Role of IT Architect

Url Shortening: Tr.im shutting down

A few days back I posted a few concerns about the URL shortening and the “tiny url’s” which are now all over the place literraly.

Now another conern comes along, so what happens if the company you are depending on for keeping all your URL’s safe which you would be posting for months or years (in future) suddenly shuts down. You loose the meaning of all your life long tweets which thousands of links. A huge amount of content will be lost with millions of broken links.

That is exactly what is going to happen to the URL’s of Tr.im, the URL shortening service which is shutting down.

Using Log Parser for analyzing IIS Logs

Microsoft Log Parser is a Command Line tool to analyze and extract data from all sorts of Log Files. It is a command line tool and does not have a fancy UI but is extremely power. The most powerful feature is the use of SQL Like query structure to extract information.

Just created the following Availability Throughput report for a couple of application that we have here. It is taking the average of the time-taken field in the IIS log over the last 4 months.

See the Log parser query.

After getting the data it is just a matter of putting it in an excel and generting the graph which I did but the Log Parser tool itself can generate a graph output as an image. There is along list of input and output formats for the tool. I just did’nt had time to look into the graph switches right now.

 

Best Web-Based Email System – GMAIL

I have been using GMAIL from mid 2005 and the moment I started using it I just could not go back to Yahoo! which I was using earlier. Hotmail was not even in the league back in 2005.

Although gmail when it was first introduced was quite different in managing email replies and threads and I know a lot of people who could not just get around the management of the replies. I am not sure it was the AJAX experience which caught me or the loading speed (comapred to Yahoo at the time) but I loved the experience and got stuck to it.

GMAIL is continuously evolving and adding features which are continuously enriching the experience for the users. For example colured Labels, the in-line gTalk chat and the recently added themes are some of the few continuous improvements that have been really useful.

If you are a member of a few mailing lists with a lot of traffic, you probably know how annoying it becomes to skim through all the useless junk and focus on the urgent message which you have got from your family. The coloured labels help me do just that, focus on the messages which are important and read the rest whenever you don’t have anything better to do.

A look into my gmail experience.

Is the party over for Microsoft?

A perfect Analysis of Microsoft strategy in recent years. They just can’t stick to what they do best and want to compete every other successful company in the industry.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-the-party-over-for-microsoft-2009-07-24

Is Url Shortening Safe ?

Yeatarday I saw a report on CNN about how social networking sites like facebook and specially twitter are serving as havens for cyber criminals. A large number of users post all sort of private information on these websites and people take advantage of this information. Also, people are mislead by posting wrong information about certain high-demand topics.

In my opinion the most destructive aspect specifically with respect to the twitter is the URL Shortening ot Tiny URL’s. From the last many years people have become increasingly cautious about visiting malicious websites and it is a general best practice now not to click/download links that you don’t trust.

The Tiny URL phenomenon takes this all away, where you are following hunderds of people, celebrities wicthout actually knowing who is behind the username and then there are literally millions of tiny url’s which people post daily and you access the link without trusting its authenticity. You never know where it will redirect you.

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror also has a different take on Tiny URL’s.

Google Shared Items Sorting

Just realized that Google Shared Items are sorted with the date of the post and not the date on which you have shared the item. I think it should probably be sorted by the date of sharing than the date of the original post, after all its your shared items and you should have control over sequence of sharing.

Most of the times I skip a log of blogs and only choose a particular few, but when there is time I tend to catch up all what i skipped through. If a share something which actually is a post from an old date, the shared item list shows it down the list after the items which I shared earlier.

This actually caused a problem with TwitterFeed which would only select based on the last updated item (probably with date) and do not update the items which I share from previous dates.

Hubble’s final servicing mission – The Big Picture – Boston.com

Hubble’s final servicing mission – The Big Picture – Boston.com

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The Best of Telerik ASP.NET Ajax Controls

Last year in July we decided to buy Telerik Suite here for our team and I think it has been a wonderful decision. At the time, we started working on an highly data intensive application and we had to reduce postbacks using AJAX. I had used ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit before (like here) but I found it limited and you still have to do a lot of work around the toolkit controls to actually make them work in more complex scenarios. So we decided to give Telerik controls a go and it has been amazing !

We have used various controls from the Telerik Suite in our applications like RadAjaxPanel, RadEditor, RadToolTip, RadChart, RadGrid, RadInput, RadUpload, RadSplitter, RadWindow. All these controls are useful and not only provide an amazing UI but also reduce the development time considerably, still I have fallen in love with specially two controls RadAjaxPanel and RadToolTip.

RadAjaxPanel

Rad Ajax Panel is an enhanced version of UpdatePanel with a wonderful Client Side and Server Side object model to work with. So, just put an RadAjaxPanel around everything you want to Ajaxify.

<telerik:RadAjaxPanel ID="RadAjaxPanel1" runat="server" Height="100%" Width="100%" LoadingPanelID="RadAjaxLoadingPanel1" HorizontalAlign="left"></telerik:RadAjaxPanel>

RadToolTip

RadToolTip is an amazing control and can be used in a range of scenarios specially for on-demand loading. You can actually fit a Web User Control in the tool tip and load it on demand on any event on the page. Some of the scenarios where we used the RadToolTip.

Data Validation (Since it can stick to any control on the page)

 

 

Dynamic Selection Menu (Loading On Demand User Control)

 

Dynamic Options (Loading On Demand User Control)

Creating ASP.NET UserControl Libraries for use in Multiple Websites

The Web User Control in ASP.NET is a powerful element to effectively reuse design components within the project. However, there is no standard way to create a Web User Control Library which could be used across mutiple web projects. In my current scenario I want multiple web applications to share the user controls.

Scott Guthrie has explained this here Building Re-Usable ASP.NET User Control and Page Libraries with VS 2005, but he is suggesting to publish the user controls project separately and then copy paste the files in your actual project. This is not very practical if you have multiple applications and a team which is constantly updating the user controls and the applications and continuously checking-in latest controls.

So here goes the solution.

1. You need to create a Web Application Project instead of a Website project for your User Controls. The reason for this is that the Website project that you create with Visual Studio 2005 cannot be consumed by other projects within the solution. Moreover, since there is no project file, you cannot add Pre-Build/Post-Build events to the project. You will have to download Web Application Project Template for visual studio 2005 since Visual Studio 2005 does not provide this in def ault installation.
2. OK, after you have the Web Application Project template, create two projects, one Web Application Project (UserControlLibrary) for the User Controls and another ASP.NET Website as shown in the figure.
3. Now Build the “UserControlLibrary” project which will generate a single DLL (UserControlLibrary.dll) for this project. Now Add a Reference of this project to the other website project.
4. In order to copy the ASCX files of the controls in UserControlLibrary to the website project, add a Post-Build Event for the UserControlLibrary, to copy all ASCX files to the Website project.
5. Now add a UserControls folder under both projects and keep all your user controls under the UserControls folder in the UserControlLibrary. Go to the properties of the UserControlLibrary project and then to the Compile Tab, open the Build Options and add the following to the Post Build Event.
   
   copy “$(ProjectDir)UserControls\*.ascx” “$(SolutionDir)WebSite\UserControls\” /Y  
   
6. After adding the post-build event, whenever you compile your UserControlLibrary project, the DLL will be updated in the Website project because of the reference and the ascx will be copied by the Post Build Event that we just added.