Optimize Your Web

Most of you have heard of Pandora and Last.fm I hope.  I am here to tell you how to get the most out of them as you can.  What’s better than hearing the music that they play?  Hearing whatever song you want, when you want.  Now make sure you read the legal notice of this program (it’s made in Denmark), but The Last Ripper can rip the mp3 streams from Last.FM.  Now it currently stores each song in a folder organized by Artist then Album and then all songs in that album are renamed in there.

Sounds great right?  Well it is, but of course there can be improvements.  I for one, would like to be able to change how it stores the song (I would want one big directory with just the artistname-songname.mp3) but that may be something implemented down the road.  Basically, once you input your username and password for TheLastRipper, it connects and you’re off to search for an artist/song/album that you like and it records anything that comes up (unless you have it recorded before, and then it skips it).

Regardless, Last.FM (and hence TheLastRipper) and Pandora can be a great source of music, even if you don’t want to rip the songs.  For me, I like how Pandora groups together music when you search for something.  The only thing for those that want to record the streams is that there is not an easy to use Pandora stream ripper available.  If anyone has heard of anything, please let us know, as I am sure we are all interested.

I stumbled upon a pretty decent invoicing service.  It’s called Curdbee.  It allows you to customize what your invoices look like, track them with Paypal, and have all of your contacts easily accessible.  What’s the catch?  Well the only downfall that I have seen so far is that it puts a small advertisement for Curdbee in the invoice.

Only thing I do not understand is where they are going to make their money from.  There’s no ads on their site, and it doesn’t seem to be selling actual ads in the invoices.  If anyone can shed some light, that would be great.  Otherwise, for small businesses, or indivduals that need a clean and easy way to track online billing, give it a go.

While trying to obtain my MCTS and then soon after that my MCPD, I have found a good combination of training methods that I previously wrote about here.  First, I have a background in Java (not an expert, but I know the syntax and actually received a minor in my undergraduate studies in Computer Science).  I also know some html, css, javascript, and php.  So while I am not proficient at any of these, the fact that I can get by and know about them puts me ahead of someone starting from scratch

If anyone is in my position, I think this information may help you.  First, before you sign up for any classes, make sure you are familiar with whichever language you choose to focus on (I am choosing C# due to the close relationship of syntax with Java).  I have received two books to teach myself what I need to know before I go to any class or do any practice tests.  These two books are: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536) Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation and Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5.  The second edition for the Self-Paced Training Kit you can pre-order, but I am not able to wait for it to be released.  Start off with the Training Kit book, and then move on to the ASP.NET book because of the way they are structured and the indepthness of the first one.

To go along with these books, I would suggest purchasing a membership for at least a year to the site LearnVisualStudio.Net.  It has been highly recommended by some .NET Developers that I know and it looks to have a very large amount of tutorials already made, as well as ongoing videos.

After I get a good grasp of the material from these 3 sources, I am going to take a practice test to see how I fare for the 2 exams for the MCTS.  If I feel the need, I will take a class for each exam (I believe they are 2 or 3 days long) and give feedback to those that are interested.  If you have any further websites or learning sources, feel free to post them in the comments.

Right now, I am in the tough decision of what combination of training methods I should choose in order to be a MCTS and then MCPD certified ASP.NET 3.5 developer.  Listed below are the possible methods and their pros and cons:

Books: They are cheap and can be taken anywhere for learning.  Bad thing is that you do not have much direction besides reading straight through and cannot ask for help on the book (some come with forum discussion areas, but feedback is not guaranteed to be fast, easily understood, or correct).

Online Training: Cost is higher, but these series of courses (to prepare for a certain exam) are scheduled to take a really long time.  While you do get some feedback and can ask questions, if time is a factor in your decision, probably one of the worst ways to train.

Classes: If you complete the prerequisties, classes are the fastest way to learn.  Instructors that are certified know exactly what you are needing to work on for the exams, give great pointers, and will answer any questions you may have.  Downside is that they are the most expensive way to learn and if you are starting, the prerequisties probably have their own classes (which leads to even more money having to be spent).

Vocational, Community College: While these classes may give you a better understanding and allow for quick feedback, they are basically in the same basket as online courses, except you can’t choose what time of the day to work on the class like you can with online classes.

Online Videos/Tutorials: These can come from places such as Microsoft.com, or be hosted on third party non-affiliated websites to show you how to start application development from scratch.  These should be mixed in with any variety of training methods you choose due to their short time, and (most of the time) free of charge while providing useful information for our knowledge enhancing.

So needless to say, I am going to approach these exams in a structured manner.  I am going to first get the books and read/practice code/syntax and get a solid grasp of the language and structure before I move on to the next method.  Throughout the training process, I am going to mix in tutorials and online videos to see how a professional instructor or programmer organizes and writes their application.  I believe after this, I will take a class and learn within the time (2 days to a week normally) before I take the exam.  Another helpful thing: practice exams.  Take these to make sure you are ready to take the actual exam, because nothing is a bigger waste of money than going into an exam and not knowing where your skill level resides.  If anyone has any suggestions or other combinations, please let me know.

After needing much documentation on both installation instructions, I need to reiterate the importance of documentation for both yourself or future readers.  I had a large project that I was completing with a colleague and after having to upgrade, reformat, and reconfigure many machines (around 20-30), I had many programs that had no documentation at all.

Reasons you may not realize why you should document:

-Just because you finally figure something out, does not mean that you will at a later time or that the next person will figure it out. If it’s not already written, write it down, even if it’s a temporary fix. It may turn into the only fix or help you find a permanent solution later with more information or further knowledge.
-Something that may seem simple to you at that time, may not be simple later or to the next person. So if it is not common sense, DOCUMENT!.

And documentation should extend to keep all licenses together and safe. It’s very hard to tell a customer that you cannot help them because they do not have their license with them. And for all types of documentation and licenses, do one thing and keep them protected. I would recommend buying something like a firesafe that they can keep those and extremely important records such as portable media backups of tax information, databases (if you do not have off site storage as well as on site for redundancy). While a fire may be devastating, it may be a breath of fresh air to know that you still have some things safe.

Ever wondered what the purpose of User Agent settings were for?  Well it has changed over the years, and was used to determine what type of browser or service was accessing your website.  Mainly it is used by people to determine what browser their main subscription base is using in order to tailor their website to that viewing.  One thing that I have seen is that some people use a spoofed user agent setting are trying to see things that they only want a website crawler such as Google’s GoogleBot to view.  This may be taking advantage of if they are showing the crawler special files that they may try to SEO optimize in order to get better ranking.

If you are looking to see whether or not the GoogleBot that has visited your site is legit, visit this list to check and see.  Also, if you are looking to tweak your user agent settings (that I mentioned in my “Top Firefox Pluggins (Addons)”) through your Mozilla Firefox, download it here.

Make sure that you use the correctly formatted user agent information, which you can get a huge list here.  For more information, please feel free to contact me with questions or tips.

Recently, I had to work on some Quickbooks for a client.  One thing I noticed is that there are so many ways to botch a configuration or install if you are going off of someone else’s work.  Regardless, if you are running a database server with Quickbooks, and are installing the Single-Host client on machines, make sure that you have added your folders to the first tab in the Database Manager for Quickbooks, and allowed it to scan.  Once this is done, you should be good.

Another thing you may encounter is a program called Yardi.  If you do, make sure that wherever your files are located (I was lucky enough to have two sets of data for different purposes), write down what users have what access to those files.  In my case, the people trying to access both sets of data had to log into one, then open another database and change the location.  It was not giving them a choice for the data, so you must log on with whatever user has access to the first one you setup and then switch to the second.

If anyone has problems with either application, comment on this article or contact me via the Contact Me form and I’ll see if I have any insights.  Good luck, and make sure you always document.

Many users, such as myself, enjoy the great addons to customize and enhance their internet experience for Mozilla Firefox. Well there’s more than a few add-ons out there and most are housed here. Here is a good list of add-ons that may interest you, especially for web development and design, along with blogging and search engine optimization (SEO).

• Aging Tabs – Makes unused tabs fade with age and highlights the selected tab.
  • Great for people who bog down their system with their endless tabbing and want a quick reference to see where they can free up some memory by closing an old tab.
• Better Gmail - Enhances Gmail with a compilation of user scripts and styles.
  • If you use Gmail and Firefox then you must try this addon and get the most out of your Google mail.
• ColorZilla – Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.
  • If you do any type of web design, photoshopping, or anything related, this addon will help you quickly grab any color from any picture or site.
• Delicious Bookmarks - Access your bookmarks whenever you go and keep them organized.
  • This is a great addon for anyone who uses delicious bookmarks, which if you bookmark on multiple computers or want to share bookmarks with peers or friends, this is a must.
• Download Statusbar - View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar.
  • If you are tired of having the default status window, this one is easily customizable to allow small notifications of downloads.
• FireFTP – FTP client.
  • Enough said. Since Firefox does not render FTP connections correctly, this will do it for you.
• IE Tab – Enables you to use the embedded IE engine within Firefox.
  • Great for those sites that were not optimized for Firefox or that require IE. I don’t enjoy those sites, but have this as a little work around. (An example is the stattracker program for Yahoo! Fantasy Sports).
• SEO For Firefox – SEO Information inline with Google and Yahoo! search results.
  • Enabling this addon in the bottom right of your browser and do a search on google. This gives you all sorts of great information about the sites along with a Keyword analyzer.
• User Agent Switcher – Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.
  • Can be used to hide your User Agent information that can be see in website analyzers such as Google Analytics. Also, you can pretend to be an indexing bot like GoogleBot and see if you can view some things only GoogleBot is supposed to see!
• Web Developer – Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
  • You can see more things than you probably want to with this addon, such as css, image properties and lots more.

Many people search through applications trying to find something new and find out a new way to enhance their facebook profile or overall experience. List below are the top 5 facebook applications and some advantages of using these applications.

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Who is better Firefox or Internet Explorer (IE)? Is it Internet Explorer or Firefox? Well a lot of people would like to think that Internet Explorer is/has caught up, but are wrong. Firefox is the more versatile browser and the reason is simple. Firefox is OPEN SOURCE! The amount of time it takes for things to be “fixed” in Internet Explorer or implement new ideas and deployed is much longer than Firefox. First let’s take a look at a few noticeable things, then get down to the some solid evidence.
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