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Techemistry Blog

Daily Tip - Update AddRemoveProgramsIcon (and other properties) in a Visual Studio Installer Project

6/11/2019 8:35:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

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ZeroSSL with IIS 10

5/3/2019 5:11:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

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MinerGate.com Review - Mixed Emotions

2/3/2018 6:44:00 AM -- Ted Krapf

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Account Breach Monitoring

9/20/2017 3:36:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

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DBML Visualizer VERY Slow - solved!

3/29/2017 8:15:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

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Poor Man's SQL Log Shipping (Kinda)

12/23/2016 9:54:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

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Excel Column Letter To Number.com

4/8/2016 3:06:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

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Easy & Powerful Ecommerce Solution

4/5/2016 7:58:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

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asp:Menu Flicker on Page_Load - Solved

7/13/2015 1:48:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

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Offline ClickOnce app with command line parameters

3/9/2015 9:46:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

So the need for a client's offline ClickOnce app to have command line parameters came up again. (oh boy). The Microsoft docs initially spec'd out that you can't do this when the ClickOnce app is an "offline" app. But since .NET 3.1, there is a trick you can use to make offline ClickOnce command line parameters function. The scenario is this: Client has a ClickOnce app that gets updated (redeployed) by their developer fr...

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Windows Server 2008 Install DLL into GAC

1/23/2015 8:48:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

So first I want to say this has driven me crazy for days on end (an hour here, an hour there. If you're here, you already have discovered that you can no longer (simply) drag and drop dll files into C:\windows\assembly and have them installed auto-magically into the windows Global Assembly Cache. Also sadly, you may have discovered that you can't deploy dll files into the GAC from a ClickOnce application (understandably why, but still annoying). There are ...

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IIS7 FTP 530 Home Directory Inaccessible SOLVED!

12/1/2014 10:53:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

So this post is definitely going to fall into the "rants" category of my blogging. I can't tell you the number of times that I've attempted to setup Microsoft's IIS FTP services. IIS6, IIS7, IIS7.5. Now, don't get me wrong, if you want a simple FTP site so you can maybe publish web content or simply have one user account, it's a quick solution without adding any software to your box. But the second you even start to think about user directory ...

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Project Time Tracking - The Best Solution

4/2/2014 1:50:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

So the other day I set out to look for an app, a widget, a sidebar gadget or a web app that handled Time Keeping for project work. I was surprised to find that while there are a lot of tools out there, many are lacking, cumbersome, expensive, or just simply way over complicated. So I decided that I'd just create something for m...

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Transaction Express / TransFirst API & ACH Payment Integration

3/31/2014 3:20:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

This last week I had a client come to me with another interesting situation that needed a solution. My client had previously sought out a cost effective and easy to administer 3rd party solution for taking checking account payments while having the ability to set up automatic recurring billing. They found Trans...

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Dynamic PayPal Buttons without using tags

10/16/2013 3:21:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

A client of mine recently wanted to collect payments on her website for event registration with her PayPal account. The catch was, Adults were $10 ea, Children (3-12) were $8 ea, and Children (3 & younger) were $5 ea. So I set out on an adventure to figure out how to do this. Obviously we didn't want to make a PayPal button for every possible combination of registration possible, that would be of been maddening. Instead, ideally I wanted to build a form on her site using...

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DNN Live Chat

9/6/2013 9:00:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

So the age old question... buy it or build it? Recently I was helping a client with their new ERP that my team and I developed for them. Part of the ERP is public facing and we wanted to integrate a Live Chat feature to help the client's customers transition through the changes. I was very surprised to find a real lack of quality Live Chat services out there that fell into a happy medium between Good Features and Free. So after toiling around with a few canned soluti...

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"We Are Already Cyborgs"

8/15/2013 1:13:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

Crazy.. "If human history is the story of a creature who molts from ape to angel - or as Nietzsche claimed, from beast to Superman - then somewhere along the way it seems that we must become machines." -Erik Davis. If you don't follow "Shots of Awe" it's some pretty thought arousing rapid fire philosophy that's kind of fun! ...

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Keywords, SEO, and Internet Ads

8/13/2013 2:42:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

Clients always have great questions about SEO, Keywords, and Internet Marketing. What are some of the basics, gotchas, and where's a person or business to get started? There is no magic bullet - sorry. Like anything, hard work and research will pay off. Below are some fast tips I recently sent to a client that I thought I'd share.... You always want to avoid what I call Keyword Stuffing. Google’s spider (called Panda) that cr...

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Placebo Buttons -- they are everywhere!

7/2/2013 8:03:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

I thought this would be interesting to share. I can't think of any computer or Internet graphical user interface (GUI) buttons that are merely placebos, but I've only been thinking about it for a second here. Can you think of any?

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DNN Custom Modules - Locations, Simple Product Catalog, Form Builder and more

5/20/2013 8:35:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

As I work with clients I come across special needs that the client will require on their website. I want to remind everyone that I can custom build basically any functionality for your website. Most of my clients are using the DotNetNuke CMS platform, and I've built a nice set of custom modules to help my clients get the results they need. Here are a few of them . . . MultiForm DNN Module ...

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Mobile - Looking Good (and Easy!)

5/9/2013 7:53:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

What's all the buzz about? One of the new buzz words now for sometime has been Responsive Web Design. What does it mean? What does it mean for my business? First a little back story. Previous to the concept of Responsive Web Design, if you wanted to have a mobile version of your site you had to choose from a couple options. Native Mobile App - <...

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Oh Silly Hyphen - Prevent Line Break on Hyphen

4/29/2013 7:27:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

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Graphics Goodness - Fluid Dynamics Rendering

4/23/2013 4:25:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

PhysXInfo seems to have solved a challenging tasks, making computer generated water look like water. Now, I'm not talking about fluid rendering with the horsepower like ILM uses for movies like The Perfect Storm, but instead using a commercial available desktop to render out the magic in real-time. Think video game, instead of pre-rendered movie special effects. Rendering water is particularly tricky bec...

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One-Way Trip To Mars -- You can sign up soon

4/16/2013 5:33:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

Nonprofit organization, Mars-One.com, plans to fund a colonization of the Red Planet with a blend of crowd sourcing and ultimate reality TV. Thus far, their plan is to acquire one million entries from private citizen for $25 each along with a 60-second video of why you'd be a good candidate to go to Mars. If selected, get ready for a seven year long training course. Here's the catch.... you won't be coming home to Earth. The Mars One mission calls for ...

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Combine Excel Documents Using C#

3/15/2013 12:47:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

A client yesterday had a common problem, "Ted I have 100+ Excel documents that I need to be able to quickly search through, and I'd like to combine all those work books into a single .xlsx file so that I can just search in one document." Sounds simple enough right? The first thing we tried together was scouring the web for a VBA script to do this. Seems simple, get a list of the files in a directory, open each doc, and copy and paste its contents into the m...

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Stupid chain letter spam

2/6/2013 3:51:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

Infrequently I love getting chain letter spam, so that I can read through it, pick it apart, and then reply to the 100+ people that I was not BCC'd with. Note the use of "infrequently". It's bad enough to get spam, but to get it directly from family members? Plus the fact that my email address is then shared with 100 other friendly spammers because even after repeated attempts to explain the BCC feature, it doesn't get used. Sigh.... I thought I'd share...

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Facebook, Amazon, and Google going the way of Rome?

1/28/2013 8:18:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

I just ran across an interesting article on Gizmodo that cited John Naughton ...

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End of the World?

12/18/2012 4:18:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

So, the Mayan's 'predicted' the end of the world? Seems strange that they would do such a thing. I guess every civilization has thought of their beginning and their demise. As advanced as the Mayans were, their mathematics didn't take leap year into account. The actual number of days in a year is 365.2425, not 365. This is because a day is not precisely 24 hours. Now, since the Mayan's didn't take this into consideration, they had a roundi...

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Why Get A New Website

4/23/2012 4:13:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

When customers visit your website does it look like a time capsule? Was Bill Clinton still in office the last time you updated your site? Customers want to see new content; it's not a question of, it's a demand. Take Facebook as example, do you know why facebook.com gets over ONE BILLION hours of use daily? It's because people have, arguably, become addicted to looking -- looking at refreshing content. What's new with their friends and family? ...

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Reverse Sale: The Answer?

5/7/2012 4:13:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

How do you monetize your online presence? If you are 'in business', I would think you are probably in the business of making money. Are you running an eCommerce site? Are you advertising to your visitors? Are you selling a service, subscription, or knowledge? In the late 90's, it seemed like everyone was getting into the online game. Giant ideas came and went. Some things have changed, but undeniably some very simple, non-technological principals still a...

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Busy Beavers & Domain Registrations

8/16/2012 3:57:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

It's been a while since my last blog entry -- life has been extraordinarily busy with IT and web development projects, some family transitions, and planning for my upcoming wedding to the girl of my dreams! Have you ever run into a client, or guilty yourself, of purchasing tons of extra domain names for a single business? Even ones that aren't related to the business name, but end up pointing to the same website? <...

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