As several companies dig into various ways to increase sales via social networks, it is interesting to note Dell Outlet’s success ($3 million in sales) with their Twitter account. A lot of organizations struggle with monetizing social networks and finding where they fit in the ever-evolving social commerce spectrum. It is almost clear to me that we can all draw parallels between Dell’s Twitter strategy and that of email campaigns for other eCommerce brands — except generating sales leads via Twitter is next to free — assuming you build a solid network of followers and continue to offer a value proposition.

Needless to mention, if you join the social commerce bandwagon you have to consider alternative ways of tracking sales in the new era. In most cases, you have to supplement your existing analytics software platform with other tracking solutions.

Here’s an excerpt from an article describing Dell’s success story:

In making sales through @DellOutlet, Dell sends tweets to subscribers, telling bargain hunters the latest available refurbished systems. The company also messages coupons and clearance events.

The strategy has taken @DellOutlet to the top 50 most followed Twitter users, according to Dell. Such standings are tracked on a third-party Twitter monitoring service called TwitterCounter.

Other top 50 Twitter users includes brands like @Zappos, @Woot, @JetBlue, and @WholeFoods. As of March, Twitter.comreached 9.3 million visitors, according to ComScore Media Metrix.

If you are yet to read about Dell’s success, check out the InformationWeek article.

“Don’t call it a come-back, I’ve been here for years…” If you can relate, you are probably in a good place!

To all thy fans of this blog, I apologize for neglecting you. What can I say, the economy is tight… Anywho, my blog has been dormant for a while now. Life got a little tougher than I imagined but it is all within our living means. If you subscribe to any form of gospel, the clause “he will never give you more than you can handle” probably resonates with your insides. I pledge to myself and you, to start pumping out some technology and marketing-related nothings in the next couple of months.

Stick with me – I will make you fishers of “something”… hopefully, something interesting I don’t quite know yet. “Do it anyways. Just ’cause.”

Hmmmm, if you read all of this, you probably really want to know what’s going on. So on a more professional note, stay tuned.

Cheerio!

Microsoft introduces “salsa” and “valves” as enterprise social networking hooks.

Check out the video:

http://www.cio.com/video?bcpid=9774639001&bclid=1373280988&bctid=27469683001

‘Would be nice if the Embed Code feature on CIO.com worked for WordPress. Fix it guys!!!

A few of my fellow developers and I are entertaining the idea of putting together an entrepreneur-developer camp in the Milwaukee WI area, sometime in March of this year. This initiative is geared towards encouraging and empowering developers (primarily .NET folks) who have relatively limited free time but yet have some mind-blowing entrepreneurial startup projects in mind, to tap into a pool of well-oiled and like-minded coders — in an effort to collaboratively kick-off a web startup.

The modalities for profit sharing and associated agreements are in the works.

First, Who?

If you are a (.NET) Developer/Architect or you personify the term “jQuery Guru” or perhaps you are a “knock-down” Design junkie or maybe a sharp-witted Strategist or Agile Evangelist, this might be for you. If you are just interested in networking with other developers and learning how other developers collaborate on projects in an “Agile” way, you are more than welcome to peep in.

Think iPhone Apps, Facebook Apps., “Software as a Service” (SaaS) Apps., Games for the Xbox, Wii, etc.

Supposing you are not good at this coding stuff, but you can pull off the marketing side of things and maybe you have a “Killer-App” in mind, you are more than welcome to come pitch your ideas to the team.

Then, How?

• Members of the elite team who have great entrepreneurial ideas will pitch their dream projects in a collaborative “think tank” environment to the rest of the squad.
• The squad will, in turn, pick the most interesting project in the boiling pot of ideas and prepare to crack it at the scheduled meeting date.
• A member of the team will be responsible for architecting the solution and creating a clear and granular project plan for accomplishing the core part of the project, prior to the camp meeting.
• The squad will meet on the scheduled camp date – an all-day Saturday and Sunday affair, and make it happen!
• Thereafter, the solution will find its way through the various phases of testing and eventually our marketing savvy folks will go to town with pushing the product through to market. If it makes money, the team members stand to reap the benefits.
• Then on to the next “iteration” or phase of the project (where it makes sense) or on to the next project idea in the boiling pot.

Support

So far, we have garnered support for camp location/development space. Ideally you will walk in with your own development tools (preferably a laptop), maybe a pillow and a blanket (where need be). If you are like me, you are probably thinking free “lite” beer (I mean, it is MKE for goodness sake), good pizza and some BW3 wings or sushi to keep you going. We will do what we can to make it fun for you! J

If this tickles your fancy or you have further questions, drop me a note here on my blog or via my email (idehao@gmail.com).

Web-based “widgetry” and syndication goodness might finally find their way to the big screen — with Intel and Yahoo leading the way.

Needless to say, the future is bright for marketing opportunities on the interactive TV!

I must say, it is not the best video there is, but you get the idea!

It’s been a while since I used inline code statements in ASP.NET. If you are a C# developer getting back into the  ”old-school”-Classic-ASP way of doing things, perhaps because you are working on an ASP.NET MVC project, you might run into an error similar to this: “error CS1026: ) expected“. This misleading error message alludes to the fact that you might be missing a closing parenthesis, unfortunately that is not the case.

The perpetrator is the semicolon (“;”) at the end of the inline statement. Simply remove it to resolve the issue. You are probably used to this from Java or JavaScript or C# programming or maybe F# code… or whatever your excuse is.

For example, instead of:

<head runat="server">
    <title><%=ViewData["Title"];%></title>
</head>

Go with something like this:

<head runat="server">
    <title><%=ViewData["Title"]%></title>
</head>

If you are a “seasoned” software architect or developer, chances are, you’ve had to work on or with a “Coding Standards” document of some sort. As much as they serve as great guidelines for programmers (or coders or better yet, developers), we often find ourselves straying away from the very purpose they serve. Remember, coding standards should typically echo “best practices” however the key goal is to have your organization’s “source code reflect a harmonized style, as if a single developer wrote the code in one session.” Coding standards are also critical to any software development project because they promote “Code Maintainability“ — which refers to the ease with which a software solution can be “changed to add new features, modify existing features, fix bugs, or improve performance.”

In most cases, “Code Reviews” performed either by peer developers or a superior developer tends to bode well for enforcing these standards. I just recently checked out “FxCop” — from the looks of it, it is quite a good tool for enforcing coding standards. Automated tools like “FxCop” should not necessarily replace the need to conduct “Code Reviews”. If anything, they should be viewed as useful tools for conducting “Code Reviews.” More importantly, “Code Reviews” should be used to identify code defects (e.g. security flaws in the code base, etc.) not just for enforcing coding standards.

Code Reviews should be performed routinely throughout the development life cycle not just at the end of the project.

I know it screams “micromanagement“ but it doesn’t have to be the kind that makes a developer feel like his or her superior does not trust him or her to write good code. You can find a good balance – so find it! Nonetheless, if your excuse happens to resonate with “Man, that sounds very time consuming!”, my advise is to sip on this adage “A stitch in time saves nine.” Frankly, I will take 1 now than 9 later. 

Here is my philosophy on code reviews:

Think of code reviews as, you would, “work performance reviews.” I don’t know about you, but I will rather have my superior review my work progress with me on a regular basis (and provide some constructive feedback) so that I can resolve any looming performance issues that might potentially end up “biting me in the rear,” than to wait for my “annual performance review” (usually at the end of the year) to find out that I failed to meet my goals — by which time, it might be too late to correct my wrongs. In other words, I will rather be known as the kind of Professor who provides his students with constructive and effective feedback throughout the course of the class and also guides them on how to excel at the subject matter in question, than to be the kind who after teaching a class for a semester, sits back and dishes out grades that have no valuable meaning to his student’s development. AKA rather than being the “Cop” who hands out speeding tickets, be the “Cop” who “serves and protects.” If it is all so fuzzy in your mind, all I’m saying is: recognize the purpose of your job/actions — “be the ‘Help’, not the ‘Judge’.”

Coding Standards – templates:

• Clint Edmonson, one of Microsoft’s Architect Evangelists, offers a good template for developing or perhaps revamping your organization’s C# or VB.NET coding standards. Download the ZIP file here!
• DotNetSpider offers a good template for C# Coding Standards and Best Practices. Get it here!
• IDesign (kind courtesy of Juval Lowy) also offers a C# coding standards template. Check it out!
• Tiobe Software, a coding standards company, offers a C# coding standards document that you might find interesting. Have at it!
• CSharpFriends.com, offers a C# Coding Style Guide. Here you go!

Enjoy!

I had to step away from my blog for a split-second, it seems. Next thing I know the rest of the “social web” is racing right past me with full steam – even with the audacity to wave “bye” at me. Make it hurt, ‘why doncha’! It doesn’t surprise me though – the speed with which new advancements are unveiled in the ever-growing web order is not out of this world – the information technology area has always been notorious for forging ahead anytime I go to catch my breath. I am convinced that the 6-month “effective half-life” hypothesis that used to be the norm is quickly losing its promise of diminutive stability. For my loyal audience, I apologize for the long drought. For all “Ye” believers with no boundaries, “Yes, I’m here…” I might have sunk my teeth into a little too much – arguably, even more than I can chew – in trying to juggle doctoral studies, teaching, working and staying committed to my entrepreneurial cravings (can’t forget family and friends). In any case, I survived November (the most stressful month I’ve ever crossed paths with) and December is flying by very quickly. January is always my favorite, probably because it plays host to my birthday.

Enough about me and my excuses for not keeping my blog fresh! : )

As I ponder my return to active blogging and how to model my blog in a way that allows it to outlive the ever-decreasing “half-life” of IT advancements, I am tempted to examine the future of blogging as we know it. Micro-blogging tools like Twitter seem to be trading places with what we typically categorize as weblogs. Even so, the concept of “LifeStreaming” seems to be gaining grounds as the future of blogging, from what I’ve seen thus far. I have been preaching about the “aggregation” of social media for god-knows-how-long. Maybe it’s time to practice what I preach?

Blogging is fascinating and can be quite rewarding from both a professional and personal standpoint yet we all know that people are reading less literature today than they did yesteryear. If that postulation is anything to go by, perhaps blogging in the midst of the fleeting social media haven lends itself better to “LifeStreaming” than to ‘old-school’ blogging. So I ask myself, if “LifeStreaming” is the future of blogging what shape will corporate blogs take in the future? For individuals who participate actively in what is termed the “social web”, a “lifestream” makes sense; hitherto, for a traditional organization that is not active in the “social web”, maybe this is not for you?

All and still, I can think of a few organizations that maintain a Facebook presence, a LinkedIn group, a MySpace page, a Plaxo Pulse presence and perhaps a Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, SlideShare, or FriendFeed account. If you can relate, maybe this is the time to start looking at the promise of a “LifeStream” of some sort.

On my list of admirable “LifeStream-like” blogs are:

• Julia’s site on NonSoceity.com: http://julia.nonsociety.com/
• YongFook’s site: http://www.yongfook.com/

Is there a place for “LifeStreaming” in Enterprise 2.0? With a carefully crafted web strategy, any form of regulated social media aggregation can offer untold benefits to the enterprise folks.

P.S.: I want the “MacBook AIR” for Christmas. Santa, I hope you are paying attention this time! : )

Quite recently, Tim Mallalieu (Program Manager of the LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework Team) made it clear in his blog post that the Entity Framework (LINQ to Entities) will get more focus in the .NET 4.0 build as opposed to “LINQ to SQL” — which I am slowly growing to love by the day (in any case, you don’t want to know what I do by night). Yet, with my disappointment of the possible abandonment of the rather lightweight “LINQ to SQL” elucidation, comes my appreciation for third-party Object/Relational Mapping (ORM) implementations of LINQ.

I was first introduced to SubSonic earlier this year when I worked on the BoomerTowne project. I must admit, I quickly consumed the “Koolaid” with complete admiration. In fact, I feared that SubSonic will die a natural death with the introduction of LINQ to SQL, but my steadfast hope is now renewed.

In a recent discussion with Scott Hanselman (on HanselMinutes), Rob Conery of Subsonic (a popular .NET ORM/code generation tool) mentioned that Subsonic is working on implementing “iQueryable” in the next version of Subsonic. In other words, the next version of SubSonic will be bundled with a LINQ Provider (aka LINQ to SubSonic). NHibernate (another popular ORM tool) already has a LINQ provider (LINQ to NHibernate) which affords developers the flexibility of writing queries using LINQ syntax. I think there are huge opportunities for open-source OR/M tools to step in and create even more lightweight and efficient LINQ providers. If you are already a die-hard SubSonic or NHibernate fan, it makes sense to “stick with the known” while dipping into LINQ.

If you are interested in creating your own LINQ Provider, head over to Kevin Halverson’s post on How to implement IQueryable (Part 1).