I can hardly believe that a year has already passed by… Exactly a year ago I was blessed with what I thought was the best start to the year 2009. Last January 1st, 2009 I received an email from Microsoft awarding me the Microsoft MVP status; I was psyched to the say the least. While the rest of 2009 is history, I am pleased and blessed to say that 2009  continued to be a good year for me and my family; I can only pray (and work hard) that 2010 will bring us the same joy and happiness that 2009 did. This January 1st, 2010 I am blessed with another gre... [More]

Earlier this year I decided to switch Blog platform partly in an attempt to force myself to learn something new. I chose BlogEngine.NET. I chose it over anything else in the blog-app-sphere because it is open source, and appeared to be amongst the most popular and mature. It also met my #1 requirement that it had to be based on the Microsoft .NET Framework. Soon after installing BlogEngine though, I realized that none of the included themes inspired me all that much. They all looked *ok*, but none looked quite complete to me.  A search for BlogEngine themes lead... [More]

I am pretty sure you’ve done this at some point in your professional life too, you checked the “Remember Password” checkbox when creating a network share. This, of course, saves you the hassle and the time to enter the password each time you accessed that network share, but what if your domain/network account password changes? As it turns out, there is no user friendly navigation shortcut to the “Windows Key Manager” (or if there is, I could not find it). That being said, there is a handy Command you can run under a Command Prompt as f... [More]

Mike Morris, Founder and developer of SQL Sets recently reached out to me through my blog and Microsoft MVP website offering a free license of his product. Before taking him up on the “free license” offer, however, I decided to first download a trial version and take the product through its paces before finally deciding whether or not I was going to park it in my “tool shed”. Well, a couple of hours later, I posted this tweet; It should give you a pretty good idea about how I felt after using it. Shameless, I know! :-) At my company, we often... [More]

I’ve been using Windows Live Writer (WLW) to write my blog articles since my blog platform has supported it, and I have installed as one of those “must have” tools on 2 of my PCs, my laptop and my main desktop. If you do not use Windows Live Writer, then stop reading this post and go download your copy, set it up, then by all means come back and finish reading. The problem I have had, has been the fact that the two instances of WLW on each of my PCs know nothing about the other. If I start writing a draft blog post on my laptop, I cannot go and finis... [More]

Horinaja is a slide-show ready-to-use for scriptaculous/prototype or jQuery. Horinaja is different than other content sliders because it supports mouse wheel navigation.
I found this resource the other day while I was working on the new theme form my blog. I will be using this script to created a slideshow of the “latest headline stories”. This will enable me to display more than just one story at a time, provide a navigable and sleek interface. [More]

If you are a regular reader of this blog then you probably noticed that the design and layout has changed considerably. The fact is that the changes actually go much deeper than that, as I’ve gone as far as switching the platform entirely. I recently decided to explore other Open Source platforms, and the final choice of blogging platform chosen is BlogEngine.net. I will be sharing my reasons and thought process about this change (and others in the works for other application types) in another blog post. When moving a blog there are several things that need to ... [More]

As I sifted through my inbox for the VB-Insiders list emails the other day, I wandered how many of those VB MVP’s and insiders shared their thoughts, knowledge and random comments on Twitter. I decided to send out an email to the VB-Insiders distro asking everyone who had a twitter account, and who wanted to be listed on this Tweeps List to send it to me. The response, and you can see from the list below was great. (For the record, there were a few who still felt that twitter was pointless and a waste of time; I still cannot disagree with them 100% – w... [More]

Just the other day we had a customer with the exact same quote: “Show us how you did that, so we can do it in-house”… and the following video, although an obvious exaggeration, depicts what I am beginning to see more and more; is this a sign of the economy, or…? Well, you decide – I just thought this was too funny to not share.   We’re not a “Taco Stand” – Way too funny!     Technorati Tags: Business,Vendor-Client Relationship,Humor

While the first half of 2009 is almost behind us, there is a lot more community work left to get done. As I try to arrange my life-work-community schedule I see that I have quite a busy couple of months coming up yet. I am still waiting for responses from other community leaders and events such as the SDN/Open Force Europe, so I won’t list those here just yet. Meanwhile, here is what I’ve got lined up. 6/26/2009 Sharepoint User Group DC Session: Sharepoint VS DotNetNuke (3:00pm – 4:00pm) Prepare for the battle of the titans! Which platform is ri... [More]

On June 26th, I will take the stage once again at the Regional SharePoint User Group. I will be joining Hal Hayes in a battle that from the looks of it may rival “David and Goliath”. The event topic is labeled as follows: Prepare for the battle of the titans! Which platform is right for you? Each one has its uses depending on the audience. If you are interested in watching this battle in real-time the register for this event and join us on June 26th between 3:00PM and 4:00PM. Here is some more information: For two exciting days, you'll be eating, drin... [More]

The June Capital DotNetNuke User Group event promises to be yet another great meeting chuck-full o’great insight and information. DotNetNuke module development still remains one of the most requested event topics. On June 17th, Chris Busse will demonstrate how to mash-up external Web 2.0 web services with your modules to provide right user experiences. With the proliferation of "Web 2.0" sites and applications, such as Google Maps, Twitter, and Basecamp, has come the ability to programmatically interact with many sites using APIs (Application Programming Inter... [More]

MSDN road shows are FREE events organized and managed by the Microsoft Developers Network to educate, train, and share knowledge with everyone and anyone interested. I particularly like this event as it is a one day event packed with lots of valuable information. I’ll be attending the event in Reston, VA on June 2nd. Here is what’s in store: AGENDA Session 1: Developing on Microsoft Windows 7 Building applications that are easy to use, visually appealing, and offer high performance is a challenge that developers face every day. Innovative applications c... [More]

PimpThisBlog.com is a place where you promote, publicize and socialize your content. Don’t be fooled, this is not yet another social bookmarking website, although it may look and feel that way to you. It's a simple to use and effective way to get your content noticed and FAST. All you have to do is let PimpThisBlog.com know that you have content that you wish to publicize and it’ll "pimp it" for you. PimpThisBlog.com will share your content, by syndicating it to various RSS readers, it will tweet your posts on Twitter (make sure you follow @PimpThisBlog to s... [More]

Earlier this month my company launched PimpThisBlog.com. PimpThisBlog.com runs on ASP.net MVC, a SQL Server database and combines a number of online third party services, such as Gravatar, Re-Captcha, ShareThis, and more, to provide a rich Web 2.0 user experience. While I will soon publish another blog post to outline the details of the application’s technology stack, I first want to use the spotlight of this first post on the topic to outline how PimpThisBlog.com works, how it can HELP YOU promote your business and content, and how you too can harness its wit and po... [More]

If you live in the Washington DC area you cannot help but be consumed with the constant news about the presidential inauguration and related events. Never have been so many streets been closed, and never has the anticipation of the attendance of million people been so high. With that being said, and although I am not looking forward to the chaos that the inauguration promises to bring, I am very excited to have Joe Brinkman, DotNetNuke Corp. Co-Founder and Technical Fellow, come to our User Group to give a presentation on DotNetNuke and JQuery. Here is the abstract: ... [More]

I am pleased to announce the publication by Wrox Press of Wrox Blox Done in 60 Minutes:  Building a Custom DotNetNuke Membership Provider by yours truly. In this publication, I put down into more detail the topic which I presented at last year’s OpenForce08 / DevConnections conference. In this eBook (Wrox Blox) I demonstrate how to build and configure the DotNetNuke (DNN) Membership provider without modifying any core DotNetNuke (DNN) code.  By reading this publication you will soon see what a powerful tool this can be for gaining control over the DNN mem... [More]

When Windows Beta (Build 7000) was released to the public, I rushed to download  and install it on a Virtual PC. I was very impressed with what I saw, and it proved to be much more stable and usable than I had anticipated. Today I decided to take the proverbial plunge and install Windows 7 on my main laptop. So far all the apps that I use on a daily basis seems to be running fine except for a little snag I ran into when I needed to join a last minute meeting with GoToMeeting (GTM). As I clicked on the meeting invitation (in IE8) I expected the usual GTM page prom... [More]

I was invited to attend an all-hands meeting this morning at company called SMBLive. I had the pleasure of working at SMBLive until last year as their CTO. CEO, Matt Howard, gave a great presentation on his 2009 vision and goals for his company's products and services. To put it in context, SMBLive has developed online social commerce solutions - 1StoreFront and 1WorkSpace - that demystify the web for SMBs and help them grow faster and work smarter. By licensing, branding and providing these social commerce solutions to their SMB customers, broadband carriers are... [More]

I can’t think of a better way for me to start 2009 than by thanking everyone for their support and encouragement over the past year. I received word on January 1st that I have been selected as a 2009 Microsoft MVP, which is a great honor for me.  It seems like a long time since I first began work in this field, and while I grew to love my work and enjoy the community I entered because of it, I never dreamed I would get an honor like this! As you all know, sometimes times are tough and each year brings accomplishments and setbacks.  The last year has been no... [More]

I just wanted to drop you all a quick note to let you know that I have figured out a great way to stream live videos from OpenForce '08. If you want to be notified of when the stream will be active, follow me on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/antoniochagoury I will be tweeting when the shows begin. Once they begin you can view the shows here: http://www.cto20.com/OpenForceLIVE.aspx I will be streaming my presentation today at 11:45 PST: Done In 60 Minutes: Building a Customer Membership Provider. Come on over an watch me live!

Last call! If you have not already registered, it's not too late! Seriously, if you work with DotNetNuke, or are even planning to use it for your enterprise then you cannot miss this opportunity. All the people that make DotNetNuke happen are going to be available to educate you, and support you with every question or concern that you may have on the platform. Great sessions will be given, great events are planned, great topics will be discussed, and need I even mention, it's Vegas Baby! If you are going to be there, make sure you hit me up... I'd love to meet you!

I was updating my professional profile on LinkedIn the other day, and I realized that there was a lot missing about what I do. In essence my profile contained a lot of the stuff I did for a living, but not was lacking all the work I do on volunteer basis. All the community contributions such as speaking, organizing, writing etc, was left out all together. I decided to start compiling a list of my community contribution and while I am sure I missed some things, here is what I came up with so far: Open Source Projects DotNetNuke Core Team Member DotNetNu... [More]

I don't know about you, but for the past two years I have been using a virtual machine to do all my development. The thought process is simple: I can back up the entire machine into one file I can have as many configurations as I wish (operating systems, IDE version DB Servers, etc) Clearly defines my business workspace versus my development workspace Well, there is lots more, but I am not try to sell you on using virtualization here, just how to access it from anywhere you want ;) The setup is fairly simple: One powerful desktop machine running Windo... [More]