Gotta love this Visual Studio error message – An error occured while attempting to start the compilation.
It’s usually caused by the bin and or obj directories being read-only. Removing the read-only flag usually fixes the problem. It would be helpful to have a more friendly error message!
The TomTome One is a nice piece of kit. I got one about a month ago after getting some vouchers from Mastercare for my broken camera. Unfortunately, they took so long to arrive, that I ended up getting a Casio Exilim Z750, and hence, needed to get something else. Was actually planning to sell the TomTom One on EBay, as it’s not something I particularly need, but once I bought it and stared at the box for a couple of days, I ended up tearing off the plastic seal and decided to use it myself.
Not so much in London, as I don’t do much driving here outside of my regular routes, visiting family, etc. But, moving to the US in a few months when I get married will be a new place, and there are all sorts of maps available for the TomTom. It’s a pity they’re so expensive… a full USA map retails at about £110 (including the SD card). I’m sure I saw regional maps somewhere, which were only £25 each, but can’t seem to find those anymore.
One of the annoying things I have noticed about the TomTom is it’s tendency to just die sometimes, and refuse point blank to turn on. Mine has only been used a couple of times, and spent the best part of it’s life sitting on my desk doing nothing. When I initially bought it, getting it to turn on was a nightmare… though it did eventually (fortunately before I tried returning it!).
Wanted to check the software version on it just now, and it happened again. Although fully charged, the power button got no response whatsoever. It appeared to have just died! Eventually, I jammed a paper clip in the master reset hole at the bottom, next to the SD card slot, hit power, and voila – we’re back in business. The power button actually works again, and the device powers up.
Interestingly, it hasn’t actually lost anything. My settings are still exactly the same, which is great, though begs the question as to why I had to do a master reset anyway (or in this case, not do one…). Needless to say, I’m probably going to selotape one onto the back of mine in case it happens again.
Still, a bargain for £250, and will hopefully be a great help in a few months time.
Whoa! 37Signals are on the front page of BusinessWeek in the US this week. Gotta admit though, these folks make great products. It’s hard to remember what work was like before Basecamp, and my fiancee and I are using Backpack to plan our wedding as we live on two different continents.
I’ve really gotta check out Ruby on Rails too. Don’t think I’ve heard anyone say anything bad about it!
Good customer service is something which I’ve noticed a distinct lack of recently, so It was a refreshing change to deal with SearchBlackBox who really do know how to treat their customers right.
One of the projects I’m working on at the moment is to implement an improved search facility for a high-traffic, content-heavy website. The search technology of choice is Lucene, but we were reluctant to use dotlucene as it’s been discontinued (by the looks of it).
So, we went with the commerical version offered by SearchBlackBox, as it comes with support. I’m impressed though. They reply to emails quickly, supplied code samples to assist us, and have offered advice and suggestions on problems we are experiencing.
I think it definitely makes sense to pay a few hundred dollars for the excellent support on offer, when there’s a high-traffic eCommerce website at stake.
But, for Just-Jokes which is my pet project and relatively low traffic, I might implement dotlucene. The search facility on there is just a basic stored procedure at the moment, and I doubt many visitors actually find what they’re looking for using it…
This post has been edited, as it initially had my opinion about Ektron’s customer service, which actually isn’t as bad as I made out. Needless to say, I do have issues with their product, but that’s a topic for another post.
Just found out about this from Mark, and it looks quite good. VistaDB are offering their product free to people mentioning it on the front page of their blog. Most projects I’ve worked on tend to involve SQL Server, but clients are looking for more cost-effective solutions, and this is certainly a step on that road:
From VistaDB’s website:
VistaDB 2.1 database for .NET has been released
This 2.1 update includes over 60 improvements, including new support for .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. VistaDB is a small-footprint, embedded SQL database alternative to Jet/Access, MSDE and SQL Server Express 2005 that enables developers to build .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 applications. Features SQL-92 support, small 500KB embedded footprint, free 2-User VistaDB Server for remote TCP/IP data access, royalty free distribution for both embedded and server, Copy ‘n Go! deployment, managed ADO.NET Provider, data management and data migration tools. Free trial is available for download.
- Learn more about VistaDB
- Repost this to your blog and receive a FREE copy of VistaDB 2.1!
Make sure you check out the VistaDB Blog Offer.
Update 15 March 2006: It’s been 5 days, and I haven’t heard a thing from VistaDB (other than the initial automated email stating they’d review the site and get in touch). Maybe they’ve been overwhelmed with the response, that they can’t review the submitted sites enough. Or perhaps they just can’t be bothered, and are enjoying the free marketing they’ve got. Will post an update here as soon as I hear something…
Update 21 March 2006: It’s now 11 days, and still no word. I’m convinced this was just a marketing trick by VistaDB to get some free publicity at the blogosphere’s expense. After this, I’m not even going to bother with their free trial. They well and truly suck.
Update 24 March 2006: Finally heard back from VistaDB and got my serial number! Not sure why it took so long, but the important thing is that the offer is real and they are processing them. I’m looking forward to checking this out! 
Yep, I do love Telerik. They make awsome ASP.NET controls, and have really added lots of cool functionality to applications I’ve worked on.
But this is extreme:
Who’s going to top that I wonder. Keep an eye on Telerik’s customer of the month!
Can’t wait for this… Finally a skype phone which can work without a PC. In fact, even better, it works over wifi so it’s cordless too.
The Netgear phone is pre-loaded with Skype’s software, ready out-of-the-box to use with a wireless network. All a user needs to do after turning on the phone is enter a Skype username and password. The Skype software pulls up the user’s full contact list, displays the connection status on the phone screen, and allows the consumer to connect to any other Skype user for free.
The phone will also allow users to connect to non-Skype users with the SkypeOut feature. More information on Netgear’s Skype WiFi phone, including pricing and availability, is planned for the first quarter of 2006.
It’s March now, so that means anytime soon.
This is perfect. I’m using the Cyberphone K at the moment, and although it’s nice, it has some annoying issues like randomly losing its volume. Oh, and having to be stuck at my desk when making or receiving calls. This handset is definitely cool. Can’t wait until it’s out, and hopefully it’ll be reasonably priced!
You can pre-order the Netgear Wifi Skype phone at Expansys, though there’s no mention of price yet. Seeing as a standard USB phone goes for an average of £30, and the Linksys Skype cordless phone for $130 (£75), my guess is that the Netgear model will retail at about £90 – £100.
You’d expect online companies with millions of customers to be more careful about phishing. I’ve just received an email supposedly from Expedia, with the subject line “Welcome to Expedia”, from an @expedia.chtah.com email address. Sure, it started with Dear Munsifali, but my name is no secret (heck, all those spammers know it!). The fact that every link points to the chtah.com domain is also not reassuring.
Why is the subject “Welcome to Expedia” when I’ve been registered on the site for years. They’re sending me marketing email. I want personalisation dammit.
So, is this email real, or fake? The chmail.com domain redirects to CheetahMail which is owened by Experian, so it appears to be real. But, I’m not going to do enable ‘view images’ so I can see the full glory of their marketing masterpiece. I’m pissed off that they sent me an email with a flaky subject line, links to an unknown domain, not to mention that viewing images will undoubtedly record that I’ve viewed the email, and every link I click on will be tracked and reported.
All in all, this is an example of how not to do email marketing. They need to speak to Lemon Foundation!
I’m subscribed to close to 300 blogs, though they all get different levels of my attention, depending on how much time I have to read them and which ones I find are more valuable [to me] than others. So, when I read about Nick’s idea, it made a lot of sense. His proposal is to capture attention data – time taken reading blogs – and add this to the OPML file of blogs a user is subscribed to.
It would be great if you could automatically sort your blogroll by the attention you give each blog, or check out which blogs other people with similar interests are giving most of their attention to, or how many of your subscribers are giving your blog their attention (though I imagine it’ll probably show a lot of people that their blog is hardly read!).
There are a couple of problems. The storing and retrieval of attention data would have to be something that is integrated into existing RSS readers, which requires the software authors to implement this, so the idea would have to reach a tipping point first.
It’s a great idea though, and I know Nick’s been doing some prototypes to test the waters, so there’s progress. It’ll be interesting to see the direction this idea takes.