Web 2.0

   Recommended Reading for January (click here for previous recommendations):

·         MOSS Search Word Stemming: Part 1 and Part 2 – written by Mike Taghizadeh, SharePoint Ranger; clarifies one of the most esoteric topics about SharePoint Search. If you’re interested in SharePoint Search, then subscribe to Mike’s blog because most of his posts have been and will be focused on this feature area.

·         Custom Master Pages and Site Definitions in WSSv3 (and MOSS2007) – written by Robert Bogue, SharePoint MVP; provides some good “in the trenches” details about implementing a custom Master Page and making the appropriate modifications to the Site Definition.

·         SharePoint Solution Generator: Part 1 (create a site definition from an existing site) and Part 2 (the internals of the created site definition project) – written by Serge van den Oever; provides a walkthrough (full of screenshots) on how to use the SharePoint Solution Generator stand-alone utility program that is part of the Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, which is scheduled to be released in Q1CY2007.

·         Write your own Custom Authentication Provider (in C#) for SharePoint to use: Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 – written by Liam Cleary; provides a comprehensive guide (with sample code) to developing a custom ASP.NET 2.0 Auth Provider (with membership and role providers) and doing the necessary configuration tasks to get MOSS working with it. In case you’re worried about having to change auth providers too often, check out the innovative Universal Provider Framework developed by Adam Buenz, SharePoint MVP, which will get you up and running with nearly any custom database type in less than 30 minutes.

·         Using the Business Data Catalog to connect to an Oracle database – written by Luis Du Solier, SharePoint MVP; provides a walkthrough (with plenty of screenshots) of using SharePoint Server’s BDC features to retrieve and interact with information stored in an Oracle database. Speaking of Oracle, I’m very pleased to highlight that the Microsoft Information Center for Oracle Customers website (http://www.microsoft-oracle.com) is now running on MOSS!

·         Whitepaper: Bringing Web 2.0 to the Enterprise with the 2007 Office System – written by Arpan Shah, Group Product Manager for SharePoint; explores how the 2007 Microsoft Office system allows enterprises to adopt Web 2.0 ideas and technologies to create high-value, user-driven applications for the Internet and intranet.

   <Lawrence />

We launched JobBurner.com almost 1 week ago in partnership with Rob Howard and Telligent.  You can find out more here on Yahoo! Finance where we got some initial coverage of the press release.  Job postings are FREE until March.

So far we've seen job postings from some great companies; Amazon.com, Turner Broadcasting (Time/Warner), officialCOMMUNITY, Fellowes, and of course Match.com to name a few. 

We have a great community where job seekers and employers can collaborate here and we've setup forums here.

And some even more exciting news - we've partnered with Gretchen Ledgard and Zoe Goldring from JobSyntax.  Gretchen joined JobBurner as Vice President of Product Marketing and Zoe joined as Business and Marketing Advisor.  Gretchen shares more details on her JobSyntax blog here. 

I'll provide more details as well as discuss some technical details of JobBurner later this week.  For now, here's a list of some of the products and platforms we used to build JobBurner:

• Blogs, Community Features, and Forms are powered by Community Server from Telligent
• Data Layer, ORM, Services Layer, some UI features, and Entities all generated using NetTiers and CodeSmith
• Frontend Ajax powered by ASP.NET AJAX
• Site Design by Sound Creative
• Designs cut into awesome CSS & XHTML by XHTMLized

As you can see, things obviously went well over the last week and we have some great momentum going.  Today Job Text Ads launched on CommunityServer.org, and we will be running ads on http://www.asp.net and http://www.iis.net later this week.  If you would like to join our affiliate program early please drop me a line and let me know.  Lastly, if you know any recruiters I'd love to tell them about our product; I can be reached at shane (at) jobburner.com.

-Shane 

The Machine is us.

(Link to the video)

It"s always nice to find little treasures in the inbox, especially one that is part of a continuing story

• Beta Release of GP Ruby.NET Compiler
• Find a new name for the project formerly known as Ruby.NET
• Ruby.NET under development downunder at QUT

Anyway"s, here"s the note and more info at Joel Pobar"s weblog - New GP Ruby.NET Beta release

From: Wayne Kelly
Sent: Friday, 9 February 2007 1:28 PM
To: Frank Arrigo
Subject: Announcing new release of Ruby.Net compiler

Dear Frank,

We are please to announce the release of Beta version 0.6 of Ruby.NET.

See http://www.plas.fit.qut.edu.au/Ruby.NET/ for more details and downloads.

Cheers, Wayne.

Way to go QUT and thanks for the update Wayne!

One of my big pet peeves with syndication is when platforms publish multiple formats. Or, more precisely, when the user is presented with 5 similar-looking icons with all of those options. Why make the user think? The user wants your content, but you"ve put an additional barrier in that ultimately has little or no effect on their consumption.

Many argue that ATOM is a superior format, and from a technical perspective that is probably the case. I just can"t bring myself to care all that much. ATOM makes certain things easier (or even possible) for the developer. If I were developing a publishing platform or an aggregator, I might feel more strongly about it.

But as a publisher and consumer of content, I don"t care how syndication happens. I don"t care if you"re sending me RSS 0.92, RSS 2.0, ATOM 0.3, or ATOM 1.0. I don"t care how you encode and escape and cache the content. Those are technical details unimportant to the consumption and creation of the content. Much of the appeal and success of blogging is that these platforms and standards have eliminated technical barriers to publishing and consuming content. Among the groups who have a vested interest in syndication, the producers and consumers have the least incentive to care as long as it all works.

We do have a universal standard for syndication: XML.

The reason syndication formats don"t matter is that they"re all XML. First of all, XML can easily be transformed from one format to another. It is relatively trivial for me to convert from RSS to ATOM and back. And you can always use FeedBurner, which (among other things) "translates your feed on-the-fly into a format (RSS or Atom) compatible with your visitors" feed reader application."  If your aggregator supports ATOM, that"s what you"re getting. If not, the feed degrades gracefully until we find a format that works for you. Secondly, XML is - as the name suggests - extensible. The RSS specification may be frozen, but I can easily add additional information to my RSS feed without breaking existing aggregators. 

Furthermore, as aggregators become increasingly commodified, they they must "be liberal in what they accept from others" to have any chance to compete. They must necessarily support RSS and ATOM, and they will continue to have to do so as long as there are RSS feeds that their users want to consume. this group probably has the most incentive to standardize on the easiest format - but unfortunately they"re not in the position to make that decision unless it"s unilateral. And you know what? If I were writing an aggregator, I would just transform all of the other feed types to my feed type of choice to support the greatest amount of content.

That is the beauty of XML, and that is why syndication formats don"t matter.

Conceptually, syndication is very important, but like AJAX, the spirit behind it is unfortunately tied (by name) to a specific implementation. RSS doesn"t matter; ATOM doesn"t matter. What matters is the fact that content can be syndicated, and I will consider this movement successful when anyone can subscribe to content and not know - or care - how it actually happens. Right now, we"re not far from that ideal.

AskTheVC addresses the question of what happens to IP rights when the founders go their separate ways. "Bottom line, you have a strong incentive (as does your former partner) to settle this amicably, otherwise, you both are going to be worse off."

I thought it was worthwhile to dig into this a little further, though, and discuss what happens with the various IP rights a startup might acquire.

Often you"ll hear 3 founders say "we want everything split 3 ways", but joint ownership of IP can be tricky. Rights and duties with joint ownership are poorly misunderstood, even by many lawyers. More importantly, the rights and obligations of each owner vary by the type of intellectual property and from country to country.  A joint owner of copyright in the US has different rights from a joint owner in England, and a joint owner of copyright has different rights from a joint owner of a patent.

Both copyright and patent rights vest in the original author(s) or inventor(s) respectively, and both can be assigned to the entity. There are some issues to be aware of there though. Any assignment or exclusive license must be recorded to be effective. If one founder is creating the IP (i.e., a patentable business method or system, the copyrighted code), then he or she retains that IP if the company dissolves without a proper assignment. Even with an assignment, the author has an inalienable reversionary right such that they can "reclaim" an assigned work after 35 years. Yes, this is eons to most startups, but it"s worth discussing. Reversionary rights do not exist for a work made for hire, because the "author" for these purposes is the company who did the hiring, so this issue is especially relevant if you plan on hiring contractors. (Patent does not have the concept of reversionary rights.)

Another often neglected IP right is trade secret. A trade secret is anything information that conveys a competitive advantage, is not readily known, and that you"ve taken reasonable steps to protect. It"s especially relevant when the creation is not otherwise patentable or, like many early stage startups, when it is not financially reasonable to pursue a patent. Trade secrets are probably the worst type of IP to leave open for interpretation - some districts have recognized joint ownership, but the rights and obligations are not always clear and the case law is sparse. Unlike patents or copyright, a trade secret can be lost by publicly disclosing - so it"s especially important to deal with this issue. Joint owners generally have the obligation not to disclose it unreasonably, but obviously there"s a lot of room left for interpretating what is reasonable and not.

AskTheVC "can’t think of any company that has fully thought out this scenario and planned for this contingency when forming the company from the onset", but probably these companies probably should. It"s easier than trying to settle it amicably later or leaving it to the interpretation of the courts, especially if the divorce is not amicable.

Like many others, I subscribe to my own feeds to help catch any issues that happen to arise, and I just noticed this gem at the bottom of my FeedBurner e-mail subscription.

If you prefer to unsubscribe via postal mail, write to: Loosely Coupled // Tim Marman"s Weblog, c/o FeedBurner, 549 W Randolph, Chicago IL USA 60661

I"m tempted to write them and see if I really get unsubcribed. Better yet, I wonder if I can SUBSCRIBE by postal mail. It would be so cool to get a letter everytime I post something on here.

Ha.

Wenngleich dies nicht unmittelbar ein Telekommunikations-spezifischer Beitrag ist, so stellt das Medium „Blog“ (zusammengesetzt aus Web & Log) einen der bestimmenden Trends des Web 2.0 und der davon abhängigen, künftigen Industrien dar. Ansgar Zerfaß, Prof. für Kommunikationsmanagement an der Uni Leipzig kommt in seiner Blogstudie 2007 zu folgenden Ergebnissen: Den Heavyusern des Internets sind Weblogs bekannt. Sie sind sich deren Bedeutung bewusst. Blognutzer sind an neuem, schnellem, hintergründigem...(read more)

This videocast is a follow on from a previous Videocast I did when I showed how to create extender controls using just the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions. This video contrasts the different development approaches and shows how much easier it is to create the same AJAX Extender controls using the AJAX Control toolkit.

Subscribe.

Original URL: http://aspnetpodcast.com/CS11/blogs/asp.net_podcast/archive/2007/02/15/asp-net-podcast-show-86-creating-extender-controls-with-the-ajax-control-toolkit-by-paul-glavich-video.aspx

Download WMV.

Download MP4.

Download support files.

Show Notes:

• Previous Videocast showed custom extender controls using the core ASP.NET AJAX Extensions
• AJAX Toolkit contains approximately 30 free controls
• Free, open source
• Additional framework for developing custom AJAX controls
• New Templates
• http://www.codeplex.com/AtlasControlToolkit
• Contrast between development approaches when creating an extender using just the ASP.NET Extensions and the AJAX Control toolkit.
• Re-using some of the provided scripts/code/features of the toolkit within the controls.