Owner: Useful Concept URL:www.usefulconcept.com Join Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:09:47 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Technology, Reviews, Commentary and More. Site statistics:Click here
var scope of query in cfc 2007-05-03 21:00:00 I made a silly code error. I admit it. In my CFC I had queries without var scoping them. The result was some rather crazy errors for one client. To my credit I had properly scoped and locked my loading of the cfc and its init vars, etc. Why didn't I? Not sure why but it just didn't occur to me that I needed to. Makes sense now of course. A handy guide to scoping in CFC was made by Ray Camden for those that need more general info.
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They Might Be Giants 'The Else' Review 2007-05-04 23:58:00 They Might Be Giants
just kicked off their tour for their new album The Else. The album will be released in a few weeks to itunes, and then to stores in June. Their first stop was at The Stone Church in New Hampshire just last night. It was a great show. The club only fit a few hundred and they easily sold it out for two shows. They played a good mix of new and old songs. We got a good taste of their new album. Apparently there will also be a bonus CD. My favorite new song is actually a track on the bonus CD. We live in a Dump, or something like that. It was catchy and fun.
Their performance style is relaxed and casual. They chatted with the crowd, and with the light crew. They love their crew it turns out! Oh, and they are doing some sort of contest. Beards vs No Beards. So far it is a tie at 1-1. Not sure if only the lighting guys count. At any rate, I recommend the CD and the show i
Adsense Flash Ads 2007-05-08 02:36:00 Google has started to roll out dynamic ad content into their adsense affiliates. On my blog I have seen video ads for Cadillac so far. I think this is a good move on their part. The ads don't look like traditional ads from Google and as such will probably get a higher click through. At least when the ads are new to people. Another good part for web site owners is at least some of the flash ads don't redirect to other sites.
The ad I have seen on my site so far is from Cadillac and is pretty good. Entirely a branding effort. It is about time we see large brands not care about clickthroughs and instead focus on specific branding in context of user experience. It is a short video and when over you are still on my site. I love this. I have no idea what the payout for me is however at least part of the payoff for me and other site owners is that you don't leave the site. Watch the ad and then continue su Read more:Adsense
, Flash
Johnchow Review Results 2007-05-11 01:16:00 As you may note I did a review of John Chow's web site recently. The deal is you review his web site and he will in turn link back to you in groups of 10. His site gets a lot of traffic so people are willing to dedicate a blog post just to get some link love in return. His link back program has been a big hit for him and has also really helped his blog in the search engines. Search on 'Make Money Online' and he is at the top. All because of this link back program.
I was interested to see what would happen if I got a link from him. How much traffic would result? Would that trigger other links or reviews? So I did the review. He posted the blog entry with link a few days later.
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Top 10 Pet Peeves 2007-05-11 00:04:00 These are my top 10 pet peeves in no specific order. A few notes. I have the right to change my mind at any time. I welcome your contributions in comment form. Don’t take them personally, it’s just a blog.
1) The woman in front of me this morning throwing her burning cigarette out the car window while turning right on red without stopping or using a turn signal. You really SHOULD buckle up your young child that is currently standing in the front seat. Perhaps even look into a child seat for him.
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Google Adsense Requires Google Account Now 2007-05-10 23:44:00 Those logging into their google adsense account may now see a wizard alerting them that they must now associate their adsense account with an actual google account. About time! Kind of silly that an adsense account didn't automatically become a google account, but then again that would explain why my issues began with their wizard.
You see my same google account email address is used as my adsense email address. Pretty standard stuff. The transfer wizard requires I enter my existing google account info so they can associate it and transfer the account over. However since my emails are the same it results in an error. You can't have the same email for adsense and google account. What? Let me say that again. Google
will not be able to associate your adsense account with your google account if you have the same email associated with both. Some sort of paradox that would result in destruction of the Universe I am sure. So, what Read more:Adsense
, Account
, Google Adsense
when should I sell my stock? 2007-05-10 14:46:00 When to sell my stock? The ultimate question for the stock market newbie like myself. I own 600 shares of just one stock. (outside of our family retirement stuff) I bought it a few years ago on a whim when it was very very low priced. Right now it is up about 800% and a great success. So when should I sell it? The price has gone up and down a bit, but overall it has climbed pretty consistently.
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user rights on shared objects 2007-05-14 15:28:00 We are reviewing and recoding some user rights code in Savvy right now. Specifically having to do with how you apply rights on a page or template level. Right now it is easy and intuitive (I think) to apply rights to a specific object on any page within the site. Also to do so on a site wide basis. So when applying rights to all objects
on a page, or all objects on all pages made from a template, how do we deal with objects that may be shared across multiple pages/templates?
For example lets look at the navigation object. That object may be the main nav, and used on many templates. When applying user or group rights to a template how should that filter down to the nav object. Should it get the rights like one would normally think, even though that means the user can alter data shown on other templates they may have no rights for? My initial thought is yes. It is easy enough to exclude certain types of objects (such as nav) when appl
naming the 'unauthenticated' user 2007-05-17 21:31:00 What are peoples preferences for naming the unauthenticated user account? I have seen it named unknown or everybody or maybe even visitor.
This account is basically the user that is on your site that isn't logged in. The name is important so admins can set the rights for what this person type can do. If the name isn't accurate that may confuse the admin. For support reasons I would like to lock down this user types official name so admins can't rename.
Boston Scorpio Tour 2007-05-17 14:26:00 Last night the Boston
ColdFusion User Group was held at Adobe's office and it was all about Scorpio
. Despite some bad weather there were 60 or so people who showed up to find out more about CF 8 and all its goodness. There were no new tags or features mentioned as far as I could tell. The crowd was kind of quiet which may have unnerved the speaker (Jason Delmore I think, I came in late) a bit. Jason did a good job even though he was sick and every one was very excited to get their hands on Scorpio. I am sure everyone in the room thought at least once 'that would have made my life so much easier'.
After the presentation I asked Jason why they chose to use FCKeditor to bundle with CF when Adobe owns KTML which I thought was a better editor. He pointed out that they have been working on CF8 for a few years now and that the editor was done a while ago. KTML was just brought into the Adobe fold 6 months ago. Basically too late to be c
Videos of my CMS 2007-05-16 19:48:00 I know that a lot of my blog readers don't really know what I do for a living and for those of you that are non-technical in nature my descriptions probably sound like gibberish. I work for Savvy Software and am the lead developer for our main product Savvy Content Manager. We just posted 30 short videos demonstrating some of the functionality of the CMS. This is not a complete review of the product, but it should give some of you an idea for what it is I have been working on in general. All powered by ColdFusion of course.
Our CMS has been doing quite well lately. We get constant search traffic from schools, municipalities, and companies of all sizes. It isn't unusual for one of us to talk to the likes of Disney and CareerBuilder in the same day. I can't wait to talk to our latest customers that are going to CFUnited and network with some of my fellow CF friends.
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Tabula Rasa 2007-05-16 00:45:00 Raise your hand if you are excited for Tabula
Rasa. I am very interested in trying the beta. While not much info is available the videos look compelling. Apparently you can lock onto targets which aids in action play without the difficulty that many have with first person shooters.
Richard Garriott is the executive producer. He made some of my favorite games. Ultima 4 and 7. As a kid I dreamed of growing up and having his job. The fact he is involved tells me there is at least a chance that the game involves more delema style decisions and complex emotional situations as well as a very imersive world. I am not saying the game will be perfect because he is involved, but I think it is a good sign.
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Read more:Tabula Rasa
Kontera Removed 2007-05-15 23:43:00 I have decided to remove Kontera. For those not familiar Kontera is a form of advertising. As opposed to a traditional ad that shows text or images in an area designated by me, this program looks at the text of my site and automatically ads links to other sites.
I get a few pennies for a click. Yes, a few pennies. The money isn't really worth it. Maybe if I had the volume of activity in the hundreds of thousands of users, but right now it just clutters up my site with no real benefit. I will keep the account in case I need it for some reason.
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Vista Zip Slow and Broken? 2007-05-20 19:16:00 Anyone notice how really really slow unzipping a file is with Vista
? I was downloading ColdBox to play with. a) it took forever to extract the files b) the extraction failed with all kinds of errors. It looked as though it was having issue with unencrypted files and files writing over themselves. (side note coldbox looks really interesting and has great docs and sample files)
I finally gave up on the built in Vista utility and downloaded 7zip. Quick install, free, and worked perfectly. No errors, and did the same task in a fraction of the time. These are the little things that kill this OS.
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Read more:Broken
Best Affililiate Programs 2007-05-20 18:46:00 I have been asked many times by friends and client about ways to make money with their web sites. The quick answer for many is AdSense, but there are many other programs out there. I decided to make a quick little site covering some of my favorites. It isn't a complete list, as there are a lot of scams out there. Rather these are programs I have used or are known to be legitimate and work well for people.
My Best Affiliate Programs
list is a work in progress. I will be adding more when I have a moment or two. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.
Google Supplemental Results for BlogCFC 2007-05-25 17:26:00 I was reviewing my blogs google stats recently when I found that 75 pages of my blog are listed in the supplemental results, not the main google index. My first thought was that maybe blogcfc didn't have propper settings for indexing and following links. A quick look at the code proved that wrong. Blogcfc works just fine (thanks Ray!). The typical reasons for being in the supplemental results don't seem to apply.
Pages such as my vanguard review or database metadata for example are supplemental, though have good content (well, not junk content). I have unique titles and keywords. I have unique content. I don't see anywhere in my blog that my content is duplicated accidentally (category views, etc) that are indexed in any way.
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Read more:Google
, Google Supplemental
computer down 2007-05-25 08:12:00 My HP DV9000t notebook recently had some serious issues. I have had it for 6 months and love it dearly. Why oh why would it mysteriously lose its audio device and mess up its own Ethernet drivers? Was it a power surge? Maybe a windows update? I haven't done anything else but watch tv on it for over a month.
At any rate I gave a call over to HP support. We went through various options and basically I had tried everything they though of already. Reinstall audio drivers... nope. Check services.... nope. Update BIOS... nope. Side note, they used VNC to remote into my machine. Kind of cool. Next step, complete reformat and restore. Turns out that my notebook had a partition on the HD so I didn't need any CD's. Simply press F11 on startup and you are on your way.
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Good By Network Solutions 2007-05-23 18:23:00 I have a half dozen domains registered through Network Solutions. In the past month they have called me no less than 4 times to ask me to renew my domains (not needing to be renewed for months) and sign up all the extra services. It didn't matter that I told them I was all set. I host my own sites. I don't want private registration. I don't want to pay way to much money to register 10 years into the future. They keep calling.
I have been meaning to transfer my domains over to godaddy for a long time and this was the final straw. Godaddy offers the exact same service and for a lot less. In fact, the last Netsol sales rep reminded me that they are actually just resellers of Netsol. On top of that Network Solutions DNS servers have been down for hours at a time and thus my sites using those DNS servers were down. Yup, the goto company for domain registration has caused my sites to go down numerous times. My
color changing card trick 2007-05-28 16:56:00 I love these sorts of visual tricks. Watch this video closely and see if you can catch what is going on. The first half is about the trick the other half is the explanation.
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Read more:card trick
applications without databases with dataMgr 2007-05-28 14:29:00 I have often thought that many smaller applications could be more useful if they didn't use a database. It isn't that I don't like databases, but all to often they become a barrier for adoption, testing, etc. Those apps could easily run without a DB. Easier to test and deploy in theory. Plus writting applications to support multiple DB platforms can be a pain.
Wouldn't it be nice if those small applications that are read only for the most part didn't use a database at all? On the other hand, writing those apps using only xml (or another format) can be a bit more of a pain than it is worth. Using a database makes it so much easier really. None of it is rocket science, but hey we use ColdFusion because it is easy right? Why make our lives more complicated when we don't need to.
That is why DataMgr caught my eye last month. It looked like the perfect tool for quickly and easily using an xml doc as a datasource
Facebook ColdFusion Group 2007-06-01 13:30:00 Did you know there is a ColdFusion
facebook group? Looks like 155 members, though only a few familiar faces/names on the list that I know. I just joined facebook to see what all the talk is about. I find it odd that the networks available are work/school related or region, but not topic. They have groups like the CF group, but it isn't a formal network. Wierd.
Anyway, if you sign up or are already signed up add me to your friends list. See you at CFUnited.
Read more:Facebook
, Group
Lumosity Review 2007-05-31 18:15:00 This is an early review for Lumosity. Lumosity is a site where one plays short games that are supposed to help with brain function. There are many different games that test your skills in various ways. Memory, Speed, etc. You can test your skills with their games without creating an account, to get a good flavor for how it works though the quick trial only includes 3 of the games.
The games themselves are petty fun. You get a score and naturally you want to play again to try and beat that score. My wife and I found ourselves with very different strengths. She is much much better at the speed math games while I do well with the memory maze games. Birdwatching was only ok for both of us. We will play a bit every night for the next month.
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super mario brothers rocks 2007-05-30 11:46:00 I have very fond memories of Super Mario Brothers when I was a kid. I spent sooo much money on the game in the arcade and finally got a Nintendo so I could play it at home. Countless hours of entertainment for me and my friends.
This widget helps bring that fun back.
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Shift Happens 2007-06-06 12:28:00 This video is quite interesting (after the first 20 seconds or so). Basically a lot of stats about the world, techology and the future. I think some of its predictions are bunk, but overall it quite thought provoking. How do you teach technology to kids when it is outdated before they graduate? How do you prepare them for jobs that don't yet exist to solve problems that don't yet exist?
In thinking of my own background I went to business school rather than pursue a computer science degree specifically because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew it would involve computers in some way, but I had NO clue other than that. It wasn't until near the end of my education (1995) that I was introduced to the web, and upon graduating (1996) when I started using ColdFusion. The best thing I did was focus on logic and philosophy as a minor. Gave me everything I needed to learn down the road. Seems to me problem solving shoul Read more:Shift
Panasonic PTAX100U LCD Projector Review 2007-06-10 08:30:00 First a bit of backstory. I have no TV. No Stereo. No home theater. Instead i have a few PC's with Media Center installed on them. I use them to watch tv, record tv, play music, etc. One really handy thing you can do with them is share the media with an extender. For me, the extender is the xbox 360. So how does the Panasonic
PTAX100U LCD Projector
fit in?
If I have an xbox 360 i need to display it somewhere! Plus I always wanted a big screen display. So I went to my office to get our projector, connected it with a ceiling mount to my xbox 360, and presto I am streaming tv and such from my pc to my projector to an 80" wall space.
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Book / Blog List - need advice 2007-06-15 09:36:00 I need to build a little library here thus in the market for some new books / resources. I would love your recommendations for the following:
Flex 2 (or should I wait for 3 before buying book?)
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New Hampshire Smoking Ban 2007-06-19 13:42:00 New Hampshire
officially joins the rest of New England today. A smoking ban for bars and restaurants has been signed into law. Thank freaking goodness! While I respect my smoking friends and their interest in being able to stink up everything around them I am very happy to have smoking banned.
The law takes effect in 90 days so smokers will be able to enjoy the rest of the summer. It will be interesting to see if any restaurant changes early, or if they have a smoking party to mark the end. Interestingly of my favorite bars in Portsmouth, two of the top 4 are smoking bars. The Brewery went non smoking a couple years ago and had a short drop in traffic and then a boom in sales after that. Their clientèle changed, however. Some people just went elsewhere. What will happen to the final bars that held out to the end? I suspect those that held out will suffer the worst. But then again, where will those customers Read more:Smoking
, New Hampshire
, Smoking Ban
CF 8 Released before Max? 2007-06-18 11:49:00 Many people are predicting that ColdFusion 8 will be released sooner rather than later (exactly mid of year). I say at CFUnited! I noticed today that the CFUnited blog has a small clue (maybe). In the blog entry about prizes and giveaways they state that CF 8 will be a prize given out on Friday and that it will be delivered in 1.5 months after the event.
I take it to mean that you will get CF 8 by middle of August. Well before Max.
tagcloud 2007-06-21 17:21:00 Sometimes it is fun to submit your site to silly things like Tag A Cloud. This site is basically a way to tag your own site, and hope people click on that tag. There are ways to make your tag larger or different looking to garner more click throughs. Silly, fun and a good waste of a few minutes of my afternoon. For the record here is my tag score thus far. Click on it to try it yourself.
Recommend Site To A Friend
