Why oh why 3.0 Matt Gudmundson

Why did we even have 3.0? Why did I learn 3.0? I know!

As you all know 3.5 has been released for sometime along with a bunch of new stuff from Microsoft. I am pretty sure most of the developers out there have been awaiting this release for sometime and from the latest feedback buzz is what you can do in VS08 is da bomb. Hey look javascript intellisense, huh what, and the new framework has changed the way we can do things… Again.

One of the neatest things you can do in 3.5 is build a big ole office solution. Yes I said an office database application using VSTO. If your company is using office 07’ you can integrate your ‘business to internal’ applications’ within office: using outlook, excel, etc. What’s neat is you can also host the application, which would make it available for clients. So what does this mean, multiple user interfaces, more security and hey wait a sec maybe you could use all of those excel formulas. VSTO was available in office 2003 yet somewhat limited. Hey this sounds familiar like the 3.0 framework with a few exceptions. With one exception being is that 3.0 has become the core of some of the leading technologies out there. So I know the argument is eh, 3.0 so what, yet it had paved the way of some really good ideas and products.

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Finding what you need on the internets Wayne Rodgers

Search engines, namely Google, (supposedly) make it easy to find information about anything you need. Google continuously searches the internet and indexes information from every corner of the web. All the information is there, and yet some people can’t seem to find anything. These poor souls include my wife, parents, brother and sister. They also have a habit of double clicking on links and have evidently never noticed that one click gets the job done.

There’s no doubt that being a good internet searcher takes a little bit of abstract thinking. The key, I’ve found, is to put yourself in the shoes of the person who would potentially be writing about what you want to know about. If you can guess who might be writing about a subject and in what context it tends to help narrow down your keywords. If you can’t even render a guess, you can start with broad searches with common keywords until you catch a whiff of what you’re looking for and then start over at page 1 with a fresh group of keywords.

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• Posted In Client Services

Denver Botanic Gardens - Highly Recommended Jim Halligan

I have to say that I have been missing out on a great place here in Denver. With several Indigians volunteering for this weekend’s plant sale @DBG, I decided it was a good opportunity to chip in and take some pictures for the current social media campaign we have rolled out for the gardens.

I was blown away.

For those who don’t know me, I attended Oregon State University and received my B.S. degree in Botany. I also have dabbled in, and continue to show interest in graffiti art. And as you may know, Denver Botanic Gardens has put the two together to develop a unique and outstanding meduim in their current exhibit Urban Nature.

It’s amazing, when I ask myself ‘why did I spend all that time and money in college and do nothing with it?’ Then, I find myself working for a great company in downtown Denver and going on-site to one of the top-ranked botanical gardens in the US to shoot pictures for the benefit of their website. I guess I can’t say it didn’t work out for me, because even though i’m not in a lab testing Phytophthora infestans’ resistance to fungicide- I get to stroll around a beautiful venue and snap picutres of two things I love for a good cause.

So, I feel somewhat lucky to be so involved with this campaign. I would highly recommend giving the gardens a visit sometime soon. Different species will be coming into bloom over the next few weeks, and the plantlife will certainly compliment the artist’s work as time elapses over the summer.

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• Posted In Media

In Defense of SEO Jamie Streib

After a few months of hearing nothing but bad things about search engine optimization (thanks Calacanis, but SEO is NOT bullshit), an article in Slate praising its talents:

http://www.slate.com/id/2190387/

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I found my next hire Tom Whittaker

I mean honestly, how do you pass on someone who knows internets. 

My thanks to Dave Herrold for instant messaging the link to this gem.  Unless, this is actually a photo of a younger Dave Herrold and this was his idea of a resume. Hum, I wonder. 

I also think we may need to look at changing Indigio’s tagline from Succeed Online to We Know Internets.

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• Posted In Tom & Becki's Prom Stories

Testing methodology Mike Girenko

I was asked by my friend about “Testing methodology” and what this means. To be honest, I could not answer. I tried to come up with answers, but was only able to produce something along the lines of “test type”, “test case design technique”, “test level” and few others. My friend told me that “Testing methodology” includes “Regression Testing”, “Unit Testing, and “Performance Testing”. I did not agree with him and had to look up in QA Department documentation. Here is what I have found…

1. Categorization of testing based on the knowledge of system (Testing Type):

·Black Box Testing
·White Box Testing
·Gray Box Testing

2. Categorization of testing based on the time it is executed in the Software Development Life Cycle (Testing Technique):

·Unit Testing
·Integration Testing
·System Testing
·User Acceptance Testing

Examples of Black Box testing techniques:

·Exploratory testing
·Function testing
·Regression testing

Examples of White Box testing techniques:

·Statement testing and coverage
·Decision testing and coverage
·Control Structure Testing: Condition Testing and Data Flow Testing

3. Test Case Design Techniques (Black Box)
·Error Guessing
·Boundary Value Analysis
·Equivalence Partitioning
·Orthogonal Array Testing

As you can see, we do not use the “Testing methodology” term. When I did search for it, I found that sometimes it means the same as Testing Technique (“Testing methodology includes Unit Testing, Integration Testing..”), sometimes it means “the strategy for testing” for a particular project (which to me would be a Test Plan), and sometimes it means “an approach for testing.”

Mike Girenko

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What happens in Vegas, doesn’t necessarily stay in Vegas… Teresa Lawlor

 I’m taking off for Vegas tomorrow night to attend the Suburban Newspapers of America’s (SNA) Interactive Strategies for Suburban and Community Markets meeting on May 13. Indigio is a proud sponsor of the event and I will have 5 minutes to tell the attendees about us, what we do and how we can help their newspaper sites evolve. I’ll post while I’m there and the presentation will also be videotaped (gulp… which depending on how it comes out I may post too after the show).

Look’s like a good agenda. There’s a session on Social Networking presented by the Bakersfield, Californian that should be relevant to our social marketplace work that are kicking off with MNGi and what looks to be another session on serving readers and advertisers through search marketing. Looking forward sharing our perspective on that too. I will be in Vegas for exactly 24 hours. Stay tuned for how much I can squeeze into that timeframe!

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• Posted In Marketing & Events

Future Indigians Teresa Lawlor

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• Posted In Marketing & Events

Windex Cleaning- 10 seconds- JohnsonDiversey Lana Kellams

Windex Cleaning in 10 Seconds!

JohnsonDiversey launches a new site with Indigio

Who says you cannot kill germs and Bacteria in just 10 seconds?  JDBrandsPromo is the place to go if you own a Daycare, Bar, Restaurant or any business that is looking for cleaning supplies.  If you are lucky enough to get a promo code you can even save money on your purchases. Visit JDBrandsPromo.com

This site was built using Dotnetnuke, so JohnsonDiversey can change the Products or Product information with the click of the mouse. 

 Stay tuned for more Johnson Diversey updates coming soon.

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The Evolution of Web Scraping Mike Minton

One of my very first professional programming jobs was to write scrapers to extract Job Listings from various sites and massage them into a format for import into the CareerSite application. In 1997 this meant Perl, enough complicated regular expressions to make you go blind, and LWP::UserAgent. Forms were rarely an issue and one just had to crawl their way through the site happily lifting the content. Even if a form did get in the way it was relatively simple exercise to set the params and fire off a properly formed POST. Cookies and Javascript were rarely an issue.

A typical script might look like this:

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->agent("MikeBot");
 
$response = $ua->post( "http://www.monster.com/search",
{
"category" => "IT",
"company_name" => "IBM"
}
);
...

WWW::Mechanize came along later, extended LWP::UserAgent, and solved the repetitive tasks of cookie handling, form processing, traversing links, etc. WWW::Mechanize is still actively maintained and can be used to effectively crawl reasonable web sites.

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