June 2010 - Digital Tool Factory blog June 2010 - Digital Tool Factory blog

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Rest In Peace Drex


Today at 3:00 PM I put my dog of six years to sleep.  I got Drex in 2004 when his previous owner was out of the house for too long during the day and Drex needed constant companionship.   Luckily I never left the house and we fit together well.  He was a great dog, preventing at least one break-in at my condo, and always being loving, protective and affectionate.

He had his neurotic moments, like the time he chewed through drywall and insulation during a thunderstorm, or the time he opened a locked door (he was quite bright) and climbed the back fence during the Tornado of 2008, but he was a great dog through and through.  Over the past year (his 14th) he entered a marked physical and mental decline and it got to the point of being cruel to let him continue.

Godspeed Mr Buddy.

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

Sentiment— No comments
29
Jun 10

Written By Steve French

 

My “So What” positioning statement

As I’m currently reading Mark Magnacca’s excellent book “So What” (regarding marketing) I offer my humble Positioning Statement

Me: Do you know how you always forget people you meet and then don’t see for a while?

Potential Customer: Oh yes, that happens to me all the time

Me: Well, Stronico helps you remember people by showing you where they fit into your life.  You can see their interests, their friends and how you know them in the first place.

Coming up with that is an illuminating exercise.     “Visual Contact Management” is an accurate description of what Stronico actually does, but most people don’t see the utility in that description.

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

Marketing— No comments
25
Jun 10

Written By Steve French

 

I don’t post for a week and the hits go up!

By that logic, I wonder how many hits I got before I even started the blog!

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

Misc— No comments
25
Jun 10

Written By Steve French

 

I apologize for my earlier book review

My last post was a review of Work The System by Sam Carpenter.  In the book I erroneously conflated several themes and accidentally inserted a quote from a review in progress into the Work The System review.  I have taken the original review down it will not reappear.  I apologize for the errors.

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

Uncategorized— 1 comment
17
Jun 10

Written By Steve French

 

How to fix the “The service cannot be activated because it requires ASP.NET compatibility” error

The Problem: You try to access your web service on IIS 7 and you get the following error

The service cannot be activated because it requires ASP.NET compatibility. ASP.NET compatibility is not enabled for this application. Either enable ASP.NET compatibility in web.config or set the AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsAttribute.AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode property to a value other than Required.
at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedAspNetEnvironment.ValidateCompatibilityRequirements(AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode compatibilityMode) at System.ServiceModel.Activation.AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsAttribute.System.ServiceModel.Description.IServiceBehavior.Validate(ServiceDescription description, ServiceHostBase serviceHostBase) at System.ServiceModel.Description.DispatcherBuilder.ValidateDescription(ServiceDescription description, ServiceHostBase serviceHost) at System.ServiceModel.Description.DispatcherBuilder.InitializeServiceHost(ServiceDescription description, ServiceHostBase serviceHost) at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase.InitializeRuntime() at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase.OnBeginOpen() at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open() at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.ActivateService(String normalizedVirtualPath) at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.EnsureServiceAvailable(String normalizedVirtualPath)

Continue reading →

ASP.net / How To Fix / Web Services— No comments
15
Jun 10

Written By Steve French

 

Adventures with PayPal Website Payments Pro and Authorize.net

walletSeveral days ago I decided to use PayPal’s Website Payments Pro system for the Stronico credit card processing system.  At the time, I thought PayPal was the obvious choice.  It had relatively low fees (about $60 per month), no setup fee, and it seemed to be the 800 pound gorilla in the space, so how bad coudl it behard could the setup be?

As it turned out, I was very, very wrong.   I spent part of the day Sunday and all day Monday wading through non-working sample code, looking at near duplicate setup guides for the 56 (how it is 56 I don’t know) versions of their Website Payments Pro system, installing all of the add-ons needed to get the sample apps going and so on and so forth.  All of that merely to make a Get request with the proper query string (which is all the Website Payments Pro System really is). Continue reading →

Accounting / Reviews / Software Development— 5 comments
09
Jun 10

Written By Steve French

 

The Five Whys meet the Five Whats

HoodedPeople like to use the Five Whys of Toyota to diagnose problems (in deductive fashion).  I  use the 5 Whats to explain what I do for a living, Stronico, and my music.  Which version you get depends on what I think your subject matter expertise happens to be.  For my consulting company the 5 Whats are:

Question: What do you do?:

  • Audience: Technically unsophisticated:
    Answer: I build websites
  • Audience: Of average tech savvy (an iPhone or Android owner, but no more):
    Answer: I’m a computer programmer
  • Audience: Technically Savvy – able to set up WordPress and remove viruses from a friends computer:
    Answer: I do the backend programming and database development for websites
  • Audience: Technically sophisticated, but not similar to me, e.g. graphic designers and pure DBAs
    Answer: I’m a .Net developer, specializing in backend programming and database development for websites
  • Audience: Technically sophisticated, and similar, e.g. another .Net developer or PHP developer and the like:
    Answer: I do ASP.net/C# and Sql Server, mostly for the backend of sites

When I describe Stronico it goes like this: Continue reading →

History & Theory / Marketing— No comments
07
Jun 10

Written By Steve French

 

How to fix the “550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable or not local” email problem

Lost: Remote ControlThe Problem: You send an email to someone and get the following back

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject:    Any Subject

Sent: 6/4/2010 2:31 PM

The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:

This User on 6/4/2010 2:31 PM

Server error: ‘550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable or not local’

The Cause: Both sender and recipient are on the same mail server, but the recipient’s mail server is hosted by Google Apps (or some other mail server).  Your smtp server makes a preliminary request to the wrong server, and causes this false error message.

The Solution: The recipient (who has the mail server hosted by Google Apps) needs to disable mail services for their domain.  You can do it in IIS directly (assuming you are running Windows).  In Plesk simply go to Domains > Mail > Disable Mail

Creative Commons License photo credit: jaqian

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

How To Fix— 3 comments
04
Jun 10

Written By Steve French

 

How to Fix: Canonical Urls with IIS 7’s Url Rewrite feature for https

SATOR Magic squareThe Problem: You want to make your website all SEO friendly by creating a single, canonical url.  For example, if someone types in http://www.stronico.com, you want them to be redirected to http://stronico.com (Google likes it this way).  You do some research and discover that all of the default code and documentation for handling canonical Urls in IIS 7 uses web.config files and the URL Rewrite application program.  All is well and good so far, but what if you use SSL?  The stock code will always redirect you to http://stronico.com/Signup/ even if the original url was https://stronico.com/Signup/ (note the https). Continue reading →

ASP.net / ASP.net MVC / How To Fix / SEO— 1 comment
01
Jun 10

Written By Steve French

 

Creativity, Isolation and Endurance Sports

orange tree by red doorLeo Babauta recently wrote The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People on ZenHabits.net, and the number one habit is solitude.  By eerie coincidence I recently finished reading Switch: How To Change When Change Is Hard by the Heath brothers, which makes something of the same point.

The rational portion of your brain (the rider as the Heath brothers put it)  is a weak limited thing that wears itself out quickly by making decisions, exercising self control, and ingesting information.  If you isolate yourself for long periods, be it long bike rides or marathon running, or simply taking the phone off the hook, closing email, and minimizing distractions, you free your mind to work on important matters, like being creative.   The above explains why I tend to have creative breakthroughs while on long bike rides.

As I write this it occured to me that visual clutter probably plays a part in tiring your brain as well.  I must clean the office!

Creative Commons License photo credit: badjonni

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

Uncategorized— No comments
01
Jun 10

Written By Steve French

 




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