kashyapa's .NET Rumbles

Today, it is official that twitter has released its own tweetbutton. Till now it used to be third party links that provided the tweet option. With the release of the tweetbutton now everybody will start grabbing the link and provide it on their sites.

So lets have a look at how to use the tweetbutton on your web site.

Step 1: Go to www.twitter.com/tweetbutton

You will be presented with the following page:

If you notice carefully – Twitter – is calling the TweetButton as “Goodies” – interesting isn’t it :). Tweet Button is a goodie for the world – great.

So this page has 3 section. Lets go over those sections one by one.

Step 2: Choosing the button and Customization.

The tweet button itself comes with 3 flavours as below:

- Vertical Count – This has the counter – i.e. the number of tweets which originated from either the web or any sort of clients which has reference to the current URL – on the top and button below. See the screenshot

- Horizontal Count – This has the counter aligned horizontally next to the button. See the screenshot below.

- No count – this option will only contain the button. No counter is presented. Simple and stylish i say.

Once you have chosen the button, you have the option to customize the text that you want to have in the tweet, the URL if any and also the language you want to tweet in. So lets see the customization one by one

- Tweet Text customization – this is self explanatory. This allows you to control the text that you see while you tweet. Here is the screen shot of this  customization:

As you can see, the option allows you to tell the tweet button to grab the title of the current page the button is in or you can provide your own customized text. In this case i have opted to have my own customized text “Check this out”

- URL customization – This lets you to decide whether you want the tweet button to automatically grab the current URL or you would like to provide a custom URL which will be added to the tweet. What’s interesting is – By default what ever you select tweet button is going to auto shorten the URL using Twitter's URL shortener, t.co. Here is the screen shot of the customization

- Language – This option lets you decide in what language do you want to see the tweet button to be rendered. Currently the language supported is as follows and the tweet button rendered in those languages:

English
French
German
Spanish
Japanese

So as you can see depending on your language you can have the tweet button appear in that language.

Step 3 – Recommend people to follow

What this option does is – after somebody tweets using the tweet button, twitter will display to the user 2 accounts to follow and you control that through this option. So you can set 2 twitter accounts that you want the users to follow.

Here is how this option translates to after a tweet has been done using the Tweet Button

Step 4 – Preview and Grab the button

The last step is to of course preview your customization and grab the button link  and put it in your website. Here is the screen shot of the preview:

Notice that this is not something different from any of the widgets or plugins you might have played around for your. Its just a anchor with bunch of custom attribute which the twitter can parse to produce the tweet.

The Tweet Text you set is translated as “data-text” attribute. The button type that we select is translated as “data-count” attribute. The 2 accounts we set for follow is translated as “data-via” and “data-related” attribute.

This was a attempt from my side to explain the Tweet Button usage.

I will give it a spin by including the Tweet Button with this article. Why dont you Tweet This .

Tweet

Update: Here is the official video from twitter on the Tweet Button

This weekend Silicon Valley of India – Bangalore or Bengaluru is witnessing a technology filled 2 days. Yes the Community Tech Days – “Behold the power of Technology” – is being held in Bengaluru on Aug 7/8 2010.

If you are new to Microsoft world and wondering what is Community Tech Days – well here is the official description of the event:     

“Dive deep into the world of Microsoft technologies at the Community Tech Days and get trained on the latest from Microsoft. Build real connections with Microsoft experts and community members, and gain the inspiration and skills needed to maximize your impact on your organization while enhancing your career. What more... you can watch some of these sessions LIVE online from the comfort of your workstation as well.”

What’s more interesting is – the sessions to be held in CTD Bengaluru is beamed live. Yes there is a live stream available for Bengaluru event. So if you are someone who cant attend in person but have a net connection at home –well sit back in your chair and enjoy the sessions. Check the official link given below.

Day 1 Aug 7 2010, is for the developers a.k.a Developer track. Day 2 Aug 8 2010 is for the IT professionals. Some interesting sessions are lined up. The topics range from ASP.NET MVC to the latest and greatest – WebMatrix. I am pretty excited about the whole event. I am going to be attending the first day for sure.

Here is the venue details and session details for the event.

Some of the speakers to watch out for is Pandurang Nayak. If you had attended Tech Edge 2010 held in Bengaluru couple of months – you will remember the roving camera and behind the mike it was none other than Mr. Nayak. So i am excited to be seating in his session. Another speaker not to be missed is of course the ever enthusiastic and great speaker and motivator Vinod Kumar. I am excited about meeting him in person this time. Its unfortunate that i will not be sharing the stage with him this time. May be next time i am gonna be presenting along him. He has been a great motivator for me at least. So looking forward to Saturday and Sunday to meet Vinod. Other than these two speakers i haven’t seen any other speakers session. So will blog about that later.

So don’t miss 2 days of technology and information packed sessions. Be there i will be too.

Here is the official link to CTD - http://www.communitytechdays.com/

So till next time – Happy coding. Code with passion.

Today i am going to talk about “How to upgrade a Trial version of Office 2010 Professional Plus to a full licensed version”.

I had downloaded and installed the trial version of Office 2010. Couple of days back i got my MSDN subscription. So now i have the full version license keys to play around with.

First thing that came to my mind was how to change the product key of the already installed Trial version. When i searched for all the information i could get on the net – everybody said go to backstage and click on the Help option. Then on the right hand side you should see product activation. So change the product keys there. Well it seems like that’s not the case with the Trial versions. Following is the screen shot of what i see in Trial versions:

As you can see in the Trial versions, the product activation is not here. So where else can you find it.

For everything in MS – keep in mind that there is either a Repair or Change option which will be present in Add Remove Programs feature. So go to Add Remove Programs and find Office 2010 entry and Right click on it. You will see a “Change” See the screen shot below:

Click on the “Change” option. You will be presented with Change your installation dialog. There you will see the last option to “Enter a product key”. Voila here it is. Now you can enter a different product key. See the screen shot below:

Select the “Enter a product key” option and click continue. You will be shown “Enter a  Product Key” dialog. Here you can enter your new key. See the screen shot below:

So that’s how you upgrade from a Trial version of Office 2010 to Full licensed version. I had problem finding this information. So may be somebody will make use of this information.

As i say always, till next time Happy Coding. Code with passion.

I had to post this sooner than this date but was caught up with the day job. When i heard the news i just couldn’t believe it myself. Wondering what i am blabbing about well read on.

There are couple of blogs i follow regularly in the .NET world. One such blog is from a person named Mr. Vijay Raj. His blog site is known as www.msigeek.com. Quoting from his own website – here is what he says about himself – “Vijay is a passionate Technology Evangelist and a Microsoft MVP in Application Setup / Deployment”. Yup his blog www.msigeek.com is all about stuff on setup and deployment. I must say that he has carved his own niche world out there in the blogging arena. His site is filled with Tons of information on the said topic.

Microsoft, celebrating the launch of VS.NET 2010 and .NET F/W 4.0 was giving away “Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN activation cards”. Vijay had 3 of those activation cards to giveaway – thanks to his MVP status – i believe every MVP has this licenses to give away (don’t count me on this – i am just guessing here). Listed price of VS.NET 2010 Ultimate is $11,899. Yup its 11 grands to own this baby .

On the blog arena, if i am right, www.msigeek.com was the first site and Vijay was the first person to start this give away. After this i have seen couple of other sites/people who have started the giveaways.

So what was the contest all about. All we had to do was to answer the following 3 simple questions. Here is the link to the article “Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN Subscription – Giveaway Contest”. A panel of 3 judges including Vijay would then go through the entries and pick the best 3. So the questions we had to answer was:

• What specific feature do you want to use in the ultimate edition of VS.NET 2010?
• If you win this software, what would be the dream application you want to develop using VS.NET 2010 Ultimate?
• Are you a subscriber of msigeek.com blog? If no what is stopping you ? Do explain?

One fine day i decided to get into this contest because i wanted the product badly. Lately i have started doing some community stuff and although the express edition does support most of the scenario there is nothing like having the ultimate power. And also the best part of this contest was - the first 2 questions were questions which could be answered by ones experience. For question no 1 i just penned down my thoughts that i gathered keeping in my my decade in the industry and what VS.NET 2010 has to offer. From my perspective the Intellitrace and the utilities we have for architects are the killer. (Vijay may be writing a blog post which will have all the winners answers. Not sure on this. will try to get my answers and try to update this post.) For question no 2 – i have a application in mind which i am currently building using Web Matrix Beta. So this help me to convert that app to ASP.NET MVC. I am saving the info for another blog post of mine. As you can see the 2 questions really needed a answer from one own experience and that might win you the booty. And so did i post the answers too.

I was eagerly waiting for the result. And so did the results announced and what a way to be notified. You wont believe this but Vijay contacted me with a tweet of his – a direct message. I was in a meeting and thanks to Nokia 5235 + Airtel Live + SnapTu – i was able to get it right at that moment. Technology i say .

Here is the link to official results page : “Giveaway Contest Winners – Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN”    

Yooohoooo – i won $11,899 worth of a product. Believe me when i say the feeling of winning is simply ecstatic. This is my first ever win in any sort of competition online.

Thanks to Vijay and his site www.msigeek.com i am now a proud owner of VS.NET 2010 Ultimate with 1 year subscription to MSDN.

And last but not the least – all of you who read this – do visit www.msigeek.com. An excellent source for setup and deployment related articles.

As i say always – till next time Happy Coding. Code with passion.