Mark Wagner's .NET C# Cogitation

My blog has moved to:
http://www.wagnerlive.com/mark (or http://www.crsw.com/mark)

If your a software developer, computer programmer, software engineer, or even a code monkey; you now have a song written just for you.  You'll enjoy Code Monkey by Jonathan Coulton.  I encourage you to visite Jonathans web site and listen to it and other songs in his list.

Jonathan Coulton
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songs

Code Monkey:
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/music/thingaweek/CodeMonkey.mp3

How to send SMTP email using Telnet

This is an old method of sending email using Telnet.  I've posted it here mostly for a remider to me on exactly how to do this, but thought I would share it with others who may not know of this.  This can be useful when testing if a server can successfully send email.  For example, I use this to confirm if a SharePoint server can successfully send emails for alerts and notifications.

The items in bold are what you should type.

Start a Telnet session from a command line by entering:
Telnet your.mailserver.com 25

220 a.mail.server.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.3790.2499 ready at  Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:59:02 -0600
helo

250 a.mail.server.com Hello [192.168.125.237]
mail from: fromemail@server.com

250 2.1.0 email@server.com...Sender OK
rcpt to: joe@server.com

250 2.1.5 joe@server.com
data

354 Start mail input; end with .
This is a test.
.  (enter a dot/period to end the data)

250 2.6.0 Queued mail for delivery

quit
Connection to host lost.

I found the informational balloon tips that appear on my task bar to be very informative - initially, but become very annoying over time.

You can easily disable these network connection balloons in two ways.

The first and easiest is by disabling the Show icon in the notification area when connected option.  To hide the icon and disable the newtork connection balloons, simply open your Network Connections, edit the properties for the network adapter you desire, and uncheck the Show icon in the notification area when connected option.

However, I personally like having the icons appear on the task bar, but the balloons have become very annoying.  To allow your network icons to appear without the balloons, you can do the following. 

These instructions are for Windows XP

This will disable all balloon tips on your task bar.

I have been hosting at WebHost4Life how for about three years.  I cannot say enough good things about this hosting service.  Yes, this is something of a shameless advertisement - but it is the honest truth.  If you are in the market for a new hosting service with professional grade products, you should try WebHost4Life. Here is an article I posted a while back that covers my experience with WebHost4Life.

Here are the reasons I find the WebHost4Life hosting service of great value:

What is the most difficult thing to find on the Internet?   A telephone number. 

Far to many companies are using their web site as a barrier to contacting a person directly.

I needed to contact Amazon Customer Service to resolve an issue.  Finding their telephone number is an absolute chore and very frustrating, by design in my opinion.  For those of you looking for the Amazon.com Customer Service telephone number, here it is.

Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number
1.800.201.7575

Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number

Web Part Package Installer for Windows SharePoint Services 2003

Click here for the complete article...

For those of us who are familiar with installing and removing SharePoint web parts, it’s a pretty easy process.  However, for those individuals who spend more time using SharePoint than installing and configuring it; locating and using the STSADM command can be a bit tedious.  To help simplify the installation of web parts packages, I have created a simple Web Part Package Installer program.

The purpose of this program is to make the installation of web part packages much easier for less-technical people.  Web Part Packages are stored in files having a .CAB file extension.  The nice thing about a web part package is that a package can define some initial properties and configuration settings for the web part being installed.  This is where my Web Part Package Installer program may be useful.

The installer form is very simple.

Click here for the complete article...

Google Search Web Part

Mark Wagner
http://blogs.crsw.com/mark
June 10, 2005

Article: http://blogs.crsw.com/mark/articles/1009.aspx

I created a custom Google web part a few weeks ago for my demo SharePoint site.  You can see what it looks like on my testing SharePoint home page http://sharepoint.crsw.com.  The Google web part submits a search request by navigating the user directly to the Google search web page and performs a Google search using the Google search engine.  I have since received a number of emails requesting to get this web part for use on their SharePoint sites, so I decided to make it available for others.

First and foremost, the Google name and search service are the property of Google.  I have no affiliation with the Google name and its services.

Google is a must-have resource for my daily work.  If I need to find something, I Google it, and nothing else comes close when searching on the Internet.  With this dependency, I had to have it on my new SharePoint demo site.  My SharePoint demo site is more of a test-harness at this point since it is hosted on a shared/public server, so don’t be too disappointed when you see it.

For those of you not familiar with Google, welcome to the Internet.  Google is the single best Internet search service available on the Internet, for the Internet.  If you need to find something on the Internet, Google will find it for you.  This process of searching is commonly referred to Googling.  If you Google something, your are using Google to search the Internet for it.  For the rest of you, Google is probably how you found this article.

It is important to remember that this Google Search web part is not intended to replace the SharePoint search feature.  In order for Google to find any results, Google must have already searched and indexed your site.  Also remember that Google will not be able to crawl and index pages on your SharePoint site that are not accessible to the public.  This is where the SharePoint search has the upper hand.  Again, this web part is not intended to replace the SharePoint search feature, but to conveniently access the much used Google search from your SharePoint page.

Configuring the Google Search Web Part

Here is a picture of the web part configurations.

Google Image URL

Once you have installed the web part, in the configuration options of the web part is a Google Image URL property which defaults to an image on Google’s web site.  You should use the default url for the Google image.  I have made this property available just in case Google renames or moves their image.

This Google Search Web Part can be configured in three distinct ways.

Standard Google Search

Local Site Search

Custom Site Search

Complete article here...

The WinFX SDK Community Technology Preview Edition has some very good content.  I recommend the reading the WinFX: Guidelines and Best Practices

http://winfx.msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_fxguidance/html/2995cebf-2b57-4cdb-8cac-0e171fb7b0b7.asp

SoftPro bookstore

For those of you who live in the Denver, Colorado area there is an excellent bookstore that specializes in only technical books.  There selection is excellent and they almost always have what I am looking for - in stock.  If you want it now and don’t like paying for overnight shipping, I suggest you stop by their store just south of Denver.

http://www.softpro.com

BusinessWeek is now trying to dip their toe into the blogging waters with their new blog site BlogSpotting.net.  My initial 4-second impression is they intend to use it to sell online advertising more than anything else.  My popup blocker was the first thing to fire.  They also know how to stir up the publicity by picking a name that immediately begs an explanation – and they most certainly have provided their “oh no, not that” response.

What this does show is how the blogosphere has become big enough and influential enough across the globe to demand attention and participation from more a more major old-media based corporations.

Welcome to the 21 century BusinessWeek!  Remember this; your competition will be much stronger and your subscribers will be more demanding and more critical about what you write.

A sharp .NET developer has just started blogging.  Spence is an excellent .NET developer and I expect good things to come from his blog in the future.  He always seems to deliver something just a little extra special when it comes to software development.

Jason Bunting has a cool little trick to keep it running here.  Sometimes the obvious - is just not obvious enough.  Good job Jason.

Google Maps - very nice!

Mike Woodring has an entertaining and informative article Of bathrooms, toilet paper, and thread synchronization on threading and the Monitor class.

Yes, his analogy is very good.