Ever wondered how to create a custom function, otherwise known as a user defined function, in Microsoft Excel. Then read on to find out how easy it is to create a custom function or UDF (User Defined Function) in Excel.

This is primarily a HowTo document on "how to save your custom functions as an Excel Add-in".

Microsoft Excel is the most widely used application in business today. It is packed with features. From all sorts of functions to reporting and graphing.

After you use Excel for some time, you come to understand that although it has tons of functions that can do almost anything in Excel, there might be a few that are unique to your particular circumstance. It is then that you discover, macros and Visual Basic for Applications to automate repetitive tasks or even write your own functions. The next step is to take all your fantastic functions and to put that into an add-in so that you can share your creations with your collegues.

In the great debate between Mac and Windows, I will happily hold my hand up and say I prefer to use a Mac. Don’t ask me why... I can’t really explain it except to say that I had been a PC man all my life until one of my computers died. On a whim I decided to try a Mac and was instantly smitten.

So what do you get a geek or a nerd for Christmas. They certainly will not enjoy a box of chocolates, and deodorant and perfume is just so boring.

Here are a few ideas that might spark an idea

 Whether we like it or not, Social Media is here to stay. With the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google+ Social media is all around us.

Merriam-Webster defines a myth as "a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon."

Like common society, social media has it’s fair share of myths. Here is a list for you to consider. This list will clear up some of the Social Media Myths floating about.

Did you know that you can legally install Microsoft Office on two computers? That’s right, a single Microsoft Office license and purchase can be legally installed on two computers.

Do you have a Windows Phone 7 device? Want some tips and tricks? Well read on I have gathered 10 of the best and most useful.

It brings me great pleasure to see a well renowned and famous blog like Mashable is not as famous or as liked as we all would like to think.

This might sound kind of cynical, but it will all make sense later, and I believe you will agree with me.

A very difficult question to ask because I never can tell what answers to expect? Never the less I am going to ask it. Am I good or am I bad?

More specifically it’s about my blog, my writing style site design etc.

Any good leader needs to often look to himself to see if he is improving. Self evaluation is critical. But often a very biased view result from that.

The hardest thing to accept is criticism from outside sources. Especially if that criticism is not what you are expecting. But I’m going to clench my teeth and accept constructive criticism.

One of the easiest ways to create great looking websites is an intelligent font choice.

Many young web designers go crazy and choose weird and fancy fonts. Changing style every so often on the same page.

Your font choice can make or break your website.

Remember when it comes to the web and fonts, simple is always better. You don’t need, and often monitors cannot display, the nice glamorous fancy fonts that you wish to use.

I came across an interesting post on one of the blogs I frequent. It posed the question, Do Women Blog better? what separates women from men in blogging.

First I kind of thought, wow that's a bit sexist. Then after reading I got the idea. Men and women have different characters and different natures. So it’s conceivable one could use that to ones advantage.

We all know how important your blog is. We all know how much effort you have put into your blog to make it a success. But my question to you is, are you not paying too much attention to your blog?

To SEO or not to SEO. That is the question isn’t it? There are so many websites and blog posts about SEO, what it is, how to use it, how to manage it. All positive points. But to correctly understand what SEO is all about, we have to look at what SEO is not.

Running an online business or a blog takes an enormous amount of work and effort. You would be a fool not to seek out tools and resources to help you and make your job easier. Thereby helping you to succeed.

Here are a few good resources that you and I need to investigate and make use of:

I’ve been given a Prototype Samsung Taylor Windows Phone 7 to test. Let me get this out of the way right from the beginning. I’m impressed. I think it’s the most exciting thing to happen to the mobile world for a while.

Look, it’s a new beginning for Microsoft. After a rather dismal performance by previous versions, they had to come up with something new and exciting, Windows Phone 7 is just that.

The web is run over by blogs, posts and articles on how to increase the traffic to your website. There are some really well thought out methodologies, and then there are the completely whacked out ideas. But most of them are completely useless.

What does SEO mean? What does it stand for? What a weird question. I’m sure you know by now what SEO stands for. But I will repeat. It is an acronym and it stands for Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is the process and art of getting your website to work better with the search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing by using choice keywords and key phases that appear naturally in your copy.

I suppose the most basic purpose of our blogs is to get people to read them. If not that, then we are just wasting our time. The question then is, how do I get people to read my blog.

The answer, in an F shaped pattern.

With all the new technology we have at our disposal you would think that it would make more free time. But in fact it has created a generation of people with very little time and so much to do.

Because of this very few people read an entire blog completely unless it is of prime interest to them. What do you do then?

It’s the 2010 FIFA World Cup, round of 16. England just made it through by the kin of their teeth. They play Germany. Oh dear, they get slaughtered 4:1. Their worst ever. Germany go through. Why?

The main problem as I see it was that their defence was exposed. They had more holes in it than a sieve. Germany penetrated their defence at will.

Can users penetrate your website defences at will?

A good marketer can sell almost anything to anyone. Whether you need it or not. We can learn from some of those who seem to be doing it right, or at least making a success of it.

Making money online is important, but at what cost? I'm all for selling products online. But not for fooling people into buying something that they don't need.

This is not meant to offend anyone, but just a comical look at selling products on the internet via your blog.

Layout and design is so critical to a successful blog and website. Get it wrong and you will struggle for months even years to get traffic and loyal readers.

Most blogs nowadays have themes or templates that pre-determine the design and layout of a blog or site. The most common ones that I have seen and used are layouts that are presented in either two or three columns.

Keyword research is the process of finding the best words and phrases that will give you the best possible SERP (Search Engine Results Page) position for terms search by Google users.

When a user uses a search engine to find pages about a particular topic, they would use some common words to search that will describe the topic. You and I need to try and foresee what those terms might be and use them in our copy.

Here are some free tools that will help you.

So you’ve got a blog or website and you think it looks great. In fact you believe that it’s the best site out there. Problem is that you and I are very biased when it comes to our own handy work.

The problem is that your blog and site are not meant to be pleasing to your eyes alone. The purpose of your blog or site is to be of benefit to others who will read it. So really it does matter what they say.

Here is a little something that will bring a smile to your face. We all need to laugh now and then. After all it is prescribed as the best medicine.

WOW, what a list. This is the largest list in our carnival since I started. Just so much good stuff here. There are really some talented people out there.

Be sure to visit as many as you can. Pass that traffic luv around. Rember to leave a comment.

I’m sure you all know the story of the Pied Piper. The Pied Piper of Hamelin is the subject of a legend concerning the departure or death of a great many children from the town of Hamelin, Germany, in the Middle Ages.

Whatever the truth behind the legend is we can learn a great many things from this story. One of which I would like to point out.

In the story of the Pied Piper, you have what might be termed a Charismatic Influential Leader and a bunch of unsuspecting innocent followers. Followers who eventually met their death.

In my previous post, I spoke about Twitter mentioning that they are moving towards embedded tweets. Read it to find out more.

As expected Twitter rolled out a new tool called Blackbird pie, how ironic is that. So lets look at Blackbird Pie and a few other ways to embed or get tweets into your posts.

This week I set a really tough Paragraph Collaboration Challenge. The  Topic “Why I’m the best blogger …”. I did not want people to be arrogant, but wanted them to see themselves as good bloggers worthy to be noticed.

We see so many things said about the top A-listers. We then also tend to measure ourselves up against them, finding that we seem to fall short of our own expectations. Especially when compared to the super bloggers.

This was an opportunity for our contributors to express why they think they are good at blogging and a place to show that off. An opportunity for you as readers to see new bloggers and appreciate their work.

Here are our five contributors to “Why I’m the best blogger …”, enjoy.

Sitting at the keyboard typing away has almost become mundane and robotic. I do research, jot down some ideas then start typing whatever is in my head. Then go over that and fine tune it.

As I was looking at what to write about it suddenly occurred to me to ask the question; Why do people blog? What is their motivation? Why did they start their blogs and has the focus changed over the years.

Welcome to the April 5, 2010 edition of web developers carnival.

This edition of our web developers carnival promises to meet everyones needs. From PHP developments to Websites for science teachers, to Twitter feeds to improve your writing.

from Pedro Espi-Sanchis on Vimeo.

So many times we concentrate on the negative. Pointing out the bad and the ugly. Criticising. Often with good reason. We do need constructive advise to make our blogs better. Many bloggers, and I’m sure including you, would be grateful for someone to help out and point out where you can improve.

But lets not concentrate on the bad and the ugly. Let’s concentrate on the good for a change. Be positive about your blog

You did not read the title incorrectly, and I did not write it incorrectly. Yes I know the formula you refer to. It is Einstein's theoretical formula on total energy, E=mc²

This is a powerful formula which states that 1 gram of matter has an enormous amount of energy. Increase the mass and you are in for a huge energy boost.

Image via Wikipedia

Today I got an irate phone call from a client telling me that their site is not working. They can’t find it. So I asked them if they were using their website address. They answered YES.

But to be sure I gave them the address again, spelling it out correctly. To my horror the voice on the phone said that their site was gone.

Inspiration is one of the most important aspects of your blog. Without inspiration, your blog becomes website fodder and just another cyber squatter.

Many blogs fail long before 6 months because the authors run out of things to write about. Don’t let this happen to you. Don’t let your blog become a burden. It should be a joy.

Here are five things that can help you find that inspiration for your blog and it’s next few posts.

Here are 10 rules that all bloggers, commentors and readers should understand. Read them and see if any apply to you.

An article written on News24 poses the question: “Is Blogging Dead?”. The premise of the post is based on a study which highlighted  the fact that young people are losing interest in long-form blogging, as their communication habits have become increasingly brief, and mobile.

We all need to de-stress and look at the funnier side of life. There can be so many things that can cause us stress. The internet, and technology as a whole was meant to make life more simple, but in truth it has made it more complicated.

Here are a few graphs I found on www.graphjam.com that depicts the reality of life in the technological/internet sphere.

Have fun and enjoy.

For bloggers content is definitely king. Without content, your blog is nothing. If content is king then images and multimedia are the magical fairy princess. Because it is images that make some blogs extra special and more attractive.

Image credit: Mikael Damkier

Image editing software has become vital in this digital age. It has become almost a necessity to have some form of image editing software in the bloggers toolbox. Whether you’re designing a web interface, or cropping your favourite family photos or altering pictures to fit in with your blog topic. You will need your favourite image editing software.

Screen recording or screen casting software is used for recording demonstrations, remote technical assistance, sales presentations, and training. Much like screen capture software, but a little more. Screen recording does just that. Records your screens activities, including mouse movement and sound if any.

Screencasts can be used for describing software features, reporting bugs, or for interactive e-learning. Just as a screenshot is a picture of a user's desktop screen, a screencast is essentially a movie of what a user sees on his or her monitor.

Image via Wikipedia

Screen Capturing is an essential tool for bloggers. Have you ever wanted to present something on your PC to your blog readers but just could not. Perhaps you have written something and you want your readers to see exactly what it is you are talking about.

I find that screen captures can work really well with  tutorial type posts as well as Question and answer or help type posts. Basically any post that you feel you need to show a unique picture to your audience.

Then screen capture is the tool and process to use. Here are some tools and resources for you to consider.

Image via Wikipedia

SEO! Are you quivering in your boots yet. Strangely a term that sends shivers down some peoples spines. A term that strikes fear into the hearts of many. SEO a term that some hate and some never consider.

This is mostly due to ignorance and lack of skills. SEO is not SCI-FI and is not the exclusive domain of a select few. You too can perform some really top notch SEO on your blog or Website

In order to be found on search engines like Google you need to understand some basic SEO principals. Especially if you want to be found regularly within the top few results of the first or second page.

Many webmasters, bloggers, and companies will either hire or consult with an SEO professional. Who will in turn give them some advice as to how to achieve this.

The question though, is this advice good advice? or should we submit them to the Mythbusters to be busted.

There are a lot of common mistakes many professional webmasters make. Not to mention the mistakes you and I make as we build our own sites and blogs. While we all must learn from the mistakes we make, you will find that your visitors will not easily forget your mistakes nor forgive your ignorance, by not returning. When creating a web or blog, there are several website design flaws that you need to avoid if you hope to earn your visitors loyalty, and hopefully, some return visits

In South Africa we love our acronyms. We have an acronym for just about everything. When I was at school and Bible College the only way I could remember things was to make up acronyms.

Remember the acronym for the colours of the rainbow in order. Roy G Biv: it stands for "red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet." There are many others. Can you remember any of them.

Geeks and the computer industry have a few acronyms themselves. USB, IDE, RGB, SCSI, CD-ROM, RAM, HTML, HTTP, BASIC, etc, etc.

Blogs and website live and thrive off traffic. If you get none or very little traffic to your blog or website then your site just becomes another “Cyber Squatter”. The whole purpose of setting up a blog or website is for people to read it, be affected by it and take action through it.

You decided to start blogging, or perhaps you have been blogging for a while, because everyone has said that it is the easiest thing to do. There are millions of blogs on the internet and thousands started each day and just as many fail and are closed down.

Yesterday, 7/12/2009, Google announced the launch of it’s Real-Time Search. Hot off the heals of Bing and Microsoft's announcement that it had a deal with Twitter for real time search and that they were also brokering a deal with the likes of Facebook.

Every one that uses Google to search is now tracked in the name of a better service. So according to Google.

If you have used Google in the past and you are a regular “Googler”, then you know that Google tracks your online activities while you are logged in with your Google account. The way to avoid this has been to log out from Google so that they would not track you any more.

All that has changed. Google now tracks people whether they are logged into their Google account or not.

Even searchers who aren't logged into Google in any way have their data tracked in the name of providing a 'better service'

Welcome to the December 7, 2009 edition of web developers. This week we have a bunch of very cool posts for you to read. They come from all corners of the internet. From Blogger template hacks to open source software for the healthcare sector. From weh hosting for business to a review of Hootsuite. you can also read the 100 killer iTunes feeds for science geeks or perhaps your are interested in the Rails migration post.

But what ever you interest, there is something here for you. Take your time, read the posts. Enjoy and have fun.

Are you looking to increase your blog readership. This might come as a huge surprise to you. The best way to increase your blog readership is to focus on other bloggers blogs. That's right, getting involved with other blogs is a sure way to increase your readership.

It's all about being social, about engaging with other bloggers. In promoting others you promote yourself.

Yesterday, 3/12/2009, Google announced on their official blog that they were offering the use of their DNS server to the public. From their blog'; “Today, as part of our ongoing effort to make the web faster, we're launching our own public DNS resolver called Google Public DNS, and we invite you to try it out.”

A Facebook application allowing people to be virtual farmers, similar to SimCity and the like, has more users than the whole of Twitter, according to Facebook.

A blog is also known as Weblog. It is a personal online diary or you can say journal which allows you to share your thoughts and ideas , you can add video, games, pictures, music, you can read comments visitor leave on your blog. you can do all these things without  the need of any programming knowledge.

Blogging is the act of posting content on a blog (a Web log or online journal) or posting comments on someone else's blog.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What is beautiful to you might just look like, well I won’t say it, to me. We all have different tastes and we all have different likes and dislikes. That’s what makes us so unique, and what makes the medium of blogging so unique.

It always amazes me that when I visit an art gallery I find certain pieces of art really distasteful and rubbish. But, these very pieces are considered extraordinary and masterpieces by others. Some of the art pieces, paintings and sculptures look really childish to me. Often my son would say; “Dad I can paint better than that”.

Any one can create a website. There are so many free tools available that makes this task easy and as painless as possible. But just because you can create a website does not mean that it will be a good quality successful website.

If you are going to do business on the internet, then you need to make sure that your website is a success. There are many ways in which a website can be measured as a success. Most often people refer to the look of a website to determine it's success.

PageRank is a technology developed by the Google search engine to measure the importance of web pages. Well at least how important other people view your website. It was meant to be a measure of the web’s vote of confidence on your blog, website or any particular page on your site.

Welcome to the November 30, 2009 edition of web developers. We have four great articles this month. Take time to read them all. You will not be disappointed.

Twitter is a micro blogging service that allows you only 140 characters to express your inner most needs, your most astounding questions, your most intellectual answers and your most outrageous funniest jokes. With only 140 characters, there is not much room to explain much or to be long winded. You have to be crisp, sharp and to the point.

So when someone post 140 characters on Twitter that make you laugh, it's worth while to share with the rest of the community. Here is a list of really funny 140 characters. We can't really call them one liners can we?

Blogging, it's about writing. Blogging is the web 2.0 phenomenon that has taken over the internet. Every Tom, Dick and Jane is blogging now.  For a while I had thought that you needed to be an author or a journalist in order to be a blogger. I had thought that one needed some form of writing skills in order to blog. Because of this I never got into blogging. Why? Well simply because I have dyslexia.

Can a dyslexic blog? Will people read his blog? Will they mock and ridicule his mistakes? 

These and others were always questions that I was asking and was afraid of what the answer would be. So I never got involved. But like a catchy Flu virus that you cannot avoid, I caught the blog bug. Now here I am, a dyslexic blogging.

The ceremony of thanksgiving as we know it today is celebrated mostly by Americans on the fourth Thursday of November. Most people in South Africa and many other places around the globe do not celebrate this particular memorial. But that does not mean we do not have anything to be thankful for.

My question to you is, can you list what and who you are thankful for?

The X Factor is a British television singing competition, contested by aspiring singers drawn from public auditions. The X Factor was devised as a replacement for the highly successful Pop Idol. The show has proved hugely popular with audiences, with the series 5 final attracting 14.5 million UK viewers. 

The X Factor is largely the baby and brainchild of Simon Cowell who wanted to launch a show that he owned the television rights to.

We are always looking for new and inventive ways to promote our blogs. Now the best ways to promote your blog is to actually convince others to do it for you. Word of mouth is still the number one and preferred way of marketing. First of all because it's genuine and carries a good recommendation, and secondly it's a whole lot cheaper than normal marketing channels.

While searching and surfing around the blogospere I came across a wonderful site called Blogengage.

Everybody can blog, but perhaps blogging is not for everyone. Is that true? I see so many new bloggers start with great expectations, but soon give up. Their blogs seem to die a horrible slow death after only having life for a few months.

When Young bloggers take on this new medium they are all filled with enthusiasm and passion, but soon that dwindles down to nothing. It seems that giving up is the easiest thing to do. Thousands of new blogs are started every month and thousands upon thousands are neglected and closed down each month.

Should you actually give up blogging. Well here are a few reasons for you to consider.

Just come from visiting family. It's a great time and every one has fun and shares a lot of memories and great stories. But then it turned into a who's better than who argument, and eventually ended in putting other family members down. Whether they deserved it or not was not the point, but it did leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

This got me thinking about bloggers. So many bloggers and readers end up downing someone else's character in either a blog post or blog comment. Which should and often does leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

Every blogger looks towards the A-list bloggers like Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki and sees how much money they make as full time bloggers. A fair amount of funds seem to come in via different ad campaigns, affiliate marketing, onsite sales of things like ebooks, and various other onsite money making schemes. So the dillusion is, that to make money one needs to have as much ads on your site as possible.

But is this really true? Does having ads on your website actually b

Technorati is one of the oldest and most popular Blog Search Engines in the blogosphere. Some say it is competing with Google and Yahoo! But I think not, as it's target searches is not your every day website, but only blogs and then only blogs registered on the Technorati website.

The Technorati search engine has a special blog metric called Technorati rank, which has become extremely popular in the blogosphere and is considered as a factor of prestige (similar to PageRank in Google). The Technorati rank is only applicable to blogs registered with them and depends on quantity and quality (Technorati rank) of other Technorati blogs linking to you.

Copyright Marvel Comics

Link juice is the fuel that drives the internet. It is the democratic voting system of any website or blog. It shows how important your site is. If people like it they will link to it. Inbound or backward linking is so important that Google have developed a rating system called PageRank. The higher the PageRank, the more people like your site, and the more important it seems to be.

There is just so much good advice out there on the internet about blogging. How to start a blog, how to blog, and how to promote a blog. Problem is that most of it has been regurgitated and re-written, but it is all the same stuff. I want to give new advice, something that is bold and will change your life.

So to this end, I have compiled a list of 20 crazy, wacky, weird ways for you to promote your blog and website. Take a look and tell me what you think.

Last week I started a new effort on my blog. I started a blog competition. It served to help promote other bloggers for free. While benefitting their blog, I would benefit as well. The competition would award a blogger a free weeks of ad space on my blog. The winners will be determined by the best blog comments, as well as any blog that mentions and links back to my blog. Well I am pleased to announce that we have our first winner.

Internet giants Google and Yahoo have lined up with the pharmaceutical industry in asking the U.S. government to draft new rules that would give drug companies more latitude to advertise online. Current U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations require that any mention of a drug's benefits must also reveal its risks, including detailed lists of side effects. But drug makers and Web companies attending a two-day hearing this week on online marketing of medical products said the rule hampers them, given online space constraints. - USA News

Every internet user, whether you are a blogger, reader, or just a casual browser or email user, has been affected by spam at some point. Spam is the plague of the internet. More and more energy is being poured into trying to find more effective ways of combating spam.

It is a difficult balancing act trying to keep out spammers as well as trying to make your blog and website user friendly and easy to use. The more tools you use to block spam, the harder it is for users and readers to read and comment on your blog.

I feel that there are many who have missed the point of blogging. They have seen a few A-list bloggers, seen that they make a huge amount of money by blogging proffessionaly and think that blogging is a good way to make money. Only to fall flat on their face because they did not understand what blogging is all about

Blogging is not about making money, although that could be a nice bonus, it is about being social, having fun, building networks, sharing your thoughts.

Welcome to the November 10, 2009 edition of web developers. A small one this week, but nonetheless exciting. Check it out.

It's all over the web, Twitter streams are full of it. Google has announced their release of a new programming language called Go. What is Google up to. Hot off the release of Wave, is Go. Here I thought Google was just a search engine.

But is this a wise move for Google? Don't they have too many fingers in too many pies? Is releasing yet another programming language the right thing for Google and the internet right now?

I have developed a passion for blogging. It is in my blood, part of my life. I have also developed a strong desire to help other fellow bloggers. Blogging being part of the Social Media phenomenon is the perfect place to be social and help others.

One of the sustaining forces of a blog is traffic. Bloggers are ever looking for ways and means to promote their blog and increase their traffic. Advertising seems to be a good effective way of doing this. But many times it can be expensive. Is there a way to have free advertising and increase your traffic?

We all go through it sometime don't we. Whether in sport, at home, at work, we all suffer from some sort of fatigue. Bloggers are not immune from this either.

Those times when you wonder why you bother. Any number of things can bring it on, a slump in traffic, a nasty comment, a bad day at the office, family feuds. What ever it is, you could be plummeted into a deep dark hole and find it difficult to get out.

If we all will go through blog fatigue sometime, then how do we combat it. How do we stop it and revive that fire and enthusiasm that we once had.

Everyone makes mistakes. The point is do you learn from them? Twitter is a World Wide Web phenomenon that every one is getting into. As a newbie you would have made many mistakes. But now that you are a professional seasoned Twitterer are you still making those silly mistakes? Social media is one big learning experience at this point,

Botox! What is it? Why do people use it? Well acutall Botox® is a protein derived from botulism toxin.  In large doses, the protein causes botulism, a rare paralytic illness often linked to food poisoning. 

However, the protein is used in cosmetic medicine to treat moderate to severe brow furrow (glabellar lines), uncontrolled blinking, lazy eye, wrinkles, and facial creases. These procedures use a small amount of diluted botulinum toxin that enables controlled weakening of muscles.

For a long time now, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites has been honed into a fine art with entire companies devoting considerable effort to defining best practices and touting the value of SEO for raising a site's performance on organic search listings. But there is a new kid on the block. With the rise of Social Media and Social networking, it's no surprise that a new specialised market has evolved. Some might scoff at the idea, but nonetheless it is there.

Everyone is talking about SEO lately. SEO professionals are crawling out of the woodwork in every corner of the globe. Traditionally SEO was targeted at big business. Then other smaller businesses and websites saw the benefit of optimizing their sites. Bloggers traditionally have not worried about SEO. Either because of ignorance, time and money, or because they just don't believe they need SEO. But a blog is just another website. If you want your blog to get traffic from search engines, then you have to pay attention to SEO for your blog

Looking to improve your blog? Have a strong desire to increase your traffic? Have a strong desire to see more loyal readers to your blog? I guess you answered yes to all of these questions. Who wouldn't you? Things all around us improve. We get better cars, faster computers. We strive to be healthier, live longer. We endevour to improve our standards, and living conditions. All around us there are continual improvements. Why should you as a blogger be any different, why should your blog be any different.

Welcome to the November 2, 2009 edition of web developers. A short list this week, but none the less worth while. Support us, have a look, and enjoy

What is your purpose for blogging? Why do you blog? What are you trying to achieve? These are all questions every blogger should be asking themselves. Another question you should be asking yourself is, how can I improve?

We all should be improving in all aspects of life? Whether it's our relationships, our health, our sport, or whatever. Remaining stagnant and static will actually bring more harm than not.

To succeed at blogging you have to find ways to improve and become a better blogger.

I am in the IT industry. As a programmer we really have a hard time sometimes. I suppose the biggest challenge of any programmer is to produce a bug free program. Something that is considered the Holy Grail of the programming world.

Here is a good funny list of a program life cycle that I found while browsing the internet. Don't know who the author is.

We have just traveled from South Africa to the UK. Going through both airports is an eye opener. So many differences as to how the employees handle people and customers. It got me thinking, if your blog was a real physical business and you were it's employee, would you be friendly and helpful. Many blogs today are indeed businesses and their bloggers are it's employees. But the question is, is your blog presentable and friendly

Welcome to the October 26, 2009 edition of web developers. Once again a fantastic issue. From styling input fields to creating a viral twitter campaign. From Real world texture to online radio. I am sure you will ahve a wonderful time. Read, enjoy and have fun.

Derek Powazek launched an attack on SEO and SEO Consultants on 12 October 2009 that really said nothing that others haven’t ranted about before. In fact he is either a genius or a complete idiot. I must admit that the post did attract a lot of attention. Perhaps this was his ultimate goal. To create a controversial topic so as to attract huge amounts of traffic.

Welcome to the October 12, 2009 edition of web developers. This week we seem to be concentrating on Twitter. If you have a twitter account, or use Twitter in any way, or even thining about using Twitter. Then this blog carnival is for you. Read the posts and have fun

Welcome to the October 5, 2009 edition of web developers. A very interesting edition this week. From free online educational tools to Free tools for publishing that first book of yours. Don't forget to read the importance of a professional website design. Learn how to insert pictures on your blog as well as Site Rubix website builder. Enjoy and have fun.

One thing I like about twitter is that with in the short period it has been around, the developers have continuously made updates and changes. Some are not big, but some do offer significant benefit..

A study of the global state of broadband has put South Africa in the last 5 out of 66 countries in terms of the quality of its networks. Much has been said from the government and other players about increasing the broadband quality, availablity and pricing structure. But it is all just talk. No action. Typical for most African Countries

Twitter, is the social networking app that has taken the world by storm in recent month and years. Over recent months I have noticed a large increase of users, a.k.a. Twitters, using Twitter for their own personal gain. Turning it into a free marketing site where all they do is sell sell sell.

Back links are the life blood of PageRank. Having quality back links pointing back to your site is critical to how much search engine traffic or link juice Google will send your way. Everyone is always talking about building relevant backlinks and backlinks from websites that have a high Google page rank. But what about backlinks from bad neighbourhoods, bad or questionable sites. Will Google penalise my site for this?

“Duplicate content", a topic that has had much debate for a number of years now  . A topic that has plagued SEO for years is this idea of a penalty for duplicate content. The question being asked is; “Does Google, or any search engine, penalise duplicate content?”

Is scraped content a pain for you? Is your site being scraped of its content on a daily basis? The internet is a vast and magnificent place for knowledge. It has been a place where you can find almost anything. It has been said, if you can't find it on the internet, it does not exist. That being said, the internet is also a sewer of fraud, theft and corruption. Many original content sites have had their content scraped or stolen, then posted on some other site without their express consent or any credit given. For many years there has been debate as to how to stop this, if it can be stopped.

Every year on Heritage Day we attend a Volleyball competition. I have been playing volleyball for years, but age is now creeping up on me, so the speed and agility is not there anymore. Yet our team won both the men's and the mixed groups. Quite an achievement. What then has this got to do with blogging?

Welcome to the September 21, 2009 edition of web developers. We have a wide variety of posts to read. From Cybercrime and Social Networks to Education Technology for parents. Have you ever used WolframAlpha, well read the post about 25 tips for WolframAlpha.

Have dun and enjoy.

Every blogger, whether your are a professional a-list blogger, or a casual blogger, had to start somewhere. But like me, many just jumped into blogging without even a thought as to what blogging is all about. There are things I wish I had known before I started. Things I wish I had done before I started.

According to reports and blogs on the web, IBM is dumping Microsoft Office in favour of its own version of Open Office, Lotus Symphony. It has issued a ban, prohibiting it’s employees from using any Microsoft Office software.

History teaches us that history teaches us nothing. I’m sure we have all heard that. But why does it have to ring so true. If you have been blogging for any amount of time, you would readily admit that you have made many mistakes. That's not bad in itself. What is sad though,  is when you do not learn from your mistakes.

Website Pagerank, SEO, Search Engine Results Page, Google are terms that are being given a lot of attention of late. If you're a blogger (or a blog reader), you're painfully familiar with Comment Spam.

Welcome to the September 14, 2009 edition of web developers. This is our 17th issue. Although not as large as the other issues, none the less exciting. In this issue we see a lot of free things. So take a look. You will be amazed.

Four Months ago, around about May, Wolfram|Alpha launched as a search engine for structured data. Wolfram Alpha, founded by Stephen Wolfram, is designed around good old-fashioned computing. Of course, other search engines have been computing for years. But WolframAlpha is slightly different. It’s young and ambitious and I suspect will go a long way.

Google has quietly launched a new resource called "Google Internet Stats". A small search like resource that brings together industry facts and insights from across five different industries. The data for the stats is provided for by a variety of party vendors. The stats tool parses through online data to reveal small Twitter-sized snippets.

Caster Semenya - Gender Controversy

Controversy always brings attention. It opens you up and shines the spotlight on you. Controversy is not for the faint hearted. But it certainly does work. Controversy sells. If you have been writing your blog for a while, you have probably used controversial posts to engage your users and gain more traction in the blogging world. If not, then why not?

A homing pigeon named Winston will fly from Howick (outside Pietermaritzburg) to Hillcrest (outside Durban) on Wednesday morning to prove that he is faster at transferring 4GB of data than a landline.

With the unholy level of broad band, well actual very little and expensive broad band, we have in South Africa, this might just be a no brainer for the pigeon.

Welcome to the September 7, 2009 edition of web developers. This week was a slow week, but does not mean that our articles are of any less quality. Read them, you won't be sorry.

This is probably a difficult post for me to write. Why? Because, like many blogs out there, mine is not perfect, and there is great room for improvement. Many blogs do not succeed because they break fundamental rules of blogging. Here we are going to have a look at some of these rules.  Take this as constructive criticism not an attack on your blog. I did, am still doing, and it has made my blog a better blog.

Blog titles are one of the most important aspects of a blog, but often times are not given the importance that they deserve. One of the biggest factors that affect your position in the Google search engine results page is your blog title. A blog title is also the make or break factor when it comes to enticing a click from a potential reader, and thus potential traffic. Not all of us know or have the skill to write good attractive blog titles. So, lets try and see if we can come up with some good ideas that will help us with or blog titles and increase our traffic.

Just the other day I was analysing my blog stats and noticed that I had a few large peeks on Wednesdays. Obviously I could not remember what posts were done on Wednesdays. So I needed a way to select data from the database by filtering it and returning only posts posted on Wednesdays. So I used this little gem in SQL.

Two thing that young bloggers struggle with, that is traffic for their blog and blog exposure. These two seem to be interrelated. That is the one depends on the other. More traffic will get you more exposure and more exposure will get you more traffic.

Google It! has become a household phrase. The internet is a vast and unforgiving place. Without search engines it would be worse than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Normally we would gravitate to the Big Three. Google, Yahoo, and The Search Engine Previously Known as Live Search aka Bing. But those are not the only search engines around.

Testing is so important to application development. In fact more time in the development cycle is used up in testing and design than in actual coding. Any Tom, Dick or Jane can code. But truly gifted developers can test, find and eliminate bugs.

Welcome to the August 31, 2009 edition of web developers. In this edition we see grouping around making money on the web. Enjoy the posts.

This could well be a joint venture between Apple and the American Government in an answer to the terrorist threat. It is the perfect cover. A concealed WMD.

Free software is a matter of freedom not of price. So says the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Open Source Software although mostly free is slightly different. The term “open source” software is used by some people to mean more or less the same category as free software.

We are always trying to find new ways of making life easier. PC  accessories are not only there to extend and enhance our PC and the user experience, but also to make those difficult laborious everyday task simpler and a pleasure to perform. Here is a great piece of new hardware that will surely make your PC life simpler.

On 25 August, Sony announced the third member of its new Reader family – the Reader Daily Edition™ and a new library content service. The Reader Daily Edition has a seven-inch touch screen with 16 levels of gray as well as a AT&T 3G modem, enabling it to pull content wirelessly. It'll launch in December for $400. Along side that Google as made available more than a million eBooks for the Sony eBook reader.

Telerik have released an open source lightweight UI extension framework for building rich views in the ASP.NET MVC environment.

Much has been said about racism in South Africa. Many people choosing to focus on us and highlight the terrible wrongs that have been done in the past as well as the present. But this cloud just serves to draw focus away from all the other people, companies, and countries that perpetrate the same or similar offences.

The internet has certainly changed our lives. Some would argue that it has improved it. One thing is for sure, we are more connected. We can share more. From photo’s to videos, we can splash it all over the internet for all to see.

In the past, the internet was not that media friendly. We were amazed when we were able to display small pictures on our websites. Now we can show all types of media. From sound to video.

Blogs are easy to start but difficult to maintain, and even more difficult to grow and make successful. If you haven't picked up on this yet, your readers are your blogs most valued asset. Without them your blog is just an HTML page amongst billions. Email a new reader or commenter to build that relationship and build your blog.

Welcome to the August 24, 2009 edition of web developers. In this issue we look at some Female Science Bloggers, Search Engine Optimisation, Some host for blogs and small business, with some Java related stuff thrown in as well. Enjoy and have fun.

While testing the new Visual Studio 2010 and the new C# 4.0 I’ve been able to play with some of the new features. We have already looked at Dynamic Types and Named Parameters. In this post we are going to look at Optional Parameters.

Caster Semenya World 800m Champion

Caster Semenya is a top South African athlete who has just won a Gold Medal and the World Champion in the 800m final in Berlin this year. But Caster Semenya’s glory has been stolen by accusations and gossip regarding her gender. “She is male” is the out cry. “She cannot run that fast without being a man” are what some of the disgruntled losers are chanting.

Twitter just got a new meme where Twitters express a song using code. The hashtag used to follow this meme is #songsincode. Go to Twitter  and take a look and you should understand how fun it is, if you are just geeky enough.

A successful blog needs great content. If you are a blogger, and or a programmer you understand that you have only a limited amount of knowledge. That is why you and I need to follow other guru blogs and developers. By following and getting involved in other blogs, we increase our own knowledge, create new ideas for content for your own blog.

No man is an Island. Human beings do not thrive when isolated from others. We desire company, friendship, companions and relationships. The only way to get company, find friends and form relationships is to go out and be friendly. Be a companion to someone else, form relationships. We are social beings, we need to interact. Our blogs and websites are no different. They cannot survive by themselves. 

Phishing emails, 419 scams, scams sites, the internet is rife. These people pray on the uninformed and uneducated, and internet illiterate. I have received emails before from PayPal, requesting me to go to a site to update my details. Which obviously I didn't. But I received another one, slightly different.

With every release of a new language or a new version, there is always a slew of new features that accompany it. Otherwise what would be the point? Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4.x and C# 4.0 are no different. There is a list of new features that are bound to bring a smile to your face.

Welcome to the August 17, 2009 edition of web developers. This issues seems to be dominated by Tim Grice, but I believe that he has some valuable SEO points and tips that we can make use off. Also a post a bout learning Linux, strange since this blog is more .net orientated. But we provide for all popular programming languages. Some tips on increasing web traffic as well as some Twitter tips. Enjoys and have fun

Cloud Computing and Web 2.0

Before we go into more detail we need to remove some confusion over the difference between cloud computing and Web 2.0 applications.The latter deals predominantly with social media such as Facebook, Friendfeed, Twitter, Flickr, etc. Just to muddy the water a little there is some overlap in that businesses are increasingly using Web 2.0 services to promote their company and its products but by and large Web 2.0 apps are primarily are online channels for social interactions between friends.

Wow what a week. And it's not over yet. This week has been a week of fantastic news in the realm of Technology.The big Giants have not held back with the punches.  It seemed that it belonged to the Social Networking giant Facebook. New releases, acquisitions, it’s fantastic.

A USA Judge, on Tuesday 11 August, banned Microsoft from selling MS Word in the United States. The Texan court granted an injunction against Microsoft, preventing it from selling copies of Word, its word-processing software.

Facebook  is launching a newer, simplified version of the Facebook platform, called Facebook Lite. This news comes only a day after Facebook made its acquisition of FriendFeed and rolled out its Real-time Facebook Search.

I’ve been testing and evaluating C# 4.0, Visual Studio 2010 and the new .NET 4.0 over the last few weeks. One of the new features that I have noticed is the new Dynamic Type in C#. I have been in programming for many years and cut my teeth on dynamic languages such as dBASE and PHP. I know full well the pitfalls of dynamic languages as well as the immense freedom and speed of coding when using a dynamic language.

August 10 2009, a deal is agreed upon between Facebook and FriendFeed for Facebook to acquire FriendFeed. At this point details on the acquisition are still very sketchy. It is estimated that the deal is worth a cool $50 million. But the question I suppose everyone is asking is, how will this affect Twitter?

Google recently opened up a preview of their new Caffeine update. For the last several months, a large team of Googlers have been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google's web search.

Everyone wants a successful blog. If not what is the point? Success though might mean different things to different people. Nevertheless, if you have a blog, you want it to mean something. You want people to read it. The question is though, how can I make my blog successful? Here is what I believe are the three most important things to a successful blog. If you don’t follow these three points then your blog will certainly fail.

Welcome to the August 10, 2009 edition of web developers.In this edition we have a wide variety of topics. From a question of an oil crises crippling the internet, to affordable shopping carts. A stern warning to those webmasters practising link exchanges. ALso included is a post about Documenting your software, as well as some tips on raising christian kids in this internet, facebook, twitter age.

Enjoy and have fun.

Yesterday, 9 August was Women's Day in South Africa. I thought that to celebrate this and show my appreciation for all the women in our lives, I will make a list of the top 10 female tech blogs.

Sung to the tune of John Lenon's "Imagine"

Sung to the Tune of 100 bottle on of (whatever) the wall

Digital cameras are fantastic. I remember the days of film 110 and 34mm cameras. Where you were so careful about the photograph being taken. Sometimes you would take an extra shot, in case the first one did not come out correctly. The loading and unloading was always a pain for me, because of the fear of exposing the film to light and losing it all. Then there was the development process. Putting the final print of you pictures into the hands of what you hope is a qualified developer.

Linux, many would think, is the operating system to rival Windows. What makes so many people gaga over Linux? Is it because it’s mostly free and open source, or is it because it’s better than Windows. The arguments get very heated on both sides. But this post is not to see which is the better OS, but to see if there is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that can rival Visual Studio on Linux.

Blogging, Blogging, Blogging. every Tom Dick and Jane seems to be blogging lately. If you are anything like me, you want to make the experience as trouble free and user friendly as possible. While most blogging software allows you to post your blogs online, you might need to be able to do that whilst your not connected to the internet. If you do not have an offline blog editor and publisher, then you're stuck.

Admittedly, Apple do make some very cool stuff. I have to say that the new Mac look cools. As do their gadgets. Like the iPod. My son has been saving up to buy the iPod classic. But after hearing of exploding iPods, I wonder if that is such a good thing.

Software giant Microsoft said the latest version of its flagship operating system, Windows 7, has been released to manufacturing. This means its development is now complete. Microsoft’s Windows 7 is set to be available in local retail stores on 22 October this year.  Three versions of Microsoft’s latest operating system will be available:  Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional.

Welcome to the August 3, 2009 edition of web developers.In this issue we have some exciting article. A new CMS to 23 great Firefox Extensions. A great article about moving from Blogger to Wordpress. A guide to optimising your landing page and a Twitter starter guide for small business. Enjoy and have fun.

With all the hype over the last few weeks and months concerning Google and Bing our focus is drawn away from the little guy. Although these two search engines, and Yahoo, are the big boys, and they are the ones who we turn to in time of need. They often do not return the results that you are looking for. Often the search results are crowded with unrelated searches. It is then we need to turn to search engines dedicated to specific topics.

We all seem to love blonde jokes. Probably because they make us feel just that little bit smarter. But not so if you're blonde. But blonde jokes are normally not about the colour of your hair but the amount of brain cells you have at your disposal. Here is a joke where the Blonde is the winner. Enjoy, have fun. Remember laughter is the best medicine.

Gatorpeeps is a micro blogging service similar to Twitter. They are generally referred to as the SMS of the internet. These micro blogging services allow you to post messages or update with a limit of 140 characters.

Which is the best browser? A question which has had it’s fair share of debate. With the recent launch of Microsoft Bing, the debate has increased. Now it has become even hotter because Yahoo has just given into Microsoft. Yes that's right, Microsoft made its $45 billion bid for Yahoo, and it seems that Yahoo have accepted. This means that Microsoft have some ammo to take on Giant Google. Seems that Microsoft is jealous. They like to be the only Giants in town.

Bill Gates confessed at an event in New Delhi on July 25 that he gave up on Facebook because he couldn’t keep up with the friend requests. Gates remarked that there were “10,000 people wanting to be my friends” after he tried out the service, and it was time consuming to decide if he “knew this person, did I not know this person”.

When I first started blogging one of the questions that sprung to mind was, How many times do I need to post? After some research I finally settled on the idea of writing at least one post every day, sometimes three. Pretty soon I had a good number of blog posts to my name and was quite proud of the effort I put in. But do you need to blog everyday?

Welcome to the July 27, 2009 edition of web developers.What more can I say, we have a very interesting list of articles to read. 100 Awesome Firefox add-ons to How much does an average website cost. Search Engine Ranking to site maps in Wordpress. Take a look, you wont regret it.

Have you ever tried to describe what the internet is to a Technology or Computer challenged person. Here is a list I found of some very fun questions asked about the internet. Obviously from the Internet challenged community. Enjoy and have fun.

Every industry has their geeks. Geeks love to splash fancy terminology around to impress and make as though they know something. We are sometimes bewildered but the use of bits and bytes, megs and gigs, but what does it all mean. Well here is a list that I found in some email that will make it all clear. Have fun, enjoy, and remember laughter is the best medicine.

Yesterday I wrote a blog post about Adgator and their ad network. I also explained and commented on such terminology as CPM, CPC, PPC, FRP, Cost Per Impression,  Cost Per Click, etc. I mentioned  Good ad design, call to actions are essential for a good add campaign. One of the problems facing Adgator ad network and advertisers is where the bloggers place their ads. If they are placed below the fold, Visible screen area, then advertisers do not get value for money. Placement is crucial.

Firefox. Not the most widely used web browser, but certainly the most loved. Firefox is gaining on market share every day. Once you’ve used Firefox, you will hardly want to change. Why is that? Probably because of its awesome range of Firefox add-ons and extensions. Little apps that make Firefox better, easier, more attractive to use.

Have you noticed, as of this writing, that Adgator is no longer serving paid campaign ads, but only serving their own in-house ads. I thought it was only me until I did some digging and it turns out that the Adgator service is not as successful as the advertisers would like it to be.

There has been endless debates going on between Linux faithful and Windows enthusiasts. Both stating that their preferred operating system is the best, and bad mouthing the competition. The problem is that they are aimed at different users in general

Kids are truly fascinating when we watch them. They seem to have a knack of keeping themselves busy. Did you ever have an imaginary friend whey you were younger? You might not remember, but your parents might.

Welcome to the July 20, 2009 edition of web developers. In this issue we have some interesting posts. One that might catch your attention is a comparison of Blogger and Wordpress, two free blogging platforms and blog hosts. We also get a brief introduction to the Google App engine and a look at a web database engine I certainly did not know about.

A Post By Bonnie Landau of LandauDesign

Usability on the web is such a big concept it has become its own industry. And yet it is the most-often ignored piece of a web design project. It takes less than 10 seconds for a user to be confused and frustrated by an unusable site, and they will quickly bounce right out of there. Use the following list as a way to determine if your site passes most-seen usability blunders.

The war rages on. Google and Microsoft are at each others throats, fighting for dominance in the internet world. Play for play, they are showing their cards, daring the other to better their hand. Google launch their own browser, Chrome. Microsoft launch their new search engine, Bing. Google launch their new OS Google Chrome. Now Microsoft is Offering MS Office for free on the internet.

I am no graphic artist, although I do tinker around in the beloved Photoshop. Problem is, for me, trying to create something that is half-way descent might take me a long time. Time I do not have to waste. I do, from time to time, go through Photoshop tutorials to hone my skills, but often I need graphics now. Graphic designers, in general, are very

You have to love and hate Microsoft at the same time. One thing about being so big and popular is that there will always be someone to take the micky out of you. Here is a light hearted look at Microsoft from a restaurants point of view. Have fun and enjoy.

Today, July 16, is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch, on its way to the moon and on it’s way into the future and into history. The first manned mission to land on moon. Aboard were astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr.

We have, or we used to have two great blog aggregators in South Africa. One was Afrigator, and the other was Amatomu. These two services were essential and vital for bloggers to get their posts out to the masses of Africa and South Africa. But sad to say, Amatomu has failed in its mission. It has let the South African Blogging community down. In fact it is on a self destruct course to oblivion.

Do you have a blog? Is it working? Are you battling to get readers and comments to your blog? Is Google indexing your blog? These questions and others are what all bloggers should be asking. But I suppose the ultimate question you need to ask is, Does my blog suck? Here is a list of 5 signs that your blog sucks.

Gmail, probably one of the largest online mail and application products, has finally shed it’s beta designation. Gmail, alongside Yahoo mail and hotmail, is a online application service, not only supplying mail box space and mail addresses but all sorts of other application. GOOGLE'S GMAIL has lost its somewhat dubious distinction of being the longest running program on the market to retain a "beta" designation.

How much money are you spending on your website? You probably find it is too much. Many web developers charge the earth for website development. Having an expensive website is not in and of itself a bad thing, as long as it delivers on your expectations and company goals.

Welcome to the July 13, 2009 edition of web developers.This is issue #10. Surprise surprise, it seems to have taken on a life of itself. The contributors to this weeks carnival have all come together nicely. Strangely our theme for this week seems to be SEO and  Marketing in general. Have a browse, visit each article and most of all have fun learning.

Over the last couple of weeks and months my Visual Studio 2008 has been dragging its heels. Been running very slowly, especially when switching from code view to design view. It could take up to a minute to actually display anything in the design view. This was getting extremely frustrating to say the least. So I did a little investigation and found a few things that you can do to increase that Visual Studio Speed.

Subqueries are an alternate way of returning data from multiple tables. When a SELECT statement is used inside another statement, the inside SELECT statement is known as a subquery. Also known as subselect, nested queries, inner query. Subqueries can help to dynamically control the records affected by an UPDATE, DELETE or INSERT statement, as well as to help determine the records that will be returned by a SELECT statement

Are you an internetholic, or are you a square-eyed TV addict. When I was young, when TV first came out. We were all glued to the Idiot-box. Later we were mocked and ridiculed because we could not tear ourselves away from the tube. Today's kids have the internet, and exhibit similar behaviour. Don’t you think the TV is still better. Here are ten Reasons why TV is better than the World-Wide Web

Writing is definitely a skill. A good command of the English language, a vibrant imagination and lots of resources to pool from will give one the edge. With the dawn of blogging, many fancy themselves as writers. I for one have no such illusion. I am dyslexic, nearly failed English as my first language in school. Can’t spell, have poor sentence construction, yet here I am. Many have made fun of my writing, however I do concede that sometimes we can write the funniest things.

The following are actual statements found on insurance forms where car drivers attempted to summarize the details of an accident in the fewest words. These instances of faulty writing serve to confirm that even incompetent writing may be highly entertaining.

You might have noticed that YouTube had an abundance of ****'s on the comments. You might have also noticed that when you post some of the languages more clever words they might have been replaced by asterisks as well. What has happened? Well YouTube have started censoring profanity in comments.

Advertising is a very competitive market in and of itself. Getting people to recognise your product is one thing. Keeping them interested is a totally different matter. With so many advertising campaigns going on today, many are very stereotypical,  boring and monotonous.

We mourn and cry and give world wide coverage to Michael Jackson’s death. Fans all around the world are in shock. But he lived a full life. He’s death was probably a result of his lifestyle. Drugs, medication, who knows. Point is, he lived his live the way he wanted. He seems to be making more money in his death than in the last 10 years. But when a 16 month baby gets shot over a cellular phone, all we say is “oh shame”. Mourn South Africa. We are a sick and violent society. When we kill our children for the sake of a simple cell phone, then we are in terrible trouble.

If the browser wars were not enough, we are now entering into a new phase of computing. More competition, more choices, better for consumers. Google Chrome has always been a little more than a browser: it's optimized for running web applications, each tab runs as a separate process, the interface is minimalistic and there's even a task manager.

All good sites continually try to improve. They try to make is more user friendly, add more features and functions. For a site like twitter, if it wants to continue to be on top it has to evolve, change and get better.

It’s been a bit chilly lately here in South Africa. I know that in other parts of the world, people say that it is a mild summer compared to their winter. But living in Sunny South Africa, getting used to sun, warmth and the general outdoor life does play havoc when the temperature drops. But then, who are we to say when it is cold or not. Maybe we should take our cue from nature.

The internet is rife with fraud and phising today. Just the other day I heard of an incident where a bank had phoned up a client enquiring about a R10000 payment that went off their account. The client knew nothing of this. It was obviously fraud. They found out that it was an internet transaction. They are now going through every transactiuon on their bank account.

Welcome to the July 6, 2009 edition of web developers.In this issue we take a look at some iPhone Apps, compare some hosting companies, look a some Coldfusion blog posts. We have some more tips on website promotion with SEO, IF youre a spammer there is a post dedicated to you, sd well as some Wordpress tips and tricks.

English has never been my best subject. I later found out that I am a bit dyslexic. Kind of strange that I started blogging. Spelling, grammar and syntax have always been a problem. As a result blogging is  a bit of a struggle for me. But we always feel better when we see someone else in a worse position than us.

You might not be addicted to drugs, alcohol, or some other chemical dependant, but internet addiction is becoming a real issue in this new age. We have designed a brief checklist to determine if you are an addict.

Ever wonder what those scientific dudes are talking about? I just hate it when people smother facts or lack there of with useless industry words. Problem is I have been guilty of that myself. In most cases, it has been when I wanted to hide something or not reveal the complete truth. Here is tongue-‘n-cheek look at some scientific phrases and what they could possibly mean. Have fun and enjoy, you deserve a laugh now and then.

So after a few weeks, I gave in and downloaded the Visual Studio 2010 Beta. At the end of the month I purchased some proxy time so that I could use my 20gig local bandwidth to download international data. A much smaller download than what I was expecting. I was expecting a 2-4 gig download, but it came in at just over 1 gig. Here you have one of many post that I will do on Visual Studio 2010, as I test and play around with it.

When I first got into blogging I never realised how much hard work it takes. How much time and dedication as well as consistency. Many people blog for fun and amusement, or perhaps just out of curiosity. Some do it because they enjoy writing. Others because its a business or part of it. Whatever your reason, if you want it to be successful, it is going to require effort.

Welcome to the June 29, 2009 edition of web developers. In this issue there are some great articles. Looking at correct choice of web colours to increase sales, techniques to getting more traffic, website design flaws, shopping carts. There is just a whole bunch of good stuff. Come in and have a look, you won't regret it.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It refers to the method of ensuring that websites are optimized to help increase their traffic, which in effect helps them appear high on search engine results. Basic SEO is actually based on a very simple concept: create content that gets easily noticed online. There are many facets to

Flash is a powerful web technology that can achieve a very high level of visual impact. This impact is purely visual, from the graphical point of view. Unfortunately, it is widely misused in web design. Flash still has many problems, mostly when it comes to usability and search engine behaviour. We need to properly understand what those problems are before we decide to use Flash for our site.

Nerd is a term often bearing a derogatory connotation or stereotype, that refers to a person who passionately pursues intellectual activities, esoteric knowledge, or other obscure interests rather than engaging in more social or popular activities. Therefore, a nerd is often excluded from physical activity and considered a loner by peers or will tend to associate with like-minded people. The question is though, are you a Nerd? How do you know. Well here is a list of “You know you’re a Nerd when”.

Alexa is a very powerful tool used to rank web site traffic. Alexa ranks websites based solely on the amount of traffic to the website. The Alexa rank works in descending order towards 0, where the most highly visited website on the Internet is given a rank of 0. At the time of this writing the top five ranked websites (most visitors) on Alexa are, 1- Google, 2 – Yahoo, 3 – YouTube, 4- Facebook, 5 – Windows Live. These stats tell us, that according to Alexa, these are the top five sites on the internet with regards to the amount of traffic they

Welcome to the June 22, 2009 edition of web developers. In this edition we have many interesting posts. From marketing for beginners to popular CSS frameworks. Some awesome web design tutorial. How to back up your SQL 2008 express database. Keyword research and how to choose the right keywords. An article about the rise of new search engines. THen some web browser hacks for IE,  Firefox, Chrome Safari and Opera.

I have been asked many times over the years how to import data from Excel into MS SQL database. I myself have had many scenarios where I have had to export or import data from MS Excel into MS SQL. There are many ways of achieving this goal. But sad to say, many people do not know all of them and opt to retype or recapture the data. Sometimes, depending on the Excel Spreadsheet structure you have to type it in. This can be a difficult and laborious task.

A new twitter search engine is on the market. Created by former Microsoft search head Ken Moss, CrowdEye gives several views of a topic based on the conversations taking place on Twitter, as well as an historical view on that particular topic.

Found this on Sitepronews. Brilliant. What is the most popular site on the internet? How to get the most popular site on the internet.

Many might think they know a lot, but the truth is we can’t possibly know everything. This is why books are so important. They help us to hone our skills and teach us new things we did not know, as well as renew the stuff we had forgotten. But the problem is that books are just so expensive. So when one finds something for free, it warrants a closer look.

Can we be choosey about what we eat, where we buy our food and what we spend in this economic climate. We would all like to have the best, but like my wife says, “I want doesn’t get”. So when you offer somebody homemade food, and they turn you down, you have to wonder, what's up with that?

This edition of the Web Developers carnival concentrates on SEO and website profitability. We have some very interesting and good articles. Your website will benefit greatly by reading these. Lots of free advice and excellent tips by our authors.

These questions about South Africa were posted on a South African Tourism Website and were answered by the website owner (great sense of humour!).

Have you ever had printer problem that was easy to figure out but not as easy to fix. Well check this out it’s hilarious. I don’t know if it is true or not.

This is dedicated to my wife, Beverley. Today, 11 June, is our 15th wedding anniversary. I wish you have a great day.

I try to blog every day. Keeping up with consistent fresh traffic is essential for a successful blog. But it could also be mentally and physical draining. Sometimes one just experiences writers block. Perhaps you have run out of ideas, your material seems to be exhausted. What do you do?

If you have been living in a man-hole you might not have noticed the obsessive craze of micro-blogging. Micro-blogging is a form of communicating and networking. Sites like Twitter, and South Africa's Gatorpeeps are examples of micro-blogging sites and services. But space is limited. Her is how to make the best use of that space.

Welcome to the June 8, 2009 edition of Web Developers Blog Carnival. This is a fantastic edition. You have to take a look. From expert advice on internet marketing to Easy Search Engine Optimisation. We look at internet marketing and laws to run a business. A review of a great Wordpress plug in that will help with SEO. Find out which is best, Free traffic systems or Article marketing. We check out some fonts, some cool HTML and then rocket into outer space. Come in, you won't be disappointed.

I can't believe I am reading this. Mike Stopforth witnessed one of the most bizarre, frightening, freakish things you will ever see. He saw a single propeller plane crash head-on into a bakkie . Mike watched this happen from about 20 meters away. I am glad they are all alive.

Microsoft is continuing its research and has come out with some interesting touch screen devices, first it was a coffee table, then the wall and now they are coming up with the Sphere. The latest from Microsoft is spherical mutli touch surface device which is still in concept stage. The Sphere is based on Microsoft Surface Technology.

Microsoft, today, announced that it will be renaming it's new C# programming language. This renaming is aimed squarely to position its new language as a direct competitor to Java. Now named "Tea", this new language will offer a full palette of development tools and technologies. The key components of the new "Tea" language are "Flavorlettes", "Tea Bags", and "Brew Objects".

Web 2.0 blog conversations are built upon comments going back and forth and branching out in new directions, developing new ideas. As the web becomes more social, it has become easier for anyone to get involved. Whether you join in the comments on a blog post, or just read them, a Gatorpeeps peep (stream), a Twitter stream, a Facebook News Feed, an email , a Google result, IMDB, a forum, a YouTube video,  etc. All these new ways of sharing and getting involved.

What makes a website successful. Just having a website up does not mean that people will visit it, let alone stay and browse. Professional website developers know too well the importance of web design and its part in  making a website successful.

Do you think that blogs are only for the weird geeky guys? Do you believe that your company cannot benefit from a blog on your company  website? There are many advantages to adding a blog to your website. Here are a few.

Blog vs. e-Newsletter, which should you or your business use? This has always been a struggling point,even for me. I recently had this exact same situation from one of our clients. They felt that there was no purpose in having both blog and newsletter. But what is best? The quick answer is both. In order to understand the answer, we have to understand the purpose of both blogs and newsletters.

Welcome to the June 1, 2009 edition of web developers.This is issue #5. In this issue we cover things like creating online music, to internet marketing. Some iPhone apps for athletes, to some thoughts on design. We even cover the possibility of making money with Twitter. Have a browse through.

The worth of a programmer is not necessarily in hi ability to write code, but also in hist design and debugging ability. Any one can write code. It's designing that killer app, then making it work, by having the ability to trace find and exterminate bugs.

The amateur singer Susan Boyle was admitted to the Priory clinic following her surprise defeat in the final of Britain's Got Talent.

One of the biggest arguments against Microsoft, .NET and C# (csharp) development is that it costs so much money. Buying Visual Studio can be very expensive. So, many anti-Microsoft developers plug their open source tools, stating that you can get these, download them, and develop for free. While this may be true, what many don’t tell you is that you CAN develop in C# and .Net using free tools.

Einstein was a genius, so was Beethoven. Every parent wishes their children have some genius in them. If nothing else to please themselves and get to do things they never could. Here is a clip of Daniel playing “Clocks from Coldplay. The thing is. He taught himself to do it.

Susan Boyle had a meltdown on Wednesday in the middle of a hotel lobby. Susan Boyle's cursing and four-letter word vocabulary shocked hundreds of guests. No longer Britain's Angel anymore. I wonder how this will affect the public's view of her when it comes time to vote in the finals of Britain’s Got Talent.

Welcome to the May 25, 2009 edition of "Web Developers". This Blog Carnival is for your enjoyment. Here you will find help from marketing to using Linq to SEO for Blogs, even the od gadget might take your fancy. Take a look and have fun

Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle, who catapulted to stardom through YouTube video singing “I Dreamed A Dream" from the musical Les Miserables was voted through to the finals of Britain's Got Talent.

Oh how I hate Telkom! For the third time this month I have run out of bandwidth. My 3 gig cap was up before the middle of the month. Forcing me to buy more bandwidth three times before the end of the month. But wait you say, you still have 20gigs of local bandwidth. But that is not all fine and dandy as I soon found out.

Reading Emil's blog on Blogging just got dangerous just made stand in awe as to how many ridiculous governments are out there. As I commented on his blog, I noted that most of us bloggers would be dead by now if that law or similar was passed here in south africa.

So you think you can program. You believe that you can write code. Well the sad story is that many people can write code. That’s the easy part. Writing good code is difficult. Writing bug free code is nearly impossible on the first try. Any complex application is always going to have bugs. Being able to effectively trace, isolate and fix those bugs is what separates the men from the boys.

Request for Technical Support, Incident #99-02-14-01

Last year I upgraded Girlfriend 1.0 to Wife 1.0, and I can find no documentation on several features. For example, Wife 1.0 installs itself into all other programs and launches during system initialization where it monitors all other system activity.

Micro blogging, Social Networking, Email, Internet is much of an addiction as cocaine, alcohol, or any other drug. The question you have to ask yourself is: Am I addicted. Let me answer that for you.

“These are the voyages of the star ship Enterprise, it's continuing mission to explore a strange new world, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.” Star Trek is one of the great franchisees of Sci-fi, perhaps of Hollywood itself. Every Sci-Fi movie is met with great expectation. Sadly to say, that besides but a few, most have bad acting, a weak plot, bad directing, and so so FX. Not so with the new Star Trek. I loved it. The new movie, Star Trek 11, takes you to the Star Trek crew and the enterprise where no mov

Flash drives are like the new floppy disks. We have several, if not more scattered around the house and office. Not only is it a great way to transfer files and data, but it is increasingly becoming clear that it can be a valuable marketing tool. With companies creating different style flash drives to drive home their product. Here is the coolest flash drive you will ever see. It is a Transformer—Ravage flash drive that really transforms.

Trying to explain computer technology or computer terms to a technology illiterate person is often difficult. If you can come up with a visual representation, your job is halfway done. While searching the internet many years ago, I came across this great picture explaining all the important terms in computer technology. Have a look, it will really make your day.

Here are some great posts that I received during the week. This week there is a very usefull list of posts that will be helpfull to you. From free software to font categories to brainstorming.

Whether you’re new to .NET or whether you are a guru, you still need help. Perhaps more so when you’re new to .NET. The Internet is filled with Tutorials and tutorial sites. That's what makes it so great. Which one to choose though, or which one is the best, has often been asked.

GatorPeeps is based on the Twitter model. A Micro blogging service similar to the likes of Twitter, Pownce and Plurk. But you might say, so what's the big deal? there is Twitter already, how is this going to take off? How will it work for me? But just like anything in life, nothing is automatic. It takes hard work, time and consistency. In this post we will be looking at a 10 points on how you can make Gatorpeeps work for you.

After participating in various blog carnivals and organizing two myself, I can say that if done properly, organizing a blog carnival is a rewarding practice for bloggers, especially in terms of blogging experience and traffic. In this post we are going to look at what is a blog carnival and how we go about getting involved.

The blog carnival must be one of the blogosphere’s finest innovations. So what is a blog carnival then?&l

Welcome to the May 11, 2009 edition of web developers carnival. In this edition we have post ranging from "Free course ware classes to develop websites" to "iPhone Apps for nurses", from "Becoming an expert PHP developer" to "Installing php and MySQL on Windows". This week is an exceptional week for extra ordinary posts. I am sure that you  will find many very useful to you. Have a peek, take a look.

Everyone wants to improve their website or blog. They want more traffic, more readers, more subscribers. We want our websites to rank well, for that we need inbound links. How do you then achieve all this? Well, read on, I will give you five tips that can improve your website and blog.

Websites and web development software were never meant for desktop publishing. Because of this there were certain limitations that had to be worked around. One of them being layout. In DTP, you could easily layout your copy with little effort. But for the web this is not so.

Traditionally webmasters have been able to achieve website layouts with the use of tables. But tables are very cumbersome and heavy, as well as having their own set of problems. Nowadays the preferred method is to use CSS for layout. But moving to something new is often scary. If we take the move a little at a time then it will all be manageable and less daunting.

Blogging is all about useful information. Many people flock to blogs that have “How-to” articles. So it is natural that a “How-to” is a great post for a blog. But another one, is a list post. When you do not have a post at hand or you want to give people a quick short post of some important things, then a list post is ideal.

No blogger is an island. We need each other. Many times young or new bloggers feel terrified about promoting another bloggers blogs or posts. They fear that they will be loosing traffic or readers. But the opposite is often true. Promoting someone else's posts will in turn bring much needed traffic and readers to your blog. Here’s one way of doing it.

Hollie Steel, the little girl with the big voice. “Britain’s Got Talent” is really heating up now.

Yes that's right, Mr Delivery is about to go out of  business. You can now order your pizza via Twitter by tweeting your order through to the Naked Pizza using twitter. The address to tweet and to follow is  http://www.twitter.com/nakedpizza.

This weekend Afrigator launched GatorPeeps in Lagos Nigeria. GatorPeeps is based on the Twitter model. A Micro blogging service similar to the likes of Twitter, Pownce and Plurk. But you might say, so what's the big deal? there is Twitter already, how is this going to take off. Well read on, I will tell you what I like about it,then try it for yourself and let me know.

There have been many blogs and posts written in the world of SEO about the importance of Links. Most target the importance of inbound links. But what about outbound links? Here the debate has not quite been concluded. The Jury is still out. Many have the opinion that outbound links are detrimental to your PageRank (PR), while some believe that it works towards a positive PageRank. Here is what I think.

We've created this post on our blog, so that we could "Call For Submissions" for an upcoming edition.

Yahoo Geocities is not accepting any new customers. Why? Because they are closing down this year. Do you have a Geocities account? You'd better start looking around for other hosting.

So you’re getting traffic, but not converting it into sales. Or, you’re not getting traffic. Or, and this is the worst one, you have no idea whether or not your audience knows your website exists.

Susan Boyle, the internet Super star from Britain's Got Talent, received a surprise package yesterday, Monday 20 April. A FedEx agent delivered a package to her door step, marked "Job Offer". The offer is to star in a movie alongside Cyndi Lauper.

Want to get oodles and oodles of traffic? Want instant gratification? Want to see your blog posts soar in traffic ranking? Then you have to get your posts to go viral. But what if you just can’t do that. Well then do the next best thing. Ride on the back of someone else.

How many of you guys have web forms on your websites that require users to fill in. Part of those forms require information to be valid. Things like  phone numbers, email addresses.  Validating these form fields can be a task in and of itself. Many have always resorted to server side validation. But that requires a round trip to the server. Is there an easier way to do this? Can this be done on the client side, before they submit the web form to the server.

We all thought, well at least I did, that the US military was totally responsible for the starting and the beginnings of the internet. It turns out that England and France were instrumental in what we have today as the modern internet. The following video is a great presentation which everyone will benefit from.

The four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's biggest file-sharing website, received the verdict of the Swedish court today.

Talent is often found in the most unlikely places, and often the most unlikely persons have the most talent. Such is the case with Susan Boyle, who at the age of 48, decided to audition for "Britain’s Got Talent"

Google announced its 2009 first quarter results, and it looks good. In a world that many claim is in a recession, Google seems to be doing OK. Their ad revenue is testament that internet add are working and many are moving towards it. Spending more and more on internet ads every year.

I had to make an animated banner for a site. The obvious and easiest choice was to create an animated gif. Having done that, with a six image slide animation, I ended up with a 5mb image size. WOW. That would take ages to download, especially with our not so fast bandwidth here in South Africa. This will definitely drive people away from the site, never to return. Folks just don’t like waiting any more, they do not have the patience. It’s Go! Go! Go! So I had to come up with another plan.

The war rages on. The debate intensifies. Families split up, friends become enemies. We scream and shout, argue and fight to get our point of view across. We strongly believe who is the best. I'm talking about the age old debate of Windows vs Linux. My question to you is, which OS are you developing for? Which do you see has the brightest future? Which OS can you put your faith and trust in? Whether it be Desktop development or Web development.

I see a lot of questions on monetising blogs. How do you monetise you blog? What ads do you put on? How much should you charge? I'm not making enough money from adverts. I think a lot of people have missed the point. Its not about how much money you can make on your site/blog. It’s about how will it benefit the advertiser.

If you want to improve your blog but have been putting it in the ‘one day’ basket or just don’t know how to do it - you’re not alone. I and many other bloggers, whether you have been doing it for years or just months, will want to take part in this challenge.

What a week for Twitter. What a weekend for Twitter. Just as they sat down to rest after the recent down time problems and of course the StalkDaily worm that hit Twitter hard, another exploit hits them in between the eyes.

Viruses, viruses, viruses. When will it ever stop. Seems that no matter what you do. Not matter what technology you invent, there is someone out there willing to destroy it. Myspace, Facebook, and now the 140 character Social Networking phenomenon Twitter, has been hit by a worm. When will it stop.

Most web developers are used to working with tables. We have used tables for layout purposes for many years now. Primarily because its easy to visualise. The editors can give you a accurate WISIWIG representation. But times change, and the latest from all the web gurus is to use CSS Layout, with DIV elements. This is great. You get good flexibility. But like all things there are pros and cons to everything. One of the things I battled with is collapsing Empty DIV elements. In a table, the cell collapses nicely, but with DIVs that's a little different.

You are a SEO professional. On your site you boast some successful SEO jobs. You have clients testimony proving your results. But are they truthful?

Movies and cinema have certainly come a long way in the last few years. I was not around when the "moving pictures" were first invented, but I do remember watching old 16mm black & white movies at home. I remember watching what were termed, "Silent Movies". Now we have movies in 3d. Amazing!

Every geek thinks he is a web designer. You can go to your local cafe and find 10 web designers if you can find one. People now days think that if they have FrontPage or Dreamweaver or Expression, that they can design websites. Not so. Here is a list of some of the top design mistakes that will hurt your website in the long run.

There are a lot of SEO firms and SEO professionals out there. Every one is trying to get your business. Like politicians, they will promise the world to you, bend the truth and even lie.

With Windows 7 soon to be released I thought it would be cool to travel down memory lane and remember where Windows has come from. Remember DOS? Does anyone remember Windows 1.0?

Space, the final frontier. We all, or at least most, recognise that line from Startrek. I am a great Startrek fan, and am quite amazed at some of the scenes presented in the Startrek series. We often shrug these off as science fiction, but the universe truly is a wondrous thing. This new picture will leave you awe struck.

One of the most widely used office suites are set to be retired this month. Microsoft Office is probably the top office suite used world wide. At least the top amongst Windows users. At the moment it is sitting in and extended support phase.

What is application state? Application state is a collection of user-defined variables that are shared by all instances  of an ASP.NET application. These are set and initialized when the Application_OnStart event fires on the loading of the first instance of the applications and are available till the last instance exits

With all the hype around Google and Twitter one has to wonder what on earth is going on. Rumours surfaced that Google where in high level talks to Acquire Twitter. Then posts started to appear to the contrary. Then a middle ground appeared.

Rumours have been flying around the web on the topic of Google acquiring Twitter. This is not a April Fools joke, check your dates. Even though one should not give in to rumours, this is certainly one to watch.

Just seen the most ridiculous ad on Amatomu. Not that it is Amatomu's fault. They just serve ads. The ad is served from Google, once again not that it is Google's fault. But the advertiser.

This so so funny.  Although it has nothing to do with the theme of my blog, technology and programming, I just have to share it because it really made me laugh. I found it on one of the news groups I frequent, that being the dBASE news group.

Nintendo's latest hand-held console has hit the British high street today, 48 hours before it hits American shores. I wonder when it will be coming to SA, if ever.

So you have a blog. But want more traffic. There are various ways of doing that by using aggregators and social bookmarking. Here is another social bookmarking site especially for promoting and syndicating blogs.

Captcha have become a normal part of most websites when it comes to filling in web forms of some sort. THe idea is to stop spam by being able to tell the difference between a human being and a bot or automated program. It does this by asking a question that a normal human being is able to answer. Then a computer grades that answer to determine if you're human or not. All is fine until the thing does not work.

There are millions of blogs on the net. The new web 2.0 craze has truly caught on. From stay at home moms, to teenagers, to your granny writing about her life. Everybody has a blog. Some are good and people actually make money, but most are dreadful. Because of this there are tons of posts, tutorials and articles about blogging. What to do and what not to do.

Alexa, the web traffic ranking site has just recently upgraded their website UI. Well it seemed recent to me as I have just noticed it.

CSS gives us the ability to style certain parts of the document by using pseudo elements. Pseudo elements refer to parts of the document that you cannot directly access through the HTML. Pseudo-elements allow you to style information that is not available in the document tree. But the browser can access those elements. For instance, using standard selectors there is no way to style the first letter or first line of an element's content.

I had great plans of posting a great April fools joke. Only to find out this morning that my internet was down. There goes the initiative. Thanks once again Telkom for ruining my day.

Telkom and the state have done it again. With the looming possibility of lost revenue due to competitive fixed line operators, Telkom has seen that their fixed revenue stream will soon be diminished. They have started the ball rolling on authorizing an internet bandwidth tax.

One of the things I had to grasp early when learning Object Orientated Programming, or OOP, is this idea of events. Raising events, and what they mean. Then when it came to web development, I had to find out about postbacks. Now if these two concepts allude you or confuse you, then stay tuned. I am going to try and make it easier for you.

Music piracy is rife all over the internet. Record labels and artists claim they are loosing millions to piracy, and illegal downloads. Now Google have announced that you can download free music legally.

There are thousands of programming languages out there. Many are aimed at a particular industry with a particular purpose. But what makes a programming language popular? I would venture to say that the top programming languages would stand out for their job marketability and wide use, and developer support.

When trying to discus which is the most popular programming language, we can become emotional, entering into a battle that rivals religion sport or politics. Often times there is no need to debate, the language of choice is pre-chosen. Example of when a programmer needs to update a legacy system or a existing system written in a particular language.

Some time in your SQL life you are goimg to need running totals in order to produce a graph or report. There are many different ways toachive this. I had to do the running totals in  a SQL View, because the final view was being used by a report, which I had no control over.

No, Windows is not a virus. Viruses have certain characteristics. Lets compare these with Windows to disprove that theory,

Acronymns make it easier for us to remember things. I remember in school, when studying, I would try and make important points into acronyms to remember them. South Africa like their acronyms. They will find weird acronyms for every organisation, process or idea. The IT and computer industry is not without their fair share of acronyms. Here is a list of acronyms from the IT industry in a way you might not have read before.

DevDays 2009 is finished. Just returned from the Johannesburg event and came away feeling little bit enlightened but also disappointed somewhat. It was no doubt the largest DevDays yet. Well the largest that I have been to. With over 1200 attendees, and three tracts to choose from, we were sure spoilt for choice.