If you’re a technology startup and need an FREE* MSDN Subscription, you should look into BizSpark

I signed up and I’m loving every minute of of it. Once Kohnen Solutions was approved we received a retail MSDN Subscription. (Which contains any piece of Microsoft software I could ever need to get my company going. Operating Systems, Databases, Blend, Visual Studio Team System Team Suite (VSTS), the list goes on)

You’ve got to first be eligible. Are you:

• Actively engaged in development of a software-based product or service that will form a core piece of its current or intended business
• Privately held
• In business for less than 3 years
• Less than US $1 million in annual revenue

If you meet all of the above you might be eligible for BizSpark.

But software’s not the only thing, you get access to the Developer Network, 2 Technical Support Incidents, Discounts from Third Party Providers (I’m constantly getting snail mail discount offers), and so much more.

To sweeten the deal, you even get a certain level of access to Windows Azure

*Free for a while at least. When you leave the program you have to pay a fee of $100. (Hell, that definitely beats $10,939 if you buy it new. IMHO, BizSpark is worth it.)

 

Adding Code Samples to Blogger with Windows Live Writer

Sorry, if anyone got the slew of test posts I made in order to get my code formatter right.

But as a small reward for putting up with my bumbling, I give to you my findings.

I’m using Windows Live Writer with the “Code Snippet plugin for Windows Live Writer,” but I found when I published my posts my formatting was off. Many “<br/>” tags were appearing in my blog and RSS feed that came out of it.

The problem was not with the plugin, but with Blogger.com formatting my posts. So to fix the problem here is what you do…

1. Log into you Blogger.com Dashboard
2. Choose “Settings” for your respective blog
3. Choose “Formatting” under the Settings tab
4. Set “Convert line breaks” to “No”

Tooltip for TextBlock in Silverlight (and any other Silverlight control)

I’ve always been used to “.ToolTip” to add a tool tip text to a control. Unfortunately not all Silverlight controls have such a property.

However, Silverlight does provide a class called “ToolTipService” so you can add a Tooltip to almost all Silverlight UI elements.

You can use the class both in the XAML

   1:  <TextBlock x:Name="txtblkNotification" Text="My Textblock">

   2:      <ToolTipService.ToolTip>

   3:          <ToolTip Content="My tool tip for the TextBlock"></ToolTip>

   4:      </ToolTipService.ToolTip>

   5:  </TextBlock>

Or directly in code

   1:  ToolTipService.SetToolTip(txtblkNotification, "My tool tip for the TextBlock");

I hope someone else finds this useful. (I sure did)

Because of Fiddler I could not browse the web after a power failure.

I was in the middle of debugging my network traffic with Fiddler when there was a power “hiccup” and my computer rebooted.

When I came back up, I opened an Internet Explorer window and could not reach any web address. I could “ping www.google.com” but when I tried to browse to “www.google.com” IE kept sending me back to “http:///”

I’ve learned recently the fiddler makes strong usage of a local proxy. I stared up fiddler again, and did a clean shutdown of the app. After this I was able to browse the web again.

Interesting experience I thought I would share it.

Now it’s time to get an Uninterrupted Power Supply.

CODODN 2009 Registration is open!

Registration for the Central Ohio Day of .NET is now open. Quick sign up while spots are still open.

The Central Ohio Day of .NET is a joint venture between the Dayton .NET Developers Group, Central Ohio .NET Developers Group, Cincinnati SQL Server Users Group and the Cincinnati .NET Users Group. The event is a FREE day of technology discussions devoted to helping the local development community grow. Please check back often for more information about Day of .NET events.

If you need additional information please visit the official website.

If you want to track the event start following @CODODN on Twitter. Or keep an eye on the hash tags.

And since I'm the board member in charge of marketing for the event, help me spread the word.

• Tweet it on Twitter
• Download the flyers and print some off to hang around the office
• Blog about it
  • Don't forget your blog bling. Wear your badge with pride:
    <a href="http://www.cinnug.org/cododn"><img style="border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-bottom-style: none" src="http://www.cinnug.org/images/cododn2009Badge.gif" border="0" /></a>
• Tell your friends, your mother, your cats, and dogs.

A great event is coming up.... don't miss it. Register Today!

Software Development Trueisms

A co-worker sent these to me, and I thought they were hilarious and instead of spamming people I thought I would post about it.

• Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
• Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.
• Users don’t know what they really want, but they will know when they see it…
• The degree of normality in a database is inversely proportional to that of its DBA.
• If you work on a program long enough, it will eventually send E-mail.
• Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
• If you want software made you have 3 options: You can have it done FAST, you can have it done RIGHT, You can have it done CHEAP. Pick 2.
  

CAPTCHA Tool for Protecting Email Addresses

This post is a continuation of my previous post. "Some tips and tricks to prevent Email Harvesting / Scraping"

One of the techniques I mentioned was an "Anti-bot" process and I made reference to the Google Groups CAPTCHA design.

Today I found out that reCAPTCHA.net offers the same service for free. It's called Mailhide

Just browse out to http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/, supply an email address, and they will provide you with HTML you can use to mask your email.

Here's the process with pretty pictures

Providing an email address.

The generated HTML

Once the HTML is embedded, clicking the "..." gives you

When you provide the correct input you get

Pretty cool huh?

Give it a try yourself: User...@Domain.com

They also have an API available if you want to do the same process in bulk.

Happy coding.