.URL files and IIS

A client wanted the ability for his users to easily “put an icon on their desktop linking to the site”.

Now, that is actually a bit more tricky than it sounds in this day and age of restrictive security in browsers. Running a script is out of the question and I don’t want to download and run an application. Now, users’ internet shortcuts on their desktops are just .url files so a very simple solution is to just stick a “my site.url” file on the server and add a link to it. When the user clicks on it they will be asked to download it and can just save it to their desktop – easy!

If Internet Explorer is their default browser and you have specified a favicon in the webpage then your favicon will even be displayed on the user’s desktop.

Now, just one problem… By default, IIS won’t let you download .url files so when the user clicks on the link you will get a 404 error. In order resolve this, go into MIME Types for IIS and add .url as an extensions. I used “application/internet-shortcut” for the MIME type but there may be better choices. You will have to do an IISRESET for the new setting to kick in…

New website for NewOrbit goes live

We have just developed and gone live with a new website for NewOrbit Ltd.

NewOrbit is the company I run with Sean, where we develop custom-fit, web-based solutions for our clients. It’s an exciting venture which we have spent the last year getting fully up and running. It’s high on my to-do list to start blogging about everything we are doing.

First employee, first office

Today was a big day in the life of NewOrbit. Our first employee, Technical Director Pete Kendall, joined us and we moved into a joint office.

Sean (co-owner of NewOrbit) and I  have so far been working out of our respective homes but with new staff joining us, it was time for a change. We are currently in the process of actually building a dedicated office but it’s not quite finished yet so we have taken a large spare bedroom and converted it into a temporary office.

I have always been a firm believer in the idea that people need proper tools to do their jobs. For IT people that means good monitors, computers and chairs and the software you need. Dell are selling 24” flat-screen monitors for £200 each so that was a no-brainer, one for each of us, which works very nicely when combined with the laptop’s 15.4” on a docking station.

For chairs we are fortunate that so many businesses in London are cutting back as it meant we could get 3 Aeron chairs for a little over £300 each. So now we can sit comfortably and write code or whatever else we need to do on big, bright monitors. Microsoft’s BizSpark programme has us sorted with regards to software.

Life’s too short not to have the right tools for the job.

When we started NewOrbit last year we focused primarily on consulting work to get the business off the ground and that has been very successful. However, it was always our intention to do something other than consulting; Consulting is a day’s pay for a day’s work so whenever you are not working, you are not making any money. There is good money in consulting but it is a treadmill and doesn’t help us achieve what we really want. Our main focus now is on our NewOrbit Rapid Systems business unit, where we build bespoke business systems for companies. We are using an application builder platform to do this, which allows us to very rapidly develop bespoke, hosted systems. Sean’s and my background are in business management and optimisation, meaning that we have a lot of experience in process optimisation and business integration, experience which we are putting to use analysing client’s requirements and building systems for them.

Outlook 2007 stays "disconnected"

Sometimes I do these things just to try them out... For example, I recently got a new laptop and decided to install Vista 64-bit on it and Office 2007. I have the IT team reporting to me so it makes sense that I try out some stuff and I tend to be able to help myself enough that I don't cause a drain on their resources. I decided a while ago not to upgrade our internal systems to Vista or Office 2007 for a while yet. Vista partly because of the hardware requirements which we can't meet, partly because it is still flaky - even after service pack 1. Office 2007 because the UI is so different that it will just cause a lot of calls to the IT Helpdesk and I can't see any real benefits in the new version - it is mainly window dressing with little substance.

But I digress... One of the problems I have had with my setup is that often when I switch between the wireless and the wired network (many times a day - the curse of being in and out of meetings) Outlook 2007 will go into "disconnected" mode and will stubbornly stay there. Normally a reboot will sort it out but not today so I decided to do a bit of digging. It turns out this is well-known problem in Outlook 2007 and I have seen reports back from May 2007 - but still no fix from Microsoft. They do have this article but the "solution" in there doesn't work and is in any case unrelated IMHO (it only deals with RPC, I have the same problem with pure HTTP)...

However, some kind soul on a message board revealed the secret: you need to run "ipconfig /dnsflush" in a command window and it sorts it out. Mind you, you need to do this each time you see the problem. Would be nice to see a fix to this problem...

Why write a blog?

Ever since I left Denmark I've maintained a blog in Danish, on and off, to keep my friends and family back home updated on what I am up to. As time has gone by, I found myself updating it less and less frequently - not least because I found it frustrating not to be able to write about what goes on in the UK. I like to comment on a lot of things, but a lot of things have no relevance either outside the UK or to a non-technical crowd. So, I figured I would try a blog in English. Whether anyone will ever read it remains to be seen - and I'm not sure I will actually be able to keep on posting but we shall see.

If nothing else, it'll serve as a place for me to pour some thoughts into and keep them for the future.

Now I just need to get enough free time to dismantle the Blogger template structure so I can make this webpage look like I want it to be...