http://www.prlog.org/

From the prlog web site:

Press Release Distribution

• Distribution to Google News.
• Distribution to numerous search engines.
• Numerous javascript, html & RSS feeds.
• Customizable realtime/daily/weekly alerts.
• Powerful advanced search.
• Your own Press Room

We currently have a position opening for a suitably qualified person to assist on a number of projects on a casual contract basis. The amount of work will average 1-2 days a week and would ideally suit a student studying information technology or information systems looking to gain industry experience and a willingness to learn.

The job role involves the following tasks:

• Assisting with the setup of online courses (including uploading files, entering survey and quiz questions, writing course and subject summaries)
• Assisting with the writing of user manuals and tutorials for a company intranet
• Assisting with development of PowerPoint slides on small business use of the Internet
• Assisting with development of ASP.NET/C#/SQL Server web applications

Required Skills

• Web page development
• Microsoft Office 2007/2010 (Word and PowerPoint)
• Excellent written communication skills
• Ability to work unsupervised
• Proactive attitude

Bonus Skills – one or more of these skills would be great but we will provide training if you don’t have them.

• ASP.NET application development
• Experience with online learning systems such as Blackboard or Moodle
• Experience with content management systems such as SharePoint or Joomla
• Please email enquiries@castnerit.com with your cv and a cover letter addressing the job role and required skills.

Job Posted: 4 August 2010
Position closes: 18 August 2010

1. IrfanView (www.irfanview.com) – great for basic image editing (resizing, cropping, creating thumbnails, etc.) and screen capturing.

2. WinRAR (www.rarlabs.com) – great for working with zip and other compressed files. Also great for working with CD and DVD image files (e.g. .iso files)

3. Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E59C3964-672D-4511-BB3E-2D5E1DB91038&displaylang=en) – useful tool if you develop web pages.Has a host of features to analyze and validate HTML, CSS, and other web site features. Includes a feature to see how your site looks at different screen resolutions.

5. FaceBook Developer Toolkit (http://www.codeplex.com/FacebookToolkit) – allows you to build FaceBook apps within Visual Studio.

6. Microsoft Office Outlook Connector (http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7aad7e6a-931e-438a-950c-5e9ea66322d4&displaylang=en) – “With Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, you can use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail or Microsoft Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages and contacts.”

7. NMap (http://nmap.org/) is a useful tool for IT security. It performs a variety of network scans that can potentially highlight weaknesses in your network security.

8. MacDrive 7 (http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/) allows you to see and use your Mac hard disks when running windows. I find it especially useful when running bootcamp and I want to access files from the Mac partition.

1. Accept text input into a web form that includes multiline text boxes. The text often includes line breaks.
2. The text is stored in a database such as SQL Server 2005. SQL Server 2005 has no problem storing the line breaks.
3. I then display the data in an ASP.NET gridview control. Because the control renders as HTML, it doesn’t recognize the newline escape characters.

The problem is how to convert the newline characters into <br />. Here is one solution. It is closely based on this MSDN article: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xwewhkd1.aspx (regex.replace)

This C# example assumes you are using an ASP.NET FormView with a label called lblSampleText:

//Create a regular expression that matches a newline
string pattern = "\n";
Regex rgx = new Regex(pattern);
//Find the relevant label from the FormView
Label vL1 = checked((Label)FormView1.FindControl("lblSampleText"));
string inputStr = vL1.Text;
//Replace the newline character with br
string outputStr = rgx.Replace(inputStr,"<br/>");
// Display the resulting string
vL1.Text = outputStr;

This VB example assumes you are using a GridView with a TemplateField control. Inside the TemplateField control (ItemTemplate) is a label called lblSampleText.

Protected Sub GridView3_RowDataBound(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridViewRowEventArgs) Handles GridView3.RowDataBound
If e.Row.RowType = DataControlRowType.DataRow Then
' Create a regular expression that matches a newline
Dim pattern As String = "\n"
Dim rgx As New Regex(pattern)
' Find the relevant label from the gridview
Dim inputStr As String = CType(e.Row.FindControl("lblSampleText"), Label).Text
' Replace the newline character with <br/>
Dim outputStr As String = rgx.Replace (inputStr, "<br/>")
' Display the resulting string.
CType(e.Row.FindControl("lblSampleText"), Label).Text = outputStr
End If
End Sub


SURFACE AREA CONFIGURATION

1. Go to Programs –> Microsoft SQL Server 2005 –> Configuration Tools –> SQL Server Surface Area Configuration
2. Click on Surface Area Configuration for Services and Connections
3. Expand Database Engine and Click on Remote Connections
4. Select local and remote connections and TCP/IP and named pipes.
FIREWALL CONFIGURATION

1. Make sure your firewall allows TCP port 1433.
WIRELESS ROUTER CONFIGURATION (if you have one!)

1. Go to port forwarding and forward port 1433 to the internal IP address of the machine running SQL Server 2005 (e.g. 192.168.1.1).
SQL SERVER CONFIGURATION

1. The simplest (but not most secure) method of authenticating a web page query to a database is to use SQL Server authentication. This requires your server to allow Mixed authentication. The more secure method of authentication is windows authentication. For an excellent description on how to set up and use windows authentication with ASP.NET, visit http://www.spaanjaars.com/QuickDocId.aspx?quickdoc=395. If you want to use mixed authentication:

2. Open Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio
3. Authenticate in the usual way (usually Windows Authentication)
4. In the Object Explorer, right click on the name of the server and select properties.
5. Click on the security page and select SQL Server and Windows authentication.

CREATE A NEW SQL SERVER LOGIN (if using SQL Server authentication)

1. Open Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio
2. In object explorer, expand the security folder and right-click on Logins.
3. Select New Login
4. Type in your new username and select SQL Server authentication.
5. Type and confirm a password.
6. [Optional] Uncheck enforce password policy and User must change password at next login.
7. Choose the default database.
8. Click OK
9. In the object explorer, click on the name of your database, expand the folder, and expand the security folder.
10. Click on users and if the user you created is not listed, right-click on users and select new user.
11. The login name needs to be the user you just created (click on … to select a user from a list of users). The username can be the same if you wish.
12. Select the relevant database roles (e.g. db_datareader and db_datawriter).
13. Click OK

Hope this helps!
Grant

The UO IT department has a great page with instructions for viewing your uoregon e-mail through Outlook and other e-mail programs:

http://it.uoregon.edu/help/email/setup.shtml

2. Hotmail

Use the Microsoft Outlook connector available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7aad7e6a-931e-438a-950c-5e9ea66322d4&displaylang=en

3. Gmail

Follow the instructions at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=86374 (POP) or http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77689&topic=12814 (IMAP)

To avoid displaying the complicated error messages displayed by the .NET framework, you can direct users to a more user-friendly page by inserting the following tags into your web.config file:

<customErrors mode=”RemoteOnly” defaultRedirect=”errors/error.aspx”>
     <error statusCode=”404″ redirect=”errors/error404.aspx”/>
</customErrors>

Using this method of error handling also has the added benefit of not displaying sensitive server information to the user (or potential hacker). “RemoteOnly” means that the error messages are still displayed in their normal format if viewing the pages on the web server itself. You can also view the error messages in the server’s event viewer or e-mail the errors to a system administrator by inserting the following code (or similar) into your global.asax file:

    Sub Application_Error(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
        Dim varCurrentException As Exception
        varCurrentException = Server.GetLastError.InnerException()
    
        ‘E-mail to system administrator
        Dim client As New SmtpClient
        Dim message As New MailMessage
        message.Body = “Error: ” & varCurrentException.ToString & “<br/><br/>Source: ” & Request.Url.ToString
        message.Subject = “DSC488588 Web Site Error”
        message.From = New MailAddress(“name@domain.com”, “System Adminstrator”)
        message.IsBodyHtml = True ‘Assume HTML format for website owner

        message.To.Add(“name@domain.com”)
        client.Send(message)
    End Sub

Remember that it is better to explicitly handle individual errors (for example, using Try, Catch) rather than relying on this catch-all method for handling all errors. Use this method for detecting any remaining errors but consider handling them individually if they reoccur.

1. If you connect to the Internet via a service provider other than the UO (e.g. Comcast, QWest), then you need to download and install the VPN (virtual private network) software available from http://micro.uoregon.edu/getconnected/ or obtain a duckware CD from computing services in the McKenzie building (room 151). You do not need to run the VPN software if you are connecting through the UO wireless network.

2. Each time you want connect to your I: drive from home, first run the VPN software. The VPN software does two things. It sets up a secure tunnel between your computer and the UO network and it gives you a UO IP address.

3. Open up any window (e.g. My Documents)

4. In the address bar, type in \\lcb1\undergrads\yourusername or \\lcb1.uoregon.edu\undergrads\yourusername. If you can’t see the address bar, go to View –> Toolbars –> Address Bar. For MBA students replace the undergrads with MBAs.
5. You will be prompted for a username and password. The username is in the LCB\yourusername format. The password is the password you use to logon to the computers in the Chiles computer lab.

6. You will now see your I: Drive files.

Note that it won’t be called “I: drive” on your computer unless you map your directory to your I: drive (not required though). To do this:

1. Go to Tools –> Map Network drive.
2. Change the drive to I: drive.
3. The folder is \\lcb1.uoregon.edu\undergrads\yourusername?
4. Click on Connect using a different user name.
5. Type in your username (LCB\yourusername) and password.
6. Click on OK then Finish.

Note that you will often see a “Cannot reconnect” error message when you turn on your computer after mapping your I: network drive. This error occurs because you are not connected to the VPN when you first login.

For Mac Users:

1. In Finder, go to Go –> Connect to Server
2. Type in smb://lcb1.uoregon.edu/undergrads/yourusername
3. Enter your LCB username and password when prompted (you don’t need the LCB\ in front of your username)
4. For MBA students replace undergrads with MBAs at step 2.

The calendar control is useful for displaying event dates that users can then click on for more information. Here are the steps for setting up the calendar control to display event information from database.

1. Place a calendar control on the required page (for example, default.aspx)

2. Create a second page called calendar.aspx for displaying the event information.

3. In your codebehind file for the page with the calendar control (default.aspx.vb in my example), create the SelectionChanged Sub for your calendar control (calendar1 in my example) and enter

  Protected Sub Calendar1_SelectionChanged(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Calendar1.SelectionChanged
    ‘ Display calendar details when date selected
    Dim eventDateSelected As String
    eventDateSelected = Format(Calendar1.SelectedDate.Date, “MM/dd/yyyy”).ToString
    Response.Redirect(“calendar.aspx?eventDate=” & eventDateSelected)
  End Sub

The code above retrieves the date clicked on by the user (Calendar1.SelectedDate.Date), formats the date, and redirects the user to calendar.aspx with the date selected as a querystring. You will need to format the date to match the format of the date in your database events table.

4. In calendar.aspx, use a data control such as a detailsview or formview to display the information.

5. When setting up your formview or detailsview data source (assuming that you are using Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer), click the Where button to create the querystring criteria. The column should be your date column, the Source should be QueryString, and the QueryString Field should be eventDate (if you are using the code above).

One thing I should stress is that the date format from the database needs to match the date format of the query string. I use a SQL Server 2005 database to store event data. In the view I created to display event information, I use the following conversion to extract the date from the eventDate column and match it with the query string:

CONVERT (nvarchar(30), eventDate, 101)

101 is one of the predefined date formats.

These tools can help you analyze your pages and optimize them for improved search engine rankings.

1. Yahoo Site Explorer: Allows you to see which pages are linking to your site. For example, link:isom.uoregon.edu will show you all pages that link to isom.uoregon.edu

2. Google Webmaster tools: Tools that ensure Google is indexing your site correctly.

More tools coming soon.

Some of the information in this post is from a presentation given by Andrea Loreto of SEO Architect