Running Digital Ads is a lot of fun. Many times, it’s instant feedback. If something is working you get clear results in your metrics and reporting (Right?). If something isn’t working you either see the absence of metrics or just get an “overwhelming sense of quiet” where there shouldn’t be. I sometimes get that same ...

If you remember, I spent 17 years building software, running a startup, and also running a consultancy. Imagine my surprise when I entered the corporate world after a 12-year hiatus. Apparently, the industry has redefined what the word "Partner" means. Due to my role, I get many emails, offers to connect on Linked In, and other unsolicited commun...

I've been contacted by a company claiming to be from Direct TV. They claim I can take advantage of a promotion with Amazon to pay 5 months of my bill with an Amazon Gift Card. If I do that, I'll get 2 years at a very reduced rate. I've been stringing these guys along for a few days now, just to see how this works and how I can report it. Since I a...

Connection to Google untrusted? Fix below! Lately, I have had issues connecting to Google, Google Mail and other random services over the last few months. I did some digging today and fixed (I believe) the issue. If you are having problems with security messages like the below, try these steps to see if it fixes the problem. I'll put some narrati...

I spent a bit of time trying to understand why a tap event failed to fire on a button in NativeScript. Here was the original code segments: Button Code Tap Event Handler Function exports.payDebtAction = function(args){ var page = args.object; console.log("paydebt"); } The intent of this code was to hide the Pay Debt button if there was...

I ran into an issue updating NativeScript 1.4 to NativeScript 1.5. The symptom: > nativescript@1.5.0 postinstall C:UsersDanWilsonAppDataRoaming pm ode_modules ativescript > node postinstall.js Basically, after uninstalling and reinstalling NativeScript on Windows 7 (maybe other OS's are affected also), the process would hang at the node postinst...

Occasionally, while running a NativeScript application on android, the process hangs and does not complete. I have not gotten to the bottom of this, but I can tell you how I resolve the issue to continue running my application. Symptoms - one of these C:\_webNativeScriptTradeOMatic>tns livesync android --emulator --watch Project successfully prep...

Choosing database column data types can be dicey. Choose an overly large data type, and indexes will be overly large, storage will fill up and other bad things can happen. Choose an overly small one, and you end up with hard errors. A common data type for a database identity column is an int. However, if your application gets popular, it can brea...

NativeScript is a free open source offering from Telerik allowing mobile development in Javascript with 100% Access to Native Platform APIs in iOS, Android and Windows Phone. With NativeScript, the entire native platform functionality is available in the JavaScript layer. I've finally found the packaging and tooling I want to use to develop native ...

Kickstarter is all the rage, isn't it? As the owner of 3 small businesses, I really like the capabilities kickstarter brings to the table. The ability to fund a project based on merit alone, rather than create and shop a business plan to the venture capital industry, makes a ton of sense. My only complaint is I didn't come up with kickstarter and m...

For reasons too complicated to get into, ColdFusion 11 no longer ships with a JDBC driver for MySQL. This is a change over previous versions of ColdFusion. Largely, this is because of a license issue relating to redistributing the Jar file. How to fix it The fix is easy: download the JDBC driver JDBC Driver for MySQL (Connector/J) here: http://de...

I've just posted the presentation "Our application got popular and now it breaks!" that was delivered at Dev.Objective() 15. If you were at the conference and would like the presentation files, you can find a PDF version here. You can also view this presentation on Slideshare So you helped build a cool application and the public is flooding your s...

At the CFSummit 2014, I presented on The Top 5 Things You are Doing Today to Hinder Scalability. I collected my material through helping clients to scale their applications over a number of years. The important things in this presentation are listed in order. Decisions you make in your applications today, affect what options you have when you need...

I'm helping prepare the CFSummit conference. We've organized the sessions on Trello and had a public voting session. It's time to start organizing the topics into a schedule. In a conference schedule, it's important to know which sessions will be popular. It's desirable to ensure the most desirable sessions do not compete with each other. Thus, I w...

There are a lot of ways to cache data. You can cache a piece of data, a query, a page fragment, an entire page, or an entire website. You can cache to local memory, local file storage, distributed memory, distributed file storage, a front cache, or a Content Delivery Network (CDN). You can cache for ever, until the process regenerates, 5 years, 5...

I don't envy Technical Recruiters. They have tough job trying to place people in roles the recruiter himself doesn't understand. I don't blame them. The ever shifting sands of technology can be confusing. What other field completely changes landscapes every 3-5 years? Who can possibly keep up with just the new Javascript frameworks that came out t...

Local Job Posting for friend. This is a good position for a high quality ColdFusion person who understands start up culture and wants to make a difference! We are seeking a Senior Web Developer / Architect / Dev Ninja to join our team. Be a part of a young organization with a disruptive idea and good momentum in need of your technical creativity...