Month / April 2008

by Aaron

My intro to Woopra, and why you should wait.

I thought I’d give Woopra a spin this evening.

The signup process has a few bumps. The privacy policy request bombs when I click on the link (file not found). I notified them via their contact info a few days ago and never heard back — nor was it fixed.

They don’t bother spell checking instructions — always a bad omen.

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A confirmation email has been sent to your inbox, follow the provided contruction in order to confirm you email.
Please check your junk emails or spam folder if you haven’t received the confirmation email

When should I check my junk emails or spam folder? It doesn’t give any sense of a time frame.

E-mail with confirmation code and link showed up in spam folder as promised. :)

Confirmed and then redirected — password automatically entered …

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Oops?

OK, send me my password.

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Huh? I’m not registered?

OK, I’ll bite .. they have a live chat, and it’s “Online.”

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And one final slap…. [WHACK]

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Nothing.

I can’t recommend you try Woopra, because it would seem that it’s a waste of time as there isn’t anything that actually works properly.

If someone from Woopra would like me to do a decent review and fix things for me, contact me. I’m interested in trying your product, and happy to provide feedback.

by Aaron

The photo frame used on my website …

I was asked about the photo frame I used to make the background of my web site. I’m including it below. Just right-click, and copy/save and enjoy. It was originally a photoshop action, that I then tweaked to my liking. It’s a PNG, with a transparent background and shadow so it should work well in most situations.

I have a Wacom tablet that I used to create the handwritten location text on each photo.

simplephotoframe

by Aaron

I need a Jargon-Free Silverlight description/blurb

I want to be able to describe what Silverlight is to a non-tech person. The description, which shouldn’t be more than a few sentences, must be jargon and marketing jibberish free. It cannot use acronyms or phrases such as "Rich Internet Application." Those are meaningless. And no, it should not include the phrase, "lights up the web." :)

The best way I can summarize it to people:

Do you know what Flash Is? Eh, It’s like that, from Microsoft though.

If they answer no, then it boils down to suggesting an example of Flash in use (think annoying advertisements you can click on!), or saying it will just make their web experience better somehow.

Any suggestions?

by Aaron

The Podcasts I listen to (somewhat) regularly…

I had wanted to list them in a priority order of some sort, but honestly, I pick and choose what to watch/listen to. I don’t listen/watch to every podcast from every podcaster. I often delete them as I just don’t have time to listen to them all.

I would like to decrease the signal to noise ratio though — what do you listen to and enjoy?

by Aaron

Dirt Simple 301 Redirect on Shared hosting and the 404 trick.

I’m using a shared hosting account for my web site. I have no control over the file types (extensions) that are handled by ASP.NET — only the standard file extensions (ASPX, ASMX, etc.) are supported. By request, I was asked to make my old RSS and Atom XML file feeds up to date with my new blog posts. During the transitions I’ve made, I may have lost some subscribers as I hadn’t kept them up to date as much as I would have liked.

So, with a wave of the magic ASP.NET wand and a little 404 magic, the two XML files are now serving up content from my new WordPress installation. On my web host, I can modify what pages handle 404 web server errors (file not found). I changed the setting to point to a new ASPX file, appropriately named, 404.aspx. Here’s what it contains: 

<%@ Page Language="C#" %>
<%
    string qstr = HttpUtility.UrlDecode(Request.QueryString.ToString());

    if (qstr.Contains("index.xml") || qstr.Contains("atom.xml"))
    {
        string movedTo = "http://feeds.feedburner.com/wiredprairie";
        Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
        Response.AddHeader("Location", movedTo);
        Response.End();

        return;
    }

    Response.Status = "404 Not Found";        
    Response.End();

    return;
%>

I grab the query string which minimally contains the requested Url, and if it’s either atom.xml or index.xml, I redirect to the FeedBurner location for the RSS feed. If it wasn’t one of those files, I just return a 404 error and quit (as I don’t have a custom 404 page developed).

Of course, with a bit more robust coding, this could handle a wider variety of cases and redirect to far more web pages. Or, you can just point to my RSS feed. :)