Numerous articles and books have been written about proper project management techniques and how to steer a project from start to finish.  Many of them offer help in maneuvering a floundering project back on track. What is mind-boggling, however, is that despite receiving so much help and advice, so many IT projects are considered failures, even those that were delivered on time and on budget. Furthermore, if you add the project evaluation criteria to measure the success of IT projects, it’s likely that the list of success stories would shrink even further.

One reason for all this dissatisfaction is that many customers initially don’t even know what they want, or more … more

Recently I upgraded my DotNetNuke installation from 3.x to 4.5.3. Upgrade went smooth but I had tough time making dasblog work under DNN (running on virtual directory under DNN).I googled for solution nearly full day but didn't get the exact solution. All the solutions were for dnn 3.x though which I was using for around an year (on .Net 1.1). <Clear/> tag does not work to clear root HTTP modules and handlers settings which gets inherited to any .net applications under root. Hope this solution helps guys in similar trouble. This can be applied for any DNN 4.5.3 installation to have any virtual directory within the same...<br>1) add following entries in the beginning of … more

In software development, a  design Pattern describes a general solution to a design problem that recurs repeatedly in many projects. Software designers adapt the Pattern solution to their specific project. Patterns use a formal approach to describing a design problem, its proposed solution, and any other factors that might affect the problem or the solution. A successful Pattern should have established itself as leading to a good solution in three previous projects or situations.

Here are 3 categories of the Patterns involved in software designing... 1) Creational Patterns

Abstract factory pattern: centralize decision of what factory to instantiate

Factory method pattern: … more

via netfxguide

The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 (NetFX3 or WinFX), is the new managed code programming model for Windows. NetFXGuide presents the best resources about the .NET Framework 3.0 including videos, tutorials, articles, source code and much more.

more

via www.businessweek.com

With a background in the Indian army, this Babson MBA student thought working in teams would be a breeze. He was in for a shock ...

more

via newsmotto

Stuart Brown has grouped colors into three color sets -neutrals, muted tones and bold colours and called this Web 2.0 Colour Palette:

Joseph followed the tip and made his wordpress blog theme web 2.0 like DC Media points to some more web 2.0 colors - Mile Burke?s The Web 2.0 Secret Weapon and a little more comprehensive web 2.0 Color palette. There is even a web 2.0 logo creator [Via Sticki Widgets ]

And if you want to learn from the start - Web 2.0 Design From Start to Finish and Designing in Web 2.0

Other Web 2.0 Links:Design, fonts, logos, blogs, etc.

Web 2.0 ZenJim Hobart on web 2.0 design and usabilityDIV & Pure CSS for web 2.0 designWeb 2.0 Design TutorialsWeb … more

Presented here is a nice article on Asp.Net optimization.. Via John Belthoff

************

If you read all of the websites dedicated to Asp.Net you will inevitably read about the wonders of the DataGrid, DataList, and Repeater controls. While each of these has its place, if you are only displaying data there is a much faster and more efficient means to do so. more

To examine the advantages and disadvantages of software outsourcing, as well as the application of lean principles to software development, Harvard Business School has done a case study on Wipro's innovative Factory Model approach. It specifically explores Wipro's experimental use of lean principles as a source of new competitive advantage in software services.

The case study addresses the advantages and disadvantages of software outsourcing and how to mitigate the effects of, for example, lock-in and hijacking. Explores how Wipro has helped its customers deal with these issues and looks at the changing competitive role of Indian outsourcers (from low-cost, to high-quality/rapid … more

VISIBILITY.net is one of the first Enterprise business applications to be written from the outset entirely using Microsoft.NET framework and Web services architecture. This methodology provides engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturers with a distinct set of advantages when deploying the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application. VISIBILITY.net has a highly functional user interface, providing the user with a multi-document interface (multiple windows) in a single browser session.

Visibility extended the standard Microsoft ASP.NET development environment by providing a highly intuitive, interactive user experience that would not usually be possible within an Internet application. This … more

Via windowsfordevices.com

McObject has released a C# implementation of a dual-licensed object-oriented embedded database that can be used to develop Window CE and Pocket PC applications. Originally written in Java, Perst boasts "tight integration" with C# and support for the .NET Compact Framework (CF), along with high performance and a modest footprint, the company says.

According to McObject, Perst's tight integration with C# results in "exceptional transparent persistence and ease in working with objects." The company adds that the database's typical 30 to 300 KB run-time code footprint enables it to satisfy the resource constraints of many embedded applications, and also makes it … more

I'm working on a more

Today, I was trapped in an interesting issue while more

I have recently moved my blog from community server to dasBlog. While setting up google Adsense ads on the site, I was caught up in a specific requirement as in where to put the ads. Google suggests that for high CTR ratio, ads should be placed just above the content and this left me searching for ways to put adsense in start of First Post's body content.

A simple way to implement this was modify your latest post every time you write a post ... cumbersome huh?? Not only cumbersome, this also invalidates your RSS as the feeds doesn't allow <_script_> tag in the XML. Looked around little more thinking that I might not be the first one having this kinda requirement ...but to my … more

Microsoft announced a major win today in retails sector. Target Corporation, the national's second-largest discount general merchandise retailer, is headed to adopt Microsoft? .NET Framework based technologies within its 1,400 stores in 47 U.S. states. Target will migrate its systems within each store to the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, Windows Serveral 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005, core technologies that deliver on the Microsoft Smarter Retailing strategy for connecting people, information, systems and devices.

According to Janet Schalk, chief information officer at Target Corporation, Microsoft technologies can help us drive down costs through a simplified architecture and … more

After un-installing SQL Server 2005 Beta version, I started facing issues with my SQL 2000 installation and it was shooting an strange error...

SQLDMO has not been registered, please re-run SQL Server setup and contact your system administrator?.

more

Today I ran into an issue with one of my DNN sites... I changed site settings and set the login page to one of the tabs which resulted in no access to login page for me and my users...I tried some of the solutions on the web but none of the earlier worked because I had removed friendly URLs host setting.

To get the access back try adding ctl=login to the end of a query string it forces a load of the login dialog eg http://www. mysite.com/default.aspx?ctl=login . If this doesn't work, try this to get around the problem http://www.mysite.com/Home/ tabid/<36>/ctl/Login/Default.aspx (change <36> with home tab id)

If this also doesn't work, John Mitchell has also posted a solution … more

Road2mba has written a nice and innovative XML based GMAT exam practice software ( GMATTER ) .

Gmatter is a software program to simulate real like test environment for GMAT Test while practicing. It uses easily created XMLs from text based materials which are utilized as inputs to the program. Gmatter has lots of good reporting features also, which enable you to analyze your strength and weakness areas in an efficient manner.

Try it here

Cheers!! more

The string type represents a string of Unicode characters. string is an alias for System.String in the .NET Framework. C# defines a number of aliases for CLR types which can be used interchangably or even mixed together.

eg. string x = new System.String(' ', 5);

Although string is a reference type, the equality operators (== and !=) are defined to compare the values of string objects, not references. This makes testing for string equality more intuitive.

Some more defined C# aliases are:

string

System.String

sbyte

System.SByte

byte

System.Byte

short

System.Int16

ushort

System.UInt16

int

System.Int32

uint

System.UInt32

long

System.Int64 … more