Jason Fried: Why work doesn’t happen at work

Posted November 29th, 2010 in Productivity, Talks by admin

Jason Fried has a radical theory of working: that the office isn’t a good place to do it. At TEDxMidwest he lays out the main problems (call them the M&Ms) and offers three suggestions to make work work.

More talks on http://www.ted.com

Windows Phone 7 : User Experience Best Practices

Posted November 24th, 2010 in Talks, UX, WP7 by Sam Beauvois


Get Microsoft Silverlight

Source : http://www.msteched.com/2010/Europe/WPH202

10+ sources for Windows Phone 7 development

Posted November 17th, 2010 in WP7 by admin

Windows Phone 7  is out and it’s great !

As a dotnet developper you have to be interested in how develop apps for that platform.

Besides you can develop for free, there are a bunch of tools that Microsoft offers you !

  • Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
  • Windows Phone Emulator
  • Silverlight for Windows Phone
  • XNA Game Studio 4.0
  • Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone

All available from here

And here is a list of sources for informations.


There is no more excuses to avoid wp7 !

Analyse your web traffic without redeployment.

Posted November 5th, 2010 in ASP.NET by Sam Beauvois

The spying of users activity is good for you business !

Web analytics are an important part for a website; it allows the site owner to understand what users are looking for and to enhance his site in order to grab more users.

Web Analytics systems.

One of the most popular system is google analytics, if you have a google account, you can use this system for your sites.
You just have to create an entry for your website on www.google.com/analytics.
It generates for you a piece of code with a specific ID that you have to paste just before the closing head tag of each of the pages you want to monitor.

An alternative is Piwik, which is open source.
This web application has to be installed on a web server (with php/mysql).
This app also generates for you a piece of javascript code that you have to paste right before the closing body tag.

With ASP.NET Webforms.

In ASP.NET Webform you can copy this tracking code on your main Master page and it’s included in all pages using this master page.
But it requires modifying the page and redeploying the web site.

You can also use the Global.asax to add code to each page which is generated. It also requires redeployment.

Another alternative are the httpmodules.
It allows you to add functionalities to a website with just copying a dll file in the bin directory of your application and reference it in your main web.config file.

It’s the solution I choose in order to add analytics functionality to a website already running.

SAHM for Simple Analytics HttpModule.

My first implementation added only google tracking code, but I added piwik just in case and because I was testing this system.

I made it public, so you can download it from codeplex at the address : http://sahm.codeplex.com/

To use it:

1.) Copy the SAHM.dll file in the bin folder of your application

2.) Edit your Web.Config application file.

2.1) Locate <configSections> and add


<sectionGroup name="SAHM">
 <section name="google" type="SAHM.GoogleConfig, SAHM" allowLocation="true" allowDefinition="Everywhere"/>
 <section name="piwik" type="SAHM.PiwikConfig, SAHM" allowLocation="true" allowDefinition="Everywhere"/>
</sectionGroup>

2.1) Add a SAHM section


<SAHM>
 <google Code="UA-XXXXXX-X"/>
 <piwik Server="www.yourpiwikserver/" IDSite="1"/>
</SAHM>

Set your identifiers.

For the piwik : be sure to set the Server value without the “http://”

2.3) Add the module in the <module>


<httpModules>
 <add name="SAHM" type="SAHM.AnalyticsModule, SAHM"/>
 </httpModules>

or if you use II7


<system.webServer>
 <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"/>
 </system.webServer>

2.4) Save your web.config file and test if your tracking code is in your page code.

2.5) That’s it

If you enjoy this module, please let me know!
Happy web traffic analyses.

Download link : http://sahm.codeplex.com/

Windows Phone 7 official Add

Posted November 1st, 2010 in WP7 by Sam Beauvois