On June 17, 2009 I'll be heading up the road to the Captial DotNetNuke User Group to give a talk on Developing DotNetNuke modules that interact with 3rd-party RESTful APIs then the following evening (June 18th) will be the first ever meeting of the Richmond DotNetNuke User Group, so please check out that page and register if you're in the area and interested in attending! Also, if you have any questions or suggestions in advance for me for either meeting, leave a comment below or email chrisbusse@gmail.com

I'm preparing to write a series of posts over the summer that outline how I use a bunch of Web 2.0 / hosted applications to manage my business and personal productivity. To help me visualize the relationship between the apps I've creating this rough diagram, which I'd really like to refine (straighten the text, adjust colors, etc). For each of the items on this diagram, I plan to make a "zoomed" in diagram showing how I use the tool as well as articles for each one describing my processes around them, and if I get ambitious, screencasts.

While being cross-examined during a trial in which he accused a critic of libel, James McNeill Whistler was questioned as to why he charged two hundred guineas for what amounted to two days of work. His response: "I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime." This quote reminds me alot of a parable in Gordon Macenzie's Orbiting the Giant Hairball where an oil baron buys a dairy farm and berates the cows for not working hard, where in reality they are producing milk but the action is unseen.

Zendesk is a Web 2.0 / hosted application that provides an easy to use helpdesk or request tracking system in which tickets can be assigned to people ("agents"). These tickets can be Open, Pending (input from the requestor), Solved, or Closed. "Out of the box" Zendesk provides a set of custom reports that can be used to view the overall status of a ticket queue at a quick glance. One of these reports is a "Backlog Evolution Report" which shows three points for each day: "Backlog" = Working Tickets "New Tickets" = Created Tickets "Solved Tickets" = Resolved Tickets One a ne... more »

We had beautiful weather last week and the gas pipeline construction through the Cary & Belmont intersection had wrapped up so buskers returned to the street corner outside of my office. A gentleman we've dubbed "Freebird" usually sets up for all-afternoon sessions, but he wasn't seen. Instead we got a mix of talent: And lastly, this gentleman was in the alley at 10am on Tuesday, enjoying a cold beverage while having a lively conversation on his cell phone:  

At my company we use a number of online / "Web 2.0"-style applications to track the various activities we do. Our use of these systems has evolved to the point where if you communicate with me in relation to the work I do with you, I'm tracking that communication in at least one of five systems. Additionally, another two systems are used for time tracking and accounting, and a few others to extend all of these, however in this post I'm just focusing on communication tracking. I'm trying very hard not to interject any cynicism into the idea that "OMG it takes me seven friggen Web 2.0 apps to k... more »

 On this website I have a module that I created called TwitterDNN that loads a real-time view of the five most recents posts ("tweets") I've made on Twitter.  It does this via a call directly to Twitter's API at the server level, and renders the results out as the page loads, as opposed to using the JSON callback that many other Twitter badges/modules use, which execute client-side Javascript to render out the results. As a result of doing it through the Twitter API, the contents of my tweets appear within the HTML of my pages when Google and other search engines inde... more »

I am giving a presentation tonight (March 5th, 2009 at 6:00pm) on "DotNetNuke and what it can do for you" at the Richmond .NET User's Group. DotNetNuke (DNN) is an extremely flexible, customizable, modularized Content Management System that can be used for simple web sites, blogs (like this one!) and as the basis much more complex applications. This presentation will cover some of the skinning (ala themeing in WordPress), XHTML compliance, and perhaps a sidebar on grid-based page design (and related DNN Projects). We'll also cover how to develop a custom module for DNN, and how you can get i... more »

Today I did a brainstorming/planning session with a potential new client who is interested in a DotNetNuke-based website with some custom functionality specific to their organization's business needs. On a whiteboard I created a matrix with four categories down the side: Function, Content, Metrics, and Access (although in retrospect, I like the order of Content, Function, Access, Metrics better). Across the top I listed major areas of functionality that would most likely make sense as DNN modules: Classes, Self Assesment, Feedback, Events, Development (aka Fundraising), etc. As we went th... more »

I am a big fan of Moleskine notebooks, especially the Squared Notebook (large) for keeping a work journal and jotting down ideas, sketches, diagrams, etc.  Recently it came to my attention that Molekine has released a limited edition Helvetica notebook, but only in the Asian market. Source Yesterday I came across this blog post on ilovetypography.com where they had gotten 15 of them in.  In the comments "nor" linked to the moleskineasia.com online store that carries them so I figured I'd try ordering some to see how much the it would be under the assumption that between the currenc... more »