Altitude on Small Business Tools

Today I would like to talk about error reporting and logging.

We always like to know what’s going on with all your web applications, or our clients as soon as possible, not only know the error, but sometimes, if we are able to see the full exception stack, and may be see the screen the user saw when that error occured, so we can proactively seek solutions.

For that we use Elmah. Elmah is just an awesome pluggable Module, that easily be plugged to your asp.net website, quickly, without having to change any code.

It provides many reporting capabilities, and recently twitter was added as one of the reporting options, which I thought is very nice option to have.

Now I would like to thank Atif Aziz the project owner, for a great module and a great work..

It is totally free and open source.

Here are some other features:

I always configure the log files, to be reviewed with an admin role,

and emails to be sent when exceptions occured.

Here is a screenshot for elmah in action:

Please drop me a line if you need any help, with Elmah setup.

I have used it in many of our projects, and it is GREAT…

I have seen many tutorials but the following are the ones that I liked the most,

and I thought they were the most helpful:

Elmah on DotNetSlackers.

Elmah on Phil Haack blog.

Please post any comments or questions you might have in regards to elmah.

JESS3, a creative agency specializing in data visualization, has put together an amazing video which shows the current state of the Internet. We have highlighted some of the data below, but please also watch the video for yourself (it rivals the Social Media Revolution).

* Faceboook Serves 6 million Pages per Minute
* 1.73 Billion Internet users worldwide
* 90 Trillion Emails Sent in 2009
* 81% of Emails were Spam
* 126 Million Blogs on the Internet
* 27.3 Million Tweets Per Day
* Faceboook serves 6 million pages per minute
* 4 Billion photos hosted by Flickr
* 182 Videos watched on average per month (per user)

Very informative video below:

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

Source: Web Analytics World

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Just Got Easy

Search engine optimization shouldn’t be that difficult.

A new free tool released by the IIS team from Microsoft,

to help developers and designers do SEO analysis on websites,

review your websites, and make changes fast.

The SEO Toolkit with its detailed analysis and search engine friendly suggestions

helps improve the relevance of your website in search results right away.

Optimize for  and more!

Increase Website Traffic and Revenue
Analyze your website and find ways to boost your number of hits.

Use SEO recommendations to improve traffic and increase your revenue stream.

Influence and Update Search Engines
Control the access and display of your content in search results. Keep search engines current with the latest information from your website.

Improve Customer Experience
Discover and solve common problems in your website content and design to enhance your end user experience. Make it easy for your customers to find what they’re looking for.

Review the tutorials and documentation and download here

Before you read further…

Let me  ask you the following quesstions:

Did you ever wished that domain search was faster,

and more real time?

Did you ever wish you could click on one link,

and takes you straight to GoDaddy.com, after

finding your desired domain name, and buying it  at a discounted rate?

Did you ever wish that you don’t have to deal

with page refreshes, and slowness, while searching for a domain name?

Well if you answered YES to any of the questions,

then look no more and head to this website InstantDomainSearch.com.

It is really an awesome tool, free, and once you find the domain,

you will buy your domain at a discounted price from

godaddy.

You don’t have to spend few minutes,

searching for the coupon code on Google.

I like speed, and efficient stuff.

Enjoy…

Here is another awesome tool from Google.

Basically it shows the hot zones of your web page.

This is based on Google Research,

and it really represents how much information,

does the users of your webpage.

And you will be  surprised..

Refer to the following screenshot, based on one of our web pages..

Browser Size.png by altitudeinfosys on Aviary

As we all know, people follow a very similar pattern, to what they

look at first, that’s why Headlines are very important, and must be

very visible.

I always wondered if there is an easy to show that, I saw,

some tools where users wear close to their eye, and

it reflects what they are looking at at any given second,

but I am sure they are very pricey..

What you are given, by this tool, is a reasonable tool,

in comparison to the efficiency to one of Google pages.

I beleive this will be a good demo, that you use to persuade,

your clients, of the effectiveness of some your design suggestions,

and to come up with the best usable design possible.

You can checkout this tool here,

and you can read more info about it here

No one can keep up with Google, I got used to the past few months, every time when reading technology news, or checking a techie blog that there is something new Google is working on, or just released.

Now google introducing real time search it is really neat, also refer to the video below, for a quick demo.

Refer to the original post from the Google Blog right here….

I got 15 Google Wave invitations.

I love my followers and if you want to receive an invite,

leave a comment about this blog, any suggestion or feedback is greatly appreciated.

I will make sure that I have the invitation emailed to you..

Good Luck my friends…

5 Keys to thrive, and you should add to your toolbox..

1) Take control of your mind..
Fear can take us over.
Get control of your inner voices.
Stand Guard at the door of your mind, and don’t overwhelm your mind with useless things.

Read……. Every problem you encounter, there is a someone who
wrote a book or something about it on how to solve it, or make it better,
so no need to reinvent the wheels.

So read and feed the mind, at least an hour of your day.

Read, listen and watch.

2) Feed and strengthen your body..
Physiology first – radical change in your body.

Do you know why this is important? Because as soon,
as you start doing it, you are going to hear those voices in
your head saying “I am tired” , “I can do this some other time”
But if you learn how to beat those voices, and push forward,
you can beat most of the challenges in your life, once you know
how to beat those voices, you are on your way accomplishing the best
in your life.

So Get that run, or lift those weights..

3) Get a role model, that inspires and pushes you
and study history.
And things might turn around.
Anything that you lost and come back.
You can make your money at times when there is maximum
pessimism – We area going through difficult times, but still
there is a need for something and you can still offer value,
and reciprocate.

4) Get a plan, and take massive action..
Start making progress, you will get happiness.
If it doesnt work, change it, and keep going..

5) Feed and strengthen your spirit.
Power of giving…
Do something for someone else, who is worse than you are.
Motive does matter.
You are here in life not just to get but to give.

Watch this video, from Tony Robbins.

I am fascinated with languages, and I would love to be able to speak

at least 5 languages, in my lifetime.

I was talking to a neurologist a while ago, and he told me something very profound.

He told me that if you want to keep your brain cells alive and as active as possible,

there are two things that you can do:

1) Learn a new language – all the time

When you are trying to learn language, and trying to come up

with the right tense and use the right vocabulary, your brain is

working on a different level, and building different connections.

2) Utilitze the other side of the body, so if you are right handed,

try to do more work with your left side, and vice versa.

I think This service will be very helpful, to give you in a way a wide global reach,

and may be expand friendships, and be able to communicate with clients,

and friends in their language .

Give it a try here Google Translate

And watch this video:

We are a small virtual company. Most of our employees and contractors

work virtually, we use the web, cloud and different collabaration tools, to collabarate

with each other on different projects and tasks.

This model serve our customers “business friends” very well, and allow us

to operate in maximum efficiency, especially during the current tough situations.

Since we are self funded, this allowed us to survive slow times, and be able to offer

unlimited savings to our business friends, and still provide maximum quality possible.

The fact that we all work remotely, we still do care about our business friends, privacy,

and also we want you to rest assured that all your data is safe. We mostly use laptops,

because of their mobility, and we apply DOD like encryption, to all our laptops, that contains

customer data.

We have been using TrueCrypt in the past year or so, and we are very pleased with it.

Here are the reasons why we like it:

1. It is open source and it is free
2. No performance issues
3. It works well, and almost non intrusive
4. Peace of mind by knowing that your data is safe and secure

TrueCrypt never saves decrypted data in to your hard disk, in other words,

any data written to your hard drive is fully encrypted.

Even if you are not using your laptop for business purposes, I still recommend,

installing TrueCrypt to your personal laptop. Since we all carry many personal

information like family photos, or financial information.

TrueCrypt finally released a new version with Windows 7 support. So I am really

looking forward to both.

To download TrueCrypt.

Below are some TrueCrypt screenshots..

TrueCrypt Setup Image

Encryption Options at TrueCrypt

Please let me know, what you think…