Disqus - Latest Comments for Emad Ibrahim

Re: iPod Touch and iPhone

Emad Ibrahim — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:39:20 -0000

These are all good reasons... I should have been clearer. If you are in the US and are using AT&T; and don't mind paying $20/month for data plan then buying an iPhone is a no-brainer. Is that better?

Re: Microsoft Money Plus (2008) Review (Part 1)

Emad Ibrahim — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:55:51 -0000

According to Microsoft, here is a list of what's new and improved in 2008 (plus):

# NEW! Insights, with alerts customized by you, keep you in the know about the information you need most, even when Money isn’t open!
# NEW! Bills Insights alert you when bills are overdue or due soon
# NEW! Spending Insights keep on top of the spending you care about most
# NEW! Cash Flow Insights gives you a fast convenient view of your spending and deposits, as well as your account balances
# NEW! Attach links to important files such as check images or scanned receipts right from transactions in the Money account register
# NEW! Get the top 10 daily update from MSN Money StockScouter
# NEW! See Morningstar ratings in the popular MSN Money ETF center
# NEW! Rate favorite stocks and challenge Wall Street gurus yourself as CAPS tracks their stock picks on MSN Money
# ENHANCED background banking helps keep account information up-to-date
# Check out articles from the experts on MSN Money to help you improve your finances in a particular area
# Share your ideas and hear ideas from others on our spending message boards

Re: Unlock your Car with a Tennis Ball

Emad Ibrahim — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:00:59 -0000

Oh really. No, I didn't know it was fake. I assume everything on YouTube is true :). Thanks. I will do more research before posting stuff like that again.

Re: Review: Money Plus 2008 (part 2) | Emad Ibrahim

Emad Ibrahim — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 09:27:42 -0000

I think this is an MS Money issue not vista. If you are running 2007 then stay with it but otherwise you might want to upgrade.

I am still running the trial (60 days trial) but I think the activation scheme will let you install it on ONE computer but I am NOT sure. I remember that 2007 wouldn't install on my laptop after installing it on my desktop.

Re: Improve LINQ Query Performance

Emad Ibrahim — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:08:58 -0000

Ed, thanks for the tip, I will give it a shot and report back.

Re: Laser-Sharp Focus

Emad Ibrahim — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:52:06 -0000

@Rob: Thanks for the tips. I am a huge fan of GTD and have been regulary using it. I am trying to outsource everything I can. The opportunity cost lost by trying to do everything on my own is huge. It's better to focus on what I can do best and outsource everything else.

Re: I quit

Emad Ibrahim — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:55:26 -0000

@All: Thank you all for your support, advice, words of wisdom. It has been a huge encouragement. It has only been a few days, but I already feel better and very optimistic.

Re: Windows Live Writer And Wordpress Mu (WPMU)

Emad Ibrahim — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:39:31 -0000

@Jettero: Actually, I am not sure if this is still the case. I have a feeling it has been fixed. I am using a standalone WP and it works great, so I am guessing the new version of WPMU and WLW should play well together. If you do find the answer, please come back and let me know.

Thanks

Re: Unit Test Linq to Sql in ASP.Net MVC with Moq

Emad Ibrahim — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:54:55 -0000

@cannonfodder good catch, I meant to reference the private field authenticatedController. I fixed the code.

Re: Yonkly - Open Source Twitter

Emad Ibrahim — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:22:43 -0000

@chad thanks, I will look into them
@haacked, @mike, @sam I will let you know when I post the source code online. I will announce on this blog
@chris, working on it :) keep throwing ideas at me
@sam: it took me about one week - but it is still missing a lot of features... so, be on the lookout for a new release next week

Re: Yonkly - Open Source Twitter

Emad Ibrahim — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:52:46 -0000

@dave thanks for the enthusiastic support, replying by email right now..

Re: Get Things Done with Outlook 2007

Emad Ibrahim — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:13:24 -0000

I thought about using outlook add-in for GTD but come on 70 bucks??? That's a rip off... I would pay $20 for it but no more.

Re: Synchronize Outlook Tasks with Remember the Milk

Emad Ibrahim — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:20:46 -0000

@Oscar the utility as it is right now is not for "consumers" it is more of a technical preview and you need to be a programmer and have visual studio to be able to compile it and run it. I am hoping someone in the community will volunteer and create an installer for everyone to use. Stay tuned and I will announce any updates here.

Re: Yonkly - Open Source Twitter

Emad Ibrahim — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:12:13 -0000

@Albert, I have already added the code to assembla but it is not public yet. I have just had a new member join the team and we will try to get this to a point where we can make it public i.e. add documentation and installation scripts. Stay tuned.

Re: Ruby on Rails for a .NET Developer - Part 1

Emad Ibrahim — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:05:59 -0000

@Jonatha thanks. It's a little challenging being that everything is different, OS, tools, platform, syntax, language, etc... I am lucky I have been playing with asp.net mvc because the transition is a little easier.

@Antonio great tips. thanks...

One thing that sucks so far has been the documentation.

Re: Microsoft Money Plus (2008) Review (Part 1)

Emad Ibrahim — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:44:57 -0000

@Jared I have been very disappointed with performance too. Unfortunately, I feel stuck and unable to move all the years of data anywhere else.

A friend told me that he archives his data every year which keeps his file small and improves performance. I did that and it improved performance but not as much as I would like.

Re: Ruby on Rails Crumbs - Part 1

Emad Ibrahim — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:46:06 -0000

@Matthew I am glad to hear that all this writing is not going to waste :) Thanks for the comment and you might like my new "crumbs" post. I will keep adding more as I learn my ways.

Re: Yonkly - Open Source Twitter

Emad Ibrahim — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:47:32 -0000

@A'braham Barakhyahu I have never used castle and don't know much about it... Good luck getting comfortable with MVC... I think you will like it. By the way, your twitter link doesn't work - you can find me at http://twitter.com/eibrahim

Re: Ruby on Rails for a .NET Developer - Part 2

Emad Ibrahim — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:20:25 -0000

@Antonio thanks for the comments, I fixed the class definition. I thought about writing a book exactly like yours but I am still a Ruby beginner. Looking forward to it.

Re: Yonkly: Updated 05/09/2008

Emad Ibrahim — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:20:20 -0000

@A'braham Barakhyahu: That's another task on my list. Maybe, we should tackle that before OpenID integration

@Vyrotek: Contact me through the contact page and I can set you with access to the source code. I just have to do a few things to package so people can play with it.

Re: Dynamically Build LINQ Queries Using Reflection

Emad Ibrahim — Sat, 17 May 2008 07:49:32 -0000

@mark: Thanks for pointing out the Translate() method, I looked into it and that wouldn't solve my problem. For starters using reflection works well for me because I can dynamically populate the list of columns in a checkboxlist and then dynamically create the LINQ query...

Using reflection and custom attribute also allowed me to specify which columns can be exported and which ones can't. So that alone, would prevent me from using regular sql strings and executing on a command.

On the other hand, you are right, almost everything I did could have been done with a sql string and a command but where is the fun in that :)

Thanks for the string.Join... I am embarrassed to say that I have never used it before and looking at your code snippet - I LOVE IT.

Re: Yonkly - Open Source Twitter

Emad Ibrahim — Sat, 17 May 2008 08:06:41 -0000

@azzam: I didn't test in opera. Being a 1-developer team, I figured targeting 90% of the user base should be ok. I actually use a jquery plugin for the reply popup, so my guess is that the plugin is the one not working with opera :)

Someone made a similar suggestion about creating a distributed twitter-like platform. But that is one tough problem... I haven't had time to really think about it but just dealing with data on multiple servers and authentication alone would cause you a headache...

So let's say we have server a and server b. Each has its own version of the database and a different set of users. How would you deal with user a on server wanting to friend user b on server b? Sure you can server a talk to server b but then what if we have 20 servers?

Or another scenario, user a leaves a message while on server a, how will this message show on the other servers? Having every server query every server on every request would just not work...

Eventually one server/provider would be the most popular and you will end up with the same problem of a centralized twitter system... It's kind of similar to OpenID, sure there are several providers, but in a few months/years, 80% of the users will be with 20% of the providers - probably one of the bigger players (yahoo or aol).

How would you handle upgrading the servers and multiple versions of the protocol floating around?

A more important question, why would anyone bother hosting one on there servers? I mean, what is the financial benefit to them?

Obviously, I haven't thought this through but it is not a simple problem...

I would love to hear what others think. Any ideas?

Re: Ajax with ASP.NET MVC Framework Preview 2

Emad Ibrahim — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:13:39 -0000

@Pieter: thanks for sharing your findings
@Christian: I am not sure what is going on here. I personally never used ContainsDataItem method on ViewData because I always used a typed ViewData.

I have a BaseViewData that is used on the master page and every page using that master and then I create derived classes for ViewData for each page e.g. UserInfoViewData, etc...

Re: Synchronize Outlook Tasks with Remember the Milk

Emad Ibrahim — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:22:08 -0000

@tomas: thanks for pointing this out. I have uploaded that dll to codeplex as a patch. You can get it at http://www.codeplex.com/rtmos/SourceControl/Pat...

Re: Yonkly - Open Source Twitter

Emad Ibrahim — Thu, 29 May 2008 13:45:14 -0000

Source code is available over here

Re: Yonkly Source Code

Emad Ibrahim — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:30:22 -0000

@Vyrotek: I am not sure what is causing that. The project file was upgraded to the latest version of MVC, so that might be the problem. You might want to try and create a new empty project and copy the yonkly files into it... Anyway, let us know how you end up fixing it.

Re: Yonkly Source Code

Emad Ibrahim — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:17:41 -0000

@david: I believe that you can use express with mvc project but you will have to install the mvc framework preview 3 which should install the project templates and then you will be able to open it. Here are some links I found that might help you:
http://jason.whitehorn.ws/2007/12/10/Using+ASPN...

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/06/...

Re: Get Tasks in Outlook 2007 with VB.NET

Emad Ibrahim — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:32:10 -0000

Outlook.OlTaskStatus.olTaskComplete _
).ToList

You can take a look at my open source project that syncs RTM with Outlook you might find what you are looking for in the source code. There is more info at http://www.emadibrahim.com/2008/04/14/synchroni...

Re: Get Tasks in Outlook 2007 with VB.NET

Emad Ibrahim — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:34:14 -0000

One more thing... if you want to create a new task, you do it like this:

Dim MyApp As Outlook.Application = New Outlook.Application()

Dim outlookTask As Outlook.TaskItem = MyApp.Application.CreateItem(Outlook.OlItemType.olTaskItem)

Re: Get Tasks in Outlook 2007 with VB.NET

Emad Ibrahim — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:05:43 -0000

@captain: The code in my first comment doesn't create a task it retrieves all the tasks... Here it is again:

Dim ns As Outlook.NameSpace
ns = MyApp.Application.GetNamespace(”MAPI”)
outlookTasksAll = ns.GetDefaultFolder(Outlook.OlDefaultFolders.olFolderTasks).Items

Again, you can download the source code from the link in my first comment and take a look at it.

Re: Yonkly Source Code

Emad Ibrahim — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:34:01 -0000

@david I haven't done anywork with ajax control toolkit and mvc, so I am not sure I can help you. I decided to do all my javascript and ajax using the jQuery library because I found it really easy to use and light weight. It does require more knowledge of JavaScript compared to the toolkit where you just create an update panel and you are done.

I highly recommend looking at www.jquery.com and look at yonkly's source code and javascript to see how i do ajax. there is a ton of material out there.

If you do figure it out, please come back and tell us about it. Thanks and good luck.

Re: Tricky Asp.net MVC URL Rewriting

Emad Ibrahim — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:09:03 -0000

@Nik, you are absolutely right which is why I force user names to be 4 characters or longer. This way, worst-case-scenario, I can create a 3 letter controller. Not ideal, but a workaround.

Re: Tricky Asp.net MVC URL Rewriting

Emad Ibrahim — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:11:51 -0000

@Net framework programmer, I am not sure how to do that. I haven't used the routing library with non-MVC projects. Good luck and let us know what you find out.

Re: Yonkly Source Code

Emad Ibrahim — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:53:46 -0000

@king you need to install asp.net mvc on your machine, visit www.asp.net/mvc for more information.

Re: Yonkly Source Code

Emad Ibrahim — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:40:00 -0000

@king take a look at http://forums.asp.net/t/1237051.aspx

Re: The Best JavaScript Library | Emad Ibrahim

Emad Ibrahim — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:09:14 -0000

@Duncan: thanks for the tip - I didn't know. I wonder how fast do they get new versions to Google code for hosting???

@Mladen: jQuery minified and zipped is 16kb. And according to this chart http://ajaxian.com/archives/yui-setting-the-rec... YUI will be at 8.9kb. without animation and drang and drop and 18.4kb with them. So size is not that big of a deal - specially if it is hosted for free :)

@Dan: I might actually do that. I love jQuery's syntax too much to completely give it up. I am glad to hear that you are already doing that and not having problems.

@Ross: Never heard of JSTR but I will check it out. thanks.

Re: The Best JavaScript Library | Emad Ibrahim

Emad Ibrahim — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:20:42 -0000

@peter: Do you have any links or reference to support your claim that jQuery is faster?