Finding Long Lost emails super fast with Outlook Plug-in Xobni

Have you ever had trouble finding a particular email with standard search from Outlook?

I had until I found this great tool. It basically builds a cube with all the information from outlook, and makes it ultra fast to find all emails from a contact, a particular email from some contact, and the feature that I like most to find a specific attachment you remember someone sent you.

This plug-in is excelent, although when you open the outlook it can be a little slow indexing all the information from your email.

The only real drawback I could find is that it doen't work in Windows 7 yet.

The great thing about it is that is free! You can download it here
And you can know more about it here

There is also a paid version with more features such as unlimited pst search, but for me this works just fine

Web.Config: Using a proxy with bypass list

Sometimes when we are developing some application, we do it in a particular location where there's a proxy to access internet.

To build some websites with the capability to integrate information from internet sources we defined the proxy in the application's web.config like this

<configuration>
 <system.net>
  <defaultProxy>
   <proxy proxyaddress ="http://localproxy:8080" bypassonlocal="True" usesystemdefault="False" />
   <bypasslist>
   <add address="somelocaladdress.com" />
   <add address="someotherlocaladdress.com" />
   </bypasslist>
  </defaultProxy>
 </system.net>
</configuration>

Producing a timestamp in a batch file log

Every now and then is necessary to log some command line output. If you need to recursively do it every in a automatic way it's good that you timestamp the log file with the current date.

So to do it use a batch file with the following instructions


set startDate=%date%
set startTime=%time%

set sdy=%startDate:~10%
set /a sdm=1%startDate:~4,2% - 100
set /a sdd=1%startDate:~7,2% - 100
set /a sth=%startTime:~0,2%
set /a stm=1%startTime:~3,2% - 100
set /a sts=1%startTime:~6,2% - 100

somecommand > logfilename%sdy%%sdm%%sdd%%sth%%stm%.txt

Event Id 59: Generate Activation Context failed for <...> Reference error message:Access is denied

For some reason, I came across this error on a sql server machine.

Generate Activation Context failed for C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.2\OLAP\bin\msmdctr90.DLL. Reference error message: Access is denied.

To solve this problem I had to give the "Performance Log Users" List Folder Contents permissions

c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.2\OLAP\bin


Credits to this website more specifically Max Ustinov

Quickly view free space on your computer: Space Monger

Every now and then my hard drive starts to be almost full and for some reason I long forgot or for some unneeded files that lays around.

There's was a time where I checked folder by folder for those files that were eating up free space, the I found out this free tool that quickly displays what and how much space is being used

Download here

Theres is also a more recent but paid version here

TFS and MCMS Template Explorer

Opening an Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 project in Visual Studio 2005 with the MCMS 2002 SP2 installed when trying to checking in files in TFS gave me the following error

Unable to cast object of type 'Microsoft.ContentManagement.DeveloperTools.VisualStudio.Documents.TemplateExplorerDocument' to type 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.IVsHierarchy'.

Apparently it's a known error. To solve this problem, disable the MCMS Template Explorer when you use the Team Foundation service.

To do this open the Vwd.webinfo file located at the project's root with notepad and set the value of the CmsEnabled property to 0.

Check the microsoft link for more info:
FIX: Error message when you try to use Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server to check in files on a computer that is running Content Management Server 2002: "Unable to cast object of type"

MCMS 2002: create new page leads to "channel not found" error

Working with Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 when trying to "create a new page" in the console it gave me the erro "channel not found" when it was suposed to show me the page where I choose the template for the new page.

After some trial on error, I found out that for some reason the authentication in the web.config file was set to windows authentication, after changed it to forms authentication every started to work correctly.

ASP.NET version 2.0 Session State is not installed on the SQL server

Sometime ago I encountered this error upgrading an ASP .NET 1.1 application to 2.0

"Unable to use SQL Server because ASP.NET version 2.0 Session State is not installed on the SQL server"

To solve it just run this command in the server of SQL

aspnet_regsql.exe -S <servername> -E -ssadd -sstype c -t <customtable>



This happened because when  I was using SQL Session State, so don't forget to change the web.config element sessionstate to have the attribute allowCustomSqlDatabase equals true

Something like this

<sessionState
mode="SQLServer"
allowCustomSqlDatabase ="true"
cookieless="true"
sqlConnectionString=" Integrated Security=SSPI;data source=MySqlServer;Initial catalog=customtable;"
sqlCommandTimeout="10" /

MCMS 2002 Template explorer not available in Visual Studio 2005

Every now and then I have to maintain a website with the Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 and my surprise the site was still being developed in Visual Studio 2003. Immediately I start thinking on upgrading to Visual Studio 2005.

It seemed pretty easy. I opened the solution on VS 2005 upgrade the solution file to that version, and there was no MCMS Template explorer available. After a long time searching for a solution I found out that the website project must be the first on the solution file for some reason I can't imagine. So using notepad opened the sln and changed the order of the project.

Web.Config: Email Notification ASP.NET - Setting pickup directory

Simply add the following to your web.config’s system.net section:

<mailSettings>
 <smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory>
  <specifiedPickupDirectory pickupDirectoryLocation="c:\temp\"/>
 </smtp>
</mailSettings>

All mail sent will then been save as an eml file. Excellent stuff in a development environment.

Code Generation: Boost in productivity

Everybody in the IT enviroments knows that when developing an application, eventually will be necessary to access some sort of database engine. All that work ends up being the same, develop the data access layer, implement the bussiness objects that store the information, write the store procedures that encapsule the database logic and this doesn't  change much from one project another. 
The amount of time spent doing this is huge, and I started to think that this could be done faster, so I start seaching in the Internet for a possible solution and came across an open source solution that suits my needs and I'd like to share with others.


The software is called "My Generation" a very suitable name.You can find it at (http://www.mygenerationsoftware.com/) .


With this tool you can use a number of predefined templates to generate code. I personally like the Dooads Template, and this template I generate the the store procedures, the bussiness entities, and the business data acess layer, base on existing SQL tables. Currently Dooads is available for Microsoft SQL, Oracle, Firebird, Access, PostgreSQL, VistaDB, SQLite and MySQL. You can find more information here


There are much more template you can find and try at the website.


You can download it here : My Generation Download
HomePage: My Generation Homepage


Introduction Video





With this my productivity increased a lot giving time to develop other components much more interesting to me  and giving me a better overall performance within my company.


Good generations to you all

Welcome to the world of blogging...

Oh well, this starts on a bumping road...

This is not the first time I used blogger.  I thought this would be easy. Wrong. Configuring the blog was like going through a hurdle, I just had to jump.

Trying to activate adsense gave me an error:

"The publisher must be associated with the developer account before the developer can invoke operations on the publisher's account."

Those blogger guys could have written a better message.

Aparently to activate the adsense from blogger we have to give access to blogger.com on the adsense page

So if you have this problem go to log in to https://www.google.com/adsense and then select My Account and then Account Access and finally give access to blogger.com