Hi all,

Just wanted to display a site I have been working on for a client and if possible, get some feedback from a very helpful community.

OverView:

www.VTourApartments.com is a Detroit Metro Area based company that lists apartments for rent currently in the Detroit-Ann Arbor area, but is expanding very quickly.

What sets this site apart from the other apartment websites such as apartmentGuide.com, ForRent.com, or even rent.com is that instead of picture slide shows or those tunnel looking virtual tours, their key service is Video Tours. From my knowledge, they are the only company to offer this type of service where they will take video footage of the apartment rental, as well as community features like Clubhouse, swimming pool, etc.

The company just started up this month and is just starting to get some legs so i thought i'd give it a mention on wincust. Something a bit different as far as apartment listings and what not, and possibly in some time when they start doing some major marketing for the company, you can say you saw a blurb about the site here first on WC!

Anyhow, check it out already!

Again, feedback is welcome. thanks again.

ItechDev

I was sorting through my email this morning and opened up something from Yahoo, maybe my first mistake, but anyways.

it's Called Yahoo 360.

it's a place where you can share your blogs and pictures. It also has a system where only your "Friends" can see your posts and i assume respond to them.

Sounds interesting... I wonder if anyone else has thought of this........

OHHHH That's right, Stardock has about over a year ago!!!!

I looked at it and laughed. Just thought i'd share it with everyone else.

Not sure how much of the community here follows the Detroit Lions, but recently, one of their top Wide Receivers was caught with his 3rd drug offense.

Charles Rogers of the Detroit Lions just couldn't put down the cheeba. He gets paid millions of dollars and is simply asked to not smoke weed and what does he do, HE DOES IT ANYWAYS!!! ok i understand that it's your personal life and you can choose what you want to do, but if someone is paying that much money and one of the stipulations is to not do drugs, guess what... JUST SAY NO!!

I mean this is the third time he was cought!

The NFL Players Union keeps private the first two offenses, but once that third strike comes, he gets suspended and that one goes public. Poor guy.... not really he still has millions and really for the next 4 weeks does nothing to earn that money.

I don't know, for me, on a smaller scale, I sign confidentiality agreements and non competitive agreements at work and i don't go around giving away secrets of the trade!!

I know it's different because his was a personal matter, but still, if they pay you to perform and have requirements, i think you should have pride in yourself and follow them to your best abilities.

It's either that, or DON'T GET CAUGHT!!!!!!!!

Smoking weed isn't the worst thing on the planet to do, heck, it's a medical subscription, but in the world of football, if you are not of right mind and body due to some drugs, you'll get yourself pumbled out there.

Just random thoughts.

ITechDev

Hi all,

I've been shopping around lately to see where i should place my client's asp.net based website with the intetion of promoting and also submitting the site to the main search engines.

Well, one thing that I have been running into at each Hosting provider is some type of proprietary promotion/marketing service each provider has that will take your site, assist in telling you just what key words to use to search bots index your page, and also the easy submission to multiple search engines through this service.

These services also offer free GoogleAd Dollars with each purchase which i guess will help some in site promotion indirectly.

Has anyone had any experience with any of these services with his/her Web Hosting Provider? if so, what provider did you choose and what do they call thier service?

Here are the two main ones i am contemplating

1. GoDaddy.comLink

Reason:

Besides their commercial with the hot girl posing on the bike, it's their Price Price Price!
The company simply from what i can see gives you the most for roughly $16 a month.

here's a price break down(i don't feel like listing the features)

Link

The website promotion/marketing service they offer is called: Traffic Blazer

This one is actually pretty cool. Gives you tons of functionality. Such things as help you pick the correct keywords to use across your site and who are the top 10 sites using the same keywords. Also has a built in referral system much like WC so you can see who is actually linking to your site. Also has the auto submission to search engines such as: google,yahoo, lycos, etc to name a few.

These are just a few of the services, there are probably 10-15 in all which costs $30 per year, and you can also add some type of service that will do "Legal" Email marketing which i'm not too sure about, but that was one of the packages for $69 per year.

2. Interland

Link

Reason:

I was referred to interland by a friend who says that it has been the best service they've had so far. Packages are decent as well, for about $19 you get comparable service, and also have their own website promotion service which does some of the same core things such as search engine submission. Oh and they give you $75 in GoogleAds as apposed to $25 from GoDaddy.com



Well, Any thoughts???

Is there a better one that I really should be considering?

Do these website promotion services actually help in getting linkeage to your website? I mean i don't mind paying a few bucks in a year if i don't have to do the work myself, i mean i am lazy in the sense that if i can pay for a service instead of doing it myself, i'll do it for the most part!

Thanks in advance for the opinions!

ITechDev

Has anyone ever heard of and/or used DotNetNuke (Link) in his/her ventures in developing websites in asp.net??

Well, if you haven't, check it out i mean it's pretty cool.

But, even crazier than that is Wincustomize.com derivative of web development! the site is

Link

The concept is basically the same as wincustomize in that giving a place for a community to share it's skins and themes, but from a web site standpoint.

So for instance, a person can download the DontNetNuke framework, install in on your local pc just as long as you ahve some type of localhost capabilities that come along with windowsxxp via IIS, and have a runnable website with an attached database. Then after that is all set, you can go to snowcovered.com, and buy a new skin for your website, install it, and there ya go, a totally new look and feel for your website just like window blinds for the desktop.

Obviously the major drawback is that you have to pay for much of ths skins on snowcovered, but i thought i would share the site with everyone who is trying some adventures in developming asp.net based sites.

Kinda crazy if you ask me, the developer will soon be obscelete!!!!!!

ItechDev

Well, T-man is spending much of his hard working time speeding up our sites, I have been working on getting some basic functionality up and running for the new personal pages for wincust. I think the base is very time consuming, much of my time is spent thinking of ways to make the base functionality, and the classes that make it up generic enough such that expanding on this will be fairly easy.  The Plug In Plug Out way of doing things!  Thinking outside of the box! Very hard i think initially.

Well, besides working more on the base infrastructure, i have one live template running to display the latest additions for a particular author at the moment, tomarrow i will expand that to simply show x-amount of skins and work on tweaking that a bit then on to the next section, probably User Information and/or recent posts from JU.

 

Peace out people! GO Pistons!

 

JR

Well, after all that great talk about custom server controls, i have decided at the moment to use User Controls becuase given the tme frame i do not have enough time to learn the pipelining and how to fully optomize it's uses. 

Today well, I fixed the following:

1. In the Channel Rss Feeds for blog navigator, change the title from to

2. If a person gets approved to join a blog group, then automatically add them to the custom audience that has the same name as the blog group site name. so for instance, if you you get approved to join Pundi4u.joeuser.com, then you will be added to my custom audience Pundi4u.

3. Did some minor architectural design for wincust base classes.

 

JR

We are consolidating the categories list.

Within the last year or so, Laptops have made their way into the "Gaming" Field, on it's about dang time! Now i know alot of hardcore gamers refuse to play a video game on a laptop whether it still may be inferior equipment, or the screen is too small, or whatever it may be, but I think if you can take a game on the road with you wherever you are it's a plus.

I personally don't care if you have to tone down the resolution a notch just to get a smoother play and laptops now are coming out with equipment that can handle most if not all the higher end games out on the market! Alienware, a Gamers PC for those who can't build their own, has come out with a solid line of "Gaming" laptops that can hang with the above average Desktop. My take on it is, although you are paying quite a bit more, you are getting the portability features of a laptop so your gaming is on the go all the time. People suggested that I get a shuttle PC, they are some what portable and have the upgradable features of a desktop pc, you just have to make sure that the system's heat stays manageable. I disagree with the shuttle for a few reasons:

1: When i want portability, i don't want to have to take a mouse, keyboard, and MONITOR with me if i'm at the coffee shop drinking overpriced gourmet coffee. Thats not portability.
2: Lets say that i just take the shuttle with me and plug in my shuttle into someone else's "stuff" it's not gaurenteed that their "Stuff" will be what i want to use. A small example of this would be that someone is still using a mouse with a trackball, those dang things skip on end and bother the heck out of me!!!
3: .......... Well there is no 3, i just really want a laptop.

Well, I love to play games. I don't play them as often as i like due to the fact that i spend a big portion of my time outside of work driving to and fro, so portability is what i look for because who knows where i will end up at the end of the day, but wherever i end up, a trusty laptop can make all things better.

FLyin

"Radio" debuted recently and with much praise. I'm really not sure what the critics gave the movie, but I am more of a "I have to see it to believe it" person unless more people who have "seen it to believe it" told me the movie was as good or bad as the reviews said. But back to the quesiton at hand, it's ok for grown men to cry right? Of course i wasn't close to dropping any tears..........excuse me i needed a moment. But back to seriousness, the movie i thought was very good. It had everything a saab story needed, Drama, laughter, and most of all, football.

For those who are going out to see a movie any time soon, i recommend this flick, but with extreme caution, don't go see this with your buds unless you are really that close, i went to see it with my girlfriend, and let me tell you i should have brought a little pack of tissues for her.

I give this movie 5 out of 5 pundi's

flyin