BizSpark from Microsoft

If you are starting an online software development company or considering starting one, Microsoft has developed a program that will allow your small company to use their exceptional tools and grow quicker than otherwise possible. Through the companies Startup Zone at www.microsoftstartupzone.com, you can participate in their BizSpark program for up to three years annually renewed.

Overwriting the NoFollow Tag with DoFollow

DotNetNuke is the platform that 6 blogs are developed with that I am the administrator for. But the more I use Wordpress, the more I think I should convert them because of the great SEO and free plugin availability. With Wordpress there's a simple plugin that will change the default NoFollow rel tag on comments to DoFollow. This provides your readers the ability to gain links with Google and other search engines when they comment.

I had the need to reindex all the tables in a SQL Server 2005 database this week and found some very good scripts that loop through the list of user tables using a cursor and reindex each table to improve performance and reduce the size of the data file. In addition I used the dbcc command to shrink the database after the reindexing had completed. Below is the code used.

Darksma Trojan and Other Bugs

I recently found the Darksma Trojan and other similar viruses on one of my home computers and spent a number of weeks cleaning the system. I found three tools to be very helpful in removing these difficult to delete bugs; CA Yahoo! Anti-Spy, Malwarebytes, and ComboFix.

Export and ADO Recordset to Excel

If you're in need to taking an ADO Recordset from an Access Database of a .Net Application and saving that data programmatically to an Excel file, the following procedure will do a very good job of completing the conversion.

By Steve Patterson

You can modify the SaveAs command towards the end of the function to save the file in a different location with a different name or you can add the value as a parameter to the subroutine. There is also a Visible flag near the end of the procedure which will show the Excel file after it is created. This would also be a very good value to pass into the subroutine.

Finding Good Video Content as Easy as Channel 9

I often go to the Central Ohio .Net Developers Group at a Microsoft Office here in Central Ohio. But when I am sometimes unable to go due to schedule I try to read the presenter's blog or find similar content online as to what I would have found at the meeting. Channel9.msdn.com is a great resource from Microsoft with video from Microsoft presenters and Microsoft employees on all topics Microsoft.

Subtext and Koders.com

I was listening to DotNet Rocks show 261 Phil Haack on Subtext and Open Source about Subtext and www.Koders.com. Give the podcast a listen if you get the chance as it is worth the time in the car or on the train. Subtext is an open source CMS framework similar to DotNetNuke, Wordpress, Joomla, etc. The three frameworks just mentioned are the three that I have built sites with and www.CapturedTech.com is built with DotNetNuke using 95% of the default modules.

Clearing a text box in ASP.Net using Javascript

I was looking for a way to clear a textbox on focus in an ASP.Net application today and found some Microsoft examples using scripts in the Markup language and then referencing the script using the old onfocus="SomeFunction();". But then I found the best way that works easily and keeps the code in the code behind.

If you are establishing a web server or an application server and need to test the database connectivity from the new server back to the database server, writing a quick visual basic script that produces the feedback needed is an easy solution. Below is the code from a vbs file with the connection information left out. Just complete the connection information and run the script from the new remote server.

If you have a database which contains GUIDs as a column of a table, then inserting the unique identifier into the needed column is not always straight forward. I found that converting the needed value into a unique identifier makes adding it to the database error free.