Web Venture 101


Rails books, and Pretty URLs in Ruby on Rails for listings

, posted: 31-Jan-2007 20:30

For those of you interested in Ruby on Rails, the opensource web development framework we use to build Hire Things, the Wellington Ruby on Rails user group (WellRailed) is a good place to start. The WellRailed group also has a number of Ruby on Rails (read the entire post)...



Hire Things live now for a month! Check it out.

, posted: 30-Jan-2007 18:12

Just a note to let you know that our new web venture, Hire Things, has gone live (public beta) for New Zealand (see here for the rest of the world). You can
list things you want to hire, rent, or lend outkeep track of things you lend out (so yo (read the entire post)...



Ok, here's a wee preview of Hire Things. Ever lend, borrow, or hire anything?

, posted: 9-Oct-2006 16:37

Our new venture, Hire Things, is about to go into Beta 1, so I guess it's about time I give you a peek into what we are doing. You can see a bit about it at http://www.hirethings.co.nz/.

You can sign up there to be part of the beta & (read the entire post)...



Alpha 1, Alpha 2, and lots of legal stuff

, posted: 18-Sep-2006 14:09

We have had our first alpha of our site live for a few weeks now (top secret location sorry!), and that was quite a milestone for us... more pshychologically than technically as it marked a definite major step to getting closer to market / public ava (read the entire post)...



Geekzone '06 & Microsoft Vista installfest NZ '06

, posted: 18-Sep-2006 10:39

I was part of Geekzone '06 and I take my hat off to Mauricio for bringing together such a great group of presenters... very diverse indeed, very topical, very practical.

Geekzone '07 will be the bomb! My view is that these sorts o (read the entire post)...



Business chugging along

, posted: 10-Sep-2006 18:25

... we are three now, have been for a while now, using Ruby on Rails, RadRails, 2 macs, 1 pc, 1 server (win for now).

Development is progressing, we have our first private alpha released for internal testing, and are gearing up for alpha 2 (read the entire post)...



RadRails IDE 0.6.4 released

, posted: 5-Jun-2006 12:31

RadRails has a new version released yesterday.

For those of you using earlier versions of RadRails, the upgrade is painless. Just go to Help | Update RadRails... (be connected to the net!)

It even closes your workspace and re- (read the entire post)...



RadRails on windows - ctrl+tab to switch views

, posted: 5-Jun-2006 11:01

I'm currently using RadRails (an a command shell/prompt) for my rails development.

One thing I found annoying was the non-standard window switching, which was something like ctrl+f6. The standard in windows apps (and in Visual Studio, (read the entire post)...



Possible change of development platforms

, posted: 4-Jun-2006 13:32

I have built the initial prototype of the application in ASP.Net 2.0, which has been good and frustrating at the same time.

Along with a colleague, we are now upskilling ourselves on development with Ruby on Rails (from Agile Wed Developme (read the entire post)...



Keys, Values, and NewValues when Inserting, Updating, Deleting with GridView, DetailsView, FormView and ObjectDataSource

, posted: 9-May-2006 15:06

It takes a bit of getting used to when and how to insert values on inserting, updating, and deleting when using ObjectDataSources with the DetailsView, FormView, and GridView.

You need to figure out which part of the EventArgs to modify (read the entire post)...



Creating Typed Datasets - member names cannot be the same as their enclosing type

, posted: 8-May-2006 13:24

Using typed datasets in .net 2.0 is meant to be vastly improved over .net 1.1, in terms of performance at least. So I've decided to give them a go, which allows me to use the ObjectDataSource instead of the SQLDataSource (a more extensible archi (read the entire post)...



Finding controls inside ItemTemplates inside a FormView inside a LoginView

, posted: 26-Apr-2006 21:41

Consider this:

<asp:LoginView ID="LoginView1" runat="server"> <LoggedInTemplate> <asp:FormView ID="MyFormView" runat="server" DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1"DefaultMode="readOnly" DataKeyNames="BlahId"> <ItemTem (read the entire post)...



Implicit conversion from data type sql_variant to uniqueidentifier is not allowed. Use the CONVERT function to run this query

, posted: 26-Apr-2006 14:59

When someone registers or logs in, I store their UserId (a GUID) into their profile (as type="System.Guid"), so I can retrieve it later for use in queries (including stored procedures which take a uniqueidentifier as an input parameter).

W (read the entire post)...



Darryl Burling presenting at CodeCamp on Live.Com and Gadgets

, posted: 22-Apr-2006 15:17

Enjoying Darry's overview of gadgets and live.com at Code Camp.

I think having a gadget output for my venture will be a good thing eventually.

Great presso Darryl!! (read the entire post)...



Read-only database in SQLExpress

, posted: 18-Apr-2006 13:55

If my database in app_data is not checked out (ie it is read-only) when SSE attaches the database, it will stay as read-only (from a DB perspective) even if you check it out.

You need to detach the DB from SSE and start again.

L (read the entire post)...



ptorrsmith's profile

Peter Torr Smith
Wellington
New Zealand


I've been working on a web venture idea for the last year or so, so have now resigned from my job to go at it full-time.

Here's how I go, with business and technology challenges!!