Quick video on how I used document types in Kentico on NewAgeStore.com.

JonoH on twitter recently found that Tweetie 2.1 is not correctly using the Bit.ly API, so some instructions below:
You’ll need your bit.ly username and API key and then need to grab the URL for the bit.ly API endpoint for link shortenning (below), and then merge it all together…
The bit.ly API url (adapted for tweetie) is
http://api.bit.ly/shorten?version=2.0.1&longUrl=%@&login=aaa&apiKey=bbb
Replace the aaa with your bit.ly username and the bbb with your bit.ly API key.  Then copy the whole thing and paste it into the “Custom…” part of the tweetie settings screen under Link Shortening.  I …

There’s not much in the way of software that I pay for, in fact I go out of my way in many cases to find the free and open source alternatives.  But sometimes free costs a lot more that you think; free sometimes means slower, less functional, buggy… not always but sometimes.
So if you had to buy some stuff, what would you buy?
Here my list:

Roboform – US$29.95.  The best password manager, form filler and instant search builder available.  One master password for all your other websites is a dream.  I …

I’ve been using Excel and these shortcuts for such a long time that I virtually take them for granted.  Here’s a quick video of these if you don’t feel like reading…

Regardless, here are the 5 keyboard shortcuts that save my alot of time:

Multi-Line text in a cell – ALT+Enter. This is like hitting enter in a word processor to make a new line, but in the same cell.  It’s good for column headings that are a little long and you want to control the wrapping manually.
Autosum – ALT + =. …

About 8 weeks ago we got our first Mac computer, it will actually be used for some video and graphics work at some point in the future and I’m toying with the idea of making an iPhone App but that’s a low priority.  One of the biggest issues really has been printing oddly enough.
The computer is actually primarily used by my 5 year old daughter for playing games on nick junior and other websites.  Most of these involve some sort of drawing and printing combination and she is a little …

Mitch on Six Pixels has a great attitude when it comes to managing SPAM.
It’s pretty simple: sending someone a commercial message when you do not have their permission to do so is spam. It’s a message they did not ask for or request.
The challenge of course is trying to follow the right people and then make sure you are not getting a stream full of SPAM.  There is a way I’ve discovered though that tends to alleviate this issues.  My experience is that spammers are using automation tools to send …

Two days ago I completed the upgrade of newagestore.com from Kentico 3.1a to 4.0.  This took roughly 4 hours to do, the process I took was a little laborious but perhaps the safest.

Backups and double checking backups all round
I took a backup of the database and then restored it into a new database
I took a complete copy of the site on the file system of the server and pointed it at my new database in the web.config
Created a new site in IIS to point to this new folder with a …

I’m writing this post using something called Windows Live Writer.  This is one of many new services offered by Microsoft under the new windows live platform.
There’s a nice post here that talks about the services available. But it begs the question of whether Microsoft if catching up on all this web2.0 stuff.

Above is a screen cap of the windows live writer application.  At first I was confused in that I had to actually download this application.  How weird? Then I thought “how weird that I thought downloading something was weird”.  …

There seems to be a great debate right now on the sphere around whether the iPhone will be a business phone or not.  I have an iMate JasJam, it runs Windows Mobile 5 and has all my contacts and calendars as well as an thin exchange client.
I don’t see these sort of applications on the iPhone, in fact this article and video report to show some of the business capabilities of the phone, but i struggle to recall the last time i had to zoom into a photo or see …

I have been working with dOOdads for a while on and off.  This is an amazing tool and increases the speed at which I build applications.
I normally use it for web apps and use Microsoft Access, however it flexible in that it can work with many database formats.
Fundementally it lets you build your database interactions with a few lines of code.  So to add a record to a database you just set a few properties and submit one command and it’s all done.
The other thing is that it has the …