State / Country List

Just in case any of you geeks need a state or country list in XML,

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States - search for states.xml

Countries - search for 'iso 3166'
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API's and Web Services Connecting the World -- How Do We Get a Piece of the Pie?

Well, I'm speaking out of my league here, but Mike P and I have these conversations all the time. There are some sites out there GMAIL, BLOGGER, FLICKR, AUDIOSCROBBLER, TECHNORATI -- all of them have some sorta interconnected functionality, humping my brain trying to figure it out.

Labeling and metadata are the key, this turns into information, just gotta be the best at the service and information provided, and be specialized, leveraging these already built technologies that expose web services and api's.

One day with Mike P's genius and my practicality, we are gonna figure out the connection put a meter on it, attach a biz plan, and retire in some tropical isle, not Mike P and I together, but somewhere while professional management takes the idea and runs with it. Well at least the plan.

Data Transformations Using Excel

O Boy O Boy,

Today is a wonderful night to be an IT Professional, why you ask? I spent the last 4+ hours doing mindless data transformation tasks. It's amazing what tricks my buddy Mike P taught me with MS Excel. I used to think this tool was for accounting sissies, but it's got great functionality.

For Example:

-- Breaking out Contact Name into First name and last name
-- Breaking out Contact Number into phone1, 2, 3, 4

There's a 'text to column' feature in excel that will break that sh*t out for you based on a delimiter or a space. Wonderful!

The only bad part is then parsing thur the 1,000's of records of data manually and fixing the crap data. This wasn't even too bad using the sort features to group all the bad stuff. Looks like there is more of this ahead!

Yippie!

Rockstar Techies

Roland comes thru with his one-sy for the week. Rockin dude -- We need to change the opening logo so the girl has the rockstar techies logo as a butthat.

Thinking about the next one-sy -- How bout some categories, setting up a gmail account, and finding us some contract jobs in LA. I'm primed!

http://www.rockstartechies.com

AMF - SMTP Traffic and Choosing your ISP

The challange is to find a cheap ISP that allows a considerable deal of SMTP traffic.

Consider a database that has about 2,000 records, memberships will expire, and notification will be sent two months before expiration, one month before expiration, 1 day before expiration, and 1 month after expiration. Doing some simple projections on this, we can expect to have anywhere from 100-400 email notifications sent out daily. Brinkster allows up to 2,500 messages to be sent daily, which is pretty damn good all things considered.

Next is the issue of 'blasting' an email out to a group of individuals. Unfortunately many ISP's, at least the ones I've researched will not allow more than about 75 individuals to receive the same email.

This creates a need for other services, but I guess that's another thing.

AMF - Brinkster / Verisign Gateway Transactions

All the research / trouble for payment gateways is finally solved. It looks like we are going to choose Brinkster as the ISP and Verisign as the payment gateway. The verisign sdk integrated pretty easily with the .net IDE, and the parameter lists are pretty seemless, examples of them are as follows.

//------------------------------------------------------------------
// To Verisign
//"TRXTYPE=S&TENDER=C&PARTNER=VeriSign&
//VENDOR=SuperMerchant&US
//ER=SuperMerchant&PWD=x1y2z3&
//ACCT=5555555555554444&EXPDATE=03
//08&AMT=123.00"

// Back from Verisign
//RESULT=0&PNREF=VXW412345678&
//RESPMSG=APPROVED&AUTHCODE=123456
//&CVV2MATCH=Y
//------------------------------------------------------------------

Found the verisign system to be much less cryptic than autorize.net, but a tad bit more expensive. Payflow Pro is about 60 bucks a month for up to 1000 transactions.

YIPPIE

AMF Tech Meeting

Last night Mike P and I went to the AMF tech meeting to discuss some high level plans for the Austin Music Foundation and here's what we came up with:

All of these areas need attention, and hopefully, my wonderful random tech buddies will be able to help tangibly or intangibly (sorry for mispellings, but you know what I mean).

• Membership System - The online membership system will be up and running in its bare minimum state June 1. This means a form that collects member, membership, and transaction information on the web, and a means internally to search via received memberships and the ability to change the status and process date. There are many notifications that need to be built into the system, many reports that need to be done, much critical infrastructure dreamed up.
• In-Kind Donation System - A way to track non-cash donations given by individuals to the Austin Music Foundation. This would consist of a member name / company and a running list of donations given by the member.
• Volunteer Coordination System - A way to keep track of who the volunteers are and what they have done for the Austin Music Foundation.
• Exchange / ISP - Leveraging exchange to work with a hosted ISP in order to be able to email groups
• Legacy Data - Figuring out ways to integrate legacy data with the new systems. Currently a project is underway to consolidate numerous Access databases and Excel Spreadsheets

These are all I can think of at the moment, but as other things arise I'll be sure to pop em up here.

Ciao, Roberto

AMF / ISP

Hey Gang,

I'm looking for an ISP for the Austin Music Foundation, does anyone have any suggestions on a quick / reliable web host?

It must be able to do the following:

• SQL Server / ASP.net Support
• MySQL / PHP Support
• SMTP for numerous message routing
• 600 or so MB for unlimited email address
• Multiple Domain Host Support
• SSL and Payment Gateways

If anyone has suggestions, please let me know! Of course it has to be dirt cheaper than cheap! Robert

Home Web / SQL Server / Remote Debugging in .NET

Anyone Anyone Anyone,

I am running a web / sql server out of the apartment, I'm trying to set up remote debugging so I can get some other geeks to help with some projects.

http://divineguitar.mine.nu

Does anyone know how to set up VSS and .NET to allow remote debugging? If so, please let me know!

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! Robert

Austin Music Foundation

Currently working on a online membership system to keep track of new members. The system is able to keep information on different memberships and members.

What's left to be done (the biggies at least):

1. Automatic Email Notifications
2. Secure Socket Layer Integration
3. Running Credit Transactions
4. Hosting / Migration

If you love Austin, Music, you know C#, and want to help, I love you, please let me know!

Here's the database construct, simple as can be, just needs loads of code on top

http://www.divineguitar.com/blog/amfdatabase.jpg

TCCM - ELCA

Well currently I'm working on enhancements to http://www.tccm-elca.org . It's 7 churches around the Shiner area. I do this because I love my mom and brother, and maybe good karma. So check it out, if anyone out there who loves religion and C# and wants to help with an event calendar, let me know, that would rock.