Community developer blogs

John Brennan

Recent Posts

• ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Now Released

  Posted: 24 Jan 2007 at 13:57 by jbrennan

  Microsoft have released v1.0 of ASP.NET AJAX extensions for ASP.NET 2.0. Download available from here Also the AJAX Control Toolkit v1.0 has been released and includes 4 new controls: AutoComplete, Calendar, MaskedEdit and Tabs Download the AJAX Control Toolkit here JB Share this post: digg it | kic

• Tip: Updating ATLAS Apps to ASP.NET AJAX RC1

  Posted: 17 Jan 2007 at 13:57 by jbrennan

  I downloaded the latest build of the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX Framework (Formerly known as ATLAS) earlier this week. I ran into one or two issues while upgrading that I thought would be worth listing here. Web.config The layout of AJAX related tags has changed significantly since the last beta realeas

• Backup your phone contacts with ZYB.com

  Posted: 02 Jan 2007 at 11:38 by jbrennan

  If you've ever lost your phone or have bought a new phone and need to transfer contacts from your old phone then www.zyb.com might be worth a look. Zyb allows you to synchronise your mobile contacts and calendar with your zyb account. It also allows you to share contacts with your friends and all th

• Getting Real with the 37signals Team

  Posted: 24 Oct 2006 at 23:31 by jbrennan

  The guys behind 37signals.com have a book out called Getting Real. The book is targetted at developers and project managers who want to build web based software in a better way. It talks about schedule, prioritisation of features, staffing, product promotion...things that matter.The book is free to

• Global Warming: calculate your carbon emissions

  Posted: 22 Oct 2006 at 00:49 by jbrennan

  There isn't a day that goes by now when we don't hear something about climate change and global warming. In the recent weeks our government has launched their power of one campaign in an effort to get you and I to play our part in lowering power consumption (and in turn our CO2 emmissions).  Th

• Tool: Restore files that have been deleted from the recycle bin

  Posted: 14 Aug 2006 at 10:31 by jbrennan

  We've all been there, that moment where you use shift+delete a little bit too hastily! Then you realise you're in trouble and you need to get those files back. Well the good news is that there is a get out of jail card that "may" help you recover those deleted files.When you delete a file in windows

• Tip: Backup database using osql with a '-' in the name

  Posted: 01 Aug 2006 at 15:18 by jbrennan

  Not something you are likely to hit very often but if you do happen to be using osql to do a backup of a database and that database happens to have a hypen in the name then this article will be of use. (Today I was one of these people :-) )When including our database name in the command line we need

• Am I receiving someone else's gmail?

  Posted: 12 Jul 2006 at 11:55 by jbrennan

  My gmail address is in the format FirstnameLastname@gmail.com but this morning I got an email addressed to Firstname.Lastname@gmail.com. I was kinda stumped because this email arrived to my inbox and yet as far as I could see it was addressed to a different gmail user. So what gives? Well according

• Dell talks one2one with it's customers

  Posted: 12 Jul 2006 at 09:04 by jbrennan

  It looks like Dell are taking a leaf out of Microsoft's book to reach out to their customers and garner some valuable feedback via corporate blogging. One2One http://one2one.dell.com is  a blog that provides customers with a line of communication to the executive team at Dell. The blog also pr

• Aliens have landed at Area 51 (in Cork)

  Posted: 11 Jul 2006 at 10:24 by jbrennan

  Gamers, checkout www.area51.ie, a dedicated and powerful gaming facility for Cork's gaming community. They've teamed up with Alienware to provide unique, state of the art gaming machines that are capable of rendering today's graphic intensive games. Special discount on Four Star Pizza and they prom

• Tips when climbing at high altitude

  Posted: 10 Jul 2006 at 09:20 by jbrennan

  Some friends of mine are heading to Russia in two weeks time to climb mountain Elbrus. They've been asking me for some tips/advice on preparing themselves for the trip. Elbrus is Europe's highest mountain at 5642m (approx 18,000 feet). I am glad to say that I successfully made it to the top of Elbru

• Mozilla/Firefox Web Developer Toolbar: Essential kit for any web developer

  Posted: 10 Jul 2006 at 08:23 by jbrennan

  I've been using the Firefox Web Developer toolbar for about a month now and quite simply....it rocks! It's got a tonne of features but here are some of my favourite:CSS1. Ability to turn off CSS styles on a web site. It's also got a very granular system for disabling styles i.e. disable only inline

• Quickly change date display format on asp.net page without altering code behind

  Posted: 05 Jul 2006 at 13:26 by jbrennan

  Ever run into problems with dates displaying on your asp.net page in the format mm/dd/yyyy or have a form that expects dates in US date format. There's a quick way to change this so that dates display using your own culture. To change how asp.net renders dates on the page you can modify the Culture

• Determine recently changed users in AD (Code Sample)

  Posted: 03 Jul 2006 at 14:29 by jbrennan

  Following some follow up comments to my previous post on determining recent changed objects in Active Directory I have decided to post a sample in C#. I have left the functions GetHighestUsnFromFile and SaveHighestUsnToFile as code for you to fill in yourself. static void Main(string[] args) { int h

• Google Checkout API

  Posted: 29 Jun 2006 at 14:03 by jbrennan

  Just spotted on Digg that Google Checkout has gone live. Essentially this is Google's attempt at offering a competing service to PayPal. There's a very cool and convincing demo video here. There are a handful of online stores that are currently supporting Google Checkout but I'm sure that this numbe

• Posting to IrishDev blogs from flickr

  Posted: 28 Jun 2006 at 00:09 by jbrennan

  .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Honda, originally uploaded by John V Brennan. Here is a test post from Flickr to IrishDev.com using the Metablog API. Metablo

• Blogs upgrade on IrishDev.com

  Posted: 27 Jun 2006 at 20:58 by jbrennan

  We've moved the blogs on IrishDev.com up to Community Server 2.0. We were running Community Server 1.0 up to now. You'll notice that the UI is a bit different, primarily in the control panel/admin area. Some of the new features that might be of interest are:Ability to cross post from other blogs (in

• Free MS Press book: Signup to Microsoft Technet Ireland Newsflash

  Posted: 23 Jun 2006 at 10:18 by jbrennan

  Just got my Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure Training Kit book from Microsoft Technet. Signup to the TechNet Newsflash now and pick your free book. Books on offer are: Implementing, Managing, and Maintaining a Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 Network Infrastructure (70-291) Microsoft® Wind

• HowTo: Update an object using System.DirectoryServices

  Posted: 21 Jun 2006 at 08:24 by jbrennan

  I recently got a request through my blog for a sample that shows how to perform an update operation on an existing directory object. This is pretty straightforward and goes like this:1. Bind to/Search for the object that you are interested in updating.2  Next we assign the updated value using

• Performance Tip: Use GetDirectoryEntry() only when you need to modify an object attribute

  Posted: 20 Jun 2006 at 18:03 by jbrennan

  I recently obtained a copy of Ryan Dunn and Joe Kaplan's new book "The .NET developers guide to Directory Services Programming". This is the first book (that I know of) written specifically for .NET developers that want to leverage the power of Active Directory in their code. In fact it goes one st