Art's Web Development Blog
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Top 10 Technical Careers by Salary
This information was taken from ComputerJobs.com's "Salary Ticker", which is updated hourly ( I eliminated executive level and support level positions). The salaries listed are the average for that position.
- Wireless Systems $123,000
- Unix Development $98,000
- Technical Sales $84,000
- ERP Applications $82,000
- Project Management $82,000
- Data Warehousing $80,000
- Legacy Systems $75,000
- E-Commerce / Internet $74,000
- Database Systems $70,000
- Windows Development $67,000
Do you Squidoo?
Squidoo is a Web 2.0 Social Media phenomenon that is rapidly gaining traction. Think of it as a combination of Wikipedia and Linkedin or as a MySpace for adults. With Squidoo, the user is able to rapidly create a page (called a lens) on any topic. This page can be about any subject they want - hobbies, interests, their organization, their profession, etc. There is no limit on how many lens a user can create.
The advantage to Squidoo is web traffic (and we are talking serious traffic here as Google loves Squidoo). It is not uncommon for a Squidoo lens page to appear on the first page of Google results for its title! If you are responsible for increasing Internet traffic to your organizations web site, you need to look at Squidoo. To see an example, here is a Squidoo lens that I just created for Microsoft Certifications.
Leveraging Web 2.0 Social Media Sites for your Brand
A principle aspect of Web 2.0 is its use of the Internet to directly connect people with each other. This has resulted in an explosion of Social Media Sites such as Digg, Technorati, Del.ico.us, Flicker, and Facebook. Opportunity abounds here for the Internet Marketer, but where to start? In my research I came across an excellent article by Jane Copland of SeoMoz.org. In her article, she reviews 30 of the top Social Media Sites with comments on how they could be used to help promote your company and brand. Well worth reading!
How to Leverage Web 2.0 & Social Media Sites to Market Your Brand & Control Your Message
Updating Windows and Outlook for Daylight Savings Time
Last August Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which makes daylight saving time (DST) start three weeks earlier and end one week later. The law goes into effect this year, which means we will all “spring forward” our clocks at 2:00 A.M. this Sunday (March 11, 2007).
Normally, with Microsoft Windows you don't have to manually change the time for DST. The operating system does it for you. However, the operating systems (except for Vista) aren't aware of the Energy Policy Act. You will need to install updates to make the change.
Here are the links for instructions on downloading and applying the updates.
Unfortunately, there is not a patch for Windows 2000 - you will need to update the computers manually.
ASP.NET and AJAX
This is an excerpt from the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog.
Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX 1.0: A Background
Microsoft ASP. NET AJAX 1.0 lets developers build Web 2.0 sites using the latest Ajax techniques.
ASP.NET AJAX extends ASP.NET 2.0 and makes several new tools and techniques available to help you build applications more quickly:
- Extensions to JavaScript. ASP.NET AJAX extends the JavaScript library to bring standard object oriented concepts to JavaScript. It brings a formal type declaration system, with support for inheritance. It also provides a significant number of out of the box types, including types such as Sys.Net.WebRequest for working with web services. Finally, it helps to abstract some cross-browser issues such as XML element traversal. This makes it much easier to create robust JavaScript libraries and frameworks which are commonly needed by rich internet applications.
- ASP.NET Control Extenders. Extenders are additional ASP.NET controls which can extend the functionality of existing controls with additional Ajax capabilities. A common example is an extender which allows existing textbox controls to have autocomplete functionality with no modification to the extended control. (The autocomplete extender is included with the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit.)
- UpdatePanels. UpdatePanels allow your existing ASP.NET controls and web parts to achieve the fluid, no-postback updates of Ajax-based applications with minimal re-coding of your control or part. Quite simply, controls within the UpdatePanel control which ordinarily would post back to update their data will now be routed through an Ajax-style callback, resulting in a silent update back to the server. This makes your application “postback” much less, making interaction with your control more seamless.
With Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, you can build more dynamic applications that come closer to the rich style of interruption-free interaction you may see in standard client applications.



