One of my favorite sites to learn more about the .net framework is found at wiki.asp.net. I spend a good amount of time reading through the numerous articles presented on the site.  The ASP.NET Developer wiki allows me to learn something new quickly and from the view of my peers. Here’s a list of recommended articles that I’ve found beneficial: of some of the articles I’ve found most beneficial:

• ASP.NET Open Source Projects: This article provides a number of links to open source projects developed in .net.  I’m a firm believer that you can learn a great deal by looking at others’ code, it’s probably my favorite learning mechanism and way to spark new ideas.
• Design Patterns: If you don’t know about design patterns, I’d recommend doing some research about them as they can save you a great deal of time.  You’ll be amazed to see how many of the design patterns described in this article are either present in the code you write or within the framework you use.
• Architecture: These links will teach you about everything from software architecture to the asp.net framework architecture. A lot of these articles are interesting reads that I guarantee will help solidify your knowledge base.

Hope you enjoy some good reads!

A few months ago, I wrote about Twitter and how surprised I was at how much I use it. Now the craziest thing has happened. Not only do I Twitter more, but I find myself using Facebook less. Why? I had to do some soul searching. After all, just about everyone I know is on Facebook, and most of the people I follow on Twitter are strangers. I realized when it comes right down to it, the people I follow on Twitter try harder.

It came to me when I was talking to someone on the Wright Strategies team. He mentioned not logging into Twitter lately, so he didn’t know what good parking spaces anyone had gotten lately. I responded that it’s actually Facebook where people report their proverbial parking space dilemmas.

On Twitter, there is no reciprocal “friendship” relationship, so you can follow or be followed by people other than your friends. This makes people try harder to be entertaining and informative. People I don’t know write about things I am interested in – travel, cooking, Austin, etc. Some people on Facebook I haven’t talked to in 20 years write about getting the sniffles.

This brings me to another point about why I don’t use Facebook more. I use both Twitter and Facebook almost exclusively on my iPhone. While Facebook has an iPhone application, it doesn’t carry over my “hide” settings from the browser version. In my opinion, Facebook is missing out on one of the key best practices on the Internet – relevance.

Maybe I do care if someone I am in frequent contact with has the sniffles or is tired, but for someone from high school that I barely remember, this is Too Much Information! Shame on you, Facebook, for not respecting my desktop “hide” settings. I’ll be interested to see if I use Facebook more once this is fixed.

For now, I’ll continue my dates via iPhone with Twitter. Maybe I’ll even add to the conversation more often. But either way, I’ll enjoy the relevant and entertaining information I find there.

We’re excited to announce our latest partnership with The Star of Texas Fair and Rodeo! Rodeo Austin presents the world’s 6th largest indoor, regular season ProRodeo, along with concerts and many more events, and contributes nearly $1.5 million annually to Texas youth through scholarships.

We’ll be redesigning their website to capture the true spirit of the organization and creating a special events website for use during the Rodeo season each February and March. We’ll also integrate ecommerce into the site, making it easy for site visitors to donate to the scholarship fund and buy tickets for events year-round.

Stay tuned for the new Rodeo Austin site, coming later this year!

In order to increase stability and improve the security of our sites, we recently began moving many of our clients to a new hosting company, RackSpace. This move is especially important for our ecommerce clients, as heightened security is a key component to PCI compliance (a required standard of security and policy around the protection of stored and transmitted credit card data). The principles around this standard are:

• Having a secure network with a firewall and strong passwords
• Protecting cardholder data by storing data correctly and encrypting cardholder transmissions
• Reducing vulnerability by using anti-virus software and secure systems
• Implementing access control to data by restricting physical and electronic access to data
• Regularly monitoring data by tracking access to cardholder data and testing security systems
• Maintaining an information security policy to address how information is kept secure  

We take the responsibilities and requirements of these standards very seriously and feel that moving to RackSpace is beneficial to clients across the board, for ecommerce and non-ecommerce sites alike. Not only does RackSpace offer superior security, their customer service and 24/7 monitoring are unmatched and will help us provide better support to all clients.

A recent article in the New York Times caught my eye because it called attention to a trend that I almost didn’t notice as a “trend.” Online video viewing has become such a part of my normal routine that it’s hard to remember six months ago when this wasn’t the case. The article, Rise of Web Video, Beyond 2-minute Clips, discusses the increasing attention spans of web users and their willingness to sit in front of their laptops for longer lengths of time. Viewers are watching everything from their favorite TV shows on hulu.com to YouTube clips and more independent videos from “budding videobloggers” and “podcasters” on blip.tv.  

As this new trend emerges, Wright Strategies is focusing on including more video content on our clients’ sites. We helped Seabrook add videos in a branded way by integrating the YouTube platform into the site. The video galleries page showcases video tours of properties, new town features and TV spots for Seabrook. We’ve also seen some great videos on the KEEN Footwear Blog like this one about FlexibleLove furniture.

We have more video integration in the works, so stay tuned for our upcoming site launches!