Microsoft BizSpark

I officially started a small start up company today. Microsoft has a great program called BizSpark. I don't want to give to much away, as it is a wide open program right now. But if you are a start up, or want to be, you should check it out.

Special thanks to AZ Groups and Scott Cate for helping me get started. Scott Cate rocks. And thanks to Microsoft for their willingness to help incubate start ups.

www.mykb.com

www.azgroups.com

www.microsoft.com/bizspark/

I still have and love my day job, so I will proudly serve my employer as long as my job holds out. So I'll only be a part timer at the new gig, but with two or three other developers also working part time, I think we will roll something out quickly. If anyone has some spare computers laying around, I'd love to take 'em off your hands.

And I've been praying about some direction, this opportunity just fell in my lap, so be sure that God answers prayers in Jesus's name. (I know, that makes me strange I guess, but it is true).

My HelloWorld LINQ Example

I know it is sad, but up until today I hadn't ever written a single LINQ query. So, for future prosterity, here is my hello world example.

 string[] s = { "test", "hello world", "mamma", "zack", "aaa","xxx" };
 // LINQ
 var subset = from z in s where z != "hello world"
    orderby  z descending select z;
 int i = 0;
 foreach (var l in subset)
 {
   Response.Write("Item " + i.ToString() + " = " + l + "<br />");
   i++;
 }

What is Hot Right Now In The Job Market

I went to http://www.dice.com/ today out of curiosity ran some keywords through nationwide to get a rough indicator of what technologies are really in demand right now. Here are some interesting results (last 30 days).

Java: 8052 jobs
.Net: 4927 jobs
PHP: 1454 jobs
ASP.Net: 2324 jobs
Flex: 796 jobs
Flash 1081 jobs
test driven development: 2295 jobs
MVC: 520 jobs
Silverlight: 262 jobs
Design Patterns: 1368 jobs
Agile: 2221 jobs
SQL Server: 7285 jobs
MySQL: 1479 jobs
c#: 4014 jobs
Visual Basic: 895 jobs
VB: 1964 jobs
Javascript: 3589 jobs
jQuery: 314 jobs
AJAX: 2011 jobs
Photoshop: 646 jobs
Ruby on Rails: 257 jobs
Python: 1023 jobs
Maya: 19 jobs
3D Max: 13 jobs
Unity 3D: 1 job



A few surprises, I expected to see a lot more Flex and Silverlight jobs. Apparently Java is far from dead, despite what many bloggers have espoused. SQL Server DBA's are in high demand as well. Python also looks pretty strong where Ruby on Rails still looks over hyped in the blogosphere compared to demand.

Great AJAX jQuery ASP.Net Article

Here is a link to a great article explaining various methods for getting data from the client to the server and back using AJAX, jQuery, and ASP.Net.

http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=104

Enabling GZip on IIS7

Here is an link to a blog post about how to get gunzip working on IIS7

http://cfsilence.com/blog/client/index.cfm/2009/6/10/Enabling-GZip-Encoding-On-IIS7

Cool Javascript Visualization Library

This is a pretty neat JavaScript visualization library.

http://thejit.org/demos/




Source: Web Resources Depot

Another jQuery UI Plugin Set

Check this new jQuery UI plugin set out!

http://flowplayer.org/tools/demos/index.html

Source: http://www.danvega.org/blog/

Adding CSS Links On The Fly In C#

Here is an example of adding a link to a CSS dynamically on an ASP.Net page. I stole this from somewhere, but forgot where, so please forgive the lack of attribution.

  void AddSmallGridCSS ()
    {
      HtmlLink link = new HtmlLink ();
      link.Href = "~/App_Themes/" + Page.Theme + "/mystylesheet.css";
      link.Attributes.Add ( "type", "text/css" );
      link.Attributes.Add ( "rel", "stylesheet" );
      Page.Header.Controls.Add ( link );

    }

You don't have to use app themes, the file can be in any directory.

Noteworthy: First Graduate of a Virtual Institution

Meet Julie Shannon, Texas State Technical College’s virtual college in Second Life first grad. Pretty amazing.


Source: Dusan Writer's Metaverse

Coffee Plantation in downtown Tempe to close Saturday

Last Saturday, my favorite coffee shop in Arizona closed. It is an end of an era. I spent a lot of time at the Coffee Plantion on Mill working remotely, hanging out with friends, and occassionally checking out all the beautiful woman that walked by. There were lots of cool characters that were regulars there, me being one of them. I really enjoyed hanging out there, the 'Plantation was a big part of my life for about three years between 2004-2007. A corner stone of the old dynamic of Mill Ave is lost. Even though I moved far from Arizona, Coffee Plantion you will still be missed.

Coffee Plantation in downtown Tempe to close Saturday

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