Just tell me one thing I can do with .NET that cant be done in Java”. and for God sake dont start with all those CLR this and that techie stuffs, clients dont care about those. IMO, Pushing VB away so fast I think was a big mistake in some ways. Take a look at my post on this
http://blogs.cowblock.net/dabar/2006/11/28/java-programming-discussion-tops-nairaland-forum/
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 10:22 am ¶@dabar
Several years ago (during the .Net 1.0/1.1 period) that was probably true, .Net was just “another Java” with fever libraries and no portability. Today however that is not true, look at this e.g.;
List tmp = GetSomeListFromSomewhere();
tmp.RemoveAll(
delegate(Customer idx)
{
if( idx.Name.ToLower().IndexOf(”thomas”) != -1 )
return true;
return false;
});
.Net and especially C# is already a way more syntactic nice and rich language than Java (don’t start a religious debate now please ,) it’s a FACT)
In addition with the new stuff coming out in C#3.0 like anonymous types, LINQ, type deference, etc I think C# especially will definitely leap forward several generations beyond Java and thereby making the code way easier to maintain in the “long run”.
In addition with the Mono project basically going at the speed of light these days .Net is probably more portable (BINARY portable) than Java is for most platforms…
We’re building our Linux/Mono distro in Visual Studio in fact for our library (Gaia Ajax Widgets, follow my signature)
.Net truly rules and especially if you’re using the C# parts…
}
{But STAY AWAY from VB.NET!!
Also with all the “n” projects; nHibernate, nUnit, nCover, nAnt etc .Net are almost having the same amount of library support these days as Java have so I think the only remaining reason to not switch is almost at the level of; “I know Java from before…”
.t
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 10:49 am ¶hey Ur Blog Content is really very good. The stats are the best indicator of the quality of articles u publish.
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 2:05 pm ¶I am looking forward to read as much as i can before i go to sleep.
Keep up ur gud work.
I am subscribing to ur feed
I think people who say that MS costs too much for a start up aren’t really in tune with what is actually out there.
I think the hosted benefits and inexpensive costs of .net were well covered above.
I have a website one step above that on a dedicated server….
I launched an online website 2 years ago (it was technically a relaunch of an existing website) using MS products after 3-4 years of SAP programming (ugh!!!!) It was my first exposure to asp.net however i was well versed in html and classic asp from the olden days.
Total money given to microsoft to launch my business and run it for two years (so far…)
1) Windows Server web edition (on dedicated dell hardware) $399
2) wait…. there is no number two….
I run sql server express and will never reach the 4 gig limit even with very active message boards because I don’t store any binary type stuff inside it.
So long story short, my site is very successful in my niche market and gets tons of pageviews (for my niche anyway around 800k a month) I have made a lot of money selling ads the past two years and quite frankly I spend more on my cell phone bills selling ads than I have given microsoft.
Fast forward I am involved in a new startup company where I am employed full time with private investment money. We are building an app that a niche market will run their entire shops off of our web site. We have a solid model and we have taken great pains to spend money on infrastructure so that we can minimize downtime.
We ended up with two server stacks that are identical, one for the production app and the other for a DR / failover / UAT situation. Again this is a fairly well funded start up but here is what went to microsoft:
2 msdn licenses (support instances, visual studio pro etc for our two developers) ~1600
4 Windows server licenses ~2800
2 SQL server licenses (couldn’t use express because of our failover situation) ~10,000
So microsoft has about $15k of our startup capital. Dell has a heck of a lot more than that just in hardware!!!
For the scale application that we are doing, if you can spend 15k and never have to build a kernal, never have to worry about things breaking etc its wonderful. Windows server / SQL is simply solid as a rock, it never breaks. If we do use our support instances it will be with ms themselves finding out what stupid code we wrote ourselves
Even if you only get a shelf life of 3 years on the OS (and I expect it to be more like 5) then you are talking a 5k per year investment that is already included on the 3 year dell lease anyway. Its not like we had to come up with the cash up front in that situation. So back to the point if we are able to build an app that can support a full team of sales people, developers, and helpdesk 15k over 3 years is nothing.
Supposing (I pray!) the company does well and I need to add more servers / db boxes. Great problem to have!!! The amount of money going to microsoft is a pittance compared to the money you are making at that point.
I am located in florida and from the view on the ground here I see more companies like Fidelity etc moving off of J2EE and going with .net. Ruby etc aren’t even on their radar. Actually most of the larger companies don’t use PHP for their web presence either.
I know the question of the article wasn’t about fortune 500 type companies but social media. I just wanted to follow in the M$ costs vien of the thread. I am more interested in being able to get a job in the city I live in and feed my family than debating which non-microsoft programming language is the most elite.
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 7:13 pm ¶Java, Python, Ruby, etc embraces Open Source. Microsoft and therefore .Net does not. Open Source encourages participation and communities. Developers using Microsoft technologies are used to being spoon fed frameworks and tools from Microsoft – IDE, web framework, database, the whole shebang. I guess that it’s hard to foster a community around products that you have no say in, no ownership of. Microsoft could have embraced Nant, Nunit, NDoc, etc but have chosen not to do so. Is it really surprising that .Net gets it’s ass kicked in social media?
I develop in Java and C# for a living but I’d much rather code in Python, Groovy, Ruby, etc as they’re fun and I don’t need a huge frickin Wrox book to get started. There are a couple of disparaging comments about scripting languages, noobs, etc. First of all only noobs say “noobs”. Secondly, many scripting langauges support OOP just fine. In fact, I’d go as far to say that many are a lot more expressive and elegant.
Posted 21 Sep 2007 at 7:18 pm ¶Thank you for your list. Here are 2 of my favorite, must have extensions for Firefox:
1. Flashgot
2. Forecastfox
With regards.
Posted 22 Sep 2007 at 5:36 am ¶.NET user here.
Thanks for the article, didn’t even know about some of those other social sites, will check them out next week.
I’ve stopped going to a lot of those sites for the fact that most of them are filled with whiny ass people who have no maturity level. Try reading a thread on slashdot nowadays… worthless.
I’m a big user/promoter of SubSonic. If more projects like it crop up, .NET will get bigger.
DNK is also another awesome site, that’s how I found this blog.
Keep up the good work, we’re out here, we just don’t talk as much as some whiny Linux/Slashdot peeps.
Posted 22 Sep 2007 at 6:46 am ¶whom you are fighting for?
Posted 22 Sep 2007 at 5:09 pm ¶you sound like you are crying for a battle
i’m a .net developer and i use php sometimes
yes, i can debate for hours about the advantages and disadvantages of .net and php and java
but i’m profissional enough to not consider programming laguages as a relegtion
No one is crying for a battle; I was asking why .NET doesn’t get represented more often in social media, and then I subsequently urged more .NET developers to publish their works/blogs on the subject.
Posted 22 Sep 2007 at 6:02 pm ¶“.Net and especially C# is already a way more syntactic nice and rich language than Java (don’t start a religious debate now please ,) it’s a FACT)”
I see, we cannot debate it, just take your opinion as fact? Tell me exactly how many key strokes do I save for the sake of clarity? If your code sample is meant to illustrate the richness of c#, then I think it fails terribly since it only demonstrates how so called features can really screw up clarity. Which do you think are the two biggest complaints about written code? Lack of richness in the language used, or a lack of clarity in the code that is written?
Regardless, it appears you are getting a list of customers and removing or keeping them if the name starts with Thomas? What’s wrong with a simple loop iterating through the customers? It’s about the same amount of code, and is far easier to read what’s going on. As for nAnt, nHibernate etc…yes, you are starting to get beta and first versions of java projects that have launched, become successful, and have now faded and be improved upon. hibernate-> hibernate 3.0 with JPA, ant -> maven etc.
We considered .net, but one consideration was that we would need 3 or 4 server licenses for our dev, test and production environments, and possibly one for training. There’s over a $1,200 there without getting into dev tool costs. As for Visual Studio being free, there is a reason for that, namely because it lacks capabilities provided in the professional versions. You may get by with it, but most pro developers won’t use a crippled dev tool as a basis for a new project.
There’s also a reason Microsoft is giving this stuff away, because once you are hooked, and have bought into their framework, you have no choice but to keep paying them for it, especially with SQL server where you are more likely to need a non-free version of SQL before anything else. The whole notion of ‘Hey if I have enough customers to need to pay for upgrades, then I won’t mind paying Microsoft’ is ridiculous. Why pay anyone when you don’t need to, and if you must pay someone, take a look at Red Hat who offers the same kind of subscription and services and if you fall on hard times, you can use the same software for free.
At the end of the day, you are like a kid choosing between two sweet shops. In one, 95% of everything is free and in the other 25% is completely free, 25% is purely commercial, and you can sample the rest for free, but you have to pay for them to use them. However, both sweet shops offer the same sweets.
Also, talking about hardware costs and OS costs, when you buy your hardware, 2 days later, you still have an asset that you can sell for…what 90% of the cost you bought it for? With Windows, I don’t think you can re-sell it, so the comparison is kind of apples and oranges.
The one are .net does excel in is the kind of hosting you can buy. You can buy budget asp.net hosting for $50 for a year. Java hosting has not caught up with that yet.
So if mono is beating Microsoft to a .net 3.0 implementation, can I assume that every .net app will run on mono then, or is it just the fact that mono can run hello world in .net 3.0 before Microsoft can? Bit of a red herring there. Regardless, there is still the patent time bomb, and Microsoft has no intention of allowing a more capable .net platform than windows.
Still, enough for me is that I don’t base my development tools around Microsoft’s OS sales schedule.
Posted 22 Sep 2007 at 10:50 pm ¶@Delphi’s Ghost
I actually pitty you so much I decided upon not to answer your comment since it’s obviously stuffed with religious quasi opinions, bit there is one mis-fact I cannot let go through here;
“So if mono is beating Microsoft to a .net 3.0 implementation, can I assume that every .net app will run on mono then, or is it just the fact that mono can run hello world in .net 3.0 before Microsoft can? Bit of a red herring there. Regardless, there is still the patent time bomb, and Microsoft has no intention of allowing a more capable .net platform than windows.”
We have several paying customers that uses Mono together with Gaia and MySQL. These are fully fledged applications which could be if you’re a little bit sober when implementing them be moved back and forth between Windows and Linux without thinking about it. Mono is 100% binary compatible with ASP.NET 2.0.
Also regarding the “patent bomb”;
This is FUD from MSFT just like the “patent bomb” about Linux and OpenOffice a couple of months ago. Should you stop running J2EE on Linux because MSFT says they have 230 patents broken in Linux and Open Office without mentioning which patents they are? The situation ios the same for Mono. MSFT has not shown which patents and they don’t want to show either, they just want to make FUD around a potential very threatening FOSS piece…
But I see you are an “angry man” with an unhealthy devotion for your favorite tools and that it’s probably impossible to argue against you. But please go back to your fan club, we were having a healthy discussion here about something you’re obviously not able to contribute to…
Posted 23 Sep 2007 at 2:05 am ¶Wow, awesome post Aaron! This is something I think everyone should read and prepare for…and by everyone, I mostly mean the people that see an article like this and say ah, that’s never going to happen to me. Because as you mentioned, you never know what or when the magical traffic fairy is going to decide to tap your blog…whether it be through a direct link, stumbles, diggs, sphinns, etc. I’ve had some great Stumble Tropical Depressions and a few Tropical Storms or minor Hurricanes…still waiting for a tsunami…But my point being, it’s inevitably the posts that you aren’t expecting to be huge…so being aware and always being prepared is key.
Except in our cases, I would recommend stocking up on coffee, donuts and No-Doz instead of batteries, fresh water and canned goods
Posted 23 Sep 2007 at 5:11 pm ¶Ummm, I post something that seems reasoned and debateable, and am called angry, religious and fanatical in a post which is itself angry, religious and fanatical, and then goes on to re-iterate my own points as a rebuttle to…my own points. Twilight Zone-ish.
The patents are FUD from MSFT? But that would suggest that while everyone is trying to sell the idea of a cross platform .net, MSFT is busy trying to scuttle the very project that gives it the status of being cross platform….which would invalidate the idea of a cross platform .net given that it’s main benefactor is opposed to the idea on the basis that they want to run it solely on their own OS.
Yes, I know .net is binary compatible, that was my point. While Hello World might run on both .net and mono, it’s a bit of a mis-fact to suggest that .net is finally cross platform since binary compatible does not mean all the libraries are compatible. What about all those third party GUI components that rely on windows messages to function properly? I realize that it takes some foresight to create a truly cross compatible app, but then we are back to the old days of C++ cross compatible code where you had to write certain sections ‘per platform’. Not so with Java. (I know the java cross compatibility is not perfect but it is not non-existent).
Microsoft has given every appearance that it intends .net to be cross platform, from paying Corel to implement linux.net to having their skunkworks .net implementation project ( I forget the name) which gave the hint that it *could* be ported over. They dressed up C# / .net as a ’standard’ with the implication that there will be more than one implementation. They have given this whiff of cross platform-ness because they know java has it, they know users want it. Users know they want it, and Microsoft knows they cannot deliver it since it is at odds with generating revenues from OS sales.
I’ve seen .net advocates lament over the issue of cross platform compatibility, and lambast Msft for its singular platform stance. I’d love for .net to be absolutely cross platform compatible, heck, lets build OS’s built on top of it, and really have one true cross compatible framework, where apps will run on multiple OS’s without recompilation. Do you think Microsoft will support that idea?
I don’t think people get religious about .net for a number of reasons :
1) It’s Microsofts tool to sell OS upgrades
2) A portion of .net developers are forced to use it on the basis that it is the current Microsoft technology (nobody ever got fired for buying IBM syndrome)
3) It is far less open, open technology attracts the same kind of people that create communities and are more likely to get religious.
4) Microsoft is a lot less relevant that it used to be.
As for my preferences, I have none, except that I have been using Delphi for nearly 15 years, and as we are moving on, we considered .net and Java as options, and given Microsofts history, and the open-ness of Java, we opted for Java. This was in the last 6 months, so it’s not exactly like I have spent years getting attached to my new development tools.
Incidentally, I just noted that our host has a link to an article on “Designing a Great Data Layer in .net”. I’m certainly not disparaging our host, and I applaud the post, but this kind of layered design has been the foundation for Java application development for years.
Good OO design is the other reason I chose Java since it is ingrained from the API level up through 3rd party open source frameworks (unlike Delphi!). A lot of this stuff is absolutely beautiful from an OO perspective while .net is still forcing the same old Delphi strategy of quasi-OO with zero code re-use and simply thrusting the code wherever it is executed (Linq is another example of an achievement’ that makes it easier to do things badly).
My prediction is that in 5 years MSFT will have moved on to the next thing, and the .net jobs will be maintaining the spaghetti code created through visual studio promoting bad design.
I’m more than happy to trash linux (still not ready for the desktop despite claiming they are for the last 10 years), open source (how many notepad clones do you need) and java (memory hog) as I see fit. They are all ripe for criticism. However, the topic was about .net not having as much social media exposure, and my posts were based on that. .net doesn’t attract the kind of people that give social media exposure.
Posted 23 Sep 2007 at 10:02 pm ¶@Thomas
Still you havent answered my questions, what do clients care.
2. Some clients who bet thier business on VB series have liquidated. PHP will never die cuz its open active community, Java will not die cuz its now open source and it has a huge community, Phython Ruby etc because its built on a community free to express themselves and this people contribute fixes everyday. If M$ wants C# to kick ass, let them give it out to the community, then i can bet my future on it.
3. Come to think of it? Can your product become a future threat to another M$ product building on thier technology? What if Google was entirely running on C#? If Mono will promote applications on Linux increasing the adoption of Linux, Will M$ smile and be happy? Dont sell your future for some code sugar
Posted 24 Sep 2007 at 3:44 am ¶@dabar
Posted 24 Sep 2007 at 4:17 am ¶I don’t really know how to answer your question when you obviously don’t want to listen to my answer…
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mono+C%23&btnG=Google+Search
Mono is an OPEN SOURCE project, it’s got hundreds of thousands of users and it increases like a rocket in it’s userbase every day…
It’s maintained by one of the largest SW companies in the world with more than 25 years of history (Novell which also owns the SUSE and have a long term commitment towards Open Source) and there are lots of people working on the project and many of them even have it as a full job…
And Mono is built on a 100% standardized language and platform, to say that this is “MSFT’s property” is just like saying that the x86 architecture is “IBM’s property”…!
Regarding Google and .Net, Writely is written entirely in .Net (don’t know if it’s Mono or Microsoft.NET though)
And also I am not saying that “Java will die”, the only reference towards Java I’ve ever had (in this blog) is that C# is a more expressive language with features that Java does not have…
If you’re going to argue then first get the facts dabar…
Hi, well i would add to this other topics which are if u ask me, much more important.
Posted 24 Sep 2007 at 6:32 am ¶First and most important – by my experience is customer support – not simple one – simple answers u can find over FAQ db, advanced one.
Second is medium trust. Much of existing free components and code doesn’t work under medium trust, so best is correctly modified full trust mode – u will make your code far more quickly – that cost much more money then any hosting.
Third is direct SQL manager access – that is almost must have – and many hosting providers support it.
Fourth is good control panel – i love plesk which i believe is the best choice. It also supports – above all things like subdomains and folder permissions (must have), scheduled tasks – which will help u, a lot, for batch jobs.
Fifth are separate application pools – some hosting use one app pool for all accounts.
To add to your point #3, watch out for hosts who register themselves as the owner of your domain name rather than registering you as the owner. This is used by some bad hosting companies to lock you into their service or to make you pay through the nose to switch. I’ve seen this done most often in hosts who provide services to a specific industry, for example, real estate.
Posted 24 Sep 2007 at 11:02 am ¶Great checklist, Aaron. Recently I had been looking for a new ASP.NET host and DiscountASP.NET was my top candidate as well. I am not going with a host who offers “unlimited transfers” again
. Chinh
Posted 24 Sep 2007 at 1:59 pm ¶@Vjeran,
Those features are absolutely important, but I produced this list more or less with the intention of educating beginners on what criteria they should use to evaluate hosts. App pools and trust levels are more advanced areas. I will be writing a post covering ASP.NET-specific features and perhaps PHP-specific features.
@Frank C (of VBNotebook fame),
Thanks for stopping by! And yes your point is a good one; for that reason alone I never register my domain names through my host, simply because I don’t want any company to be able to claim ownership over my intellectual property. While most hosts do not register themselves as the owner, some shady ones do, but I usually buy my domain name before I buy a hosting package (the domain name usually identifies the intellectual domain of my site) anyways. Great point none the less.
@Chinh,
Thanks! DiscountASP.NET is fantastic. The only part of my list that they violate is that they charge additional fees for setting up databases, meaning that databases are not included in the base rate. Still, their support and the quality of service is outstanding; well worth the additional dollars if you ask me.
Posted 24 Sep 2007 at 2:32 pm ¶Ladies and Gentlemen,
The comments are getting a bit inflammatory; while I still consider the level of discussion healthy and productive, I would like to ask that we do not allow this argument to explode into a flame war.
In addition, the Akismet spam filter has been picking up false positives like crazy lately; I’ve had to painstakingly sort through mountains of spam to retrieve legitimate comments left by readers such as Delphi’s Ghost, so if any of you are concerned that I am deleting your comments, please do not be. It’s simply that some comments are being scooped up by the Akisment spam filter for reasons that are unknown and I have to check every day or so to release the false positives.
Thanks for the great discussion guys!
-Aaronontheweb
Posted 24 Sep 2007 at 3:04 pm ¶Hi Aaron,
We’ve just delivered a facebook app which I think “ticks all your boxes” for monetization whilst delivering something of genuine use.
You can find it here:
http://apps.facebook.com/txtyourfacebook/index.php?tab=main
would welcome your comments.
Peter.
Posted 24 Sep 2007 at 6:54 pm ¶Honestly, and I don’t mean undue offense to anyone, I think it’s because more ASP.NET centric developers have real jobs. Working 40, 50, or 60+ hours a week on a corporate development effort (where .NET is very much more strongly represented) just about completely precludes any significant time spent on social media sites or developing side-projects.
At least, that’s my excuse. I barely have time to write a blog post every few weeks.
Posted 24 Sep 2007 at 9:52 pm ¶I’m with godaddy, and was disappointed to find out that they don’t offer multiple logins to databases – this makes it more difficult to secure the database properly.
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 12:08 am ¶I would love to see this advanced topics
– i had so much troubles with some hosting providers – that i lost weeks on them. If u have ever been working with godaddy u will know what do i mean.
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 1:33 am ¶I think one of the most underrated metrics is the number of sites on a single box. You will find a ton of hosts who oversubscribe their servers, which eventually results in performance issues on your site.
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 5:12 am ¶@Dave
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 8:18 am ¶i’ve the same problem too
i’m starting to think that most open source developers are amature programmers whom have really “big” extra time between there hands to spend on developing software for free
@Fady
It’s very dangerous to generalize!
You’re certainly to some extend correct but look at e.g. RedHat, Trolltech, MySQL, eZ Systems and us…! (Frost Innovation – Gaia Ajax Widgets)
We’ve got a complete full development department of full time (good payed) and very skilled developers working on products all day long…
Though I may agree on that full time jobs might be some of the reasons to why .Net is less presented on SMO, in fact the only reason I participate at ALL is to be able to spread the news about our product (in addition to 10% reasons is to “keep up” with what’s moving out there…
But to say most FOSS developers are “script kiddies” with too much spare time is an exaggeration of magnitudes…!
In fact the FOSS economy is increasing at _four times_ the speed of the closed source economy…!
Though we’re .Net AND Open Source, so there definitely exist FOSS projects of importance in the .Net (and Mono) world too…
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 8:33 am ¶execuse me, but i’ve never seen enterprise projects depending on FOSS
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 8:40 am ¶most of FOSS have usability and design problems, making FOSS hard to integrate with any other system
for example i’ve never seen a FOSS using SOA
i’ve never seen anyone using Mono for real in an even small project
thats why i’m saying most of FOSS developer are amatures whom don’t know the most basic concepts of design
There are lots of enterprise projects that utilize FOSS:
10 Myths About Open-Source Software
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 8:43 am ¶mention one
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 8:45 am ¶Well for instance Google utilizes Python and PHP. Do I really need to name a bigger project than that?
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 9:04 am ¶enterprise = scalable + integration
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 11:05 am ¶please mention resources about your claims on google
@Fady Anwar
I have a couple;
* Window 95
* Windows 98
* Windows Millenium
* Windows NT, 2000, XP
In fact the ONLY Windows OS that does not entirely build it’s sockets on BSD Sockets are Server 2003 and Vista…
I think in fact most of the REALLY large Enterprise Systems are built on FOSS including Google as Aarontheweb says…
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 11:15 am ¶Others are YouTube.com, Digg.com, Slashdot.org etc…
In fact about 90% of the really large Social Websites today are built on some sort of FOSS Framework/Platform…
Linux has about 55% of ALL servers in the WORLD today and MS has about 35% I think that about nails the last piece into the coffin…
do you have any proof that support your claims? or these are just your mere opinion?
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 11:21 am ¶btw
Linux is spread on servers because it’s “FREE” and convenient for “small” projects
i’m talking about the “enterprise” projects
youtube, digg, slashdot doen’t fit the enterprise category
if you are so good at mentioning FOSS coffin nails
please mention for me a single FOSS application that uses SOA, if you understand what is SOA
First of all SOA is a hype word invented my MSFT to sell BizTalk and get folks to use WSE to lock them into MSFT products with stuff like AD and whatever idiotic crap people are using these days instead of the open protocol of SSL and TLS…
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 11:43 am ¶Second, Google Apps then, is that “enterprise enough” for you?
Or does the code have to crappy too…?
Third; *plonk* !!
@Thomas Hansen
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 11:53 am ¶First SOA is not a hype it’s a design pattern standard
and unlike you here is my refrences
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture
Second
you didn’t come up with any refrences to back up what you are saying
Third
your way of descussion irritates me, and i can’t afford time to continue such debate with somebody like you (whom use his openion as his only refrence)
seems like have extra time between your hands, so i advice you to read about SOA to know it’s not a hype and it’s the future
It’s a mistake to compare enterprise software with high traffic sites. Those are completely different animals. Regardless of development platform, a good enterprise development crew could churn out a Digg clone in days. The software behind most popular sites is no feat of engineering.
Also, where in the world did you get the idea that SOA was Microsoft centric?
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 12:06 pm ¶@Dave
True, I still mentioned Google Apps, now if the stuff they’re doing with GMail, GCal, Writely etc is a “weekends job” for an Enterprise Development crew I’d very much like you to show me that crew…!
I’ll pay them ANY price to get them in my staff…!
Regarding SOA and MSFT I overdid it a little bit, partially unintentionally. But the basic fact is that MSFT sells SOA as if it was better than sliced bread and almost _none_ of the guys telling you that they actually DO SOA even KNOWS what SOA IS, they just do it because MSFT talks about the Railroad industry telling people about the importance of standardizing the message exchange format and have support for long transactions (which also none of the guys telling you they “do” SOA knows what is)
Most developers I’ve spoken to tells me either that SOA is WSE, some tells me it’s BizTalk and some even claims that it’s CAB (Composite Application Blocks) due to the fact that it have plugin nature…!! :S
Then when people starts to struggle MSFT first sells you BizTalk to “integrate” your different systems together and when they’ve sold you BizTalk and you’ve spent a year trying to figure out how to make that dog bark you’ll end up paying for SharePoint and throwing “SOA” and “BizTalk” out the door. It will be interesting to see what will cure people’s SharePoints problems…
I’ve even seminars that had “Configuration as the alternative to Programming in a SOA Environment” as the header for a SharePoint SysAdmin talk…!!
So I am sorry for getting a little bit of confused here…
I mean a system that require Server 2003 and AD just to hit F5 in your debugging environment…
OMG am I glad I’m NOT on that train…!!
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 2:36 pm ¶@Fady – FOSS _does_ get used within the enterprise however very rarely in .Net based solutions.
I totally agree that many FOSS products are of poor quality, poor documentation and poor support. You could say the same for many closed source products.
What you forget is (or probably don’t realise is) that there are some extremely well run FOSS projects that turn out top notch software such as the Apache Foundation (HTTPD, Tomcat, Ant, Struts, Axis, log4j, etc), OpenSymphony (Quartz, SiteMesh, OSCache, etc), Eclipse Foundation (Eclipse), etc. Many of these projects are supported by software vendors such as IBM, Sun, Oracle, etc. These products are often based on J2EE. If you’re .Net only then there’s a chance that you’re not aware that Open Source pervades J2EE.
And then there are the commercial Open Source offerings, many with VC backing. Here are some examples:
RedHat – Linux is most definitely Enterprise grade. Many large corporation run mission critical applications on Linux in preference to or beside Windows.
Alfresco – probably the best example of an ECM that is built on FOSS projects such as Spring, Hibernate, MyFaces, Lucene, etc. It’s comparable to Documentum and MS SharePoint. http://www.alfresco.com/customers/.
JBoss – An enterprise grade application server comparable to WebLogic, WebSphere, etc. JBoss also maintains the Hibernate and jBPM projects. http://www.jboss.com/customers/index.
There are loads more – SugarCRM, Liferay, MySQL, SocialText, Xen….
Then of course there are the commercial products that use FOSS software. Documentum, Oracle, WebMethods, etc.
And finally there are the languages – Perl, PHP, Python, etc. You’ll find scripts written in these languages acting as the glue for a wide variety of systems (NASA, Google, etc).
Commercial software isn’t necessarily better or worse than Open Source. Microsoft for example makes some of the best software out there – Office, .Net, etc but at the same time are unable to better existing Open Source efforts – e.g. NDoc, log4net, MBunit, Nant.
And while I’m at it – a word on SOA. Of course it’s hyped – just like CORBA and SOAP were. Now we get SOA, which is just an architectural style, not a design pattern like you stated. We’re still stuck with imperfect interop technologies but at least we’ve got a nice buzzword to sell services and software with. FOSS projects that cater for SOA include Axis, CXF, Fuse, Mule, ServiceMix.
Regards
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 2:55 pm ¶I would be interested in seeing you install word press using phalanger. I’ve been meaning to do this myself, but would love a blog post on your experiences doing such!
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 6:36 pm ¶Oh yeah, one step ahead of you JP
I’m planning on launching a WordPress.NET package complete with a Windows Installer in the next week or so assuming that there isn’t a complete and total log jam trying to get the thing running.
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 10:40 pm ¶That’s fine. But how long will it take it to set it up on a web hoster like goDaddy or aquest?
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 11:30 pm ¶It takes even less time for a shared host. For a shared host deployment you just do the following:
- Create a new MySQL database
- Unzip Wordpress onto your local harddrive, edit the wp-config.php file so it has the correct MySQL login information
- Upload Wordpress and all of its content onto your host
- Execute wp-admin/install.php
- Profit
Posted 26 Sep 2007 at 12:04 am ¶Erm if you were referring to WordPress.NET I plan on making an easy shared host install solution too.
Posted 26 Sep 2007 at 12:05 am ¶I think FOSS is making some strides in .NET as well. I’m sure there are some enterprise level solution that utilize solid .NET FOSS projects like SubSonic or perhaps DotNetNuke. Those two stand out in my mind as the most prominent and excellent .NET FOSS projects.
Posted 26 Sep 2007 at 11:35 am ¶It is great to see interviews like this and to see that .NET is employed in innovative web applications. Similar to Greg’s experience, we’ve found that using .NET and MS technologies has enabled us to focus more on the application rather than on all of the areas of expertise required for FOSS use.
Posted 26 Sep 2007 at 3:36 pm ¶I don’t know who posted “you didn’t even cite your sources” followed by a citation to Wikipedia but it sure made me laugh out loud!
Posted 26 Sep 2007 at 6:29 pm ¶It is great to see interview like this and wants more to come up, we are also developing a New .NET Startup (Growing up company) , but lack of knowledge on Servers and licensing issues makes us not comfortable but .NET Proves itself my first choice among all and i appreciate the initiative taken by Aaronontheweb . keep it up man … we are all with you …
Posted 26 Sep 2007 at 11:39 pm ¶One More Startup in .NET https://www.filmaroo.com/
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 3:45 am ¶ok guys, i confiss. i wasn’t really realistic about some stuff
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 8:17 am ¶but the question is why?
well, here comes the unexpected answer
i’ve been in the FOSS field for years before i start using .net
i used to develop in PHP under Linux and i’ve met every usual problem that you will meet when you start working with FOSS
when i switched to the .net world, things became deferent and specially when i started working with enterprise applications
most FOSS that i’ve used didn’t stand a chance when came to comparison with closed source producs
most of them lacked the most important thing, the ability to scale up
when you call red had enterprise that doesn’t mean it became enterprise
enterprise software is where the money is
yes i used to promote open source software and still, but open source software just doens’t solve every problem you meet in your career life
why?
because open source software mosly is developed without an integration design in mind
lets take for instace microsoft products
the office is integrated with the browser and the browser is integrated with the active directory authentication protocol which is supported by the iis
have you ever seen any product in the FOSS that looks like AD?
have you ever seen any product in the FOSS like the biztalk? or office? or MOSS?
lets face
open office sux and is too slow
apache doesn’t stand a chance when compared to iis, have you ever though about clustering or load balancing using apache?
have you ever tried to configure a sing web site on apache using it’s httpd.conf? how much time did it took you?
mysql? i would use a flat database and still come with the same results
have you ever tried to use constrains or relations in mysql?
and yes, PHP, a coctail with various functions with no namespacing that make a functiionality like intellisense in visual studio is an impossible to do
no decent IDE to php till now
and oh yea, the php spaghiti code, html within code
and what about security? have you ever heard about remote inclusion? it only exists in php
have you ever tried to read a big file using php? try this and see what happens
open source software is not bad, it’s good because it’s free, but FOSS won’t solve your every day problems for free
Ok I stayed out of this debate for a while (largely because I was busy working on what people have insisted here must be a fictitious enterprise app that is written in Java, on Linux and Apache with MySQL) but Fady I have to address some points you made.
First, what part of Active Directory are you so enamored with? Because Samba is a Free/Open Source application that can actually act as a co PDC or Backup DC directly alongside a Windows domain controller. That would seem like a reasonable measure of code maturity and enterprise reliability. But I admit to not being that much of a Windows networking guru.
Open Office is slow, but it has become a lot faster (fans of the application recall using it back when it was called Star Office), and it is trying to accomplish a much different goal (run on Windows, Mac and Linux) so they have to make different design choices. Some of these might come at the cost of deep system integration, but that line is moving closer and closer to Microsoft levels, and being free and open source anyone who is inclined can (and has) contribute changes that make it do more of what users want. Open Office is much more interested in being an office productivity platform that others build applications on top of than a productivity app. This is the same goal Microsoft has but they want to be the ones profiting form that platform. How successful would the web have been if Tim Berners-Lee was the only guy licensed to build web pages and everyone else had to pay a royalty? This is a BIG project with lofty goals, but if the Open Office Community team succeeds it could create a platform many times more powerful than anything a closed source team could produce.
The last time I checked my linux distribution came preloaded with Apache, and loading PHP support was as easy as checking a box in my package manager (or running ‘apt-get install php’ if I wanted to install from a command prompt). And yes I have considered load balancing, I setup a load balancing proxy that simply asked for the IP addresses of the boxes that were a part of my “farm”. One paragraph of documentation later I was up and running. If I wanted to get more complicated that that I could have used Linux Virtual Server and set up watchdog timers and heart beat monitors. All of this was controllable remotely from SSH, and worked with out issue (or reboot) for 100+ day uptimes (occasionally I would run ‘apt-get upgrade’ and all of my installed packages would get upgraded to the newest stable versions automatically, and I would reboot, though most of the time the reboot as totally unnecessary because Linux can distinguish between a user process and a system process, and there for rarely requires rebooting to replace versions of software.
As for MySQL. I don’t think you understand what MySQL is. MySQL is more like the AVI file format. It is a container for other storage engines that handles common subsystems like authentication (which is also pluggable). Underneath MySQL is MyIASM, MEMORY, InnoDB, BerkeleyDB, CSV, ndbcluster and IASM, and once MaxDB though SAP bought that, so its not part of the Free version. Each have different strengths and weaknesses. And in a single Database you can decide which table engine fits your needs on a table by table basis. 99% of the time a website just needs InnoDB (this is why Oracle bought the team that created that engine, though because it’s Open Source that means the engine is free to be maintained by other talented developers). But a database administrator is free to migrate their data as needed. The point is MySQL is a powerful platform that is capable of many things, this helps explain why they made over $40 Million in 2005 (http://www.news.com/MySQL-fills-Oracle-consumed-hole-in-database—page-2/2100-1012_3-6058930-2.html)
As for PHP intellisense, it has been a part of Zend Studio (The company that created PHP) for quite some time (and that program is written in Java), and works great. Now it’s a part of Eclipse and NetBeans, so it sounds like the community has responded to that need. As for code style. I completely agree that inline logic with HTML is messy, but you know that you don’t have to code that way (and ASP developers are often quite guilty of the same thing). There are template engines and even PHP compilers that helps you separate your code into clean display and business logic layers. If you code better applications you tend to see issues like large file handling get addressed.
I personally have found Open Source technologies very integratable. And while it might require more work initially (though in most cases I haven’t found that to be true), the reward has time and time again proven to be greater. Microsoft technologies haven’t always had a stellar record integrating with each other, but they have gotten better. However in the same time the Open Source community has been hard at work solving real business challenges and addressing needs like scale and security. The Open Source model means companies like IBM who get real benefits out of a stronger Linux OS (they make their money consulting and selling hardware) can devote serious money and developer time, and everyone else in the community can benefit. It also means people like myself who utilize Open Source software to build my business can make the kind of changes that meet my business needs without waiting for a larger company to address them and ask me to pay them for the upgrade.
And thats all I have to say, I really need to get back to my work.
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 11:41 am ¶No I guess not. Not sure what the problem is with the comments. I haven’t made any modifications to Wordpress’ comments engine. Can you shoot me an email if an error message is getting thrown?
jiive[dot]aaron[at]gmail[dot]com
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 12:58 pm ¶One last try, this time without apostrophes…
The problem I have here is that there are a lot of questions unanswered by the person who sent you the e-mail as far as what resources he has available to him and what his actual plan is.
It seems like the person is looking for only one person who will fill every technical role of the new startup and that is a pretty tall order, particularly if the position isnt full time. The reality is, most technical people who have interactions with people who arent technical get ideas thrown at them pretty regularly.
Im an IT director who works in a field full of people who arent that technical and I have to tell you I get, on average, about a pitch a week from someone who has no programming skills but who thinks theyve discovered the next big thing. So unless you have a significant amount of money to start its going to be an up hill battle.
By “significant amount” I mean enough money to pay yourself and the technical person (full time) for the first few months bare minimum.
If you dont have that all I can suggest is that you put yourself out there and hope for the best. If you really do have a great idea you might be able to get someone to sign on in their spare time and help you out. Though even that is tricky because you dont want to share your idea too liberally for fear that someone you interview might decide to take it for their own.
Either way, if you do find yourself in a place where you have candidates to choose from here are my suggestions as far as criteria is concerned…
Look for experience: I have to say that Ive honestly stopped looking at degree information at this point. Dont get me wrong, as a programmer you can learn a lot from a University program but it certainly isnt guaranteed. Ive literally interviewed people who had a B.S. in Computer Science and yet had never worked on an actual usable program before. Bottom line is that a person who has worked on an actual production system of some kind is worth 5 guys who just have their degree.
Meet with the candidates personally: Ive known several people in my life that could code in ways that made my jaw drop but who couldnt articulate an idea to another person if their live depended on it. If you are looking to get some kind of funding you are going to have to present both a business and a technical assessment which means the person you choose is going to be as visible as you are in the funding process. So though some people might be able to write great code they may not be what you are looking for.
Look for people who code in their spare time: If the person you are looking at has worked on something in their spare time such as an open source project or even a technical blog that reflects well on their commitment and their ability to get the job done. Open source projects are the best in that someone who doesnt know what they are doing wont last long in a group open source project which makes it a great way to vet candidates.
Wow, this turned out to be a long one. Hope it helps!
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 12:59 pm ¶Yup, it was the apostrophes…
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 1:00 pm ¶@Jason,
One additional comment from me on PHP intellisense. On my Phalanger article a reader pointed out an intellisense plug-in for Visual Studio which I have since installed onto my development workstation. I haven’t had a chance to play around with it thoroughly but it looks promising for VS 2005:
Check it out: http://www.jcxsoftware.com/
It might work with the free express editions of Visual Studio but I am not sure; I have the academic editions of VS 2005 so my experience has been based on that.
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 1:38 pm ¶@Aaronontheweb
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 1:47 pm ¶you can’t have intellisense like functionality in any IDE that supports PHP because simply PHP have no namespacing
Thanks Khushal. And thanks for the lead on filmaroo. I’m always looking for cool new .NET-driven services to interview!
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 1:49 pm ¶@Jason Sperske
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 1:50 pm ¶you can’t compare Samba to AD
i’ve used Samba and in my job i perform several network administration tasks that i’m sure that Samba can’t do
Samba is all about file sharing
JCX Software’s .NET/integrated PHP debugging demo, with PHP intellisense
http://www.jcxsoftware.com/jcx/vsphp/tutorials/dotnet_debugging
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 1:52 pm ¶@Jason Sperske
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 1:56 pm ¶yes in open source projects like Open Office it’s possible it would have lots of features in the futures, but guess that? because of the FOSS non centric development there will be no integration within these features and within any other FOSS products
for example you want be able to use open office within firefox like we can now use microsoft office within IE
you can’t use RMS in open office because simply it can’t be integrated with any other service like AD
you can’t have CMS document libraries like the one in MOSS that use open office to edit there documents
what really lacks FOSS is “integration”
for gods sakes i’ve not seen till now any decent installer rather than RPM packages
@Aaronontheweb
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 1:59 pm ¶that wasn’t intellisense
that was debugging
btw that was VS 2005 which is a closed source application owned by microsoft, i’m sure you can notice that
Fady, If I had to choose I’d take propreitary software over open source 9 out of 10 times. The PHP intellisense/debugging suite that JCX produces is ALSO propreitary. I’ve spent a lot of energy making the case for proprietary software on my blog.
They mouse over variables in PHP and extricate current values during debug, just like how you can with a quick watch. Yes. But everywhere on JCX’s site they list numerous examples of their INTELLISENSE support, like on their blog
http://www.jcxsoftware.com/jcx/blog
On their tutorial video where they select WHAT PHP MODULES SHOULD HAVE INTELLISENSE support
http://www.jcxsoftware.com/jcx/vsphp/tutorials/remote_server
Or INTELLISENSE for PHP screenshots
http://www.jcxsoftware.com/jcx/node/1452
http://www.jcxsoftware.com/jcx/node/1397
http://www.jcxsoftware.com/jcx/node/1355
The product even checks to see if your project’s includes exist or not:
http://www.jcxsoftware.com/jcx/node/1370
When I make my WordPress.NET port I’ll even include some of the intellisense screenshots from that. However, if this isn’t enough proof for you that JCX’s product does what it says it does, then I give up.
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 2:13 pm ¶I don’t think open source is really the issue here, is it? I would strongly consider using something like SubSonic in a corporate app. I have no problem with solid open source projects. ASP.NET AJAX is open source, for that matter.
The major difference that I see when it comes to the topic of the post is a divergence in long term factors.
If you’re developing an application to be used in a medium or large business, you know from the start that it will have a large user base and must be maintainable for the long haul. With this in mind, you’ll almost certainly go for Java or .NET, probably depending more on the existing IT infrastructure than any difference between the platforms (as they are very comparable).
However if you’re developing a startup application, your user base could be anything from 5 users to 5 million users, depending on the mood of the Internet when you release. In that scenario, a looser, cheaper platform will always be more popular. Something like Cake or Rails becomes a nightmare to maintain and scale, but brings you to market much quicker, cheaper, and easier.
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 2:18 pm ¶@Aaronontheweb
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 2:33 pm ¶you brought me the wrong video, it’s not my fault it’s urs
and it seems you didn’t understood my comment about lack of namespacing in php
as ofcourse know in php there is no namespaces unlike any other OOP language like java or .net
so when ever you type the first charachters of your the function you are intending to use the IDE will show you “ALL” of the php know functions that begins with these charachters. so you will end up typing the whole name of the function you want to use specially in php lots of functions have the same prefix
@Dave
you are right
i’ve always said that php is good for small and agile fast paced projects
but when it comes to big enterprise integrated large scale applications, you to use the right tool and php is not an option
@Fady
It was perhaps foolish of me to attempt to address your points about Active Directory (as it is not a part of my job, or even within my range of computer interests). If anyone is keeping score, then point to you good sir.
Often times it isn’t fair to address multiple (and separate) points of contention in a blog post, as it makes it hard to hold the individual discussions that they require.
My point on system level integration is that the Unix model (everything is a file, originating from the command line) works better for the kinds of system administration I do. From my perspective, it really doesn’t matter how well Microsoft can connect multiple GUI apps, because the kinds of things I’m interested in doing are made much easier for me in Bash scripts. Now I know that .net exposes access to the MMC (is that what it is called?) and allows me in .net to script a lot of system functions, but in the time that I have been working with computers that is still a relatively recent development which only serves to bring Windows (and all of its related technologies) up to the level of quality that Linux has always been (for me, can’t stress enough that this is my personal opinion).
Other people will come from other backgrounds, and they will be interested in other things. Microsoft being better or worse than any one else isn’t really that important to me at any given moment. The fundamental argument is can Open trump Closed. You can replace each side with any company or community can get a different answer. Is MySQL better than Oracle? Or is Open Office better than Microsoft Office? These questions might lead a lot of rational people to say many different things. I don’t think it really matters because none of these products (or their teams) is ever done, and so any advance one has over the other is likely to change anyways. But a common trend among people who start successful businesses is their ability to adapt to challenges that they do not initially foresee. This causes them to consider the long term impacts of what languages they choose or how they choose to build their product(s).
So the choice is between an accessible but closed platform or a challenging but open platform. I say that Microsoft is only marginally more accessible, and much more closed, than the free Open Source applications that I rely on. But then thats just me (and a hack of a lot of other people). I’m not totally clear on why I’m still involved in this conversation as I accept that making anyone agree with me won’t make my life any easier and might even send good hard working people down the wrong track. I guess I just wanted to address why something that is as powerful as .NET can be considered “un cool” and why that might not ever change.
One thing seems clear at least, that Open Source projects and their contributers wont back down from this. Their efforts are enriching computer science, and allowing future generations to find new and original ideas and capitalize on them. Richard Stallman (a man who I have had the pleasure of meeting on more than one occasion) believes (and I agree) that ideas shouldn’t be proprietary. This is the heart behind GNU which forms the basis behind most of the Open Source movement. Closed platforms (even if they contain Open components), in my book, are relics of a past era where computers were a mystery to 99.999(and then some) of their users. Linux, GCC, Apache, even Wikipedia are great examples of the masses ability to self govern and collaborate. They are not perfect models, but they show tremendous promise, and have produced tremendous value.
Ok Thats enough grand standing, really I need to finish this Ajax component serialization function (Don’t worry Thomas, I’m not after your Gaia Widgets market, I still think your library is cool).
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 2:40 pm ¶Hi Fady
Sorry but I still find myself disagreeing with some of your comments.
>because open source software mosly is developed without an integration design in mind
lets take for instace microsoft products
the office is integrated with the browser and the browser is integrated with the active directory authentication protocol which is supported by the iis
have you ever seen any product in the FOSS that looks like AD?
have you ever seen any product in the FOSS like the biztalk? or office? or MOSS?
MS products tightly integrate with MS products mostly by using proprietary technology (i.e. not open standards). This is fine if you are a MS shop and don’t mind the vendor lock-in. Commercial competitors often use this approach as well. For an alternative to AD see Fedora Directory Server. For Biztalk, see Mule. For MOSS, see Alfresco. For Office, there’s nothing
come to think of it there’s no commercial competitor either.. lol.
>lets face
open office sux and is too slow
apache doesn’t stand a chance when compared to iis, have you ever though about clustering or load balancing using apache?
I agree that Office > OOo but then OOo isn’t complete crap – it’s just not as good as Office in the same way as alternative commercial products. IIS isn’t the only app server that can load balance or cluster but I agree that IIS6 is pretty neat.
>and yes, PHP, a coctail with various functions with no namespacing that make a functiionality like intellisense in visual studio is an impossible to do
no decent IDE to php till now
and oh yea, the php spaghiti code, html within code
All fair comment until you realise that PHP was/is a hell of a lot better than ASP. Things have moved on, .Net/ASP.Net are now here but by the same token we also have J2EE, Ruby, etc. PHP has improved as well. It’s possible to write fairly nice PHP using one of the many frameworks that are out there now (CodeIgniter, Cake, Smarty, etc). It’s possible to mix logic with markup in ASP.Net so it’s possible to write spaghetti in ASP.Net.
VS.Net is pretty good but I still prefer using Eclipse and IDEA. VS.Net only becomes usable for me with add-on products like Resharper, TestDriven, etc.
>open source software is not bad, it’s good because it’s free, but FOSS won’t solve your every day problems for free
Free as is beer is definitely appealing but I love the fact that you have the freedom to inspect/modify FOSS source code. FOSS _can_ solve everyday problems, but not all problems. You seem to have a problem with FOSS. Perhaps you’ve just not used any decent FOSS software. Since you’re a .Net developer perhaps you’d be interested in one of the following – Rhino Mocks, NHibernate, Castle Project, MbUnit, etc.
If you had moved from PHP to J2EE rather than .Net I would guess that you would have a different opinion of FOSS. The one thing that I think that Microsoft have done well is simplify some aspects of development by providing the entire stack in an easy to use package. Commercial Open Source companies seem to be waking up to this now as the end products are getting better and better – see Zimbra, Alfresco, RedHat, etc.
Regards
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 3:47 pm ¶UrlParams
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1290
Have you ever wanted to edit the get or post variables on a page? This add on is perfect for doing just that.
Add N Edit Cookies
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/573
View, Create, Delete cookies quick and easy. Just install it to see the power.
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 4:15 pm ¶From their rebates website after a failed rebate attempt. Not only are they using .net, but a buggy script to boot.
Server Error in ‘/’ Application.
Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster.
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.Web.HttpException: Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster.
Source Error:
[No relevant source lines]
Source File: c:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files\root\98cc0722\64100bcc\App_Web_omnmlqb4.0.cs Line: 0
Stack Trace:
[HttpException (0x80004005): Unable to validate data.]
System.Web.Configuration.MachineKeySection.GetDecodedData(Byte[] buf, Byte[] modifier, Int32 start, Int32 length, Int32& dataLength) +2546764
System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.Deserialize(String inputString) +214
[ViewStateException: Invalid viewstate.
Client IP: 166.70.80.84
Port: 11442
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/312.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/312.6
ViewState: /wEPDwUJMjI4MTU0NDAyZGR+gn8J5EPZ7V11xlExQCu8l+5QKQ==
Referer: http://applepromotion.corporatesvcs.com/(S(55y1e03wdeu5wi45xiishq45))/Default.aspx
Path: /Default.aspx]
[HttpException (0x80004005): Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster.]
System.Web.UI.ViewStateException.ThrowError(Exception inner, String persistedState, String errorPageMessage, Boolean macValidationError) +116
System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.Deserialize(String inputString) +251
System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.System.Web.UI.IStateFormatter.Deserialize(String serializedState) +4
System.Web.UI.Util.DeserializeWithAssert(IStateFormatter formatter, String serializedState) +37
System.Web.UI.HiddenFieldPageStatePersister.Load() +220
System.Web.UI.Page.LoadPageStateFromPersistenceMedium() +83
System.Web.UI.Page.LoadAllState() +35
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +6953
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +154
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest() +86
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestWithNoAssert(HttpContext context) +18
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) +49
ASP.default_aspx.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) in c:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files\root\98cc0722\64100bcc\App_Web_omnmlqb4.0.cs:0
System.Web.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +154
System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +64
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.42; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.42
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 8:47 pm ¶I am new to the blogging for business, and I hope that I am doing it right. Thanks for the suggestions.
Posted 27 Sep 2007 at 10:49 pm ¶Rick Marnon, Howell
http://www.oaklandlivingston.com/howell.html
Thanks for posting my email Aaron.
I believe my idea is well thought out, despite my technical deficiencies, however, my research online has shown me that approaching investors with an idea and a dream is simply not enough.
My problem is that I do not need, nor want to hire someone to start programming right away, before any type of funding has materialized. I need to find a technical individual, that would be willing to sign an agreement with me and effectively become a member of my team.
I would only require that his expertise would be able to help me determine:
The feasibility of my idea
Comment on any other options that may enhance the idea
Scalability of the idea
The optimal means of delivering a live product
Once this is accomplished, we would work together on a presentation and then submit it to various venture firms.
All this I believe could be done remotely.
“IF” the idea is able to secure significant funding, the individual would then have to work on the project with me fulltime.
So I guess – the individual I need will have need very little time comittment pre-funding.
Posted 28 Sep 2007 at 7:12 am ¶Sorry if any of you were subject to a half-read article. I hit the publish button by accident half-way through writing it. I’ve spent the entire morning trying to get DotNetNuke, MojoPortal, and Community Server Express to function on my laptop as a new blogging platform for a project I will be releasing over the weekend.
In addition my Facebook application development is proceeding along smoothly and I will have a couple of articles about that posted over the weekend.
Posted 28 Sep 2007 at 4:53 pm ¶@Jason Sperske
Posted 28 Sep 2007 at 6:58 pm ¶i’ve used Linux for about 6-7 years, developed with Perl, PHP and MySql
also i’ve used java (but so much)
i also have worked within software development teams using strict quality policy and a team of quality control to test our products
so when it comes to Linux quality as you mentioned i’m sure if i applied my point of view of quality then we will find out that Linux is missing several things
1- usability
2- documentation
3- maintainabiltiy
and thats why it’s still used “only” by ppl whom have a technical background
and this is one of the day to day problems that FOSS didn’t solve “yet”
but this is not the only problem with FOSS in general, FOSS methodology as we all know is based on ppl contributions and these contributions are numerous and vast “but” they are not organized by any centric organzation that can set targets like integration for usability
thats why we can’t see FOSS products talking together transparently like Microsoft products do
put your self in the place of regualer average user, should the understand how OS works and how to use shell scrips and command lines to run mp3?!!!
common it took me a whole hour to figure out how to run mp3 on fedora, considering me as a software developer what about the normal user?
@Jason Sperske
yes i agree with you that FOSS caused a major development in the software industry, in fact companies like Microsoft would not even try to improve it’s products and make things like Vista, MOSS, VS2005 if there was no Linux, dropal, phpnuke and netbeans out there for free and open source
wikipedia is my favorite place to read and gain knowledge about alot of stuff but have you ever tried to use there editor? if you did then try to compare it to MOSS Wiki template
which is easier to use?
which have more features?
which is integrated with other products the user use?
i always used to say PHP compared to ASP.NET is more like a little knife compared to a big electric saw
Posted 28 Sep 2007 at 7:18 pm ¶you can’t cut big tree with the knife but you can use it to make artistic crafts
php is good for small cool ideas, but when it comes to enterprise software and scalability things get messy
have you ever heard about 3 tiers in PHP?
do you think you can handle ERP systems with PHP spagheti code? or mysql that can’t support transactions?
Interesting series of posts, especially on how to use catchy titles and list posts. Do you think things like Technorati tags are worth while anymore?
Posted 29 Sep 2007 at 12:10 pm ¶I think Technorati tags are still worthwhile because for every post/page you author you still have to take the time to supply <meta> tags for good-ole SEO. A lot of the time you can reuse many of those SEO keywords as your technorati tags. I actually do the opposite; I come up with about 5-7 technorati tags for each post then I add those to my bank of <meta> keywords, and then usually I’ll add in another 4-5 keywords, ones that would never do well on technorati but might prove helpful in search engines.
Have I ever received a lot of traffic from technorati? No. I think the reason why Technorati’s Alexa ranking is so high to begin with is because of bloggers routinely checking the site over and over again to see if their authority has gone up. I don’t think nearly as many use it for searching; someone documented about a month ago just how screwed up technorati is
If there’s someone out there who has managed to yield mountains of traffic from technorati without gaming the “what’s hot” section of the site then I am all ears.
Posted 29 Sep 2007 at 1:58 pm ¶Great list, thanks.
Posted 01 Oct 2007 at 8:40 am ¶I’m glad you found it useful and thanks for link back.
Posted 01 Oct 2007 at 1:01 pm ¶Hey Steve,
Thanks for the comment, and it’s no problem; I really like your starter kit! Sorry for spelling your name wrong (which I just corrected); I wrote the article in the wee hours of the morning my spelling took a bit of a nose dive, so my apologies!
Posted 01 Oct 2007 at 1:46 pm ¶it’s always nice to know the enemy
Posted 02 Oct 2007 at 9:31 am ¶Are you kidding me with the statement that Microsoft is going towards open source road? This claim is much more shallow than the allegedly shallow claims of Robert and Marshall you are quoting. Come on!!
Posted 03 Oct 2007 at 1:57 pm ¶What statement might that be?
Posted 03 Oct 2007 at 2:16 pm ¶Oh wait, there isn’t one. “Putting its foot in the open source door?” Ok, if releasing the source code isn’t the first step towards becoming open source, then what is? Does the statement indicate that Microsoft is going to become fully open source? No, it leaves it quite open.
My article passed ZERO speculation on what Microsoft is going to do, it simply reported a canvas of opinion including mine.
If you’re going to get into the Slashdot bitchfest semantics of what constitutes open source, spare us.
Posted 03 Oct 2007 at 2:21 pm ¶Well, I guess it will be useful for debugging some hard cases, learning from the design and maybe even patching MSFT’s bugs in the Framework.
Arik
Posted 04 Oct 2007 at 5:13 am ¶Exactly my analysis Aaron. Whomever wrote that RWW article clearly has absolutely no understanding of .NET – or probably any development stack. I left some comments for them regarding that.
As for Scoble – he’s clearly losing his marbles and credibility over the last year. I’ve unsubscribed to him and find none of his ramblings of any value.
And for the framework being open – it may help debugging ~ but it’s not going to do much for 99% of M$ developers out there…
Krish – you are just being stupid – sounds like a linux fanboy to me…
Posted 04 Oct 2007 at 1:14 pm ¶Hi Aaron,
Nice article. This was released mainly to assist debugging it would seem. IMHO however, it’s kinda like a laptop dancer… you can play but you can’t touch
Posted 06 Oct 2007 at 8:07 am ¶No worries, as you can imagine my name is spelled wrong all the time. Thanks for the correction!
Posted 07 Oct 2007 at 10:24 pm ¶I take your advice.
Posted 09 Oct 2007 at 8:59 am ¶I’ll surely implement those good words.
Hi Aaron,
Thanks for the link love…I have to say I chuckled when I saw the anchor text in that one in my links
Posted 09 Oct 2007 at 10:07 am ¶Lol I really liked your post Dana; I have that problem a lot myself. I find that most bloggers are addicted to the instant gratification of publishing their latest work of genius, but it takes some experience and discipline to know when to hold off and to save an article for the best possible time to publish it.
Posted 10 Oct 2007 at 11:40 am ¶Lol sorry the first title was crappy. The post evolved away from the subject of my original title and I changed it to reflect the true spirit of my the content :p
Posted 11 Oct 2007 at 12:13 am ¶Hi Aaron,
When I decided to start VB Notebook For .NET earlier this year I had originally planned to stick exclusively with VB.NET material. However, early on I found that I wanted to add in general software development topics. This eventually had the effect of making my traffic two pronged where I get a lot of DZone traffic for general articles and a lot of search engine traffic for VB.NET tutorials.
On my new blog, OpTempo I’m taking a wide open approach with no set topic. Anything goes there, aside from programming topics that fit with VBNB. I had done a few other topical blogs but I felt they were too constrained so I’m experimenting with having very few constraints plus writing as fast as possible. I started it on the 5th of this month and I’ve set the goal of having 200 quality posts by Nov 1. It should be interesting.
Posted 11 Oct 2007 at 12:01 pm ¶Hey Frank,
Your sentiments regarding VB Notebook for .NET echo exactly how I feel.
As for your OpTempo, good luck getting 200 posts up by Nov 1st! That’s a lot of writing! It sounds like a cool experiment, the wide open approach.
Lastly, check your email
-Aaron
Posted 11 Oct 2007 at 12:07 pm ¶Aaron, I think you should have followed the Om Malik link in the article you quoted (here: http://gigaom.com/2007/10/10/facebook-users-dip-could-this-be-true/)
I actually agree with most of your post but you hit a nerve with me when you started talking about Facebook’s market position. For the record, Facebook is not the “market leader” or the “biggest social network”. In fact, not by a long shot. Malik’s article shows that Facebook has Unique Visitors in the area of 30 million vs Myspace which floats around 70 million.
As a matter of fact, from the same blog post, if you take Facebook’s growth from Feb ’07 (its lowest point on the graph) to now you get a jump of about 12 million unique visitors. In that same time frame myspace grew by about 4-5 million unique visitors showing that myspace, while not keeping pace, is still going strong. In fact, while going into Facebook’s decline of 9.3% the Malik post also points out that myspace went up by .1% in the same time frame.
Finally, and this is just one those “out of no where points”, but if you want to look outside the U.S. you’ll also see that MSN Spaces (of all things) is huge in Asia. As a whole, Spaces dwarfs Facebook with an estimated 120 million unique viewers worldwide. So while Facebook is growing fast that’s mostly because its pretty tiny in comparison to everyone else.
The reason this all agitates me is that you seem to be in the right frame of mind in that you realize that most of the blogosphere is drinking the Facebook kool-aid. Yet simply by being bombarded by the hype you’ve been tricked into drinking the kool-aid as well by having your perspectives shaped by all this unrealistic Facebook talk.
Posted 11 Oct 2007 at 3:37 pm ¶Hey Tom,
Your comment is absolutely true on all counts, but to clarify, I threw the “market position” talk out there namely for the sake of argument, not so much as to enter it into the canon of social media facts. I’m aware that MySpace still has a significantly larger audience, but again, the Facebook reference was for the sake of argument. In addition though, MySpace still doesn’t have a widget platform out yet, and Facebook’s platform has been garnering a lot of attention. I guess that would make Facebook the biggest social network that’s currently widget-capable with an in-house API.
Maybe I should call Facebook the “buzz leader” instead
I’m an American college student who’s been on Facebook for three years, so my perspective has largely been shaped by my own extensive experience as a user, as a developer for the platform, but I never would have started developing for it were it not for the hype.
Your points about what’s popular in other areas of the world and in other demographics rings true as well. I read the other day that Google’s Orkut is actually the market leader in parts of South America and elsewhere. I’ll have to see where I stashed that article.
Posted 11 Oct 2007 at 3:46 pm ¶absolutely… as soon as MySpace & Google & LinkedIn launch, will likely be worth checking them out & placing ‘bets’ on those platforms.
but for the moment, Facebook is the only platform that has a real API for development.
that appears likely to change next week with the rumored launch of MySpace’s new platform offering, and in November with the rumored launch of Google’s social platform. (both rumors reported by TechCrunch)
- dmc
Posted 11 Oct 2007 at 5:50 pm ¶Glad to see someone is staying on top of things.
Posted 11 Oct 2007 at 8:50 pm ¶When I see a title “AjaxNinja” I think you’re going to be writing about Ajax. Reading about blogging about blogging seems to be too many layers of navel-gazing. Please do more techo stuff.
Posted 11 Oct 2007 at 9:00 pm ¶I see what you are saying
Posted 11 Oct 2007 at 9:48 pm ¶Here is the rest of that post, for some reason three dots caused the post to get cut off (when are you going to community server again?
)
Ironically, Calacanis posted something on this today (http://www.calacanis.com/2007/10/11/facebook-reality-check-its-not-worth-100b-and-it-wont-crush/)
Like I said before, I did agree with most of your article. I guess the difference between us is that I think Facebook’s “buzz leadership” is mostly hot air and that they’ll have very little to offer once the aforementioned Myspace Platform materializes. So while I think your points are valid I think that it will be the Myspace platform that will become the defacto standard (if there is one at all).
Quick Disclaimer: I like Facebook a LOT more than Myspace which I absolutely hate. But based on my experience, as unique visitors go up each subsequent million is 5 times harder to get than the last million (I only have about 8 years on you age wise but that’s enough to have been recruited at 19 during the first boom so I know a little something about Web based companies and traffic). I think that puts Facebook at a significant disadvantage.
Also, on the topic of Myspace vs. Facebook, I’d assume that about 70%+ also have a myspace account making Myspace even more compelling.
I mean, for you it’s probably best for you to aim for Facebook no matter what just because that’s what you know and that’s where your passion is. But I think the best decision for most people would be to target a Myspace platform (again assuming it materializes at all)
Though, and I should preface this by saying I have no experience with the Facebook platform. The entirety of my Facebook development experience consists of reading your posts on the topic
That said, from what I do know I can’t help but think that porting will be pretty easy between platforms. Assuming most of the business logic is going to be identical and most of the interface work will be carried over completely I’d think a good modular design will make a port pretty easy. I mean, all you’re really getting from Facebook is profile information right? So I’d think you could literally get by with just having different classes for each social network and keep 95% of your code unchanged.
Posted 11 Oct 2007 at 9:50 pm ¶Well thanks for stealing my thunder for tomorrow’s article Tom. :p
I’m going to get into detail on how to design a Web 2.0 Middleware that encapsulates a lot of the common business objects into an identical set of classes for each API. That’s my solution to the future problem of “which platform?”
Take a look at the ACE framework, which is a wrapper facade between POSIX and Windows. I’ve performed research for the Professor who invented it (Douglas Schmidt, world renowned middleware and embedded-systems expert) and I think a lot of his concepts are applicable to these social network platforms.
In addition though I think a lot of the buzz about Facebook is just hot air too. Some of the shit people are saying is just fucking insane. It’s going to kill google? There aren’t enough drunk pictures in the world to take down Google.
P.S. Yeah wordpress chokes on random characters sometimes… Single tick marks have been the cause of the problem before, as have been three periods. I don’t know why.
Posted 11 Oct 2007 at 9:56 pm ¶My big idea: aggregators a la news aggregators: have authentication aggregators (and maybe optionally authorization aggregators as well)
So also similar to the little toolstrips that say (digg,reddit,google,etc) we will be able to cross-authenticate to all the social and other networks using a single-sign-on type of front end.
For apps that are ad-based as opposed to license based, about the only thing you need other than uniqueness would be age-verification which every service would like to be able to offload responsibility for but reap the rewards of.
So I could send an invite to my latest great FB app to folks who are *only* linkedin friends, yet they could still seemlessly access my app. That way only I the app-developer would need to utilitize the aggregator, simplifying life for the poor linked-in-only users, and additionally I could get the extra revenue from the enlarged audience without trouble for the new subscriber.
good posts,
Posted 12 Oct 2007 at 8:21 am ¶owen
I know OpenID (http://openid.net/) is one approach to the “authentication aggregator” idea. I don’t know how widely adopted it is. I know DZone (http://www.dzone.com/), the developer’s Digg, uses it.
Posted 12 Oct 2007 at 8:58 am ¶aaron, how are these products free?
SQL Server Express isn’t going to do it for something that requires SSIS and sure IIS comes with Windows but show me how that’s free the OS is not free.
What am I missing?
subscribed…
Posted 12 Oct 2007 at 9:05 pm ¶Dude, that app from Roland K is just a pyramid scheme that encourages you to rip off your friends. I would consider removing his post.
Posted 15 Oct 2007 at 7:28 pm ¶Robert,
thanks for pointing that out. removed it.
Posted 16 Oct 2007 at 12:56 am ¶I have to say this has left me confused as to whether I need to downlaod the developers toolkit or not. I’ve done it, but there’s no instruction afaics as to where the source and binaries need to be extracted hence no Facebook related tools in my toolkit.
Posted 20 Oct 2007 at 12:10 pm ¶Hey Jef,
If you want to use Facebook.NET you do not need to download the Developer’s Toolkit. The Developer’s Toolkit is a separate interface for designing Facebook applications with ASP.NET. I’m afraid, however, that I do not entirely understand your post. No Facebook-related tools in your toolkit? What do you mean?
Posted 22 Oct 2007 at 7:54 am ¶Hi Aaron,
I meant having seen a video transcript elsewhere of a facebook app being created, the Asp.net toolkit list in VWD 2005 contained some controls under a Facebook heading in the list. So I took it that to appear in this list the binary files had to be unzipped to a particular location.
Anyway, as I don’t need the Toolkit I tried Facebooknet but find myself stuck. All seems set up correctly with my callback url set to my workstation 123.123.123.123:3179/facebooknet for example but it fails to connect every time. I switch off the firewall in case that causes the problem but no change.
I try it also on my server which I know is configured for asp.net 2.0 because I’m running Dotnetnuke on it, but the server response indicates an error, suggesting that the web.config settings are changed to create an error log file.
Jeff
Posted 22 Oct 2007 at 9:07 am ¶We’re actually developing a digg alternative as we speak. It’s been live for just over a month now and has actually had over 300,000 unique visitors thus far. The site is http://www.tagsum.com
We’re focused on making social media more social. Digg added it’s social networking features, but really they just made it easier to game the system (seriously, just by adding hundreds of friends and shout spamming I got over 20 articles on the front page of digg in a one week period).
Anyhow, we don’t want to do what digg has done. Everything is tag based so you can create the narrow niches that truely fit your submissions. I nthe control panel we have friend feeds so you can keep an eye on what your circle of friends is doing on the site. We have a full featured private messaging system, and real profiles complete with a drag and drop photo gallery system. Keep an eye on our site over the coming months as we continue development (oh, and we actually have a picture section unlike digg )
Posted 23 Oct 2007 at 10:11 am ¶I am not able to add my apps in profile page
I want to show my apps content in profile page when user add my apps in your account.
my apps is http://apps.facebook.com/body-philosophy
I am enter “” in default FBML but it’s not showing in profile page.
Please help me that which method will be use for showing my apps in profile page.
Posted 24 Oct 2007 at 6:46 am ¶The default FBML is what will appear on the user’s profile page unless you make a call to the Facebook API to set the user’s profile FBML explicitly. Do you make any calls in your application to render the user’s profile FBML?
Can you show a bit of the source if are making calls? It’d make it easier to help!
Posted 25 Oct 2007 at 10:40 pm ¶Hey Brian,
I sent you an email too but I figured I’d reply to you here also. I went ahead and signed up and I’m going to submit a couple of things. I have a quick question though, is Tagsum ONLY for submitting news items exclusively? What about just popular items that regular users might be interested in, like how-to and do-it-yourself articles? It seems like Tagsum is directed more towards news.
Posted 25 Oct 2007 at 10:48 pm ¶Thank you for joining up and giving me some feedback.
As far as the content goes, you can submit anything you like. The members that are there have been submitting quite a bit of mainstream news, but we specifically designed the site to use tags instead of categories so our members can submit anything they are interested in, and keep it easy to find. Doing a quick tag search in the search bar for DIY returns these for example http://www.tagsum.com/news/search?q=diy&t=tags . We have a feature coming soon where you will be able to subscribe to tags that interest you. So for example if you are only interested in football, cars, and diy projects, you will be able to subscribe to those and have that info delivered straight to you.
Posted 26 Oct 2007 at 7:22 am ¶I’ve actually found WordPress to be pretty rock solid. If you were seeing database errors under load, it’s likely that your host just put you on an overloaded MySql server.
Posted 29 Oct 2007 at 7:01 pm ¶Don’t get me wrong; I love WordPress. It simply had a lot more problems out of the box than BlogEngine.NET has. DiscountASP.NET limits me to 10 open MySQL connections at any given time, which isn’t much. Luckily WP-Cache solved the problem.
Posted 29 Oct 2007 at 7:24 pm ¶Just curious, are you planning on switching this Wordpress Blog to Blogengine?
Posted 30 Oct 2007 at 12:32 am ¶Andreas,
No, I don’t plan on migrating anytime soon, and I’m still not sure when I’m going to upgrade to WordPress 2.3! I feel like I have a good thing going on AjaxNinja with WordPress, but I wanted a different experience with my other blog, thus I went with BlogEngine.NET.
The process of migrating from WordPress to BlogEngine would be really nasty; I’m not sure if I’d be able to get all of the original WordPress URLs to point back to their corresponding units on a BlogEngine.NET deployment, and I really can’t afford to lose all of that Google/Del.icio.us/StumbleUpon traffic on those existing pages.
Posted 30 Oct 2007 at 1:34 pm ¶Hi Aaron,
yes, that’s the same problem I face here. It’s always a kind of a pity to run a PHP blog if you’re an ASP.NET developer, but back then when I started blogging there hasn’t been stuff like BlogEngine and I assume the same situation counts for you.
I’m looking forward to Windows 2008 Server with PHP deeply integrated by Zend and Microsoft, then I can at least move my Wordpress Blog from my Linux Server to my Windows Server without loosing the current URL Rewriting structure..
Posted 31 Oct 2007 at 2:04 am ¶I’m hoping your blog is within my readership domain.
Jamie
Posted 31 Oct 2007 at 10:20 am ¶Interesting… Now, I wonder what answer Telligent would give as to why CS2007 uses up so much memeory? Couldn’t they optimize it to have a more minimal footprint?
Posted 31 Oct 2007 at 3:07 pm ¶Aaron, I really appreciate you posting this and the other accounts on CS Forums. That seems really high, as Chris says, but Dave Stokes says its normal (on a CS Forums thread you added to), so I believe it.
I’m currently on a VPS, but before I was on WebHost4Life for at least two years, with CS almost the whole time. No 100MB limits there.
Regards,
Posted 31 Oct 2007 at 8:30 pm ¶-Dave
Facebook’s main draw was its API. Microsoft just spent $240 million for nothing.
Posted 02 Nov 2007 at 10:57 pm ¶That’s the premium you pay when you follow the BUZZ and not the business. Then again, Microsoft is the world’s most profitable company for its size, so it can do what it wants with its capital. If I were an investor who’s counting on dividends though, I might be a tad pissed.
Posted 03 Nov 2007 at 2:51 am ¶Aaron you you picked this as a “Why the hell does this not exist?” weeks ago!! Nice.
Posted 03 Nov 2007 at 8:47 am ¶WHoops. I skipped to the “bottom line” and did not noticed your remarks on the “2.0 Middleware concept”….
Posted 03 Nov 2007 at 8:49 am ¶Cameron,
I have to admit, I felt pretty warm and fuzzy after I read about OpenSocial, knowing that I had “called for it.” Hopefully OpenSocial won’t be a disappointment. I just read on TechCrunch this morning that OpenSocial was hacked within 45 minutes of its first application’s launch.
Posted 03 Nov 2007 at 1:09 pm ¶XRumer is the best program for advertisement!
It’s have CAPTCHA recognizer, email verificator, and a lot of other functions…
But. I forgot link to it
Can you give me URL to the XRumer description? screenshots, etc.
Thanks
Posted 06 Nov 2007 at 6:13 pm ¶Hey AjaxNinja,
Appreciate the link to “How do you become a StumbleUpon power user? Ask a 16 year old.”
Don’t worry – one day you too can be a 16 year old, er, um, SU expert
Posted 07 Nov 2007 at 11:53 pm ¶Cheers for the mention, Aaron.
Put this up on Sphinn:
Posted 08 Nov 2007 at 12:05 am ¶http://sphinn.com/story/12989
Thanks for the Sphinn Maki!
I’ll be a StumbleUpon expert one day; I just work much more slowly than many of the super Stumblers out there!
Posted 08 Nov 2007 at 12:17 am ¶If all your users are being logged out, you should probably specify a machineKey in your web.config. An app pool recycling should never cause users to be logged out, however if no machineKeys are set at the application or server level, then it will randomly generate them. In that case, the recycling would cause new ones to be generated. If you just specify them in the CS web.config, the issue will go away.
Posted 09 Nov 2007 at 1:33 pm ¶Ahhh, yes. The MachineKey trumps App Pool recycling. Thanks Ken! Let us know if this does the trick for you, Aaron.
Posted 09 Nov 2007 at 1:47 pm ¶I already uninstalled Community Server 2007 so I wouldn’t be able to tell you
Sounds like it would work. I’ll go and check on DiscountASP.NET if they let you play around with the machinekey settings or not.
Posted 09 Nov 2007 at 1:54 pm ¶That’s too bad. If they allow you access to your web.config, you have access to your machinekey. It’s a single line. You generate a key, stick it in the web.config. Here’s a CS Bit on it.
http://dbvt.com/csbits/archive/2007/05/23/an-ASP.NET-MachineKey-Generator.aspx
If you search machinekey in CS Bits you’ll find a lot of references about logouts. I’m sorry I did help you catch this before you removed CS2007.
Posted 09 Nov 2007 at 2:01 pm ¶Your right, those discountASP people did the same thing to me. They are just being generally scumbags. I’m sure they do have other users running CS without a problem, but those users are undoubtedly running some much older versions. I’ll likely put up a similar blog post and cross link you here.
Posted 09 Nov 2007 at 5:29 pm ¶I prefer using a pen and paper to model – I find it much faster that creating images on computer.
Posted 09 Nov 2007 at 11:56 pm ¶Aaron. Thanks for the tips, Steve’s starter kit is tidy!
Posted 10 Nov 2007 at 4:55 pm ¶Hey Aaron
Posted 10 Nov 2007 at 8:01 pm ¶Would you happen to have an example of how you “implemented strongly-typed master page references to access controls on the master page via the .aspx pages”?
I have to agree with aaronontheweb, “BAD TITLE, MISLEADING”.
I’ve developed in pascal, basic, delphi, classic asp, vb, vb.net, c#, java, php, and ruby. Been paid for most of those languages. Point being, anyone who’s ever touched php knows you run with a opcode cacher or whatever they’re calling themselves these days. And the things have been around for more than five years.
The argument of “I just ran it out-of-the-box so it’s a fair comparison” is a poor argument because php’s “out-of-the-box” experience is on linux, not windows. PHP is a dog on windows and everyone knows it:
http://www.google.com/search?q=php+slow+on+windows&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Which is why the recent announcement that MS is working with Zend on fastcgi is so interesting.
To further this thread, what’s interesting about php on .net that you didn’t have before is large corporations which standardize on a particular technology (like .net as a platform) now have the ability to run php within their own guidelines. Windows admins, notable for being poor at picking up anything not written about on msdn, should be able to deploy, administer, and support a php app on .net without even knowing it’s written in php.
-Dan
Posted 11 Nov 2007 at 9:19 pm ¶I found this comment on debugging FBML on Nikhil’s blog
———————————-
JustinM
Posted on 10/22/2007 @ 7:14 AM
Manjit,
Yes you can debug locally with fbml apps. What I did is get a free dynamic dns (gotdns.com), port forward port 80 (actually in my case port 8080, as some other machine is using 80) directly to my development laptop that has IIS running (Vista Ultimate, note the Application Pool may need to be set to “classic”). Then made a local dns entry in windows\system32\etc\hosts file to have the dns entry point to 127.0.0.1 for resolving url’s that point directly to my site (images). Everything works fine.
Posted 12 Nov 2007 at 3:01 pm ¶Cameron,
Thanks for the GREAT comment. I’m going to post this as it’s own article.
Posted 12 Nov 2007 at 3:10 pm ¶Stefan,
I still think that DiscountASP.NET provides a high-quality hosting service and I’ll continue using them, but they really do need to stop advertising that they support a platform which they clearly do not.
David,
The machine key fix will act as a work-around for the login/logout issue caused by the application pool recycling so thanks for the great resource! However, it won’t fix the performance problems caused by having the app pool recycled every 5 minutes. The website was unbearably slow when I ran it.
Posted 12 Nov 2007 at 3:42 pm ¶Binny,
If you use templates offered by business graphics software like Visio or SmartDraw it really makes it a lot faster to develop computerized business graphics. On top of that, it’s impractical to share hand-drawn graphics with other members of your project. For a back-of-the-envelop mock up, pen and paper makes sense, but for actual design documents, I strongly encourage that you use real business graphics software.
Posted 12 Nov 2007 at 5:47 pm ¶I felt bad that we couldn’t get you the machinekey fix earlier, but you’re right that app pool recycling would have to cause some performance issues. Thanks for following-up.
Posted 12 Nov 2007 at 8:21 pm ¶Man this thing works like a charm. Just used it to clean up one of my DiscountASP.NET packages
Posted 13 Nov 2007 at 6:36 pm ¶Thank you for article.
i hv learnt much from this.
may you hv long life with good health.
Posted 15 Nov 2007 at 7:12 am ¶Good blog..Many Useful & helpful resources.
Posted 15 Nov 2007 at 10:26 pm ¶nice! also, just wanted to point out i really like the add a comment link in your RSS feed. most of them dont do that, and it saves me typing in two more fields so i really like it
Posted 21 Nov 2007 at 6:27 pm ¶FeedBurner FeedFlare 4tw.
Posted 21 Nov 2007 at 6:33 pm ¶Amen to that
I have seen this happen time and time again. Unfortunately when I stumble I make sure to properly categorize the post but not everyone is doing so and in the long run it hurt the author …
Nice post
Posted 21 Nov 2007 at 8:13 pm ¶Hey Jeff,
Sorry it took me so long to get back to your comment! Are you trying to authenticate your requests through your web browser (i.e. are you connecting directly to 123.123.123.123:3179/facebooknet) or are you making the requests through the Facebook.com proxy (http://apps.facebook.com/APPNAME/)? Facebook.NET won’t authenticate you unless you direct your traffic through Facebook, simply because Facebook.NET needs access to the Facebook session data which is created at the proxy.
There is an option you can enable on the <fb:Application> control called “enableExternalBrowsing” you can set this to true then give that a try if you’d like.
Posted 22 Nov 2007 at 3:57 pm ¶HI Aaron,
I’d tried both. I’ll try that setting and have a fresh look at it tomorrow.
Thanks.
Posted 22 Nov 2007 at 4:04 pm ¶Let me know how it goes
If you want me to gloss over your code or if you want to email me, feel free to shoot me an email at
jiive[dot]aaron[at]gmail[dot]com
Thanks!
Posted 22 Nov 2007 at 4:22 pm ¶Yeah that’s how I feel Alex; if I’m unsure about the category I’ll sometimes drop the stumble altogether. Stumbling .NET pages is odd for instance, because if I stumble it under Web development, a ton of people who want to hear about CSS design will end up reading it and voting it down; if I file it under Windows Development then a bunch of people looking how to develop for Windows desktops, rather than web services, will see it and vote it down.
It can be a bit awkward at times, but for the most part properly categorizing is easy and an even greater compliment to the author.
Posted 22 Nov 2007 at 5:23 pm ¶Great and unique article. Thanks for this.
Posted 23 Nov 2007 at 8:39 am ¶It helped me a lot in writing an article Writing Facebook Applications in .NET
Writing Facebook Applications in .NET With Facebook.NET
I’ve tried to use many tools like ms project, but at the end, i found that best one are mind manager – very simple and very usefull and old school ms word! hehe funny but true. I found that complex one are usefull only when u work on big projects with precise timing – but all of that can be done in ms word + xls at the end. I would like to mention Borland CaliberRM which is best and very unique – and far more better then anything – specialised for soft. dev. projects.
Posted 24 Nov 2007 at 5:40 am ¶The older versions of CS used to work on our hosting system. From my understanding, when CS 2007 came out we tested it and it worked on our system. Our tech team re-tested the latest CS2007 version and the base install does hit the high memory usage limit – so we took down all content about CS on our website.
Posted 26 Nov 2007 at 1:07 pm ¶Aaron, This is how far I get without writing any code. Just using the facebooknet template which now seems unchanged with or without the enabalextarnalBrowsing property:
Server Error: 501 Not Implemented
Operating System Error Nr:6: errno = 0×6
No RPM for this combination of URL and method
/fbnet
Posted 27 Nov 2007 at 1:45 am ¶Did you supply the correct API key and SECRET in the Web.config file? It looks like you’re getting an authorization error from the Facebook REST servers.
Posted 27 Nov 2007 at 6:38 pm ¶Hi, I did but seem to have left some spaces in the key by copying and pasting. Also forgot to specify the channel in the callback url.
Now I’ve set this to localhost:3569/fbnet/welcome.htm and that’s the page I’m seeing.
If this is the starting point for my app, that’s fine. I was expecting to open a default.aspx file on a .net type application. Perhaps another error….
Jeff
Posted 28 Nov 2007 at 6:35 am ¶OK, then I remove the welcome.htm from the callback url and get this:
Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.
Posted 29 Nov 2007 at 1:46 pm ¶Yeah that is what sucks about Stumble and it will happen the majority of the time like you said.
What I do if that happens is changes the Slug URL in wordpress, 301 redirct the old one and then resubmit it through a good account. Most likely the first post didn’t go anywhere anyways so no one will see it as a duplicate.
Posted 04 Dec 2007 at 4:07 pm ¶No external style sheets; even within an iFrame.
Posted 05 Dec 2007 at 12:58 pm ¶On the iframe page itself (i.e. the page hosted on your own server) you can still use external stylesheets, just not on pages that render any FBML.
For my FBML applications I actually use an external stylesheet that gets parsed by a User Control into
I then use declarative output caching (2 hour duration, shared across all HTTP requests) to decrease the number of hits to the file system to a negligible number (the file system is hit only once every 2 hours regardless of the number of HTTP requests).
Posted 06 Dec 2007 at 4:57 pm ¶I just posted a new Facebook library, that’s designed to scale, called fbasync. I wrote an introduction on my blog: http://www.jdconley.com/blog/archive/2007/12/11/introduction-to-fbasync-an-asynchronous-facebook-library-part-1.aspx.
Posted 12 Dec 2007 at 12:48 am ¶My last post had a period at the end which apparently messed up the url parser: http://www.jdconley.com/blog/archive/2007/12/11/introduction-to-fbasync-an-asynchronous-facebook-library-part-1.aspx
Posted 12 Dec 2007 at 12:49 am ¶I’ll have to check that out JD! I’m always up for better libraries. Thanks for the link!
Posted 12 Dec 2007 at 4:05 pm ¶Very informative article. Thanks!
Posted 17 Dec 2007 at 1:59 am ¶Thanks for taking the time to put this together!
Posted 19 Dec 2007 at 2:47 pm ¶Jesus……awesome
very well done post aaron
Posted 19 Dec 2007 at 7:25 pm ¶When Google purchased double click, this line of thinking crossed my mind as well. Control the Ads, control the Internet.
I think that the next logical progression for Google will be for them to expand on their offering of ad types and styles. While the typical text based classic AdSense ads are performing well, conversions are going down.
I think that you’re dead on with Google’s larger goal of pageviews and eyeballs.
Posted 19 Dec 2007 at 8:00 pm ¶Great analysis. I think they should leave Wikipedia alone but from a business perspective, it makes sense for Google. In the last year or so, I have seen Wikipedia at the top of the search result for most searches.
Posted 19 Dec 2007 at 9:45 pm ¶@Hamy and Extend
Thanks for the props!
@Chinh Do,
I think Google runs the risk of incurring the wrath of a very pissed off horde of contributors who weren’t interested in donations in the first place. In addition, how will Google determine which ONE of the many editors receives AdSense impressions as a result of his or her contributions to Knol? Isn’t the point of WikiPedia collaborative editing, meaning many editors all add their thoughts and additional insights for the altruistic sake of contribution itself?
Google might end up pissing off a lot of people by threatening WikiPedia. I guarantee you that when Knol launches Google will adjust the PageRank scores in order to bump WikiPedia further down the search listings. That kind of monopolistic conflict of interest is the sort of behavior that could potentially land Google in front of the DOJ Anti-Trust unit, ala Microsoft. For a company whose motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” they sure seem to be carrying themselves about in a very heavy-handed way with Knol.
Posted 20 Dec 2007 at 12:10 am ¶Aaronontheweb, interesting test and article.
Short of splitting hairs, I think we all know the scope of the test fairly well.
Anyway, is the usual installation for LAMP using interpreted php zend thingie?
Posted 20 Dec 2007 at 8:50 am ¶My understanding is typical LAMP installations with no modifications to PHP are just Zend interpretations, yes. XAMPP is a good product for giving it a try if you want to see the performance of traditional PHP in action.
I’ve tried getting Phalanger to work on VS 2005 and it’s a lot harder than it sounds to get that sucker started. I’m running on Vista Ultimate on my new Dell XPS and I’ll be using Visual Web Developer Express; I am confident that Phalanger won’t work for that suite.
Posted 20 Dec 2007 at 12:48 pm ¶I agree with what Aaron suggests. I am trying to put up an app on FB and it is quite overwhelming to choose apps even as a user because of the number of apps out there.
But I have to slightly disagree with Aaron on the users being fickleminded because if you see the rankings list on Adonomics, it is the usual suspects and the early birds who are still in the top 20 or 30.
Posted 30 Dec 2007 at 8:19 pm ¶I am not sure if users will discard an old app to accomadate a new app.
Any thoughts?
Hey Krish,
Those top applications will not be easily dislodged due to the fact that they are networked services; the value of those applications (especially SuperWall/FunWall) increases with every additional user added. Users will reject NEW applications if those applications are unable to draw large numbers of installers who are connected via friendships on Facebook.
In my opinion though, applications with large numbers of users aren’t necessarily the most profitable.
Posted 31 Dec 2007 at 10:22 pm ¶The redesign looks great.
Posted 01 Jan 2008 at 9:02 am ¶Thanks, Rhonda! Happy new year to you by the way!
Posted 01 Jan 2008 at 1:10 pm ¶I couldn’t agree more about RoR. It strikes me as the Scientology of programming languages, with DHH playing Tom Cruise’s role.
Posted 02 Jan 2008 at 7:50 pm ¶I would like to know more on how to promote hubs
I have printed out the 13 page hub guide
I would like to know more on This Hub that is on page 11
Thank you
Posted 02 Jan 2008 at 9:48 pm ¶Frank
Hello Aaron,
Posted 02 Jan 2008 at 10:12 pm ¶Thanks, for the increased font size, also email doesn’t have any subject, FeedBurner’s Email il appeares with (NO Subject), Also i like the new avatar of AJAXNinja very much good work keep it up.
Hey Khushal,
Man FeedBurner doesn’t have a default title for their email subscriptions either? Ugh lol. I went ahead and fixed that too. Man I wish they would have warned me about that when I turned the service on lol!
Thanks for the heads up! I appreciate it (and I’m sure the other email subscribers do too.)
Posted 02 Jan 2008 at 10:51 pm ¶Hey Frank,
I’m not sure I understand your comment. Can you clarify what you mean when you refer to the 13 page Hub guide?
-Aaron
Posted 02 Jan 2008 at 10:52 pm ¶Enjoyed your list. Amazon’s S3 needs data centres in Europe for more business to make use of this concept/technology.
Jamie
Posted 03 Jan 2008 at 2:56 pm ¶Great read – I really respect people who stick it out there like this and, with a nice balance, add some thoughtful reading to the blogosphere.
Interesting thoughts on Rails – let’s hope you don’t get on Reddit or this may happen to you:
http://blog.wekeroad.com/2007/10/10/imploding-rails-jesus-dhh-and-the-uncle-ben-principle/
Good stuff – keep it up
Posted 03 Jan 2008 at 11:49 pm ¶@Jamie,
Yeah Amazon needs to expand to Europe; Europe’s becoming a hotbed of startup activity in web-based domains and Amazon is missing out on an opportunity to capitalize on those new organizations.
@Rob,
Haha! I read through your blog entry (which I liked; I had ready about the CD Baby fiasco before) and a bunch of the comments; they weren’t as negative as ones you’d see on a Digg comment thread, but yeah there were a lot of them.
I find that when techies disagree with you about whether or not a programming language is “good,” most of them try to split hairs with your argument or complain that “this is nothing new.” I don’t know why so many techies treat their programming language as a religion, then again, I don’t know why so many of them have egos about the quality of their code. Personally, I use whatever tools will help me get the job done in the least amount of time with the best results for the time spent.
Posted 04 Jan 2008 at 2:18 pm ¶I think the buzz around “Cloud Computing” may shift to distributed computing on your own infrastructure as a slew of tools are released which easily provide the same level of performance and scalability w/o the vendor dependence.
Posted 04 Jan 2008 at 3:40 pm ¶Who cares what Zed Shaw said/says? He’s just a furious programmer that get no job becuase he can’t cooperate with people – today that’s a no-no no matter how smart you are if you can’t cooperate with (other) programmers. Einstein was no douch nor a whining baby. According to some psychology experts to be smart is to manage your environment – does he really? He’ll regret that statement, because even if he got a lot of d*ckriders they need to ask theirselves if they dare to put him in an organisation – you know…where people collaborate.
Posted 05 Jan 2008 at 11:24 pm ¶Rails 2.0 is now realeased and I expect more people to go in that direction. To start up ASP.NET- or Java-website is time consuming and things are moving fast today (Web *VERSION_NR* days), so better use a framework that makes it natural to write DRY and self explainable code – Ruby is a more humane/semantic syntax – and ethics like testing and RESTful. Even more interesting frameworks like Merb will problaby gain popularity 2008/2009. I think the reason you got ROR on your black list is that you have chosed side a long time ago – your .NET-skills might not be so interesting in the future eh?
.NET has more tools available to it than Rails does. I want an instant DAL, I’ve got SubSonic. I want instant error logging, I’ve got ELMAH. If I want to do unit tests, I’ve got MBUnit, NUnit, and other frameworks. If I want to set up an instant membership management system, I’ve got the Roles, Membership, and Profiles API. If I want access to powerful debugging tools and the most rich IDE on earth, I’ve got the entire Visual Studio product line. Hell, I even get JavaScript debugging with Visual Studio Express 2008. Not to mention the great developments coming down the pike, like SilverLight development for rich media experiences that take less time to develop than common AJAX implementations, the MVC framework, ALT.NET, and the Dynamic Data controls.
The best part is, if I wanted to incorporate Ruby into any of my .NET projects, I could do so by using IronRuby. The .NET Common Language Runtime and Dynamic Language Runtime offer a pretty wide variety of development options with the .NET framework.
A quick FYI, unlike most programmers, I don’t attach myself to a particular programming language for dogmatic reasons, so I never “chose a side.” I chose the tool that would enable me to increase my personal productivity most, which is why I switched from PHP to .NET three years ago. I’ve never looked back, and frankly, .NET is just getting better and better. It’s highly scalable, comes with a great IDE for free, offers rich page handling and composition, and has a great open source community that, as far as I know, doesn’t start community-wide flamewars like the ones Zed described.
Posted 05 Jan 2008 at 11:42 pm ¶I understand your dissatisfaction, but this seems a little like complaining about the mall owners who built a mall and then charged people to set up shops there. The existence of the mall brings customers, customers shop at the stores, so who has something to complain about?
Facebook (and others) are providing a venue. They “allow businesses to connect with their customers on Facebook similar to the way they connect with their friends.”
The sky’s the limit . . . but it’s only for those with vision.
Posted 06 Jan 2008 at 6:22 pm ¶http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/22851
How do I use ? can I use this in an IFrame? I’ve made my application using Steve Trefethen’s Visual Studio.NET starter kit for Facebook.NET as a base. I’d like my Canvas page Menu to be built using the VS 2008 Menu control and sitemap and anyone done this let me know?
m3ntat@gmail.com
Thanks
Posted 07 Jan 2008 at 1:32 pm ¶How do you use the starter kit? You can use it in an IFRAME, and that’s absolutely the best option for building your first Facebook application given that it’s much easier to debug Facebook.NET applications when they’re running as IFrames.
The Canvas Page can be built using the menu control and sitemap; you may have to do your own custom subclass of the menu control in order to make sure that the rendered hyper links are all compatible with the Facebook-domain for your application though. You can probably roll up Facebook.NET’s control into a custom menu control in order to take care of that automatically.
Let me know if you have anymore questions!
Posted 07 Jan 2008 at 3:57 pm ¶Carter,
I’m actually a very satisfied Facebook user; it’s a great service and all of my fraternity brothes and classmates use it. I just think that Facebook doesn’t really have the right to sell my personal information at a premium.
Your analogy of mall is flawed. A more correct comparison would be if you were allowed to shop at the mall but the mall collected all of your shopping data and transferred it between merchants. What if I went into the mall, headed to Sam Goody and purchased a pornographic DVD; after lunch I head over to GNC to buy some vitamins, but since GNC knows that I just recently purchased a porn DVD, the salesman on the floor greets me by name (since I used a credit card and photo identificated to purchase the DVD, the mall has my name and face on record) then promptly introduces me to some sexual enhancement / erectile dysfunction drugs.
Would that constitute a breach in privacy? Yes. Person-identifiable data transferrence between parties without consent constitutes a breach of privacy regardless of the nature of the data being exchanged.
Posted 08 Jan 2008 at 11:40 am ¶@grimen: http://ifbywhiskey.com/blog/2007/04/20/acts_as_french_fries/
Posted 09 Jan 2008 at 7:11 pm ¶@Dave,
Man…. PHP programmers and Ruby-on-Rails programmers really get the shaft over in the U.K. on the payscale… Maybe I should brush up on my JAVA a little bit lol.
Posted 10 Jan 2008 at 2:46 am ¶I have got it working from your article. However, I can only publish news feed and mini news feed to the owner (actor), but not friends. My news title and news body are constructed randomly by a user input.
I have looked at Register Feed Story Templates but to no avail. Any ideas ?
Thanks.
Posted 10 Jan 2008 at 5:16 pm ¶I have got it working now, don’t worry Ninja
Posted 10 Jan 2008 at 6:01 pm ¶Lol glad you got it figured out!
Man this new theme did one hell of a job messing up this article… I’m going to have to reformat this thingy…
Posted 10 Jan 2008 at 7:18 pm ¶I agree, this was just comical.
Not to be rude to anyone but the difference between $99 and free to any company on the face of the earth is negligible. Even at $399 (which I assume will be their final price post-Beta) the price is pretty much nothing. For any business over 9 people that is the cost of a business lunch at Applebees.
So when I see someone jumping up and down over the price not only do I not want to get my support from them but it makes me think they’re in a job where they have virtually no responsibility (which in turn reflects badly on them if they are an adult).
Finally, and this is just my personal experience but I’ve found that most companies are more comfortable buying something than they are getting it for free. There is something inherent in “free” that just seems to make people nervous.
Posted 10 Jan 2008 at 9:12 pm ¶Hi Aaron, funny, I also blogged about Grafiti when they released Beta 1 with a pretty catchy title. Some of the comments were really interesting – and expected to be that way. I also think it’s perfect for commercial and professional use.
Looks like a decent future for Grafiti..
Andreas
Posted 11 Jan 2008 at 3:42 am ¶Great insight Aaron. The anti-business blinders of the open source movement will forever make them impotent.
Posted 11 Jan 2008 at 4:45 pm ¶You are right about Digg. I just tried to Digg your lead article. It asked me 5 times to enter the silly set of bitmapped characters to prove I was a human. 4 times it rejected them. Finally it believed me and then decided my subission was a duplicate (So the fuck what!) and gave me a list of clearly non-matching submissions. I clicked to override their opinion and Digg then decided to reject my submission entirely. Nice work!
If you make it so difficult to submit anything no one will do it.. and what’s with the categories: “Business and finance” now there’s a specific label. How about “marketing”, “Sales”, “Finance”, “management”… you get the idea – but perhaps that might encourage people who are interested in making money to use it “Yuckkk”.
Posted 11 Jan 2008 at 4:56 pm ¶*sigh*
I am having trouble now. I managed to use
.Service.Feed.PublishMiniFeedStory
to post a story. I made a feedstorytemplate, as well as feedstory object, putting in the target UserID’s as a List.
I can only manage to post a news feed and mini-feed to the originated User only, but not to the user’s friends at all.
PLEASE HELP
Posted 13 Jan 2008 at 7:21 pm ¶Huh? The Graffiti homepage states: “Whether it’s your personal blog, the family Web site, or the primary Web presence for your small business…”. No mention of big business/corporations there. I agree that yes, it’s gotten the Graffiti name out there but it’s an ineffective campaign: instead of “hey, did you about that great product, Graffiti?” you’re already hearing “hey, did you about that CMS Graffiti– the one that bashes Wordpress?”.
I don’t care for either of the 2 platforms one way or another but as far as I can tell there’s nothing that Wordpress can do for my “personal blog, the family Web site” or my small business that Graffiti can.
P.S. ajaxninja.com? -1 for a totally lame domain name
Posted 14 Jan 2008 at 5:03 pm ¶I saw that tagline too, but just because personal blogs are mentioned in the copy primary demographic segment targeted in the campaign.
There’s nothing that Wordpress can’t do, you mean?
And my domain name is awesome, thanks. Feel free to show me yours if you have a better one.
Posted 14 Jan 2008 at 6:43 pm ¶Vincent,
this is working as intended. When you publish an item to a user’s mini-feed there is a possibility that Facebook may aggregate the story and publish it to a select number of the user’s friends’ news feeds, but there never has been a guarantee that it will show up on the friends’ feeds.
Posted 15 Jan 2008 at 11:35 am ¶I think your post is a pretty fair assessment but I think you underestimate its value in a professional enviornment.
I run an IT department that maintains a little over 200 computers at this point. Using those computers are different levels of employees. Administrative positions need Microsoft Office, there’s just no doubt. I’m not going to put a finance person on Google Docs. But many of the positions that actually do the functional stuff only use the computer for basic word processing and never print out their work (they e-mail it). For them something like Google Docs is ideal.
So taking that into account consider this. We spend about $800 per PC when all is said and done and a lot of that is on software. I’ve been moving all our custom software to ASP.NET for several years now to the point that we’re about 90% there. So if we could find a Web Based alternative for Office we could move all of those people to cheaper Linux PCs that last longer (because they require far less horsepower than a Windows PC running Office 2003) and cost about $300
If we could use Google Docs on just the light office users I think it would save us about $173,000 every 5 years. That’s pretty darn significant and we’re just a small-to-midsize business. Corporations could easily save millions.
Unfortunately that great plan is thwarted until there’s a local version of Google Docs (think the Google Search boxes). I won’t have our corporate data on a Google server given the terms Google Docs give. (and yes, for the record I’ve thought of Zoho but with Google Docs breathing down their necks the way they are I just don’t have enough faith in the company’s survival to plan my strategy around them)
Posted 23 Jan 2008 at 5:58 pm ¶Hey Tom,
You raise an excellent point in regards to trimming costs for departments that don’t need the full functionality of Ms Office. In addition the notion of Google owning whatever documents you place on Google Docs is another concern that I overlooked. The point of my post was mainly speaking from my experience as a student (I only big limitation that Google Docs imposes on my professional work is the file size; I can’t read any big powerpoints or Word docs) trying to rely exclusively on Google Docs.
In addition, I’m not going to put anything on Google’s servers that I don’t want them to read, such as any financial data. Great comment overall, Tom.
P.S. Subscribed to your blog.
Posted 23 Jan 2008 at 7:40 pm ¶“Google Docs still has the benefit of ubiquitous data access”
Workspaces on office live is a great service and it´s free.
I think we´re going to se more services around office, and storing in the “cloud”.
I realy like office workspaces, and it would be interesting to se someone compare office live with google docs.
peace
Posted 24 Jan 2008 at 1:33 am ¶Google do have several good apps, but not all of them I would advice to use someother office suite like eDeskOnline or Thinkfree. For example, their Projects tool is too buggy and needs a lot of fixing. I choose to stay with eDeskOnline It’s got a perfect feature set and it works very well and also lets me Collaborate with others without any problems as it works (Infact) faster than Google.
Posted 24 Jan 2008 at 8:35 am ¶Hi Aaron, Sorry to hear about the experience with Google documents. Was interested to read your report on this as I sometimes use google docs in conjunction with the notebook. By the way, thanks for being a Dell customer. Hope you like the xps m1330
Posted 24 Jan 2008 at 9:18 am ¶@Per,
Forgot about Windows Workspaces… On both of my older Windows machines I used Office 2003 so I never got to play around with any of the Live! stuff. I’m going to get the academic version of Office 2007 so I’ll get to put my meathooks on that feature soon!
@kalivd,
I did not know about those services; very cool! How do all of those compare to MS Office though?
@richardatDELL,
My XPS M1330 is like owning a brand new Camero; I get compliments on how cool it looks on a pretty regular basis. One time my professor stopped midsentence during a lecture, came over to my chair, looked at the laptop for about 30 seconds and went “niiiiiiiice.” In addition I can’t imagine living without Windows ultimate now that I’ve used it for a couple of months; being able to use the Dell TV tuner to record my favorite TV shows while I’m off doing work is pretty cool. unfortunately I filled up my entire 120g hard drive within four days of recording TV shows; I guess I need to find a good external hard drive!
Posted 24 Jan 2008 at 11:11 am ¶You overlooked another good alternative to MS Office – OpenOffice… And that’s a good tip for the guy from the IT department – OpenOffice works great on cheap Linux boxes
Posted 24 Jan 2008 at 11:46 am ¶Re. your laptop – I consider it as my next laptop, the only problem that I see is that it doesn’t have a docking station …
@Aaron = Yeah, I think part of my point (that I badly articulated) what that, until technology like Silverlight or Apollo really blossoms I don’t think a power user is going to be able to switch in any meaningful way. I think its a solution only for the lower level users right now (which is essentially what you said just from a different slant). That said, you’d be amazed at the usability test results I get and how much they go up with online alternatives. The lack of features actually seems to improve the user experience for people who don’t like technology in the first place.
Oh, and thanks for the subscribe, but don’t expect much
The thing that has been most shocking to me is how hard it is to actually publish what you intended to. For instance, I really expected to have more code-based posts from the get go but I’ve found that I have to put myself on a schedule to make that happen. Anyway, it is not yet what I hope it will be.
@Arik – Thanks for the suggestion, we did look at OpenOffice and found that it didn’t offer enough of an advantage to switch. If I’m going to put people on a Linux box its going to be one where the experience is entirely browser based. If the end result of doing this is adding Linux to the products I have to support users on than it won’t be worth it.
Posted 24 Jan 2008 at 12:14 pm ¶@Arik,
I didn’t want to compare all of them, just Google Docs. OpenOffice might be a cool alternative though… Is StarOffice still around? And as far as the docking stations go, I don’t really use one anyways just because I’m up and off so much at college. I carry the laptop on me virtually at all times. When I’m sitting at my desk in my apartment though I have a big desktop with a GIANT LCD monitor that I use for a lot of casual browsing while I do gaming or coding on this laptop.
@Tom,
Yeah, I can understand Google Docs increasing productivity as a result of the lack of distractions compared to Office, but a lot of college professors and students (especially engineers) are heavy power users. Even my English professor is a total stud when it comes to using the Word editing/marking features, which in my opinion is a more powerful form of collaboration than what Google Docs currently provides.
As far as your blog goes, I understand that concern too. I originally bought the domain name AJAXNINJA.COM because I had anticipated that I would be writing a lot of .NET and AJAX code. I still showcase my Facebook.NET code every chance I get but really I’ve just grown more fond of talking about trends in the tech industry and doing some marketing analysis. In fact, I bought the domain name MARKETING-NINJA.COM and I will probably start rebranding this blog using that domain name, just so that way people aren’t surprised when they don’t see much AJAX on a blog called AjaxNinja. My current content and style won’t change though, plus I’m going to keep the AjaxNinja domain name since I get a fair amount of traffic going down it.
Posted 24 Jan 2008 at 2:50 pm ¶Thanks for the feedback Aaron, good to know
Posted 25 Jan 2008 at 11:47 am ¶@Aaron – I’m just like you, carrying my laptop with me virtually at all times. But when I’m at home (/office) I connect it to a larger screen, keyboard & mouse. I though of buying a desktop computer for my desk, but it seemed to me less convenient than using one computer (the need to keep them in sync).
Posted 25 Jan 2008 at 12:25 pm ¶Hey Arik,
I understand that issue with having two computers; keeping them in sync can be a problem. I typically do all of my work on my laptop computer and have all of my leisure stuff on my desktop (my music collection, video games, etc…) Having a docking station is a must for your situation though. What model do you use currently?
Posted 27 Jan 2008 at 3:23 pm ¶Currently every time I get back to my desk I just plug in all the cables myself (power adapter, monitor, USB hub and line out for audio). It’s more mentally frustrating than a real problem, I guess
As for your work style – don’t you prefer to write code on a bigger monitor?
Posted 28 Jan 2008 at 12:24 am ¶What resolution your laptop monitor supports?
I kicked your article. Great job. I personally like the ad campaign. They got Buzz around a beta for a product that most people would never have heard of otherwise. Sounds to me like a good marketing team.
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 1:50 pm ¶Hey Jason,
Thanks for the kick! Yeah the campaign managers did a great job getting the word out about the product; the best part is I’m pretty sure the angry WordPress community is going to keep following the Graffiti story and continually publish more information about it as it comes out. Graffiti couldn’t have asked for a more cost-effective PR campaign.
I also checked out VistaDB (only briefly;) can it really do XCopy DB deployment?
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 3:46 pm ¶Hey Arik,
My resolution is a wide-screen one; it’s 1280*800, on my laptop anyway. My desktop monitor is enormous; it’s got something like a 24″ diagonal. I prefer to write code on the laptop simply because my Desktop has Windows XP Home edition and can’t do a lot of the .NET stuff, plus the way it’s situation on my desk is a bit awkward for programming. It works great for playing video games though!
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 5:25 pm ¶That’s funny because I’m just the opposite. I can’t write code without two monitors at this point. In fact, I travel with an LCD monitor just so I can extend my desktop when I’m traveling.
To me it boils down to two things. One, documentation is a vital part of programming and I love to be able to just look over and have it there. Two, I love having the ability to keep the old version of a site open as I code the newer version so I can see what I’m changing side by side with what used to be there.
Wow…I just realized this comment is completely off topic in regards to the actual post
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 5:44 pm ¶Hey Tom,
I’ll look up documentation on my desktop sometimes from MSDN, 4GuysFromRolla, or whoever and do the actual coding on my laptop. The desktop resolution is enormous so it’s pretty easy to just glance over real quick at a screencast or something. However, a lot of the times I have to copy and paste code samples when I’m working with 3rd party components so in those instances its more convenient to have the documentation on the same machine as the one I’m coding on.
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 5:47 pm ¶@Aaron – my laptop resolution is the same as yours, but I prefer to work with larger resolution. Although I agree that coding on a 24″ screen might be not that comfortable either (my external monitor is 20″).
I guess that Tom is right – we do got off topic
Posted 30 Jan 2008 at 12:11 am ¶Being off topic is fine as long as we’re having fun, as far as I’m concerned. After all I do own the place :p
Posted 30 Jan 2008 at 4:50 pm ¶I really like Paint.NET, and not just because it uses .NET. I hadn’t heard of the other two but I haven’t been doing ASP as all.
Posted 31 Jan 2008 at 4:58 am ¶Hey Sam,
Yeah I’m just getting started with Paint.NET and I like it a lot; the fact that it’s not a memory hog like the GIMP is also nice.
Posted 31 Jan 2008 at 11:16 am ¶Dude thats insane. Good news. I wonder what their ISP providers _tell_ them when the cable is damaged, ’sorry, but you still have to pay us for the next two months?’
anyways, thats totally awesome for any us students.
hamy
ps. your picture has absolutely no margins or padding on this page, at least in FF. should prob take a look at that it looks like there is hidden text under it(there isnt, but its just really close)
Posted 31 Jan 2008 at 7:16 pm ¶Hey Hammy,
No text was covered but I did add some padding; I guess I’ll have to go under the hood and add some default padding for inline articles.
Posted 31 Jan 2008 at 9:00 pm ¶I am from India – fortunatly this has not affected me. But I was really scared when I read the news in the paper. And yes – I am one of your subscribers
Posted 01 Feb 2008 at 12:39 am ¶Hey Binny,
Glad to hear that you guys and your outfit are doing alright; what part of India are you located in? And I’m always glad that my subscribers haven’t gotten their service interrupted lol!
Posted 01 Feb 2008 at 11:39 am ¶Hello Aaron,
Today Morning when I’ve reading the Daily News Paper here in India, One headline on the FrontPage is “Microsoft makes $42B bid for Yahoo” make me wonder that one of your predications are now Real.
Hope now you’ll get start predicating common men’s future also
lol
Posted 01 Feb 2008 at 9:42 pm ¶Hello Khushal,
My batting average on those predictions has been pretty good thus far. Maybe I should take up fortune-telling in addition to blogging about web-based technology lol. Glad you remembered my predictions. Have you guys been able to get your Internet back up in India? How’s that situation looking?
Posted 02 Feb 2008 at 12:20 am ¶That was a great video that you found! Thanks for posting it!
Posted 02 Feb 2008 at 4:50 pm ¶No problem, hope you found it helpful!
Posted 03 Feb 2008 at 3:12 pm ¶Hey I just wanted to take the time to thank you for this information.
Posted 04 Feb 2008 at 7:04 pm ¶No more internet blackout, Internet backup is restored in INDIA, I think the problem is gone the speed is also pretty good.
Posted 04 Feb 2008 at 9:25 pm ¶Hey Khushal,
That’s good to hear! They got that repaired much faster than expected!
Posted 04 Feb 2008 at 9:42 pm ¶Well said. I’m surprised you didn’t go ahead and call a drop in the GOOG stock price. I assume that could have been inferred from the negative outlook. I think you’re right though and I think Google is concerned about the long term. If not then why are they shouting anti-trust? Correct me if im wrong but, They seem to have become a bit too comfortable, granted, they still make a lot of money but have never had such threatening competition.
Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 6:15 pm ¶Wow! An epic and concise “Hatorade” on Google! Loved it. I broke out laughing on the Wsock32.dll wild card… it took me by surprise. I look forward to their response.
Posted 07 Feb 2008 at 8:11 pm ¶So i am loving the articles, but quick suggestion…
i remember you saying sometimes you just dont have rainy day articles, or you dont have something ready to post about. I would love to see a page where visitors could list stuff they would be interested in hearing your opinion of
ham
Posted 08 Feb 2008 at 10:33 am ¶@Cameron,
I’m glad I could entertain you lol! I wanted to bring up how lame my experience was with Google Desktop but I just didn’t feel like it merited its own post; this was a good opportunity for me to vent.
@Hamy,
You can always email me via my contact page with topics for articles, but what is it that you had in mind as far as that page you described? Also, if you have any topic ideas that you’d like to see me write about please let me know.
Posted 08 Feb 2008 at 1:18 pm ¶well i actually had in mind a page devoted just to users submitting their ideas for articles they would find interesting. seems similar to your recent ‘pre-post’ posting thing, but rather than specific dates or ideas just user suggestions and other users entries to either encourage you to post about those topics or not.
For example, you tried google docs out
I would be interested to hear your take on OpenOffice. I have been trying it out since i found myself needing a spreadsheet program in lab after i reformatted earlier that day. I downloaded the _torrent_ of the latest build, and within five minutes was working. I have not gone back yet, and i have been exceptionally satisfied. I especially like the google-docs plugin, which makes it super easy to have small files stored instantly online and on your computer with just ctrl+S
hamy
Posted 11 Feb 2008 at 5:27 pm ¶Hey Hamy,
I’d recommend posting on my schedule posts with suggestions so I can slate them in the for the next week. I might go ahead and give OpenOffice a try if you think that’s something you might be interested in (hell, I’m interested too!)
I might post a review about my switch from Google Docs to Office 2007… I really like the new office a lot, although a lot of people seem to hate the new ribbon interface…
Posted 12 Feb 2008 at 5:59 pm ¶man, that really isn;t the best site. not only that its one of those sites so mess they load slowly even on broadband, but its so busy it is really hard to grab the relevant news.
really could probably use a complete overhaul. probably cheaper than trying to sort out what they have right now
Posted 12 Feb 2008 at 9:20 pm ¶Great post! For your information, if you have a blog regarding domaining news, please submit your posts to DNHour. http://www.DNHour.com is a Domain News Portal – 100% powered by Domainers. We encourage Domainers to submit posts to DNHour to extend their blog’s readership. Hope to see you more often at DNHour!
- Michael Cheok -
Posted 12 Feb 2008 at 11:50 pm ¶CTO of DNHour.com
It starts with people. Who are they? Where do they live? What they care about? Why are they coming in the first place? Are they repeat visitors? How are they finding our site in the first place?
What I am about gets tactical but it will help build your strategy and maybe hit the payload on keywords.
The site already has Google Analytics and HubSpot (SEO) which provides a head start. Grab those reports and have a round table with your crew ASAP examining who from where is looking at what.
The insight gained from this and other Q&A with CountryHound should help create a powerful picture\profile of the CountryHound fans and people of interest. Then overlay them with trends of interest.
An example of trends of interest may be. You notice visitors from Tamworth, Australia a country music center, a few other country music hotspots internationally and in North America. You can then hypothesize that these activity hubs are looking for to Tennessee music scene for x, y, z.
Now here is the gold. For the identified locations. Get on the phone and start calling people. Call people locally, call people nationally and YES call people internationally!
Wow you are a caller from Tennessee, USA? What do you want to know?
Build structure and gathering methods around the conversations and convert response into “hot words” and needs. Then overlay with more likely scientific SEM tools,etc.
It’s bricks and mortar marketing but you may be surprised such insights a feedback loop can create for your SEM strategy…
Posted 15 Feb 2008 at 9:28 pm ¶I am in south Africa where can I buy country music
Joe Barros
Posted 16 Feb 2008 at 4:01 am ¶Cameron,
Thanks for the great feedback. That seems like a good direction for CountryHound to go.
Posted 16 Feb 2008 at 4:51 pm ¶This is extremely helpful!
Posted 17 Feb 2008 at 9:57 pm ¶This is very true, and one of the reasons why I rarely ever use Digg anymore.
Posted 01 Mar 2008 at 6:15 pm ¶Hey Aaron,
Good post, I’ve found that by being funny, open, and honest, prospects are a lot more receptive to me. I start off making fun of myself and my industry and acknowledge that they probably get a 100 calls a week from people just like me. I tell them that we don’t take ourselves too seriously but we’re dead serious about what we do.
I sell myself as being high value, not low cost and that we look for clients who value quality over pinching pennies.
Works like a charm… I suspect it’s because I’m honest and upfront.
Raza Imam
Posted 07 Mar 2008 at 3:47 pm ¶http://SoftwareSweatshop.com
Hey Raza,
So are you a telemarketer then? I agree with all of your points – when a marketer comes across as honest and straightforward I’d imagine they do better across all disciplines.
Posted 11 Mar 2008 at 9:42 am ¶Thanks for the response.
I actually own a Chicago-based offshore development firm. Most of my marketing is via my blog and networking events. However, I do occasionally make cold calls and send emails to prospects and have found that leaving a funny, no-nonsense VM is incredibly effective.
Raza
Posted 11 Mar 2008 at 11:29 am ¶http://SoftwareSweatshop.com
Hey Raza,
I poked around on your blog a little bit; your article at the top of the fold on “Another Outsourcing Horror Story” was pretty informative. I definitely agree that project management is the most common point of failure for outsourced software design.
I’ve had to do some cold-calling myself, although when I did it it was for a political party in the CA 2002 Gubernatorial Campaign; I had to call up people who had volunteered for service and remind them what they had committed to do – I got put on the receiving end of some of the nastiest comments I’ve ever heard in my entire life, mostly from belligerent voters who had forgotten that they had committed to do community service for their party and wanted to get out of it.
I’m not sure how standard TM practices apply in that situation.
Posted 11 Mar 2008 at 2:19 pm ¶The script above does not delete the Sps which are created schemas other than default ‘dbo’. Any work around for such scenario.
Posted 15 Mar 2008 at 10:20 am ¶Hi Aaron,
I have followed your post blog for many months now. I just happed across this post and thought I would share my experiences with you. Basically you cannot use ASP.NET to control the input url of WordPress with out integrated pipelines. Which is what you found above. However I was able to use a reverse proxy to actually request the URL from wordpress. The reverse proxy worked like the URL Rewriter, except it was making an extra call in a form that WordPress understood when running in IIS.
http://www.coderjournal.com/2008/02/url-rewriter-reverse-proxy-iis-wordpress/
Also if you didn’t want to go through all the hassle and you still wanted nice URL’s the following is supported under IIS.
http://www.coderjournal.com/index.php/2008/02/10/sample-post/
notice the index.php in the URL.
Posted 17 Mar 2008 at 7:23 am ¶So you were actually able to get those URLs to work? Really? Hot damn! Nice work. I went ahead and added that first post of yours to my del.icio.us account.
In August i tred to get your second option (index.php/blah/blah/) to work but for some reason it didn’t…. maybe I should give it another try.
Anyways, thanks for the great comment! I’m going to revise my old “WordPress for IIS” page and add your links to it.
Posted 17 Mar 2008 at 1:59 pm ¶Yeah I hardly use it anymore either, Troy. It adds no value to my online experience.
Posted 18 Mar 2008 at 11:06 am ¶I think Facebook is headed down but I don’t think it has that much to do with “being cool” In my experience communication services tend to buck age-based trends (when AIM was popular it transcended age groups as just one example) because with those services its all about who you are talking to not how you are doing it.
I think the big mistake that people make with this stuff is to think that it somehow transcends the world of normal software. It doesn’t. More to the point software is cyclical and will always be replaced by either a new version or a better product.
Sure there’s a lock in factor involved but people have proven time and time again that they are willing to re-establish their social connections for the next big thing.
In fact, if you look Social Networking sites have actually seen a lot of turnover in just the last five years or so. Blogger was hot, then LiveJournal, then Xanga, then Myspace, now Facebook (and I probably left some out in that list). The question for me is “Does Facebook do everything a social network could do?” and the answer as far as I’m concerned is a resounding “no” That tells me that Facebook’s days are likely numbered.
I know for me, the killer app for Social Networks will be a service that actually allows me to keep up with what my friends are doing. I signed up an initial group of about 10 friends on Facebook. All people I think the world of but that I rarely get to see. I was hoping Facebook would help me keep up with them but other than letting me know when they’ve “become a vampire” its been fairly lacking in that area.
Posted 20 Mar 2008 at 3:24 pm ¶Yep indeed hubpages is growing much more faster. On my frist time on hubpages I saw its potential to grow more and more. It was a fun and enjoyable hubbing on hubpages. Glad money stayed hubbing.
Posted 22 Mar 2008 at 6:52 pm ¶http://moneyhubpages.blogspot.com
Hey Tom,
You bring up a really interesting perspective coming from the “software cycle” standpoint. If we’re going to talk about Facebook as software then I think we should talk about it from the “feature bloat” standpoint. The news feed, which I originally hated, then loved, and now hate again, is a good example.
Back when I used to like it, it served as a rapid delivery system for updating me about my friends; oh hey, my cousin uploaded pictures from his wedding or my best friend broke up with his girlfriend and so on. Now it’s bloated with crap from people who are friends of my friends and I could care less about.
And do I really need to be turned into a ninja? A vampire? A zombie? A… RAIDERS FAN?
One of the points of the article I linked to is that exclusion is what makes these services hip at first but as you point out these services might die just because they get replaced with something newer, regardless of the reason. Maybe it’s just a systems upgrade or maybe it’s just more “chic.”
Posted 24 Mar 2008 at 9:03 pm ¶The “badger the plagiarizer” option was hilarious =)
Luckily for the tech plagiarizers most bloggers aren’t as persistent/insane as the somethingawful types or the badgering would get pretty intense.
Posted 24 Mar 2008 at 9:08 pm ¶There is a critical fifth option that sits somewhere between “Do Little” and “Send in the Lawyers”, it would be “Secure Takedown” and would involve using the DMCA to secure either removal of the work from the host or from the search engines.
The process is very simple, does not require a lawyer and can be done in about ten minutes when you get the hang of it and have a good stock letter.
Honestly, it most cases, especially involving spam blogging, it is the best approach.
On that note. the final option could play into the hands of scrapers and thieves considering they love attention, any attention.
Hope this helps and thank you for drawing attention to this issue!
Posted 24 Mar 2008 at 10:21 pm ¶@Guillaume,
Somewhere, back when I was a misled youth, I participated in a SomethingAwful.com raid on Ebaum’s World for stealing copy righted SA material. That was my first dip into the pool of “flexible fair use.”
A lot of really shitty authors hide behind fair use as though it’s a cover-all for what is essentially complete and utter theft. Fair Use != stealing images and overwriting someone’s water mark with your own.
@Jonathan,
I tried to cover your point somewhere in the raise hell option (C&D for Cease & Desist) but I don’t know as much as you do on the subject. I looked over your list of DMCA contacts and I was really impressed at the lengths you probably had to go through to acquire all of that information.
I’m going to try to get in touch with you for a bit more information about leveraging DMCA to protect content; it would be a handy addition to my Field Guide for Social Marketing. I’m doing business travel all day tomorrow and Wednesday but I’ll try to shoot you an email between now and then!
Posted 25 Mar 2008 at 3:46 am ¶Aaron: Feel free to shoot me an email any time you wish. I’ll be leaving town Thursday night to head to Dallas and WordCamp but I should be checking email the whole time.
Just drop me a line any time you’re available and I’ll help out any way I can.
And the DMCA contact information was a pain to create but I was fortunate in that I had amassed about half of it before I started. I’d created a personal rolodex of sorts before I decided to make it public…
It’s a cheat, but it worked.
Posted 25 Mar 2008 at 6:52 pm ¶Yep–right on the money.
And frankly, this is one of the reasons why I’m no longer on Facebook. I’m too damn old! At 35 I figure most of the “cool kids” are going to think “whos this old guy?”. And really, I had “old guy” intentions in joining–curiousity about their Apps platform for marketing reasons. I wasn’t on there to be social with my peops.
Thanks for another good post.
Posted 26 Mar 2008 at 6:57 pm ¶John
Aaron, thanks for bringing this up, but please allow me to explain how I use StumbleUpon to market my own website. I am a great fan of social networking sites, not only for the value they can bring to one’s own blog, but because of the value you get from the sites themselves too.
Firstly allow me to explain I not only connect with people or send a stumble requests to friends on my list. I also use the StumbleUpon advertising solution which provides potentially huge numbers of traffic depending on how much you’re willing to pay on a day-by-day basis.
I do not send stumble requests just for the sake of it and to everybody on my contact list. For each new ‘fan’ or ‘friend’ I get on StumbleUpon, I visit their profile and write down a short list of their interests, which StumbleUpon provides at the side of their profile.
If, in the future I submit a piece of my content to StumbleUpon which I feel is worth the attention of people on my friends list, I will send them the page with a short message which goes something along the lines of “Hey, thought you may be interested in this article on XXXX” – it is then up to the user whether he/she looks at the page and certainly whether they leave a vote or not. How do I determine if a piece of content is useful to people on my list? I Simply look at their interests which I have written down as described above.
Please understand that I do not use StumbleUpon purely as a marketing effort for my own websites. Whilst the site is one of my largest referrers, I also the site because of the useful content I can find their based on my topics of interest. I do a lot more stumbling of other peoples work than I do for any of my own. You can see that via the stats on my stumble profile. As a guide, at this moment in time I have voted for 808 pages, bearing in mind I only have about 35 posts on my blog, and probably only half of them has ever been submitted to StumbleUpon, so I feel I am a lot more generous in my Stumbles for other sites than I am for my own.
Of all the content of mine which has been submitted to StumbleUpon, I ONLY ever send a stumble request for my very best content. By no means do I send content just to get a thumbs up, because I know doing that can also bring the opposite effect. If you really start to bug people, 1, they either remove you from their list, or 2, they can give you a thumbs down.
Lastly, You also mentioned that I get a nice amount of traffic and comments etc, but StumbleUpon is only one tool in my marketing toolbox. Whilst it’s the only ‘social networking site’ I use to market my own work, I do paid advertising and a lot of guest-blogging at 5/6 other high-profile sites which also help bring in nice steady amounts of traffic and comments.
If you have any other questions or queries, I’d be interested in hearing them, and will be happy to answer any questions.
Kind Regards,
Posted 03 Apr 2008 at 4:30 pm ¶Andy MacDonald
Nothing wrong with it if you’re offering something of real value. Although ‘value’ is often debatable…
Raza Imam
Posted 07 Apr 2008 at 3:19 pm ¶http://SoftwareSweatshop.com
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Stumbling yourself, per se. After all, you’re only letting others know that something exists for review. If it sucks, it won’t get any thumbs up, votes, etc. anyway.
However, you’re talking about sending stumble requests. I’ve experienced what your talking about on StumbleUpon and it feels more like begging. Nothing really wrong with that either if you only have a few beggars here and there. But if you accumulate enough “friends” and they’re all promoting their own stuff (because they rarely send stumble requests about other people’s stuff), then it starts to feel like spam. And that’s when StumbleUpon isn’t fun anymore.
Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 1:33 pm ¶“smug, annoying jack asses” seems a tad harsh
Though I have to admit part of my reaction is based on me mentally scanning the last few months trying to see if I have been a smut, annoying jack ass about my iPhone. I’ll be the first to admit it has come to a point where I’m not allowed to take it out when I’m with my girlfriend and in public (an edict set down by her).
I mean…I don’t know what to say, the device has literally changed my life. I’m typing this very comment right now because of it (it’s so easy to browse the web on it that whenever I can’t sleep I reach over and read a few feeds off Google reader). It changes your perspective and it makes you a little fanatical. I’m actually on the edge of buying a Macbook Pro and learning Objective-C/Cocoa just to develop applications for it which is a lot of time and money to spend on one device with such a limited user base. What can I say? It makes you a passionate fan and I’m honestly not sure if that’s a bad thing or not.
Where I do think a fanatical fan base hurts Apple though is in the way it influences their actions. I made a post in November titled “Learning to be an Apple User” where I said (excuse the quote, but it says exactly what I wanted to here and I didn’t want to retype)…
I have to say that one of the most interesting things about owning an iPhone has been seeing firsthand how Apple treats its customers. Honestly, I’m not impressed.
Take today, my iPhone just updated itself to firmware version 1.1.2 and after looking around on the web for about 10 minutes I still have no idea exactly what was done to my iPhone. There’s certainly no official announcement so the best I have is picking up random discoveries from other users.
Now, say what you will about Microsoft they would NEVER get away with this. I doubt they’d even try. This experience just points back to that age old truth that Apple PCs and support really aren’t that great they just have rabid fans who will love them no matter what.
End Quote
The last few months have only deepened the feeling that Apple really doesn’t care what I think and will do to me whatever they please because they know their core fan base will always come back for more. They don’t need me and they aren’t afraid to let me know it.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 5:34 am ¶Hey Tom,
Might seem harsh but that’s often how they come across when I deal with them in person, even the people who work in the Apple store.
“What can I say? It makes you a passionate fan and I’m honestly not sure if that’s a bad thing or not.”
That’s a great thing! There’s nothing wrong with being passionate about it; it’s the movement to try and convert every one else that ruffles some people’s feathers. But it’s not just the movement to convert people; it’s what they say when they’re doing it.
Take a look at the Mac vs. PC commercials, for instance; PCs are inferior, PCs break a lot, PCs are for dorks, and so forth. If Toyota ran commercials every day called “Toyota vs. Ford” where they featured a burly, masculine guy representing Toyota pick-up trucks and a skinny poseur representing Ford pick-up trucks and a bunch of “Toyota is better Ford sucks” messages, don’t you think there’d be a lot of people, and not just Ford owners, who think “well this is a little ridiculous?”
I think a lot of PC users have a similar sentiment; rather than being shamed into purchasing a Mac by an advertising campaign that tries to tell us that our current solution is inferior we simply reject the cult of smugness emanated by the Apple community.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 12:05 pm ¶You are a God, thank you for this script, it saved me from deleting and recreating a DB. It even deleted itself! Nice.
Daniel
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 2:12 pm ¶http://www.DVDs4theSAT.com
SAT tutoring you can rewind
Santaji,
I’m sorry but I haven’t played around with deleting SPs made with schemas other than ‘dbo.’ The query works by gathering all of the table names from the “sysobjects” table and flushes everything out. I’m not sure if there is a work-around for other schemas.
Daniel,
You’re welcome
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 2:25 pm ¶Does it deter sales? Obviously. There’s plenty of people like yourself who make purchasing decisions based on what other people might think of them. I can think of several other examples: wouldn’t buy a Hummer because people who drive them are jerks, don’t shop at Wal-Mart because only poor people shop there, buy Prada because some celebrity owns the same purse, buy a Prius so that people will think them environmentally conscious. There’s perfectly good reasons to do the opposite of each of those things but people like you paint everybody with the same brush.
What you buy is not who you are. I know that’s hard for a marketer to understand, but I own Macs because I find them useful computers. Just because there’s people out there who think that owning a Mac makes them better or more special or more cool doesn’t mean that I believe that. In other words, in judging a Mac owner based on your stereotypical view of how *some* Mac users behave is wrong. Not purchasing a Mac because you’re afraid of being judged by that stereotype is strikingly bizarre.
So don’t presume to know exactly what sort of person someone is based on a single purchasing decision. I own a Mac and I’ll recommend it to someone if they ask my opinion, but honestly I don’t care what anyone else does with their money. (For the record, I’ve met my fair share of PC zealots too.) The problem is zealotry coupled with materialism in my view: what I buy is good, what you buy is shit—even though they may both objectively achieve our respective ends.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 2:37 pm ¶Also, iJustine is ridiculous. If it weren’t Apple, it’d be something else for her.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 2:41 pm ¶YES.
I will not buy Apple products because of the smugness of their marketing and of their fan boys.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 2:48 pm ¶“So don’t presume to know exactly what sort of person someone is based on a single purchasing decision.”
Bill, I know plenty of level-headed Mac owners; the problem is that the BRAND is what represents the culture, and the brand is defined by both the company’s advertisements (Mac vs. PC) and the way the ownership community represents itself in public.
If you read my language in the post you’ll see that I don’t paint all Mac owners with the same brush, just many of them. I have left some room for exceptions.
For the record, I buy PCs because they offer features that Apple machines do not, but even if Apple did offer the same functionality I wouldn’t buy it just because the brand leaves a foul taste in my mouth. I will be writing a
post tomorrow that outlines it. I could care less what OTHER people would think of me if I buy a Mac; I care about what a Mac represents, and in my own mind what I own is what represents me. It’s the same reason why I won’t buy a hybrid car.
And I’ll contest the “what you buy is not who you are” statement until I die. If you come to work every day dressed in wearing neatly pressed Brook’s Brothers and a nice pair of Ecco shoes, does that not say something about your sense of style, your affluence, or your job? If you drive a beat up old truck, an H1, or a hybrid, don’t any of those say SOMETHING about you? What they say is open to intrepretation, but whether you like it or not, they all say something.
So what “owning a Mac” says about you is open to interpretation; you interpret it as a just a functional tool that you work well with – and I respect that. However, I see a great many more people who believe that owning a Mac means that they’re part of some technologically superior, smug social movement where everyone wears pastel colors, dances to Bono, and video blogs all of it as though anyone else will care – that just isn’t for me.
What I was wondering is, am I alone in thinking that the perception of Apple as a “smug social movement” can actually hurt their sales?
One thing that you and I can agree on, Bill, is that iJustine is ridiculous.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 3:06 pm ¶Let’s pick your example of someone wearing a Brooks Brothers suit. How might various people evaluate him:
1) some corporate big shot who’s probably an arrogant jerk
2) a fashionable, successful man
3) some corporate drone hoodwinked into wearing a uniform
4) a guy who doesn’t care about the poor because he’s wearing a several thousand dollar suit
5) an eligible candidate for a relationship
6) he thinks he’s better than me
In reality, he may be all of those things, none of those things, or any of those things. But by basing an evaluation on that piece of clothing, you’re doing him a grave injustice. More importantly, you’re doing yourself a disservice because this guy might be a great friend, awesome boss, perfect husband, or fascinating individual. But you’ve got him pinned down by just knowing one fact about him.
In reality, these stereotypes (including yours) say much, much more about the observer than the subject. When you meet a person and find out that he’s a Mac user, you’re probably letting loose a mental sigh and preparing for an onslaught of Mac paeans. But what if that person was me? It would never come and maybe you’d never even bother to get to know me.
Anticipating a common reaction, you might reply that you certainly don’t judge people like that, that you wouldn’t care whether the person used a Mac or not unless they started the droning. So why do you think that every one of your fellow humans is different? In other words, you’re worried that getting a Mac would engender exactly that response in others even though you yourself would never behave like that. Give your fellow man some credit. Most people, in my experience, aren’t hidebound by stereotypes.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 4:43 pm ¶Why does the man himself wear the Brooks Brothers’ suit? He could buy similar looking clothing at a lower cost from Macy’s or elsewhere, but why did he choose Brooks Brothers? Probably because identifies himself with the values that that brand represents, in one form or another. There IS a reason; what you’re saying is that there isn’t one nor should other people assume that there is. Sorry, but that’s simply not true.
I wear BitTorrent T-shirts and jeans because I identify myself as a geek and I like feeling comfortable. What does that say about me? Some people might construe wearing a shirt that sponsors a product used primarily as a means for pirating music as anti-establishment or something bizarre like that. Frankly I don’t care what anyone else thinks about what the shirt means; to me it just means that I’m identifying with my geeky interests.
Truthfully, I do groan when I meet someone who introduces themselves as a “Mac user” because, from my experience, the next thing I get to listen to is a song of praise about some product that I don’t have much interest in. The fact is that Mac users themselves created the stereotype. If you don’t represent the Mac user stereotype then good for you, but until Mac users stop getting into people’s faces, people who reject the Cult of Apple are going to keep calling Mac owners “smug jerks.”
Again, I don’t care what other people would think about me if I use a Mac book in public; I run around with an XPS gaming laptop in public now. I care about giving my hard-earned money to a corporation whose values I don’t agree with – integrated design is something that has some merit, but not being able to shut up about it is not. So can you see that what other people think of me bears little into the equation? It’s the idea of owning a product from a brand that leaves a foul taste in my mouth.
Speaking of stereotypes:
“I know that’s hard for a marketer to understand, but I own Macs because I find them useful computers.”
What’s that supposed to mean? Isn’t that a stereotype of marketers? Why would you ask me not to stereotype Apple owners when you stereotype marketers
?
Back to the point though: how much harm can this “mac user” stereotype do to Apple’s sales?
Rather than attack the stereotype [it exists and it's not going to go away] attack my rationale for how I think that the stereotype can hurt sales. Can’t it also bring people in? How so?
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 5:44 pm ¶You know what is more annoying? A VW driving, Nike Wearing, WWF Fan, Mac User.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewJ6Wzmr_V0
Will the “Creating Meaning and Belonging” strategy affect sales. Yes. When you get brand manager’s making the switch into community development the coming groundswell will expose their game.
If you use MAC because of function – Hack your i-phone, scratch of apple and re-skin it. How do you feel now?
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 7:58 pm ¶I like the parlor trick of attempting to point out my hypocrisy but it falls flat because you took my statement out of context. The previous line was “What you buy is not who you are.” Marketing is about convincing people that what they buy is defining. So my statement that it’s hard for a marketer to understand that is not a generalization about what marketers believe but a statement about what marketing is. Nice try though.
Regarding my Brooks Brothers example, you’ve completely missed my point. I said that he may fit all, none, or some of those evaluations. The motivation behind why he made the purchase is irrelevant to the stereotyper because the stereotyper “knows” why he bought it.
“I care about giving my hard-earned money to a corporation whose values I don’t agree with – integrated design is something that has some merit, but not being able to shut up about it is not.”
What values of Apple don’t you agree with? Integrated design, a simple buying experience, ubiquitous retail stores? You’re conflating Apple the company with Apple devotees. News flash: Apple has no control over Apple “cultists.”
Posted 11 Apr 2008 at 1:50 am ¶Well, I have to disagree with this…
What values of Apple don’t you agree with? Integrated design, a simple buying experience, ubiquitous retail stores? You’re conflating Apple the company with Apple devotees. News flash: Apple has no control over Apple “cultists.”
I find the Brooks Brothers example a tough fit because they, to the best of my knowledge, don’t go out of their way to bash the wearers of other suits in their Ads. That’s not true of Apple though.
Apple’s entire marketing message since I was 4 years old has been to portray Apple users as exceptional and PC users as mindless drones. From that original Superbowl Ad to “Think Different” and now with the “I’m a Mac” ads the message has always been one of inherent superiority.
So you can say Apple has no control over their zealots but the truth is Apple designed its marketing to (a) attract those people and (b) enforce their feeling of superiority (which I think is the behavior that Aaron finds unappealing).
Posted 11 Apr 2008 at 5:36 am ¶Well said Cameron. That video was interesting too. I picked up this one while I was browsing after yours finished:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F9gdx_LIAc
If you want to see a lot of weird-looking Apple users with Apple tattoos then I highly recommend that video.
And Tom said it better than I could – Apple’s own messaging from Cupertino brought in those kinds of users so they really are in control over their image. Mac vs. PC sums it up pretty well.
I don’t see how I took your generalization about marketers out of context Bill; what context am I missing?
Posted 11 Apr 2008 at 8:03 am ¶I’m not so much annoyed with the users as with Apple for marketing themselves as this cool brand that is your friend. I generally find that kind of marketing very patronising and I feel that Apple’s products are more often than not overpriced.
Posted 11 Apr 2008 at 11:01 am ¶One thing to be aware of with StumbleUpon is that there is a diminishing returns effect. Each vote for a page on a particular domain carries less weight than the one before it. So if somebody is constantly asking for stumbles for the same site, over time those stumbles will become worthless.
Posted 11 Apr 2008 at 1:32 pm ¶@John,
Yeah that’s how I was starting to feel – like it was becoming a spam service and so forth. I understand the value of stumbling your own pages just so some clown doesn’t categorize your page under the wrong category. I’ve written about that before at-length.
@Caroline,
Yep, that’s definitely another thing to be wary of – however, a lot of people will riffle off stumble requests without stumbling the page first in order to get around that.
Posted 11 Apr 2008 at 1:48 pm ¶I made a change to the script to include schema and functions.
Posted 29 Apr 2008 at 2:11 pm ¶I agree completely. I’ve had a client for eight years and he’s refused to budge on this one until just last week. He’s finally come to realize that the only competitors that don’t already have his prices are the ones that would be too stupid to stay in business more than a month. Unfortunately, he’s lost a lot of business over the years trying to protect this rather public information.
Posted 05 May 2008 at 2:10 pm ¶Hey John,
Thanks for commenting, and for submitting this to BizSugar! I assume the big impetus for doing this, other than weak privacy as you mentioned, is to collect contact information from potentially interested parties.
Posted 05 May 2008 at 8:56 pm ¶If they wan to collect information, they should just have users fill out a web form first. There’s nothing really wrong with that. The number of downloaders will be smaller, but at least you can track and follow up with them.
Posted 07 May 2008 at 12:12 pm ¶This article is called ‘How to Publish an Item on a User’s Feed’ however it doesn’t actually describe that at all. It just talks about some of the pitfalls. Please can you update the article with a How To guide so that we can see literally – ‘How to Publish an Item on a User’s Feed’. Thanks!
Posted 09 May 2008 at 2:36 am ¶I got a good laugh about the guy trying to pick up girls by flashing his iPhone. Reminds me of a guy I knew back in my single days who would always flash his “Beemer” key around in bars.
Yes, I think that certain products and the way they’re marketed cause them to develop an aura around them that can both attract and deter people. Cars have long had this.
Posted 15 May 2008 at 2:46 pm ¶Not just in facebook, by the way – I get spam in Orkut.
Posted 20 May 2008 at 11:07 am ¶Not surprised – the cost of spamming is so cheap, hence why it proliferates so many different services (blog comments, forum posts, email, newsgroups, and now social networks apparently)
Posted 21 May 2008 at 12:18 pm ¶Sweet list Mr. Ninja, a personal favorite of mine though, is the web developer toolbar. As a designer I couldn’t live without it.
Posted 21 May 2008 at 7:28 pm ¶Good luck. Twitter is definitely a flash point of some kind. I don’t use the service and I comment on it more often than I ever would have thought I would.
Though in fairness a lot of that is because I’m covered on Techmeme. The Techmeme algorithm is based on how many people link to you and I’m about as opposed to the other people covered by the service as anyone so I suspect I’ll be cast out eventually. But while the opportunity exists I feel a certain responsibility to be the “voice of the opposition” on topics where no one else is giving the other side.
Since everyone loves Twitter unconditionally on Techmeme that means a lot of Twitter commenting.
Anyway, I hope it works out for you. My only concern would be the phrasing. It’s hard enough conveying what you actually mean when you have unlimited characters to work from. Sending messages of only 140 characters to professional contacts seems a little scary to me. Most people aren’t easy to offend but I’ve found those that are look just like those who aren’t. So you don’t discover them until they’re offended by something they thought you said.
Posted 22 May 2008 at 9:30 pm ¶Kudos for taking the leap–I was reluctant myself, but when I finally got on I (like so many others) fell in love.
The truly great thing about it is that it’s a very simple, basic “medium”, and how you use it is entirely up to you. Purely social, marketing/lead development, broadcasting (some folks do this–Seth Godin in particular. I don’t find it particularly “in tune” with the medium, but hey, there’s no rule against it).
It takes a while before it to make sense to you, as it’s basically whatever you make of it, but hopefully you’ll find your stride with it and enjoy it.
I created a little Twitter app for runners on my site: http://www.hellasound.com/GoRun Creating the app was dead simple, and how folks use it is one of the things I’m looking forward to finding out.
I’ll follow you as soon as I hit submit on this comment
Posted 27 May 2008 at 2:47 am ¶@Tom,
I think I accidentally invited you to Twitter when I was playing around with it the night I wrote this post – I was trying to see if you had a Twitter ID (I assumed you did given how much you’ve written about it) so sorry if you got an email from Twitter on my behalf.
Accidentally offending people with online communication has been a problem ever since AOL Instant Messenger – even back then you could correct the issue in real-time but the problem stems from the difficulty of communicating tone of voice. We don’t realize how big an impact tone has on our interpersonal communication until we have to do without a lot of it.
@John,
GoRun is an awesome idea – I just read over your description of it. The idea of aggregating subject-specific tweets makes it feasible to build a real twitter community around a specific area of interest. That’s a great concept!
I really enjoy the personal intercommunication on Twitter – one of my readers sent me a direct Tweet and I think it’s a good opportunity to get to know some of my own readers better. Blog comments are a good method too, but they’re not as personal as a Tweet is.
Posted 27 May 2008 at 10:48 am ¶am using Iframe for Java aplication for intigrating in Facebook , facing problem while redirecting to the application page from Servlet , the page is occupying full Screen with change of Canvas url to call back url instead rendering in the facebook as an application if any body knows the solution plz reply to it
and how to post mini feeds in profile page if we use Iframe
Posted 28 May 2008 at 2:48 am ¶Thanks for testing Trackur and providing your feedback.
I’d like to give some feedback on your last bullet points.
1. If you add “smartdraw.com” to the “does not include” filter list, and you won’t see your own results.
2. With reputation monitoring, most people find it more beneficial to find the “discovered” date. If a negative item, created 6 months ago, suddenly gets added to del.icio.us, you’d want to know about the discovery date. But I do take your point.
3. Saving your keyword search allows Trackur to start monitoring the web, instead of just showing a snapshot. I think two weeks is a pretty reasonable amount of time to test it out, but I’ll consider a longer period, if others request it too.
Please feel free to email me andy@trackur.com, if you have any other suggestions or if I can help walk you through some of Trackur’s features.
Cheers!
Posted 30 May 2008 at 6:40 pm ¶Hey Andy,
1. I didn’t realize the keyword filtering would also do URLs. I’d add a couple of examples below “Must Include” and “Must Not Include” boxes to make it clear that you can add URLs.
2. I think more people are interested in when the content was published, not when it was found. But I see your point though. Let’s say there was a blog entry written about an old version of the product – a bad review. If someone wrote a new comment about the CURRENT VERSION of our product on that blog post tomorrow would Trackur show an update saying that new content had been added to an existing item, would it be easy to discern that from the Trackur interface. THAT is something that I’d request for my job in a heartbeat.
3. I get how the saved keyword search works – understood that when I wrote the article, too. I’m just saying that you might want to allow for some saved searches during the trial to make for a more complete history of snapshots – give the potential customer a better set of results to look at than what you’re currently offering.
There is a definite need for reputation management software beyond Google Alerts; I just think Trackur needs some work.
Thanks for taking the time to comment – I’m a big fan of Marketing Pilgrim by the way.
Posted 30 May 2008 at 7:21 pm ¶We’ll keep on adding new features as we grow, and refine the current ones. For less than $200 a month, I think we have pretty robust and valuable solution–especially when you consider that the next jump up from Google Alerts would normally cost $1,000+ per month.
We just launch in Feb, so this kind of feedback helps us to grow and focus on what users want. You can also leave it at http://trackur.suggestionbox.com/
I’ll leave you with this final thought. Trackur notified me of your blog post.
Posted 30 May 2008 at 7:30 pm ¶That’s true – the cost of the alternatives is pretty steep. Either way, Andy, best of luck and I’ll subscribe to the Trackur blog to see what sort of improvements you make to the system. I have nothing but respect for your marketing talent and I appreciate your candor in discussing the issues with your product.
And I figured you’d find this via Trackur, given how quickly you posted your comment on my blog after the post went live :p
Posted 31 May 2008 at 12:00 am ¶I’ve gotta say I’ve never even considered this to be an either/or decision. Each method provides rather different, but complementary benefits.
Coming from an old school marketing background, I’d have to say I’d create static documents first and support them with a blog. It’s what most people still expect. I couldn’t imagine going into a meeting without vendor documents to pass around. I certainly wouldn’t print out a wordy blog for a meeting. On the other hand, a blog gives me more insight into a company and its products. But that’s only if I’m interested enough to read the blog (most likely because I was interested based on the static documents).
My two cents: Under most circumstances, blogs are not meant to replace static documents.
Posted 03 Jun 2008 at 6:30 pm ¶Agreed with Josh in that it is not an either/or
It seems like the way to go would be the best of both worlds – publish a blog so that the smaller developers who crawl the net in their spare time find your product, and have easily accessible “real” documents on your blog in case a very busy professional comes in who simply wants the bullet points, not the whole term paper
On the ‘blogs are to sketchy’ note, I would say the blog has to be very well designed to lend a more professional look (not ad’s on two sidebars and the footer
) and must be well written, informal enough not to be a paper, but also not a ‘im to cool to care about grammar’ post
just my thoughts – interesting question though. Ill follow the comments
Posted 04 Jun 2008 at 3:15 pm ¶Some interesting updates for you:
1. After doing some testing with some email campaigns – if you give customers a choice of Blog or Document, they overwhelmingly choose “Document.” My guess is that Blog is still a four-letter word in the vocabulary of many consumers.
2. The blog seems to do pretty well among people who prefer to do online “window shopping” before making a purchase.
Thanks for the good comments guys.
Posted 05 Jun 2008 at 12:50 am ¶Aaron,
Both…and then some.
Use the blog to build, develop, and nurture relationships and deliver up-to-date info snippets and show your unique difference to prospects and clients.
Use the content management capabilities of a WP blog to deliver those White Papers, e-Courses, contracts, blah, blah, blah that people “expect”. They want this stuff usually for credibility. For example, I have a blog within a blog. The Marketing Caddy is my front-end “public” blog. My “Inside the Ropes” sub-domain is my back-end e-course, pdf download, prospect sort and slice machine.
Finally, mix in off-line touch points as part of your marketing systems. Integrate phone contacts, voice broadcasts, auto-mated print mail… and finally, if it’s a big ticket contract, sit down face-to-face and sell ‘em.
The business perception surrounding blogs is funny. My brother, a partner in a CPA firm, swears he’s never visited a blog. I get on-line with him, and ask him to show me sites he uses. Most are blog platforms that “look-like” static sites.
A business blog doesn’t have to look like a blog.But, don’t call it a “blog”. The perception of “blogs” in the REAL business world is it’s not serious and lacks credibility.Credibility is a key thing in BTB. People in business are scared as hell of picking the wrong product/service and making a mistake
Finally, back to your original question…
If I’m starting a new marketing campaign, I’d always begin strategically. What is the pain or desire? Who’s my target or Ideal prospect? What emotional buttons can I push to move them along the marketing and sales cycle?
Once I understand these fundamentals, then I can determine and TEST which info delivery formats convert and sell best.
Posted 05 Jun 2008 at 10:15 am ¶Couple questions:
1. What were the headlines/titles of the “documents”?
2. What was your specific “Call to Action”? Example, visit our blog for full details. You’ll find the White Paper download here.
As I stated earlier, my experience, all though not fully tested, is b-t-b doesn’t trust the word “blog”…
So, don’t call it a blog.
Now, if all things equal here, my question is “Why?”
Posted 05 Jun 2008 at 6:16 pm ¶Hey Walt, thanks again for commenting.
1. I can’t disclose the headlines.
2. Calls to action were:
“read more on our blog” or “download our PDF on [subject of the email]
I think you’re right about not referring to our blog as a “blog.” We’re also considering experimenting with not giving our audience a choice of where to go at all; the new call to action would be “click here to read more” or something along those lines.
Posted 05 Jun 2008 at 9:30 pm ¶We had the same issues with CS and Disconasp. We tried and worked with them but no real answer could be provided to us. We moved to Server Intellect and installed the CS. Works perfect. No more issues.
Posted 09 Jun 2008 at 1:07 pm ¶I’m not sure if this counts as “one reason” but I’d think the tendency for bloggers to be unreasonable ranks pretty high. I still vividly remember how Amazon’s Kindle got panned for not having multi-touch (a feature Apple had introduced just a few weeks earlier).
I guess that might fit into your #3 but I tend to think it goes beyond that in many ways. To give an example, is it personal bias that Mike Arrington of Techcrunch hates any service that charges for music just because he believes all music should be free? It seems like that almost goes above personal bias to the point that it should be called something else.
The truth is, I’ve always been unsure to what extent marketers should embrace the blogging community. There’s really no way of knowing how they’ll react or what motivates them to react in the way they do and since they all link to each other you risk destroying your Google results if things go the wrong way. If you ignore them at least they can only bash you for that.
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 12:19 am ¶Controversy fuels readership and comments. He’s Arrington’s et al foil.
Smart marketing.
Same as Howard Stern or Bill O’Reilly. Half the people tune in not because they agree, but because they disagree.
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 12:50 pm ¶Hey Walt,
That makes sense if it was Arrington’s goal to drive numbers but it seems like his decision to bring Gillmor aboard was to help establish some legitimacy to TechCrunch’s brand. If you look at the original announcement to bring Steve Gillmor aboard it talks about Gillmor’s rich experience and his prestidge as a high tech journalist; you can read it here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/18/gillmor-gang-now-part-of-techcrunch-network/
However, given how bad Gillmor’s execution has been it looks as though Gillmor is actually doing more harm than good to TechCrunch’s desired image of being a legitimate tech news source. Arrington has numbers and that makes him powerful, but if he’s trying to make TechCrunch a legitimate news source and not a sham like the big media outlets that he slams so often then his decision to bring Gillmor aboard has been nothing but counter-productive.
Also, Gillmor’s countroversy isn’t so much the subject of his writing as it is the writing itself – not the right kind of controversy if you ask me.
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 1:43 pm ¶Looks like Gillmore should stick to Podcasts since his writing sucks…
Arrington’s bad? Gilmor’s posts do bring out lots of comments… and some of ‘em are pretty damn funny… since his writing is so horrible.
Not sure if it’s hurting the TechCrunch brand. I’m only a casual TC reader. Given the TC business model, Arrington sells more ads and attracts more advertising dollars when he bumps readership and comments. I recall Arrington’s comments in a recent New York Times piece about the relentless pressure for his blog to produce fresh, cutting edge tech news and content. This is one way to fuel readership without the “scoop” pressure. Yep, he’s taking a page out of MSM that he slams.
Tech Crunch is already a legit tech news source, but Arrington is forced to keep feeding the beast.
Plus, you gotta admit… it’s always a hoot when smart guys try to even sound smarter. They end up sounding like complete morons. In turn this let’s TechCrunch readers have a common enemy that makes ‘em feel good. Maybe not Arrington’s original intention, but will it hurt TC? Guess we’ll see…
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 3:12 pm ¶Hey Tom,
Arrington’s bias against the music industry is a good example of my third point.
I thought of another one when I was driving home the other day – accoutability. If someone at a news paper writes a review that is false or obviously untruthful then your company can have its complaints heard by the publisher itself. When the propreitor is the same person as the author, like most bloggers, then the only people that you can hold the reviewer accountable to are the blogger’s readers and they probably can’t hear you in the first place.
Posted 11 Jun 2008 at 12:18 pm ¶I don’t know that I agree on the consumer point. The problem is, and I know how weird this sounds but bear with me, Apple is a complete novice at Marketing. I know how antithetical that sounds but think about it. There are many different components to marketing and the only ones Apple has shown proficiency for are branding and advertising.
They’ve never bothered with things like market research because they have a cult that will snap up almost anything they throw out there. The Apple Cube is the perfect example of this. I know for a fact Apple put no market research into the cube because it’s practically identical to the NeXT PC (http://www.sieler.com/vcf4/ex-next.jpg) that Jobs’ was trying to sell years earlier.
I really think it’s the great lie of Apple. Everyone assumes they’re products are perfect and that it’s just the price the keeps them from being mass market hits. But the truth is the price difference is usually only a couple hundred dollars at the most and most people buy computers on credit meaning a couple hundred isn’t going to matter. The reason people don’t buy Apple is because they don’t like them (as you found on this very blog)
The iPhone seems like the same thing to me. Sure it seems like it’s destined to greatness from the tech industry perspective (and I certainly love mine) but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I polled about 100 teenagers (remember my agency has a school attached to it) and they all said the same thing: Video and MMS (or the ability to message pictures as they put it) are deal breakers.
For that matter, text messaging is more important than calling for them which raises questions about the soft keyboard as well.
Apple very well may take over the consumer market but I don’t think it’s as cut and dried as people think and I again think it goes back to Apple’s inability to actually poll the market and find out what’s important to customers rather than just dictating what’s important to a cult that will take anything they offer.
Posted 11 Jun 2008 at 8:56 pm ¶Hey Tom,
Apple’s “inexperience with marketing” is something that we discussed in my last semester of college actually. When Steve Jobs released the video iPod he was asked “why will people use this?” His response? “I have no idea, but we figured we’d throw it out there.”
The MacBook AIR? Same example. Do people really want a laptop with a battery that is embedded into the motherboard just to save some space? Jobs had no idea but figured they’d throw it out there anyways.
I think Jobs has a clue when it comes to the iPhone, however – the addition of enterprise features, which Apple has had to license from Microsoft, are the result of customers demanding that this phone support more of the necessary services required to make it a feasible alternative to BlackBerrys and Treos.
As far as the youth market is concerned, if Apple is serious about targeting phone consumers in general and not just people who buy high-end smart phones then Apple will add those features as separate applications or minor add-ons.
I’m making the assumption that adding MMS will be trivial – if it turns out that the iPhone doesn’t have the cellular hardware (should have bought Qualcomm chips) to support it then you’re right – it might be a deal breaker for the youth market.
Posted 12 Jun 2008 at 10:20 am ¶On the MMS I was with you a year ago but now that an entire year has passed I have to assume that its either (a) way harder than I think it is or (b) Apple is specifically not implementing it.
Which comes back to the problem of Apple. Its like the famous story of Jobs refusing to sign the students Mac keyboard unless he could pull off the function keys (which he apparently hates because they were borrowed from the PC). When Jobs doesn’t like something for whatever reason he’ll simply snub it and expect the world to deal.
(though ironically I guess he’s stuck with the function keys at this point)
Posted 12 Jun 2008 at 11:26 pm ¶Hi,
Thanks, this was very helpful.
Regards,
Posted 14 Jun 2008 at 4:49 pm ¶Varun.
I see nothing wrong with making money from your blog, as long as money making is not the main reason for blogging. If you provide useful and valuable content to your readers you can make an income from it as well by having some monetizing.
Posted 16 Jun 2008 at 5:30 am ¶Tom,
I agree – some of the ways bloggers go about making money on their blogs simply contradicts the “blogging ethos” that many endorse so self-righteously. That’s all that I was pointing out.
Posted 17 Jun 2008 at 10:53 am ¶After thinking on it I think you’re probably right to an extent. I was probably to quick to put the last nail in PC Gaming’s coffin. I think on my part it was partly a result of moving on in life. Which is to say, PC Gaming is dwindlling, I’m getting older and gaming less which means not gaming on the PC at all, so I combined the two in my head to say that PC Gaming is disappearing completely.
All that said, I think you underestimate the Wii. Though you didn’t mention it specifically I’ve been more than a little impressed by Nintendo’s focus on the customer and on building hardward to meet the needs of the type of games that people want to play.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they captialized on a lot of the things you put in this post and eventually became a haven for different types of games.
P.S. One thing I picked out of your post though that is probably a topic for another time is the idea that “everyone needs a computer” Its a topic for another time but just for the record I know a lot of people who I work with who don’t have computers at home. They check e-mails and do their minor internet surfing at work so there’s no need for it. I was surprised by it at first but since then I’ve seen a lot of studies that say most internet traffic is during the week day so it might be mroe wide spread than any of us thinks.
Posted 18 Jun 2008 at 10:35 pm ¶Hey Tom,
I would have responded to you sooner were it not for the fact that I was migrating from DiscountASP.NET to Media Temple today. I didn’t want to have to repeat myself ;p
The Wii was the system I was thinking about most when I wrote this article – I think the Wii is the future of console gaming. It offers an experience that a computer would have a lot of trouble offering (it’s enough trouble setting up a network card, let alone motion sensors.) In addition, it makes gaming a social, in-person, experience; it’s different than XBox Live where you’re playing with other people over a network, just like how you would on a PC. Instead it’s great for when you have company over, parties, and so forth. It’s a fun, social way of gaming.
As for your point about not everyone needing a computer at home, I personally don’t know anyone who doesn’t have one. Well, except for the members of my family who are part of America’s Greatest Generation. Some of them don’t have personal computers.
Posted 19 Jun 2008 at 2:55 pm ¶Gillmor is smarter than Arrington, but Arrington hasn’t caught on yet.
Posted 22 Jun 2008 at 1:36 am ¶Very useful article. This is my first visit I will be bookmarking your blog… Thanks!
Posted 29 Jun 2008 at 12:08 am ¶Well said! I think that the kindle is pretty well-defined as a book substitute. Trying to make it into something else will not be to its benefit. Seth has identified a need for another kind of gadget, I suspect, for a different kind of consumer.
Posted 30 Jun 2008 at 2:46 pm ¶As long as you’re using “MyBrand”, it’s always easy to instantly switch your existing feed away from FeedBurner.
Posted 03 Jul 2008 at 11:53 am ¶Yep, I’m aware of MyBrand but I had forgotten about it. Good thing that you brought it up! It’s a good idea for people starting new blogs to use a MyBrand-destination as the address for their feeds, but blogs who used FeedBurner without MyBrand for a while will still have their old subscribers subscribed to the FeedBurner address, and that’s still a problem.
Either way, moving all of your new subscribers to a domain created using MyBrand solves most of my concerns with FeedBurner, not all of them, but it solves the most important ones.
Thanks again for bringing up MyBrand – good call on that.
Posted 03 Jul 2008 at 12:54 pm ¶What if Google begins to insert in-line adwords at the bottom of your post, unless you as a publisher pay up?
Posted 03 Jul 2008 at 1:53 pm ¶So what’s the solution, Aaron?
Posted 03 Jul 2008 at 5:30 pm ¶I wrote about something similar. As mentioned by Dave Ward, MyBrand is a way to protect yourself: http://simpable.com/technology/feedburner-cname/
Posted 06 Jul 2008 at 9:25 am ¶Just finished reading your blog article, Scott. It’s good stuff. I went ahead and got the ball rolling with MyBrand for my employer today. I might add it for my own personal blog soon.
Posted 07 Jul 2008 at 11:00 pm ¶I wasn’t aware of Mybrand, I will have to go and set it up.
I have noticed that Feedburner has been getting a lot buggier lately
Posted 07 Jul 2008 at 11:21 pm ¶FeedBurner’s data has never been that reliable; the subscribership data is a good ballpark estimate but it’s “reach” data is pathetic and grossly under-reported.
Posted 08 Jul 2008 at 5:50 pm ¶how do i get an image to appear in the facebook side nav when a user adds the application
Posted 09 Jul 2008 at 9:36 am ¶Do you mean the side nav on the profile? The only image that will show up there is the icon that you designate for your application which you can specify through the form mentioned in this post.
If you’re trying to build a side nav for a canvas page then you simply embed the image using any of the acceptable FBML/HTML markup.
Posted 09 Jul 2008 at 9:43 am ¶I know exactly how you feel. About 3-4 years ago my wife bought me an ipod for as a present. At the time I was looking at other options. She bought an iphone shortly after they came out and now wants a 3g one. She wants to give me the old one. While it is an improvement over my current cell phone, I’m not sure I really want it( I don’t want to be an http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=idouche ). I would rather get an alternative (tilt), and even though we’re strapped for cash and I’m rather frugal, I will probably suck it up and just use her old one. She wants a mac, and I’ve told her to just get a copy of osx and I’ll just put it on her pc so we don’t have to pay a premium for the hardware. Speaking of which, it costs that much more for the same hardware as any pc, at least that’s my understanding and someone is more than welcome to prove me wrong. Something that I haven’t seen mentioned is about apply “fanatics”, look up the definition of fanatic, look at a definition. I would never want to be called one and would take offense, and they seem to take pride in being an apple fanatic. Every time I see any apple product I cringe and immediately think, idouche.
Posted 14 Jul 2008 at 7:18 am ¶Dear Apple:
Tricking your customers is never good business practice.
no love,
Posted 15 Jul 2008 at 6:02 am ¶Alanna
Seconded! This is a necessary feature in the AdSense control panel.
Posted 18 Jul 2008 at 12:43 pm ¶This doesn’t happen on my (niche) site. I either get ads appropriate to the content or I get those public service announcement ads.
Posted 18 Jul 2008 at 2:15 pm ¶Hey Shambhu,
Yeah some people may not need the feature – I cover a broad range of stuff on this site and it doesn’t help that I used to write about technology before I migrated to covering marketing topics.
I’ve never had any of those PSA ads though; I guess that’s one benefit of having a broad range of potential contextual fits for advertisements.
Posted 18 Jul 2008 at 3:02 pm ¶Excellent, I’m glad we agree. So many brands ‘throw’ marketing at a community and miss the big opportunity: socialization.
Posted 19 Jul 2008 at 4:29 am ¶Couldn’t agree more. Content dumping defeats the purpose of social media in the first place, but it’s easy to see how so many companies can fall into that trap. One-way communication has been the practice ever since the early days of advertising; it’s hard for some companies to shake themselves out of the habit and adopt two-way communication, whether it’s customer-to-customer (social network apps) or customer-to-business (blogs, forums.)
Either way, great post Jeremiah. Glad I found your blog (I’d heard Dave McCLure mention it before) and I’m glad to have you on the blogroll.
Posted 19 Jul 2008 at 5:32 pm ¶Any info regarding updates to SDK’s for new.facebook.com??
Posted 25 Jul 2008 at 10:03 am ¶Not sure – I haven’t been following the new changes to the Facebook API much. Facebook.NET was by far and large the best API for .NET development and I’d say that that’s the one to look at – Nihkil is generally very good about keeping his API up-to-date.
Posted 25 Jul 2008 at 10:36 am ¶Yeap, totally agree, also should have a easy way to add blacklisted sites.
Posted 28 Jul 2008 at 6:24 am ¶Grrrrrr…the “Default FBML” field just ain’t workin’ for me. Nothing is ever displayed in the profile box (except for a “no content to display” message). I’m not writing profile FBML from my app, either.
Posted 29 Jul 2008 at 11:27 am ¶Some Facts:
1 million iPhone 3Gs sold in 3 days.
1.3 million new AT&T subscribers.
Did Apple not market as well as they should – maybe.
Is the pricing not a “deal” – probably.
Should Apple have been prepared for the high demand for their servers (iTunes, D/Ling 2.0 software) – absolutely.
This may have be a marketing problem, but it is a far cry from the Microsoft “Bluescreen” moment.
How can 1 million units sold be an “unmitigated disaster”?
Joe
PS – Show me a better all around cellphone/PDA with the equivalent to the App Store – there just is not any.
Posted 29 Jul 2008 at 5:51 pm ¶Joe,
I think it’s indicative of a long-term strategic marketing failure. Apple’s situation, if you ask me, is actually worse than the bluescreen moment – the bluescreen moment was a PR flop, but Windows 98 still come off the shelves at a breakneck pace. It didn’t actually piss off millions of loyal customers at the time when it happened.
1 million iPhones (let’s say it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $300-350m in revenue – not everyone paid $199 for the hardware) is a nice windfall in the short run, but accruing it at the cost of shitting on their loyal fan base might have implications in the long run. How many people are going to run out and get locked into a more expensive contract, dump more money on the next iPhone? Speaking of which, what’s the next iteration of the iPhone going to offer? Can we expect to pay a few hundred bucks for the iPhone COPY N PASTE edition?
I’m a big picture guy – I’m looking ahead to how this release will affect the next iteration of the iPhone product line. Will the confusion, technical difficulties, and significant cost/value gap from the 3G release screw apple when it comes time for another upward sustaining iteration of the iPhone? I say “absolutely it will.”
FYI, Palm has had an application store for the Treo line of phones for about three years. Their applications might not have the “OMG APPLE <3″ buzz, but they’ve been around for a long time.
Posted 29 Jul 2008 at 7:10 pm ¶Does it mean I can not develop a Facebook application offline on my localhost?
I need “Starting Facebok App for Dummies” I’ll appreciate having it.
Posted 30 Jul 2008 at 10:17 am ¶send a code for newz feed and profile box on face book if one have
Posted 01 Aug 2008 at 2:03 am ¶in .netC#
I’m new to this, and to add to Tomiwa’s question, can the development be done on a local host?
Posted 05 Aug 2008 at 12:05 am ¶I have put together a similar article that compares BlogEngine.Net vs WordPress
Posted 10 Aug 2008 at 12:10 am ¶I don’t understand why most people just believe everything they read or hear.
But you are absolutely correct about the damaging effects these type of reviews have on a business. There should definitely be some kind of oversight.
Posted 10 Aug 2008 at 9:43 pm ¶But Amazon does allow authors to respond! I assumes that was true for other products, but maybe not. If so, you should be able to counter misguided or uninformed criticism pretty easily.
Posted 12 Aug 2008 at 2:13 pm ¶Shambhu,
I’ve searched for hours on end to try and find a way to respond to reviews. The only thing I can do, realistically, is write a comment on a review and that’s a pretty impotent way of addressing them.
Is there something that I am not aware of or have been unable to find?
Posted 12 Aug 2008 at 3:21 pm ¶Great article! the best that i found on web for add a application to facebook
Posted 26 Aug 2008 at 8:49 pm ¶I think we might have to agree to disagree on this one.
Without knowing the details of your particular deal I can’t tell for sure but it sounds to me like the person your company is working with is actually using your product. If that’s the case I’m not sure I’d consider that person an “influencer” under the common definition of “someone who influences merely by suggestion.” If a person is actually giving a demo, even if it’s given during an unrelated presentation, I think I’d consider that person more of a salesman (which is something I completely agree with).
But I will agree on one point, the Valleywag article is stupid. Even if Stock price was a valid indicator of a company’s overall health (it isn’t) you can’t necessarily fault marketing for the success of failure of a company. Beyond that there’s the question of their choice of sponsor. I’m actually one of the (seeming) few who actually have respect for at least some of what Scoble’s done but I can’t say I’ve met, spoken to or read the blog of many others who think highly of him. I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who thinks highly of his technical acumen.
Posted 26 Aug 2008 at 9:24 pm ¶The reality is in their rush to hire a spokesperson, any spokesperson, they lost sight of the 3M’s (no, I don’t mean they forgot their post it notes) but the 3M’s which may very well be replacing the 4P’s
* Market
* Message
* Media
For any campaign, now more then ever these three elements must be in alignment.
Where did the Seagate go wrong? Not all IT people are bloggers, and not all bloggers are hardware junkies. Robert Scoble was the perfect fit for a campaign to promote blogging software, but not the hardware that runs it.
Posted 27 Aug 2008 at 5:29 am ¶@Lorraine,
I’m in agreement with you, Lorraine. Seagate did not have common ground (as I put it;) their 3M’s were clearly out of alignment (as you succinctly put it.) Blogging as a media may be fine for Seagate but they certainly got the other two M’s wrong.
@Tom,
It’s a shame that I can’t talk about this at length but I’ll give you the short version: essentially the influencers we’ve identified are acting as spokesmen for us and we’re both providing a consistent message to an active audience.
They aren’t salesman in that they’re actively pitching our software, but rather they’re saying that our software is an example of something that can handle a lot of the legwork in key areas of presentation design. It’s a bit more passive than direct selling and the best part is that it’s authentic: if the influencers we identified didn’t like our product or didn’t think it was suitable for their audience then they wouldn’t even mention it. I guess in that sense it’s a bit different than a sponsorship – if our product isn’t convincing enough to turn our own influencers into believers then we don’t pursue an outward-facing relationship.
I think Scoble is a nice guy, but I wouldn’t pick him as an influencer. He’s a bit too enthusiastic, too impulsive, and I think a lot of his audience feels that way too.
Posted 27 Aug 2008 at 8:43 am ¶Hello-
You provide a very well thought out advertising scenario. As the CEO of Twittad I would just like to give my take on things if I can.
Twittad knows that the background images on a Twitter users profiles are not clickable. Intelligent Twitter users know the same. Hence why you see the easy entry point prices being posted on Twittad. But I see Twitter evolving. My speculation is that if Twitter wants to gain more than just a simple 140 character business they will begin to develop their users pages more.
Allowing the users to upload applications, provide more than one simple link to a blog, the ability to upload photos, etc. This could be where Twitter is headed. Increasing the time a user spends on Twitter and having users viewing a profile page will increase page views, the time spent on the web version of Twitter, and bring in advertising dollars.
In addition to an Ad being seen on a profile background, when a user clicks on another user to send a Direct Message (DM) that users profile background image (with the Ad) is displayed. So one more spot for advertisers to gain a “eye”. If and advertiser wants to track effectiveness they could do so by displaying coupon codes and a different trackable URL, etc in their Ad.
I think you bring up some very good points, and they are all ones that were in our business model at the very beginning. It is our view that Twitter is in version 1.0. There are going to be many more versions of Twitter, and based on the amount of Twitter users signing up on Twittad..over 430 total as of today (9/3) people are open to this concept.
We are working on a lot of development and in the next few weeks we will roll out the second version of Twittad that will more effectively tie advertisers to Twitter users worldwide.
Regards,
Posted 03 Sep 2008 at 12:43 pm ¶James Eliason
President/CEO Twittad.com
James,
Thanks for responding to my comment. I totally overlooked the fact that those background ads are not clickable. Rather than provide you a full reply now I’m going to let the article air out for a bit before I get back to you.
Posted 03 Sep 2008 at 12:57 pm ¶Ok James, as promised here’s my reply.
Although I don’t think you intended to call my an unintelligent Twitter user, let me assure you that I use the service regularly. I totally forgot that you can’t even click on the background of the ads, and in my opinion that’s just another area of conversion that’s going to be added to the sales funnel. Based on the sample ads that I saw via TechCrunch I suppose the idea is to get Twitters to follow a “sponsored” Twitter account, i.e. one that belongs to a corporate blog and so forth. That idea has some merit to it – it uses basic permission marketing to get people to opt-in for updates from a service and I’m all about that.
However, how do you gauge performance for TwittAd then without CTR metrics? If your advertisers use TwittAd as the only method of promotion for a said Twitter account then measuring the total number of subscribers acquired makes sense as a metric, but what if they promote their account through other means, such as on the corporate blog itself per my earlier example?
I still think the idea is poor given the sales funnel – there’s just too much loss at any given step and the reach isn’t broad enough. However, I like your ideas about designing TwittAd to move alongside the evolution of Twitter and given that I left my crystal ball at home this morning I can’t speak to what Twitter may do and how it will be received by its user base.
Even if I don’t think the idea is good I still wish you the best of luck. Go get em!
Posted 04 Sep 2008 at 12:12 pm ¶Thanks for the follow up and I definitely was not calling you a unintelligent Twitter user. I have read many of your posts and have read Marketing Ninja before, all of which I have enjoyed reading.
There are a lot of things we are working on that I cant mention at this time with regards to ad performance on Twitter that comes from Twittad. But I will tell you that the #1 problem in our business plan is what everyone is talking about, the issue of not being able to click on a ad and gain the measure for the advertiser.
I will say that the Twitter community is a very intelligent and active audience. If a advertiser buys their profile I would bet many would promote that ad or service through their tweets or on their blog. Providing success for the advertiser not only comes from the views on the ad, but also the attention that comes from the purchase. Twitter users can mention the advertiser through Tweets and blog posts on the Twitter users website. To that degree, I will say we are working on something to solve this.
Again, thanks for the post and stay tuned.
James Eliason
Posted 04 Sep 2008 at 12:38 pm ¶President/CEO
Twittad.com
Microsoft recently (I say this loosely because I don’t have dates) released a series of videos – much like the Carls Jr. commercials – that shows users trying out a “The Newest Windows Operating System”. They christen it with a false name, and ask users to give it a test run. The Guinea Pigs have already expressed their distaste of Windows Vista, and start fiddling with this “new” system.
The users love it, they say it’s excellent, the speed, the performance is outstanding – only to find out what they just experienced was the Windows Vista operating system.
I believe the videos are only available online, I haven’t seen them on television – but why not? It’s a great technique to show how “word of mouth” has changed the entire perspective of users, some of which who haven’t even actually used Windows Vista.
-Jolene
Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 11:07 am ¶Jolene,
Yep, these are the “Mojave Experiment” ads that I mentioned in the article. It’s a great start for Microsoft but it needs more air time.
Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 11:13 am ¶I’d be really, really annoyed if this happened to me.
Posted 12 Sep 2008 at 8:38 am ¶Well, I’m glad I’m not alone in that regard
Posted 12 Sep 2008 at 9:38 am ¶I think it looks awful to submit your own sites to digg and reddit. Isn’t it all but shouting to the world, my stuff isn’t good enough for anyone else to want to submit so I submit it myself? Why not take a minute and actually engage in the wonder of social media, actually be social and make friends and take turns submitting each others stuff if it warrants submission.
Posted 14 Sep 2008 at 1:40 pm ¶I don’t come across many “marketers on foot”, I live in the Northeastern and maybe its different in CA. Although what we get alot of (at least in the Bean) are students working for non-profit organizations trying to scam donations from people. They’ll start off with, do you like trees? And, because I am now a veteran to their horrible canned conversation I just say, “Nope, in fact, I feel the world has too many trees”. Because if I don’t say that, they will literally demand I give them money. Oh we take $20s. No thanks, you’re not getting a 20. Ok, how about a $5. Nope.
Then they look at you like you’re a PoS. Thanks, like being broke isn’t painful enough.
Tony
Posted 16 Sep 2008 at 10:10 pm ¶“it makes me think that they lack the vision to lead this country, let alone objectively analyze a complex financial market.”
You think?
I don’t claim to know about the Austrian School of economics, the details of socialist market structures, or even why a private company is the “federal bank” but I do know that neither of these 2 bozos running for president understand economics any better than I do…
Posted 18 Sep 2008 at 7:15 am ¶I’ve always enjoyed unexpected playfulness on the internet, but your point is well taken. That really doesn’t work in a corporate culture.
My own pet peeve is sites that have snotty messages for people use internet explorer. Not everyone has a job where they can pick their browser.
Posted 18 Sep 2008 at 9:10 am ¶One thing that I probably should have done a better job pointing out was that while AIG has 1 trillion dollars worth of assets their net liabilities remain unknown, hence the speculation. I don’t think I did a good job qualifying that.
Posted 18 Sep 2008 at 9:42 am ¶There are known knowns, there are known unknowns, there are also unknown unknowns….
Posted 18 Sep 2008 at 9:57 am ¶Ugh, I don’t want to write again about all of this financial market stuff but I think that Congress deciding that this problem is “too tough” and going back on vacation makes me want to do a follow-up. I’m thrilled that they’ve realized that all they can do is make the problem worse – however, I think there are a number of other issues that still require their attention in Washington.
Posted 18 Sep 2008 at 10:27 am ¶If you can provide valuable content to a community, it will typically reward you!
Posted 03 Oct 2008 at 1:08 am ¶Thanks for clearing up several matters for me, especially the use of trackbacks, which are something I am fond of using. It is a balancing act, which method to employ, but I like to use both trackbacks and pingbacks as ways to build authority. It seems to be working for me.
Posted 03 Oct 2008 at 3:37 am ¶With facebook I like that you can target your adverts to certain age groups, and also have a picture. But as more businesses are using facebook to advertise, the minimum price is increasing in order to even have your advert show. The price soon adds up.
This is just a different perspective to your article.
Posted 14 Oct 2008 at 8:09 pm ¶The thing most people don’t realize is that a brand does not belong to them. The brand belongs to everyone else, and the brand is established by whatever people say about you and their experiences with you. All you can control is what you do and what you say, which directly affects how people perceive you (or your company). So Palin and Microsoft have a good opportunity to re-brand themselves.
Posted 22 Oct 2008 at 12:38 pm ¶I find your article very helpful but Facebook keeps on asking me to ad minimum 5 users and I’m lost
Posted 01 Nov 2008 at 9:34 pm ¶This might have been helpful had I not been on dial-up
Posted 02 Nov 2008 at 2:45 pm ¶I wish I found this post before I decided refer a client to DiscountAsp.NET. I was searching for information on how to resolve the exact same issue when using the Sitefinity CMS.
Posted 12 Nov 2008 at 4:29 pm ¶Please don’t think this is the case with ALL bloggers. I do product reviews. I never ask for money and I am honest with my reviews. I recently reviewed a game and I honestly thought it was too hard to figure out at first and I posted that in my review. I came out and said due to the complex nature of the game I wouldn’t recommend it for younger kids. I never got a dime from the review, just the game which I plan on donating to a local women’s shelter.
So not ALL bloggers are bad and not ever experience with a product review is bad either.
Just my .02 cents.
Posted 16 Nov 2008 at 5:54 pm ¶Sometimes simple links to good content elsewhere is a good service for your readers. I think that one man’s assessment of the economy is a very dangerous proposition to “bank on.” There are some equally qualified economists who think the economy is in for some long term pain.
Posted 26 Nov 2008 at 1:39 pm ¶At the time when I wrote this there was, how shall I put this, a dearth of optimism regarding the outlook of the economy.
Personally I think the future outlook of the economy remains entirely dependent upon how much the Government wants to screw with it.
Posted 26 Nov 2008 at 3:22 pm ¶Hehe funny thing about ruby! However, PHP still rocks and it will rock for a long time! Phyton is also cool and has some great concepts. I just knew about ruby when all fancy designers and people who don’t know anything about programming where talking .. ruby ruby (they allways do such things. hahaha), while when u take a look at Java and .net . heh. No comment (state of art 4 coding)
Posted 30 Nov 2008 at 2:41 am ¶Before we where script kids, then we went to more serious stuff (me .net and OOP).. Then because of stupid MS-like people attitude (including developers and MS) i was feeling sad.
Still now when i had grow up, my mighty formula is this: no more webforms (i still program in webforms) – use ajax, no more DAL coding (codesmith rocks! if u know how to code), WWF – is something really cool – still noone mentions it.
LINQ – i don’t know it. Don’t use it.. And 4 me it’s more like, i dunno.. different approach and too much confusing in relation to “old school”.
Good thing about .net is that it has split itself into to parts: one is open source and the other are blind MS followers.
Phyton – heh. really cool. Old school and much more! Game programmers use it, google use it.. etc. Very powerful and unix.
Thank you for writing this article! I’m right now dealing with the same exact issue with DiscountASP,NET, but not with Community Server, but with Dot Net Nuke. Like Community Server, a Dot Net Nuke virgin install on startup will consume ~45 MB – 50 MB of memory, and with just a single user browsing it will consume about ~90MB – ~150MB of memory with no custom modules loaded. Even with all the standard best practices being implemented like disk caching vs memory caching, etc, to limit memory usage, a single default Dot Net Nuke install with a single user will use 100MB+ of memory.
Like CS, DiscountASP.NET has a whole advertising page dedicated to how “ideal” and “compatible” they are with Dot Net Nuke, which neither can be true unless you never want any users on your site at all…
Luckily, I’m still within my 30 day money back window, so hopefully I can get my full refund out of them, but I’m certainly going to be VERY vocal about this issue on blogs, news groups and web hosting message boards to hopefully help others from having this same issue.
Thx again and nice website!
Posted 15 Dec 2008 at 11:58 am ¶Ross,
Sorry to hear about that. DiscountASP.NET has great basic hosting for .NET applications, but they don’t offer anything sufficient for enterprise CMS systems.
Posted 15 Dec 2008 at 12:35 pm ¶You describe the callback URL – ending with a slash. Later you say FB adds default.aspx to it. How does FB know what to add? What if you have index.php and not an aspx?
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 11:13 pm ¶Facebook will pick up the “default document” in your folder based upon the default document settings on your web server. So in IIS, the default document pecking order usually looks something like this:
index.html
index.htm
default.html
default.htm
default.aspx
If I have both default.htm and default.aspx sitting in my root folder and my callback url doesn’t explicitly say which one to link to, my web server will tell facebook that DEFAULT.HTM is the default document for that path, when what I really want is default.aspx.
As for index.php – if you set that up as a default document on your web server then Facebook will detect it.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 1:23 pm ¶Thanks. I came to that realization shortly after posting and reordered the pecking order in my httpd.conf file so index.php was first.
Thanks again.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 5:32 pm ¶I’ve always believed it makes most sense to target the “seekers” or the folks who log onto the internet in buy mode, as I say.
While it’s certainly possible to make money from people logging on for entertainment, you end up paying a lot in bandwidth and getting a much smaller return for the time invested.
I’m not a big follower of Facebook or MySpace but I’ll be interested to see if Twitter can figure out how to turn a profit.
Posted 22 Dec 2008 at 3:22 pm ¶It absolutely makes the most sense to target seekers, simply because they require a lower number of impressions and less persuasion to sell. Glad we agree.
I signed up for your eCourse by the way – your informal, personal style of writing is very engaging thus far. Color me intrigued.
Posted 23 Dec 2008 at 11:15 am ¶Ok, wow. I goofed in a major way. “Command and Control” is not a corporate culture. It’s a management structure. Changed the article to reflect the changes. Damn the expediency of blogging!
Posted 23 Dec 2008 at 3:57 pm ¶The most insidious marketing to me is ‘lifestyle marketing’. Where is the devide between real culture and a marketing ploy. Harley Davidson would be an example. I own two older Harley Davidsons. Plagiarizm is encouraged by marketing.
Posted 23 Dec 2008 at 8:00 pm ¶I agree with you as well. The main problem that I and I think a lot of newer companies and marketers are facing is the question… “Which network will provide me the best results?”
Is it the network that has the most people in your niche? or just the most people altogether? Should a person have as many different social network accounts as possible and check them every day, or should they just stick to 1-4 of them and really put in an effort to communicate with everyone by posting comments, adding friends, responding to private messages, and building their brand recognition on those sites?
Posted 05 Jan 2009 at 5:02 am ¶Click my link to see how to do this without cursors or multiple iterations generating error messages.
Posted 06 Jan 2009 at 1:58 pm ¶Something to consider in a large fleet is the availablity of parts / repair experience, as well as general reliability. None of these things can be satisfied by Carbon Motors. Also, how much will this vehicle cost? A new company is going to produce cars at a much higher cost. I would also argue that the generalized cookie-cutter cars are an innovation from the big 3. They are cheaper to build, easier to maintain, and more flexible. As a taxpayer, I don’t want my police department using far more expensive vehicles that are a little easier to clean.
Posted 06 Jan 2009 at 9:39 pm ¶“Something to consider in a large fleet is the availablity of parts / repair experience”
This is a good point.
“as well as general reliability”
This is not. Reliability is a major problem with the Big 3’s cars, along with general quality issues.
“Also, how much will this vehicle cost? A new company is going to produce cars at a much higher cost.”
Not necessarily – there is an entire network of third party suppliers who provide all of the parts to the Big Three. The Big Three don’t make many of their own parts anymore; they use toolers all along the Rust Belt and the Southwest. Part of my point in this article was that this infrastructure can provide a foundation for smaller, innovative car companies.
As to the cost, I have no idea what these will cost.
“They are cheaper to build, easier to maintain, and more flexible. As a taxpayer, I don’t want my police department using far more expensive vehicles that are a little easier to clean.”
Us taxpayers aren’t going to be able to do much from stopping a police department from buying something unfortunately, speaking as someone whose company sells to police departments routinely. Also, it’s impossible to do C/B analysis when you don’t know the cost.
Posted 06 Jan 2009 at 9:52 pm ¶The two wordpress vs blogengine links are broken!!! I want to read them though!
Posted 09 Jan 2009 at 5:14 am ¶It really shouldn’t be rocket science for these social networks to come up with a strategy – all it takes is a a bit of creative thinking. If they sat down and thought about the habits of their users, the answer would be staring them in the face.
People on social networks like to interact, so try to generate revenue from their interaction. There’s no point slapping on a one-size-fits-all revenue model and expecting the $$ to start rolling in.
For Facebook, apps are a big market, so why not look at monetizing that? I know they’ve got the verified app scheme, but that’s hardly going to produce the figures they are after. Maybe it’s time to face that not everything in the social network world can be free at the point of delivery. Either get the app developers to pay a subscription to use the FB platform, or charge the end user for using the apps. You might lose some users and/or apps, but that’s just sorting the wheat from the chaff at the end of the day.
Posted 09 Jan 2009 at 6:08 am ¶Yep, sorry about that. I moved off of a windows server onto a Linux box and I no longer have my BlogEngine.NET install up and running :\
Guess I gotta cut out those links.
Posted 09 Jan 2009 at 9:19 pm ¶Very nice solution, Thanks for sharing
Posted 12 Jan 2009 at 8:57 am ¶Did you have any joy in finding/creating a Html Whitelist control? just something that i would find useful myself.
Many thanks
Posted 14 Jan 2009 at 8:14 am ¶I can’t believe that a company has not made a car already that is specifically targeted to law enforcement. It is good to see it finally come about. I think it will catch on and become mainstream.
Posted 14 Jan 2009 at 5:52 pm ¶Isn’t this the X Factor to any successful business, organization, group working together? Everyone has a different vision and many times, agenda.
Posted 21 Jan 2009 at 2:00 pm ¶Long term, quality vs quantity and content will always prevail.
Absolutely people need to work together – the issue that I’ve outlined here is part of that. The issue is that if you have too much cooperation with other departments in your organization you can accidentally kill the value of your content channel.
What needs to happen is that you need to say “no” to some things and reach a compromise with the rest of your organization. Strike a balance between good content and promotion. Does that sound like what you had in mind?
Posted 21 Jan 2009 at 2:07 pm ¶Yes indeed. Your post generated a parallel thought about the workings between different departments.
A good example is to check out any local tv website. You’ll see multiple departments with different agendas/messages!
Posted 21 Jan 2009 at 3:05 pm ¶thanks for tips.
Posted 25 Jan 2009 at 4:47 am ¶On balance I’m with you rather than Ms Mah. Certainly failure will provide a depth of experience that will benefit any entrepreneur that wishes to start again but it is wasteful of entrepreneurial energy and resources. Not to mention how you restore confidence in your close cohorts that you know what you are about.
Learning from “oh dear’s” and improving as a result of them is far better than dealing with the consequenses of an “oh shit!”
Posted 25 Jan 2009 at 6:23 am ¶Clever. You hit the Microsoft method dead-on! By the way, what is that wonderful music from?
Posted 26 Jan 2009 at 7:40 pm ¶I wish I could take credit for that awesome video, but someone else made it unfortunately
I heard it was actually Microsoft employees who made the video. If that’s the case, props to them for not taking themselves too seriously.
As for the song, it has some familiar melodies but I’m not sure of its title exactly
Yep. I’m pretty useless when it all comes down to it
Posted 26 Jan 2009 at 9:51 pm ¶I’d say that it’s not just online marketers who fall into this category. It’s pretty much true of the bulk of marketers in general – which is good for those who actually do track results and adjust their marketing theories as they go. I’ve often said that the common sense is what most essential to successful marketing. Unfortunately, common sense doesn’t seem to be common any more.
Posted 28 Jan 2009 at 12:24 pm ¶Well, you’re just meeting with the wrong Web marketers, that’s all.
There are lots of pretenders out there, yes.
Posted 28 Jan 2009 at 12:29 pm ¶Marketing Ninja–first of all nice site! It is refreshingly spare.
And b, I will bookmark you. I’m a marketing VP working at my first SaaS company, and learning hands on the world of online marketing. It’s a whole new world, and I agree that many practitioners are clueless. I’m lucky to have a couple of very talented people on my team who actually know what they’re doing, and have been doing it for several years, so we’re perhaps middle of the pack or better. I for one kinda hope that the big guys don’t figure it out very soon.
Posted 28 Jan 2009 at 12:40 pm ¶That was SO awesome. Evidence of why Apple is growing so significantly in comparison to Microsoft, especially with the younger generation.
Posted 28 Jan 2009 at 12:43 pm ¶Do you think ‘they’ are clueless, or do you think that their bosses are clueless? I’ve found it pretty often that the marketer can be open to ideas, and may even have a few plans of their own when they first arrive at a brand and start trying to figure out how to really do things the ‘right’ way. Within a few months, their COO or CEO who is 20 yrs older than they are, have crushed the online life out of them, and just give in to the way their boss wants it, because they are tired of banging their heads against a wall that isn’t going to approve anything that wasn’t being done 20 yrs ago when the boss was in marketing/advertising?
Posted 28 Jan 2009 at 12:50 pm ¶The song is written by Danny Elfman of Oingo Boingo fame for the film Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. link to song:
Posted 28 Jan 2009 at 12:58 pm ¶http://www.imeem.com/cfbookchick/music/h0W7MO8y/danny_elfman_pee_wees_big_adventure_main_theme_breakfast/
I feel that sometimes their goal is to bolster their own personal brand by looking cool and avant-garde rather than get any measurable results for their clients.
Posted 28 Jan 2009 at 12:59 pm ¶Here is a link that doesn’t require registration when not coming from google.
Posted 28 Jan 2009 at 1:09 pm ¶http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYyD55elKJA
I have been in the online marketing business for about 10 years, in various roles, on both the client and the service provider side. I believe the biggest hurdle between good and great programs usually ties back to a perception problem in the organization. Online marketing is less expensive, and can be easily tracked for the most part. Decision makers see a profit of $10 dollars today, and decide that if they double the program it will make $20 tomorrow. I’ve met tons of talented marketers with great ideas who are stifled by the very thing that makes our space so powerful.
Posted 28 Jan 2009 at 1:32 pm ¶Ah, that’s where it came from! Thanks for the song link!
Posted 28 Jan 2009 at 2:04 pm ¶Of said dilemma, this is fundamentally due to the imperfections of marketing as a discipline. Over 20 years ago at a top business school I was already challenging the premises of marketing all the while going through the courses.
What you’re part of and witnessing is the unraveling of marketing as we know it for exactly all the reasons you’re uncovering by discovery
Posted 28 Jan 2009 at 3:17 pm ¶Just saw this post thought it was great. keep rocking.
Posted 28 Jan 2009 at 9:05 pm ¶Great post; a common challenge that (younger) techies face with the direction of upper management. I RTed it as well: http://twitter.com/erikford/status/1158587397
Posted 29 Jan 2009 at 8:51 am ¶Have been in this situation dozens of times. Great advice for managing the situation.
Posted 29 Jan 2009 at 11:15 am ¶Show the ROI of your idea vs. current projects in progress.
Posted 30 Jan 2009 at 4:55 am ¶This is sometimes an opportunity to do some testing. In the past, I’ve been allowed to test on a small segment to prove my idea. Testing is something all marketers should be doing, and most of us know it. You can take advantage of not testing by grabbing a test-case. Good luck!
Posted 02 Feb 2009 at 3:49 pm ¶No, Facebook is selling ads claiming that users can access free bailout cash to help pay off debt. See: http://sprawl3.com/blog/?p=126
Thanks for keeping them honest.
Posted 04 Feb 2009 at 12:31 pm ¶Excellent article. You definitely have to work to segment and target your market if you ever want to have a product people will be interested in buying. That being said I fear a step that will be missed is that you went to the engineers said can we do X,Y and Z and only after deciding it wouldn’t be in the companies best interest decided not too. What you’re advocating is making strategic decisions on who what groups you can most effectively serve not just doing things because a)that’s how they’ve always been done or b) we might be able to get one extra customer.
Posted 19 Feb 2009 at 10:07 am ¶Nicely done Aaron.
You do a very good job of describing this problem in a way that would make sense to early-stage product developers.
I was talking about this issue with a VC at coffee this morning, and now I can point people to your piece.
Thanks. Tom @tomwgibson
Posted 19 Feb 2009 at 12:31 pm ¶Hey Tom,
I’m glad that you liked this post – it’s an issue that my company still deals with constantly even though we’re not “young” in terms of years. We are still young in terms of Moore’s Chasm, however and this advice is based on our empirical experience.
We’re happy to have early adopters, but now that we’re gaining ground among the early majority we’re having to reject the input of early adopters more and more frequently. It’s hard to do, but ultimately necessary in order to achieve growth.
Posted 19 Feb 2009 at 1:52 pm ¶Credit Crisis simply explained
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 10:52 am ¶Credit Crisis very simply explained… Good videos
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 10:53 am ¶Thanks for this thoughtful post which I just found today. A few people contacted me after we introduced the Marketplace emails a few months ago with the perception the emails were unsolicited. The relationship between MarketingCharts (the publication) and its parent company (Watershed Publishing) was not known to all our subscribers at the time, so some thought these emails came out of the blue. Since then we have reviewed our subscription process to make it very clear in welcome messages (on the website and then by email) that we’d send occasional emails about relevant products or services, and who was Watershed. Originally that was stated only in our privacy policy – I realized it was not transparent enough because not everyone (by far) will review a publisher’s privacy policy before subscribing, or know about its corporate structure.
Just a comment on what “renting out” a list might mean. I’m sure you know this, but for the benefit of your readers, in this example we as a publisher don’t disclose any email address to the advertiser. We execute the dedicated email ourselves, no email address is shared in the process.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 2:02 pm ¶Hey Olivier,
I love your emails and your publications – I just used you as an example of how people might go “OMG SPAM” when really it’s not spam at all. And yes, I saw that you guys recently updated your offer emails to include “You are receiving this email because you are subscribed to one or more Watershed Publications” and so forth. I think that’s great.
I wasn’t calling you guys out, just using you as an example. The reputation management is not necessary :p
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 2:38 pm ¶Aaron, I understood the gist of your post and meant to elaborate on how we look at this issue, not do some sort of “social media damage control”!
And thanks for your support, glad you like our publications.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 4:19 pm ¶Glad you liked them as much as I did!
Posted 27 Feb 2009 at 2:20 pm ¶Note: After writing this I noticed that I look at OSS only, not free (beer) in general. Anyway:
Yes. I agree that some parts of your list of questions are valid and very important. Support, for one, is something that I wouldn’t want to miss depending on the type of product. But for lots of commercial software you have to pay extra for that as well, so this is more a “Is payed support available at _all_?” question for me. Big OSS projects seem to be backed by companies offering a solution here.
I would like to challenge some points of yours.
2) Same issue with commercial stuff, _unless_ you tend to buy from one company only. Redmond? I agree that you can hardly beat that integration for “free”. But in general I’d argue that this point is moot.
3) Same. Most (serious) OSS projects offer reasonable documentation. Certification programs? Those are extra expenses for a limited amount of value (if any) imo. Books? O’Reilly, apress cover _a lot_. Bottom line: The techs have to learn new software. One way or another.
4) Good point. I _could_ argue against this (The famous “At least you would be _able_ to patch it yourself if you’d want to”), but that’s not really a serious option I’d consider for business stuff. Nice for personal things if you happen to be a developer, but as a company you want your stuff to just work.
5) This is really quite similar to 3 and I tend to give the same answer. No matter what the software costs, your users/admins have to learn to use it. Maybe (a biiig one) commercial documentation is better in general. I’d check this on a case by case base.
6) How is this related to free or not? This only applies if you want to _replace_ a commercial product with a free one. If you start fresh (Quoting you: “Recommend(ing) _new_ products and services at work”, emphasis mine) this is a non-issue. Of course: Don’t replace a working solution for something worse. But this point seems still strange.
7) Again, unrelated to free or not in general. Yes, sure. Compare all alternatives. Compare feature sets, risks, support and – price. This is nothing that should be handled in a special way for free software imo.
But to get back to the real question: Yes, I tend to favour the free (but preferable in both ways) stuff. That’s more an emotional/ideological thing though and includes my own commitment working hard to understand/master the software afterwards. Just because it is free/libre.
Hope my english is good enough to make my point. Got to this post (indirectly) via twitter and had to RT it. It’s a very interesting question!
Posted 27 Feb 2009 at 2:35 pm ¶Ben,
Thanks for the ReTweet! I ask those questions for everything, not just free stuff – question 6 is relevant because a new, free system might be an improvement over an existing system simply because if it does all of the same stuff at a lower cost then that’s a cost improvement.
Same with question 7. It’s making an apples to apples comparison with free/commercial goods – when the dollar price of something is zero I have to convert the “time cost” of it into dollars.
In my empirical experience most free products have been more expensive to support and implement simply because they don’t have as many features, aren’t supported as well, don’t play nice with existing systems, and many other such reasons.
The other reason is support – many free products don’t offer much in the way of organized support at all, even premium support (MySQL is a big exception to this, as are some other high-profile open source projects.) It’s just something I’ve observed based on my experience with a VERY limited set of technological needs for my business – it could be totally different in a different sector.
Posted 27 Feb 2009 at 3:18 pm ¶And your English was fine, by the way :p
Posted 27 Feb 2009 at 3:18 pm ¶Aaron and Carter,
What if the shopping mall was a third party organization allowing merchants to sell to social shoppers (social network users)? This means Facebook and MySpace wouldn’t own any of the searches or purchases within the third party applications/network and therefore, they couldn’t use that information for advertising purposes.
This third party organization wouldn’t share any information between merchants or social networks, so no worry about GNC knowing about your new porno, or about getting new penis enhancement advertisements.
I know target-marketing ads are Facebook’s future, but I strongly believe they should not take part within commerce (beyond virtual gifts). Too much power (or information) corrupts.
Twitter @b3buy
Posted 27 Feb 2009 at 5:53 pm ¶Exactly! First day in any real economics course TNSTAAFL – “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
Posted 28 Feb 2009 at 11:03 am ¶Hear, Hear!
Posted 02 Mar 2009 at 1:44 pm ¶The problem with the classless society that we can surmise is the desire of these people attacking the rich class, is that it is just that: without class.
You never find a society of complete equals in all levels because the only way to accomplish that is to pull everyone down to the lowest common denominator. No one is allowed to be smarter, stronger, or superior in any way to anyone else. Which means we can only hope to attain the lowest of the low.
Thanks for this blog.
Posted 02 Mar 2009 at 1:49 pm ¶I don’t think anyone is calling for a classless society or one where everyone has equal outcomes. However i think what many are saying is that maybe its ok for Trump and others to have only 4 yachts instead of 5 if that’ll mean an extra few thousand kids can have health insurance.
I also have to question the premise/implication that the rich, upper class, investor class whatever you want to call them are not pulling their funds and stopping their investments because of the tax rates. It seems to me regardless of the tax rate if your dollars are generating funds for you through investment you will continue to invest if they’re not you won’t. Sounds simple, but the point is tax rate will only effect how much you make on your investment not whether you make it.
Lastly its easy to say look at the stock market, but most likely obama’s tax policy has much less to do with drops in the stock market (which i’ll add was already tanking) then a complete lack of consumer confidence and other factors.
Posted 02 Mar 2009 at 2:09 pm ¶@Isaac – It’s not just what the rich choose to do with their assets, but it’s also what they do with their business. The majority of the business owners I know have reduced the sizes of their workforces in anticipation of higher taxes, mandates for higher benefits, and so forth.
The mentality of “4 yachts instead of 5″ adds up – when you have 20,000 people who all have had 1 yacht’s worth of money taxed from them then that’s 20,000 less yachts that will be manufactured or purchased over a span of time – even if a yacht isn’t something that the average person can afford, the yacht-building industry is still one that employs a lot of average people – is our government going to create some sort of non-yacht job for those people?
In addition, most of the money accumulated by people like Trump is not spent on Yachts and houses and fancy cars – it’s invested into funds or stashed in banks, primary investment vehicles that keep the wheels of economic expansion in our country turning.
But who gets to say who is rich? What if I came to you Isaac and said “you know, you could probably get by with just one car instead of two – you and your wife should probably carpool – it would be better for the environment anyways.” Is that still ok?
“Lastly its easy to say look at the stock market, but most likely obama’s tax policy has much less to do with drops in the stock market (which i’ll add was already tanking) then a complete lack of consumer confidence and other factors.”
From the post: “the biggest problem with the economy is confidence, and this kind of class warfare is exacerbating a legitimate economic slump by attacking the class of people who are going to help get us out of it.”
Obama’s policies are compounding a problem that already gives a lot of business owners pause – this evidence is anecdotal, but a number of my family friends who own businesses have eliminated jobs simply because they have to assume a defensive posture as a result of Obama’s plan to soak their business. I imagine that it’s a precaution that a lot of other like-minded owners are taking.
Posted 02 Mar 2009 at 2:28 pm ¶Also – the point of my post wasn’t so much about specific policy as it was about a philosophy of aggressively attacking one economic class and using them as a piggy bank.
Posted 02 Mar 2009 at 3:02 pm ¶In terms of hiring/firing based on tax policy I’m not sure i buy it. I wrote an article on why i don’t think tax policy effects hiring… http://isaacbearg.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/would-cutting-taxes-create-jobs/
My conclusion is that smart companies are largely unaffected (at least directly) by what the business tax rate is. They make decisions on whether the person can bring in more then they pay them.
Love to get your thoughts on my math/position.
Posted 02 Mar 2009 at 5:04 pm ¶@Isaac,
Sure Isaac, I’d love to read it when I have the chance.
Posted 02 Mar 2009 at 5:20 pm ¶@Isaac,
“My conclusion is that smart companies are largely unaffected (at least directly) by what the business tax rate is.”
Before I look at your formula, I’d qualify this with “depends on what type of company.” Public companies and privately owned LLC/S-Corps compensate management in different ways, some of which are affect more by taxes than others. All of the people whom I was referring to are S-Corp/LLC owners who make most of their living off of the post-tax profits from their businesses, so it does affect them more than a C-Corp president who’s paid a fixed salary along with a pre-tax performance bonus.
Posted 02 Mar 2009 at 5:23 pm ¶Hey Isaac,
So I read through your math – in the example you gave ($1m/year business earning $100k/year in profit) a change in the corporate tax rate from 35% to 30% wouldn’t do much in the short run to create jobs given how small the profit margin is.
I prepared my own example that took me 30 minutes to write and was rather complicated, but I decided that it would be more effective if I just said this:
1. In good times when business is growing, the sole act of raising taxes would probably not cause business owners to have to fire anybody. It would decrease the amount of dollars that owners have to spend on themselves and it would decrease the number of dollars that they could reinvest into their business, which from a big picture point of view would make it more difficult to expand and grow the economy.
2. That being said, in bad times when sales are dropping, credit markets are tightening, and profits are falling, raising taxes adds another burden on top of businesses (I’m thinking more of S-CORP owners; C-CORPs are more complicated animals that I don’t understand as well) that are already struggling to make a sizable profit. S-CORP owners who depend on their businesses profit to pay for their mortgages, college funds for their children, medical expenses, and other fixed expenses can’t simply “cut down” on their own personal expenditures enough to make up for a 10,20,30% decrease in revenue. The cuts have to come from the business itself -and sometimes that means cropping the workforce.
So speaking in the here and now, consumer confidence has damaged the revenues of a lot of businesses by around 30% – that alone is cause for cutbacks. Decreasing profit by 5% by means of taxation makes the problem worse. More than anything else though, it also makes it harder to invest back into business to begin economic expansion again. The first thing to take a hit when profits fall is investment.
Posted 02 Mar 2009 at 9:11 pm ¶My goal is to get around 100 votes – this is in no way scientific but I would at least like to have a respectably large sample size :p
Posted 06 Mar 2009 at 5:56 pm ¶Aaron:
While your logic and thought processes are elegant, I really enjoy the way you use the English laguage. You almost sound like a poet talking about technology. Fascinating reading.
Good job.
ADD, Ph.D.
Posted 07 Mar 2009 at 1:11 pm ¶very interesting article, i suppose the challenge is incorporating links from twitter, niche sites etc, while also weeding out the twitter links from the free laptop people. I think Google’s got people smart enough to get it done though… if they tried.
Posted 09 Mar 2009 at 8:39 am ¶Awesome videos, they explain everything much clearer than most other sources, and with a bit of humour too!
Thanks,
Posted 13 Mar 2009 at 8:53 am ¶James.
You might want to also consider giving zembly a try. zembly (http://zembly.com) is a new kind of integrated development environment (IDE) from Sun Microsystems that offers developers streamlined, collaborative, browser-based development and cloud hosting for social applications, widgets, and web APIs. Zembly targets applications for Facebook, OpenSocial, meebo, and general web platforms.
Posted 15 Mar 2009 at 9:21 pm ¶Well I did a tweet about your blogpost. And it is an importan question so I made a little longer comment here.
I have done the same with bloggers who have bloged about news stories in our small swedish web science journal. Budget for such is 0 for marketing so bloggers who links something they liked is important.
It has a personal prize of some sort to allways contact when you notice a blog post so long periods I dont do it (so much other stuff to do – little time / small budget). But this usually works good and do not creep people out. It has focus on giving something back on a personal level and show a human face.
1. I read the blog.
2. I email if possible.
3. I say thanks. I explain that our budget is 0 so bloggers like you is important.
4. I tell about specific projects I have done to thank the bloggosphere in big (for example one site about using free picture, one about fact checking and a couple of more).
5. I give some examples of stuff I like with their blog. Like a blog post I feelt had a good point.
6. I make a suggestion in a positive way. Not something they have written that I feel is bad. More like a tips on finding a good picture + that they can have Blogger.com comment form under blog posts and such.
7. I suggest some similar articles on the same subject we have or other sites.
Good luck with your blog and Twitter-customer!
PS
Posted 17 Mar 2009 at 1:17 am ¶I have only read 3 posts yet but your blog is quite good!
Hans,
You are my hero. Thanks for reading and I’m glad you’re enjoying it!
Posted 17 Mar 2009 at 9:17 am ¶I think your blog-design is rather nice to. Not anything disturbing at all in graphics – feels very conservative and “serious”.
Posted 17 Mar 2009 at 9:30 am ¶Im not sure that nofollow is the main reason in the situation for these site. I have thought from time to time to comment on in. But most likely never will.
Thought about something else to comment here. See this lazy blog post I did in a pass-time blog and the *third* comic. Wouldnt that one be usfull in the future for you discussion Wikipedia in your normal area of thoughts on the subject?
http://www.pryltrend.com/2009/03/fyra-kul-skamtteckningar-om-prylar.html
But Im rather fond on the comics from that site (www.marriedtothesea.com). They allow republishing but check the licens your self if you see anyuse of it.
I have no affiliate with marriedtothesea.com, business relationship, association or any other contact. So you dont missunderstand it as spam.
Posted 17 Mar 2009 at 12:05 pm ¶You are spot on using ROI internally for buy in and prioritising. What about the intangibles though? This “feels like a better project”, we like the “brand on this”, this is the “vision”. Look to make the intangibles tangible and prove ROI on these too. Today I helped someone prove ROI on membership in a chamber of commerce in a down economy when all they thought they had to offer was “a place to meet and get moral support”. Well just supposing these people meet, they “pump each other up”, they feel better, they go and make a more confident sales pitch, because the pitch is confident they get an order. Hey presto – feel better = confident = sell more = ROI on “just getting together”, OK simple example but get the idea? Make the intangible tangible and you can measure it.
Posted 17 Mar 2009 at 3:11 pm ¶Yeah I wanted something that’s somewhat minimalist and uncluttered. Although blogs tend to become cluttered over time by the vary nature of adding categories, tags, and posts I think this design comes off as pretty sanitary.
Posted 19 Mar 2009 at 2:43 pm ¶Good post, we hope you are right as we are putting a great deal of effort in developing a family of niche social bookmark sites. The first up are http://www.keecricket.com , for the cricket fan and http://www.keemedia.net for the Pr professional. Many more to follow
Posted 28 Mar 2009 at 3:43 pm ¶so youre ok with kids without healthcare then?
Posted 02 Apr 2009 at 1:22 pm ¶You explained that rather well, but not well enough for the the Dems to understand.
Posted 02 Apr 2009 at 2:30 pm ¶“so youre ok with kids without healthcare then?”
Healthcare is a service, not an entitlement. If they can’t pay for it, they don’t get it. Ditto for food, water, and shelter.
Posted 02 Apr 2009 at 2:51 pm ¶Great information! Thank you….
Posted 03 Apr 2009 at 10:59 am ¶The Protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism lives. Economy, continuity and focus and burn our money at death.
Posted 06 Apr 2009 at 9:10 pm ¶I totally agree with you. In fact id like to recommend a site dotnetshoutout.com which is similar to dotnetkicks as the name suggests for .net programmers.
Posted 09 Apr 2009 at 12:55 pm ¶You’re all fools … It’s not even essential in life! It’s just a toy that will not take you anywhere, it takes you instead.
Posted 10 Apr 2009 at 3:35 am ¶Oh man, I can’t believe I put “privacy” instead of “piracy” in the opening line. My bad :\
Posted 17 Apr 2009 at 3:20 pm ¶Hi Aaron.
I voted for doing nothing. Twitter is largely ephemeral it will probably mostly float by in the current. If it makes it into more permanent online pages then it’s there for a while. I don’t know what your software is but knowing that it’s regularly hackable is a new level of information that you don’t want to get out there either or marginal pirates might get tempted.
I don’t think it’s a time to make a point. When I was younger, I was more idealistic.
Tom
Posted 17 Apr 2009 at 4:41 pm ¶Hey Tom,
Our software isn’t hacked very regularly – it does happen every few years and creates some trouble when it happens. As our company has grown it’s become a bit of a bigger target, but we’re fortunate in that most people who pirate software aren’t in our target market to begin with so the damage is often minimal. Turbulent economic conditions like these however exacerbate piracy and can create problems for us.
My personal vote is also to do nothing. My voice as a member of the corporation is louder than any hacker’s is, and I would be loath use it to notify people that a version of our product has been hacked.
Posted 17 Apr 2009 at 5:33 pm ¶Thanks for that video. Very informative for someone who didn’t quite fully understand what pingbacks were all about.
Posted 19 Apr 2009 at 8:46 pm ¶Being that this is against the TOS of Twitter – your well within your rights to notify them and have the account closed… no reason to publicly say why – Twitter should silently kill the account and move on.
Publishing hacked/pirated content should fall within one or both of these categories – http://twitter.com/tos – #5 and #10
Posted 21 Apr 2009 at 12:12 pm ¶@EmailKarma
If it’s a public account like The Pirate Bay’s account or mini-novas you don’t think it’ll cause a stink?
And thanks for reiterating that point about the TOS.
Posted 21 Apr 2009 at 1:07 pm ¶It’s an a really interesting question. You do run the real risk of the Streisand effect as you call it but doing nothing doesn’t seem to be a great option either. I voted for other.
May a better solution is just to have their account shut down as @emailkarma suggested. If they pirate multiple products it would be tough to say you’re the one shutting them down.
Or maybe (and i’m just thinking aloud) there are other things you can do with social media that don’t directly attack the hacking. Perhaps the better approach is getting the message out to people looking for the pirated version about the value of your product and why the pirated version isn’t comparable (no customer service, no updates, etc).
Those may be awful suggestion since i don’t know the product or customer well enough. However the broader idea i think is use the tools to create relationships with potential customers and to attack piracy more indirectly than directly.
just my $.02
Posted 21 Apr 2009 at 8:24 pm ¶http://highcow.com/home is a very good one and has lets of perks that those on the list
Posted 23 Apr 2009 at 1:55 am ¶Hey Aaronontheweb,
Thanks for this genuinely informative article on pingbacks and trackbacks. I always wondered what on earth they were. I recently set up quite a few wordpress blogs with the intention of turning them into valuable pieces of VRE and I think this will help me.
I’d be lying if I said I understood what they were right now; hell, I probably couldn’t explain it to you now if you asked me to. =p I had what looks like a suspicious blog pingback to a post I made yesterday… I mean, if he’s linking back to me, and giving me a free backlink, as long as he’s not spamming me, it’s ok to leave the pingback there, right?
Oh no wait… the main thing is that he’s leaving a link to HIS (or her) blog through the pingback… hmm… what’s the best thing at this stage you think, for someone who’s trying to get their own (white hat) blog “up there” in the blogosphere? Dump the pingback or leave it?
Thanks also for the info on technorati.com and the video. I’m checking it out now.
Cheers,
Johnson.
Posted 27 Apr 2009 at 2:57 am ¶I couldn’t agree more. That is why landing pages are so important. You need to set it up so that if you are running CPC on your site the visitors will do what you direct them to do.
Posted 01 May 2009 at 12:33 pm ¶stuck between a rock in a hard spot. I voted for contacting twitter like more of your readers.
Posted 06 May 2009 at 5:31 pm ¶using publishTemplatizedAction
Posted 15 May 2009 at 9:39 am ¶getting below error
This method can only be used to publish Mini-Feed stories to Facebook Pages. Its use for posting feed stories to user pages has been deprecated
The site I visited before this one hosted an open source project that does what you want on IIS. Search for “managed fusion” + rewrite and you will find it.
Posted 25 May 2009 at 3:04 pm ¶Good post… I run a blog that does no follow and it ranks very well. We try to emulate Wiki because of its strength on Google. But know with Bing I wonder what that will do.
Posted 01 Jun 2009 at 2:25 pm ¶I fully agree.
Unique visitors doesn’t mean anything unless we push them to a specific action on our site.
It also depends on the niche market your blog is about.For some niche markets, visitors come on your site for a specific action and it is easy to forecast what you can earn from your blog.
Posted 03 Jun 2009 at 7:30 am ¶I disagree with your assertion about content. Let me be the first one here to say that I am an avid player of the mafia wars game application on FB… I would never waste my valuable and precious time on facebook but for that game… ( and I don’t use the game to communicate with friends except in the context of the game play). Quite frankly, FB communication vehicles are the most ardous I’ve ever encountered in my life. You’ve also overlooked something else, about monetization. In so much as that game holds my interest, I have been tempted to purchase relevant electrons (if you will) on the promise that the ‘game experience’ becomes heightened… Not on any hope that my communication is sustained or even improved. Finally, about 2998 out of the 3000 apps you mentioned are really just crap…plain and simple… It’s as though were in a giant cracker-jack box, but there is no candied popcorn and peanuts (no content) .. instead Its an empty box, full of useless prizes that you somehow correalte and confuse as motivational artifacts to get me to spend a dollar. Get real folks! THe way you’ve manifested your communication model (Face book’s dumbass error handling user penalties for abuse not withstanding) is simply not ‘all that’. How about adapting your model to include the “self actualized” at a reasonable price that isn’t gonna disappear in three months. (Can you imagine if your house was built on the principles you hoc here??)
I’ve ranted enough..
Thank you
Posted 15 Jun 2009 at 11:39 pm ¶Think Different.
Join the collective.
Posted 19 Jun 2009 at 2:40 pm ¶If they were smart, and I certainly hope they are, they should try an actual real advertising service. They should really link up with this company Ive been using for a while now. http://adwido.com. They are Very reliable and prompt at getting my message out.
Posted 24 Jun 2009 at 1:17 pm ¶I think writing your own blog engine is a great idea. And the best part is that you don’t have to bother with someone else’s list of required features. You code it to your needs and leave the rest out. Then add more features as you need them.
Posted 25 Jun 2009 at 9:49 pm ¶I know a blogger who’s alexa is around 4k, around 450k-500k unique visitors every month. His monthly earnings = US $20k -25k
Posted 30 Jun 2009 at 12:31 am ¶Actually it all depends on how effectively and page centered monetization has been done.
You are so right, Aaron. We just had this conversation this morning at our weekly staff meeting, where we were reviewing analytics on our blog and traffic counts, sources, etc. Everyone was much more interested in length of time on the site and page views, not so focused on number of visits. Bottom line – is the blog (or website) accomplishing the marketing goal? Who ever listed web traffic counts as a marketing goal? (Rhetorical question I guess).
Posted 30 Jun 2009 at 3:07 pm ¶Thanks for an excellent article.
Posted 01 Jul 2009 at 7:26 am ¶Are there actual guidelines published by any government agency?
What is one of the criteria in what you call -Mail Marketing is not there (such as it is only unsolicited but has everything else)?
Is the number of actual emails sent a determining factor in what is called SPAM?
For example, let’s say all the criteria you mentioned is there- can one send out 50,000 emails in one day?
I still don’t get the “Callback Url” stuff!
Posted 12 Jul 2009 at 7:17 am ¶How do I know what it is?
I’m running XP + PHP5 + Apache2.2 + MySQL5.1
Sorry there, I still don’t get the “Callback Url” part. How can I get that? I’m using XP + PHP5 + Apache2.2 + MySQL5.1
Posted 12 Jul 2009 at 7:20 am ¶Thanks in advance ^^
I just finished developing my 1st fb app (link in the “website” field). would be nice if you could tip me how to monetize that one. I hope that it will be popular.
Posted 18 Jul 2009 at 3:36 pm ¶am not able to find where this side nav url is. there are many fields that you have mentioned are not there in the form that I filled up for developing a sample facebook appn,,,,,,, do u know what the prioblem is?
Posted 31 Jul 2009 at 12:12 am ¶Apple is like the freaking borg, I do not want to join them, thats why I don’t have any apple products, and probably never will ( that is until they stop “thinking different” ) and actually put out some competitive prices.
My two reasons for not buying apple products are, crazy weirdo fanboys, and prices that are two, and even 3 times higher than they should be.
Posted 06 Aug 2009 at 12:28 pm ¶You would be a fool to choose BlogEngine over WordPress. BlogEngine totally sucks.
After using BlogEngine for a year, I tried WordPress and it totally rocks.
Posted 18 Aug 2009 at 7:22 pm ¶Of the major reference sites (e.g. Wikipedia, yahoo answers, answers.com, answerbag.com) which depend on the public community to build their information database, it appears that most use no-follow. Are there still any that credit their contributors (allow links without putting on the nofollow attribute)?
Posted 31 Aug 2009 at 11:51 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 170
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[...] Search Engine Optimization for ASP.NET 2.0 | AjaxNinja [...]
[...] View Lite – There are a lot of developers out there who wish Internet Explorer would either accept the W3C standards or just go aw…, but unfortunately a large portion of Internet users are Internet Explorer users. IE View Lite [...]
[...] Web 2.0 Development, Online Marketing, and Online Business at AjaxNinja. His most recent article is Blogging for Business: Blogs are not just a fad. {Ad} Improve your life with an Oxygenics showerhead. Save money and water without sacrificing [...]
[...] Blogging for Business: Understanding the Two Types of Audiences by Aaronontheweb [...]
[...] I do not love every single Microsoft product out there; I just recently wrote an article explaining my favorite Firefox web browser extensions and I have been comparing my current open-source PHP-based blog platform, Wordpress, to the new open-source ASP.NET BlogEngine.NET. [...]
[...] do not love every single Microsoft product out there; I just recently wrote an article explaining my favorite Firefox web browser extensions and I have been comparing my current open-source PHP-based blog platform, Wordpress, to the new [...]
[...] I do not love every single Microsoft product out there; I just recently wrote an article explaining my favorite Firefox web browser extensions and I have been comparing my current open-source PHP-based blog platform, Wordpress, to the new open-source ASP.NET BlogEngine.NET. [...]
[...] do not love every single Microsoft product out there; I just recently wrote an article explaining my favorite Firefox web browser extensions and I have been comparing my current open-source PHP-based blog platform, Wordpress, to the new [...]
More Thoughts on Rea Maor’s “7 Reasons Why Microsoft is DOOMED!”
Yesterday I wrote a post called Rea Maor doesn’t get it – 7 Reasons Why Microsoft is not Doomed. It was simply a debunking piece for Rea Maor’s absurd article on 7 Reasons Why Microsoft is DOOMED!
On second thought, I think Rea Maor’…
[...] have done previous posts before on AJAX and CSS, but this time I’m going to simply give you a list of links I’m using for a little AJAX [...]
[...] word of thanks to Gary Gil of Podclass, Woody Pewitt of Microsoft (who gave a great presentation on Facebook.NET), Alex Shah of FaceDouble, Ryan Denny of BYU, David Levine of the Harvard Business School, Rodney [...]
[...] post a couple of days ago regarding the release of Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET is a total advertisement by me for the book; I am still waiting on my copy, along with a book I purchased on ASP.NET and [...]
A Much Better Approach to Facebook Application Monetization
I had the pleasure of attending the Facebook Application Developer’s Garage in San Diego, California on August 23rd. It was hosted by Rodney Rumford of FaceReviews at Microsoft’s local office space in San Diego.
For a brief bit of time we …
Are You Monetizing Your Blog Unethically?
Many bloggers abuse the trust placed upon them by their own readership with unethical monetization techniques and a failure to disclose the intentions behind product reviews, best seller lists, and the placement of affiliate links.
[...] McClure, whom I met I met through an internet slap fight over TechDumpster and VentureBeat, was the Director of Marketing for PayPal between 2001 and 2004. He knows way more about online [...]
Firefox – u
[...] spent a lot of time in the Blogging for Business series discussing what blogging is in a nutshell and how to establish your blog as an “authority” within its domain, but in this article [...]
[...] Web 2.0, Online Marketing, and Online Business at AjaxNinja.com. His most recent article is 7 Reasons Why Microsoft is Not Doomed. {Ad} Get 1 Year FREE web hosting when you purchase website template from AdesDesign.net, and check [...]
[...] Ninja has a list of 10 Awesome Firefox Extensions for Developers and Bloggers. Greasemonkey gets my vote, [...]
[...] View Lite – There are a lot of developers out there who wish Internet Explorer would either accept the W3C standards or just go aw…, but unfortunately a large portion of Internet users are Internet Explorer users. IE View Lite [...]
[...] If you want to find a niche social network for your blog or social network, I suggest you look at my article, 30+ Media Sites for Promoting Your Blog. [...]
[...] featured my piece on 7 Reasons Why Niche Social Media Outlets are Better Than Digg on Friday, and I just had to show you guys the awesome media piece that they created for their [...]
[...] instead to take care of the legwork. This approach was recommended by AjaxNinja readers in my How to Design a Great Data Layer in .NET [...]
[...] Silverlight 1.0 with C# – Photo Carousel (Part 1) – Nikhil Kothari, the same ASP.NET developer who brought us Facebook.NET, has a great Silverlight 1.0 code sample up. I haven’t had a chance to play around with [...]
[...] Why Im switching to Facebook.NET from the Facebook Developers Toolkit – I didn’t even know there were two ways to hook up .NET apps to Facebook. (via DotNetKicks) [...]
[...] went out and contacted Omar AL Zabir for my PageFlakes interview, simply to exemplify a cool new Web 2.0 company that uses …, and I know there are others out there. For the love of God can we as a community of developers do [...]
[...] Why is .NET getting its (I need to watch my language) kicked in social media? I wrote an article on my blog AjaxNinja this morning basically asking why .NET is so under-represented in social media; a lot of the DZone community has provided me with some good answers, but a lot of RoR/PHP script kiddies did a fantastic job douching up my comments page.Is .NET getting it's (I need to watch my language) kicked in social media? What does Channel 9 think?If you want to read the original post, check outhttp://www.ajaxninja.com/?p=168 [...]
How To Improve Your Traffic By 1000% Using Headline Improvements
When you write for web pages, whether it’s blog posts or web page, your headings (blog post titles) are very crucial. Your well-defined headlines don’t only increase your search engine rankings they also make people click your link. Your h…
[...] 10+ Awesome Firefox Extensions for Developers and Bloggers. I was considering putting together a list of the best Firefox extensions for web developers, but the job has already been done. Ajax Ninja has captured the best of the best in his list. I hadn’t known about Seoquake, to my eternal shame. Now I just need to find a list of the best Firefox extensions for Web Analysts. firefox extensions Web analytics web development WT Debugger WT Detector [...]
[...] mentioned in my post about why I love DiscountASP.NET that I had been with a previous host for several years before I decided to switch. I spent a lot of [...]
[...] post from the previous week on why is .NET getting its ass kicked in social media has resulted in a massive storm of comments and debate, most of which has been informative and [...]
[...] I think my readers would appreciate getting to the good stuff right away. On Friday I mentioned the immediate impact that the Lifehacker traffic tsunami had on AjaxNinja and today I’m going to talk about how you can surf a traffic wave to generate a larger splash [...]
[...] your ASP.NET applications by stripping out extra HTTP handlers, page modules, and partial methods. Click here to check out last week’s 10 Hot ASP.NET [...]
[...] article as a resource for my Facebook application development (Master Pages are VERY helpful for Facebook.NET applications.) What I like about it is the section towards the end where it covers how to access [...]
[...] It’s about time for an update on Facebook Application with ASP.NET, using Nikhil Kothari’s Facebook API wrapper for ASP.NET, Facebook.NET. If you want to read about why I’m using Facebook.NET instead of the Facebook Control Toolkit then click here. [...]
[...] strongly-typed references to Master Pages in all of your .aspx files – In my 10 Hot ASP.NET Tips and Tricks for the week of 9/28/2007 article I mentioned an article on master pages. In the subsequent code sample for the article I [...]
[...] If you write a great article on a popular subject, publish it immediately. That’s a great way to surf a traffic wave. In addition if you write an article on a subject which becomes popular some time after you wrote [...]
[...] (Data layers, Facebook.NET, [...]
[...] Applications & Social Media [...]
[...] post was about Facebook Application Monetization, a subject that I’ve covered on a couple of [...]
[...] Today I read another one of Dave McClure’s entries regarding his Graphing Social Patterns conference; Dave’s post was about Facebook Application Monetization, a subject that I’ve covered on a couple of occasions. [...]
[...] You can read the rest of this blog post by going to the original source, here [...]
[...] all the details here [...]
[...] Monday I answered a question from a reader regarding how to locate relevant blogs within your domain, and today I’m going to cover a second question from that same [...]
[...] development tips (and believe me there will be several more to come), and I mentioned using Facebook test accounts to assist in development. After a week or two of actual using the accounts extensively I must tell [...]
Facebook app monetization via SMS?
A few days ago social networking site Facebook announced mobile extension to its popular developer platform. Great move, as mobile is definitely where things are going these days. However, it seems that it’s not very stable yet, and they have rushed …
[...] Developer Things Full web2.0 API List Real Time HTML Editor Easiest way to find keyboard shortcuts 10 Firefox Addons for Developers [...]
[...] written before about how much I enjoy being a DiscountASP.NET customer for the past three years and I still have a DiscountASP.NET affiliate banner sitting at the bottom [...]
[...] DiscountASP.NET and Community Server do not mix, despite what DiscountASP.NET advertises (AjaxNinja, via AjaxNinja.com). [...]
[...] attention to Google’s OpenSocial technology, which appears to be an implementation of the web 2.0 middleware concept that I described a couple of a weeks [...]
[...] AjaxNinja posts how Community Server and DiscountASP.NET do not mix, as CS's memory footprint exceed's DiscountASP.NET's 100MB limit causing the App Pool to [...]
[...] Responds very quickly; handles traffic waves very well. [...]
[...] written before about how it annoys me that it takes a lot of time and effort to develop powerful social media accounts. However, one of my friends is trying to learn how to use StumbleUpon in order to help promote his [...]
[...] to Use StumbleUpon to Generate Topic IdeasMy Rea Maor debunking came about as a result of StumbleUpon; SU really is a good resource for coming up with topic ideas [...]
[...] Just a quick post for today, but a valuable one nonetheless. I have mentioned before how I prefer developing Facebook.NET applications using the Iframe method of implementation, namely because I didn’t think it was possible to debug FBML implementations on the localhost. [...]
[...] 50+ Resources for Utilizing StumbleUpon Effectively [...]
[...] AjaxNinja posts how Community Server and DiscountASP.NET do not mix, as CS's memory footprint exceeds DiscountASP.NET's 100MB limit causing the App Pool to [...]
[...] got visibility and an intelligent, cool audience that’s priceless. AjaxNinja suggested seek out guest writers and I’m doing it today . . [...]
[...] put together a massive resource list encompassing a large spectrum of the StumbleUpon tips and tricks last week. I knew it would take off like hot cakes on StumbleUpon, were it not for one crucial [...]
[...] Facebook uses a proxy-caching system in order to help maintain scalability, which I described in my New Facebook Application Form Demystification article. The images I was trying to publish were protected behind windows authentication, thus [...]
[...] Ajax Ninja, who blogged about ongoing problems with CS2007 on DiscountASP.NET, reports that DiscountASP.NET is discontinuing support for Community Server 2007 because it exceeds their 100MB app pool policy. More specifically, they've removed [...]
[...] 위
[...] 7 Reasons Why Niche Social Media Outlets are Better Than Digg from AjaxNinja discusses several compelling reasons for avoiding Digg: [...]
[...] Firefox Plugins: The post lists 10 Firefox extensions for web developers and bloggers. The usual suspects are included, but it is always to have a reminder. [...]
[...] They go on to talk about how they get jacked because the person submitting has no friends or they don’t know how to submit and their articles go no where but to the abyss of the dead [...]
[...] as yet another empty Web 2.0 promise, but when the guys from ADOOGA asked me to look into porting my most recent Facebook application, “Contest of the Day”, I decided to take a closer [...]
[...] About [...]
[...] Mid-October I wrote about the idea of a “Web 2.0 Middleware,” a technology capable of eliminating the “platform dependency issue” for [...]
[...] the idea of a “Web 2.0 Middleware,” a technology capable of eliminating the “platform dependency issue” for developers who are interested in developing applications to serve social networks. [...]
[...] In Mid-October I wrote about the idea of a “Web 2.0 Middleware,” a technology capable of eliminating the “platform dependency issue” for developers who are interested in developing applications to serve social networks. Within a couple of weeks of my first article Google announced OpenSocial, which, by the sound of it, is more or less the “middleware” that I was calli…. [...]
[...] future of the social graph? If OpenSocial ever gets off the ground and if Bebo ever makes its Facebook clone API available, social graphs will begin to merge, and that’s when the social networking branding wars will [...]
[...] is sitting comfortably at around $690.50 as I am writing this post. I have written before about how Google is making moves to become the world’s most powerful advertising network and how it̵… and I have no doubt that the expansion of AdSense will be Google’s breadwinner for the next [...]
[...] If you want to do more reading up on Memogate then I suggest you read the first heading of my article from August, Blogging for Business: Blogs are not just a fad. [...]
[...] has posted some great predictions for 2008. It is an interesting list that would change the Web 2.0 landscape if they come [...]
[...] hype & buzz after the announcement of the F8 platform. I have blogged many of my thoughts about proper approaches to monetizing Facebook applications I haven’t yet discussed Facebook’s "grand [...]
[...] made 8 Bold Predictions for Web 2.0 in 2008. One of the predictions is that Google will have its first failure in 2008. I thought Google [...]
[...] article from last week 10 Awesome Firefox Extensions for Developers and Bloggers was picked up by Lifehacker on Saturday and resulted in a flood of [...]
[...] I’ve blogged about Telligent’s Community Server before; I was also partially responsible for getting DiscountASP.NET to stop advertising that they support CS 2007. [...]
[...] Of course, it started working perfectly. I have posted a bug to the tracker and decided to look at the Facebook.NET, a better and much cleaner implementation according to AjaxNinja. [...]
[...] is “looking for” as far as monetizeable content is concerned. If you missed my initial Startup Spotlight on HubPages then you should give it a [...]
[...] A Much Better Approach to Facebook Application Monetization [...]
[...] Essential Graphic Design Tools for .NET Developers (Aaron Stannard) [...]
[...] October 17, 2007 Application Deficit Syndrome – or how many facebooks apps are enough? Posted by tbuesing under Advertising, NetX, Social Media, apps, facebook Now facebook apps are all the rage…with the clients. Via the back door of junior marketing people (who are entrenched in the social media scene), many marketing departments ask agencies like NetX to bring home the bacon. Namely, deliver a lasting engagement of users with their brand, product or campaign … inside their own social circles. While the entry barrier of using the f8 developer platform is set quite low, we simultaneously compete for limited real estate and user’s capacity and need for more apps. [...]
[...] Marketing Ninja How Web 2.0 is Revolutionizing Online Marketing and Services « Damn Domain Name Forwarding Lag [...]
[...] problem under control I can go ahead and write up my smug, self-congratulatory post on how well my 8 Bold Predictions for 2008 are turning out. Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo! doesn’t sound so insane now, does [...]
[...] a final note, major props to Aaron Stannard of Ajax Marketing Ninja who called this a month ago. I'm sad to admit it but my first thought when I found out about this wasn't [...]
[...] Essential Graphic Design Tools for .NET Developers [...]
[...] Marketing Ninja How Web 2.0 is Revolutionizing Online Marketing and Services « As I Predicted: Microsoft Moves to Acquire Yahoo! [...]
[...] solution was to form an alliance with all other networks not included in the F8 platform and launch the OpenSocial platform, pitting the might of Google against the buzz of [...]
[...] F8 was announced in the late Spring of 2007 and took off with a totally unprecedented rate of adoption among developers; I myself, who had never used any sort of Web 2.0 API before, was intrigued enough to give Facebook Application Development a go. [...]
[...] who is aggressively pursuing online real-estate to help them monetize the "second click" in addition to the first, scrambled to respond; after all, Google, an innovative company in their own right, is trying to [...]
[...] that google is releasing the applications built on Open Social API running on orkut. Google is loosing to social networks and there is a buzz that it wants to pick up Bebo for $1b. Myspace also unveiled it’s [...]
[...] last time I went over this: Google doesn’t have a magic money factory behind the employee parking complex at Mountain [...]
[...] thanks to Aaron Stannard for his valuable comments on my book. Here is the link: http://www.marketing-ninja.com/?p=317You can see more reviews on my book at: [...]
[...] Stannard of the Marketing Ninja blog writes in 7 Reasons Why Niche Social Media Outlets are Better Than Digg: Digg has an immense amount of traffic and getting landed on the front page will send a tsunami of [...]
[...] noticed a linkback to my 7 Reasons Why Niche Social Media is Better than Digg today, and then I noticed this great article on RW/W about how as Digg has become more mainstream [...]
[...] Over the past couple of weeks I’ve performed some social media consulting for SmartDraw, namely helping them use their blog. SmartDraw produces versatile diagramming software, which I have used for years; you can see some of the diagrams I produced with SmartDraw in my popular post “How to Use Diagramming to Easily Organize and Plan Projects.” [...]
[...] Headlines – “50+ Resources for Utilizing StumbleUpon Effectively” and “30+ Social Media Sites for Promoting Your Blog” are both good examples of [...]
[...] Headlines – “50+ Resources for Utilizing StumbleUpon Effectively” and “30+ Social Media Sites for Promoting Your Blog” are both good examples of linkbait that I’ve written [...]
[...] 50+ Resources for Utilizing StumbleUpon Effectively [...]
[...] One of the things that I’ve been recommending to my marketing clients, and one of the things that I did for Marketing Ninja today, is to have a long-term brainstorming session where you determine what you’re going to write about and what you’re going to say to your readers. There are a number of ways of doing this, but I think the easiest way to get organized is to use a Mind Map. I’ve written about using Mind Maps before in the context of project organization. [...]
Organize Your Business’ Online Message with Mind Maps | Marketing Ninja
From the Page: “One of the things that I’ve been recommending to my marketing clients, and one of the things that I did for Marketing Ninja today, is to have a brainstorming session where you determine what you’re going to write about and what you…
[...] any of my contact info. Like that girl I met at that party and never called, my former coworkers, people I haven’t spoken to since High School, my college mascot, or my ex-girlfriend’s pet bunny. I can’t believe I ever got by with [...]
Four Options to Consider When Your Content is Plagiarized | Marketing Ninja
From the Page: “So what do you do if someone else is profiting from your own content and you’re not getting adequate credit or compensation?
There are four options:”
[...] about it recently. For example, today Aaron Stannard wrote a post on his blog entitled ‘Is Shameless Self-Promotion Using Social Networks Acceptable?‘. Regular Blogging Tips author Andy MacDonald had sent Aaron about 5 stumble requests via [...]
[...] Is Shameless Self Promotion Using Social Networks Acceptable? – Marketing Ninja [...]
[...] ran across a blog posting that was reacting to another blog posting (as that’s what we blogs do best) that classically [...]
[...] 95: 50+ Resources for Utilizing StumbleUpon Effectively [...]
Are Most Customers too Old School to be Sold through a Blog? | Marketing Ninja
From the page: “If you were to start a new marketing campaign with the objective of educating small business owners, executives, and managers on the benefits of your product, whatever it is, will most of them turn deaf ears to a blog marketing medium …
[...] ever experienced on my Vista Ultimate machine are crashes from Firefox and the infamous “Google Desktop Kills WinSock32.dll” [...]
[...] Are Most Customers too Old School to be Sold through a Blog? [...]
Customers Pick Static Documents over Blog Entries 8 to 1 on Average | Marketing Ninja
Given the choice between an online blog and a PDF download, many customers feel more comfortable with a PDF or other static document.
[...] Trackur – Expensive, Weak Reputation Management [...]
[...] Bloggers Hate Marketers [...]
Apple to Focus on Market Penetration instead of Market Skimming with 3G iPhone | Marketing Ninja
Apple’s announcement of a $199 iPhone that supports critical enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange indicates a windshift away from Apple’s traditional market skimming price strategy towards a market penetration price strategy.
[...] audience, but some people don’t get it yet. Maybe a lot of people don’t get it yet. Marketing Ninja also has a relevant anecdote showing a situation where people preferred static documents (e.g. Adobe .PDF files) over blog posts [...]
[...] tend to disagree with the Marketing Ninja’s idea that social media should stay out of the Kindle. Though I agree that: Reading the Book + Reading Thoughts of Other Readers = Polluted Reading [...]
[...] a little too much for me. I agree more with Marketing Ninja who calls this polluted reading, but I admit that I will probably change my mind as I become more neurotic (or less focused) in my [...]
[...] There is a good article over at Marketing Ninja which delves deeper into the discussion of monetizing Facebook applications. Not that there’s any debate over the rise in popularity of Facebook, here are a few [...]
[...] Yes, the potential is huge. But some companies have been disappointed with the results in their early efforts. They have some great ideas, but aren’t always sure how to monetize them. (Read this insightful article on the challenges of monetizing Facebook applications.) [...]
[...] Apple to Focus on Market Penetration instead of Market Skimming with 3G iPhone [...]
[...] plan & hardware of the original iPhone. I personally was planning on buying one (despite how much I hate the Apple fan boy culture) until I read article after article about the pricing discrepancies. I know there were plenty of [...]
[...] wrote a post on my personal blog about “How I Use Mind Maps to Organize Online Marketing Messages” a while back; in this post I’m going to write about how I use Mind Maps in [...]
[...] This is what I said in my original post about monetizing Facebook applications: apps that make it are ones that add new dimensions to the interpersonal experience of Facebook. [...]