Author: Mark

Betsy Weber, the Technical Evangelist for TechSmith (the creators of great tools like Camtasia) posted a blog entry about screencasting tips & tricks. Definitely worth checking out!

If you see me looking slightly paranoid at Mix06 or ASP Connections — you now know why.

But seriously, thanks Rory I’m glad to see you’re excited about the platform!

It’s that time of the year again, time to vote for this year’s ASPNETPro Reader’s Choice award. To cast your vote, please go to:
http://www.aspnetpro.com/ReadersChoice/default.asp

Last year Community Server was voted best forum. While we don’t consider Community Server “just a forums” or “just a blog” – we actually see it as defining a complete new genre in software applications: Community Management System – we would still very much appreciate your vote for Community Server!!!

CodeSmith is also listed this year, but is in the category “Other”. This is disappointing, as you would think there should be a category just for code generation or developer productivity tools. Oh well, I’d still appreciate the votes for CodeSmith too (even if it means winning the “Other” category)!

I’m starting to figure out what all to cover in my Mix06 presentation about using ASP.NET to built a community platform, AKA Community Server. The challenge is that the audience is going to be a complete mix (no pun intended) of people that are seasoned .NET experts, developers new to .NET, and business decision makers who probably don’t care a lot about developer details! If you have thoughts/comments or ideas of what you think I should cover — please let me know 🙂

Also Scott Watermasysk pointed me to a great video by Seth Godin about building products customers love. It’s a presentation at Google, so naturally there are lots of references to how great Google is. Here is the direct link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294

If you are coming to Mix06 — make sure and say hi!

Digg.com is pretty cool resource, it’s Slashdot without the heavy anti-MSFT bias. For Community Server 2.0 there is a module that enable you to easily add either digg.com or reddit.com submissions to your posts.

Also, if you get a chance Digg the Release of Community Server 2.0. We got the beta 3 announcement on the home page of Digg.com 🙂

Telligent and the Community Server team are very pleased to announce the immediate availability of Community Server 2.0 the platform that enables you to quickly and easily create online communities.

Download Community Server 2.0 MSI Now!
Download Community Server 2.0 Web Installer Now! (required if upgrading)
Learn more at CommunityServer.org

Community Server 2.0 is available in several editions:

Express Edition – The free Express Edition is perfect for people that need to get a community up-and-running on a budget. It is free, but has restrictions on use but can be used commercially.

Standard Edition – The Standard Edition is the entry level commercial platform and unlocks some features not available in the Express Edition.

Professional Edition – The Professional Edition is targeted at organizations that require many of the capabilities offered by Community Server 2.0 for running a high-traffic community.

Enterprise Edition – The Enterprise Edition unleashes the full potential of Community Server and has been designed for organizations that require all of the capabilities found in Community Server.

For more information on licensing Community Server 2.0, please read the Community Server 2.0 licensing guide.

Important: Community Server 2.0 Standard, Professional, and Enterprise Editions are available for purchase at the 1.1 price until March 20th 2006.

In addition to many improvements in Community Server 2.0 core features (forums, blogs, and photos) some of the new capabilities in Community Server 2.0 include:

File Gallery – Easily share files of any type and size. Supports comments, ratings, download counts as well as permissions for controlling how your files are accessed.

FTP Gateway – Easily enable drag-and-drop or even drive mapping for Community Server file or photo galleries.

Enterprise Search – Enables new options for data matching; RSS enabled search; and proximity searching

Email Gateway – Enables integration with Microsoft Exchange Server or stand-alone email support. Using the Mail Gateway enables blogging by email and using forums as an email distribution list.

RSS Aggregator – Easily combine multiple RSS sources into a combined/aggregated view.

RSS Reader – Enable each user to create his or her own custom RSS subscriptions as well as aggregating and ‘mashing-up’ related content in-and-outside of Community Server

Control Panel – Completely rewritten Control Panel which greatly simplifies management of Community Server.

…and more – Video blogging, Tablet PC ink support, simple content management, search engine optimization, basic social networking functionality, new reports, spam blocking tools, member points, new slideshow tool for photo gallery, updated polls system, forum personalization, RSS enabled search, secure RSS, better NNTP and Email integration, URL redirects/tracking, threaded UI for forums.

Please visit www.communityserver.org where you can download Community Server 2.0 today!

The Community Server core source code corresponding with today’s release will be published ~5PM CST Today as well.

Want to work at a growing, fast-paced, high energy software company? Telligent is looking for the candidates to help us fill the following positions:

Program Management (2 FTE Openings)
Manage projects from initial engagement to post-launch. The position requires excellent communication and technical skills and familiarity with both agile and traditional project managment/development techniques. The ideal candidate is familiar with and has working knowledge of Microsoft .NET and Microsoft SQL Server. The ideal candidate should also have experience running projects from beginning to completion. Direct experience with ASP.NET or Community Server is a big plus. U.S. Residents only. Location: Dallas, TX USA (moving packages available). Please send email to careers@telligent.com if interested.

Software Development Engineer (4 FTE Openings / 2 Contract Openings)
6 Software Development Engineer positions with the following requirements: (1) willing to learn new things (2) willing to work with customers directly (3) demonstrable experience building ASP.NET applications with C# (in that order). A developer position at Telligent is unqiue in that we don’t hire people that want to close their door and “code all day”. We promote a lot of interaction between our developers and customers. U.S. Residents only. Location: Dallas, TX USA (moving packages available). Please send email to careers@telligent.com if interested.

HTML/CSS Expert (1 FTE Opening)
Want to use your HTML & CSS skills to build software solutions conforming to the latest progressive CSS designs? We’re looking for someone to join our growing creative team to help ensure solutions we build meet a stringent set of design requirements. U.S. Residents only. Location: Dallas, TX USA (moving packages available). Please send email to careers@telligent.com if interested.

Account Manager/Technical Evangelist (1 FTE Opening)
An Account Manager/Technical Evangelist helps work with new customers as they begin their experience with Telligent. You’ll be responsible for working with a variety of technical and business teams and will be responsible for ownership over a variety of accounts. U.S. Residents only. Location: Dallas, TX USA (moving packages available). Please send email to careers@telligent.com if interested.

At this time we are looking for U.S. residents interested in moving to Dallas, TX. If you live in Redmond, WA or New York City or are not interested in moving, but are still interested in applying please do so (we do support remote/tele-communiting work environments, but you must have prior experience with tele-communting).

Eric Smith, and some other folks at Telligent, recently introduced me to .netTiers templates for CodeSmith.

Over the past couple of weeks I put together an article and a video tutorial that show how you can create a Data Access Layer that implements the Microsoft Patterns & Practices recommended data access techniques (including use of the Enterprise Libraries) for you database in less than 15 minutes. …and 12 minutes of that time is spent downloading the software!

It’s so unbelievably easy, you just point it at the database and it does everything else automagically. Note, I did say automagically, because once you see this you’ll be as amazed as I was!

• You can read the article here
• You can watch the video here

It’s official, there will be a break-out session on Community Server at the Microsoft Mix 06 conference!

The session’s offical title and description:

Building an Interactive Community Platform with ASP.NET
In this session, we explore how Microsoft technologies can be used to build a cutting-edge “sticky” community platform with .NET. See examples of how RSS is used in new and creative ways, such as “secure” RSS, dynamic RSS search feeds, and aggregate blogs, in addition to real-world uses of AJAX to simply complex Web UI.

I’m presenting and it’s going to be a Tips & Tricks style presentation. The Tips & Tricks format means slide-demo-slide-demo-slide-demo as many times as possible in the session time slot showing how ASP.NET enables people to build some really cool stuff. In other words, it will be fast, fun, and packed with great information!

If you’re coming to Mix06, please drop by the session and say hi!

We’re getting really close to releasing Communtiy Server 2.0. One of the new things we’ve done recently is start a video blog. So far we’ve created:

• Tips & Tricks #1 – Inline Editing and Content Parts (very cool features shown off here, that many people don’t know about)
• Tips & Tricks #2 – Blogging By Email (Yes, you can blog by email now)
• Tips & Tricks #3 – Dealing with SPAM (shows off the new anti-spam tools)
• Brief overview of Community Server
• Web Installation Tutorial
• Windows/MSI Installation Tutorial
• Brief overview of Forums Features
• License Installation

We’ve got a list of about 30 or so Tips & Tricks videos we’re going to create and right now the goal is to get 1-2 done per-day.