In the past year, and especially the past month, Google has made great progress developing and expanding its suite of online software and tailoring these tools for IRS registered 501c3 Non-Profits.

Google for Non-Profits: www.google.com/nonprofits/

Google Aps: This is Google's full software suite, simplifying complex administrative tasks like creating or disabling users that previously required either an in-house computer guru or a full Microsoft deployment (for larger organizations). This suite comes complete with email (6 gb), online document storage and editing, and messaging tools. Once properly configured this is a very user friendly intranet. You can expand this functionality by expanding this intranet using Google Site. To learn more about Google Aps, click here. To learn about Google Sites, click here.

Google Doc's Spreadsheets/Forms: Although these have been free and available for a while, a few weeks ago Google added a couple new features:

• Freezing Columns: This may seem pretty simple but while working with CyberMill I found that it was really important when using a spreadsheet as a simple database.
• Forms: Instead of only inviting users to have full administrative or view-only control, now you can create a spreadsheet and share it as a form that only accepts data.
• Notifications: A pretty important tool when collaborating with multiple people on a single spreadsheet that sends a user an email whenever anyone changes a spreadsheet.
• Charts and Reporting: I have not yet had an opportunity to play with Google's reporting tools but they appear to range from standard graphs to Key Performance Indicator gadgets that can be added to your intranet.

To sign up for Google Docs, click here.

Google Checkout: Stop paying PayPal any money to profess donations online. Sign up for Google Checkout, verify your 501c3 status, and copy and paste their button to accept online donations free of charge. Click here to Apply.

Google Grants: This program permits Non-Profits, excluding religious or political organizations, to post free ads online using AdWords (Google's commercial ad program). Click here to Apply.

As of March 1, 2008 Atlas Bay has moved their central office to Sacramento. We still committed to our clients and will provide the same level of support for our Napa and Solano County clients have come to expect. To get our updated mailing address, please contact us by calling our office, 707-320-2351.

I just ran across a great tool to help you verify the identity email senders. This tool is called iconix (http://www.iconix.com/). Basically, this company has teamed up with companies like PayPal, Wells Fargo, Netflix, and about 350 others to provided verification of the email addressed. So, if you receive an email from your bank, say Wells Fargo, iconix will validate that email to ensure it is legitimate. It is very simple and easy to use. It is compatible with almost every major email service and software. Best of all it is completely FREE for the end user. Try it out and let me know your experience.

I downloaded and tested the new ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions today. There are many new and exciting features in the CTP. My favorite is the MVC (Model View Controller) Framework and its accompanying tools. The MVC framework is a complete 360 from traditional ASP.NET forms pages in a number of ways. First, there is a very clear separation of the layers of your ASP.NET web app. Second, you will notice the HTML output of a MVC app is extremely clean. There are not viewstate or other hidden tags among other things. Third, and probably most important, is the page life cycle is very different. While ASP.NET MVC is built on top of System.Web many events from the old System.Web.UI.Page class are not fired inside the new ViewPage class.

From a application development standpoint I think this new framework will help developers and designers work better together. I don't have to worry much about what goes into the .aspx page and the the designer doesn't have to worry about dependencies in my code. ("Is it okay to change this datalist to a repeater?") As a developer I am only responsible for passing objects into ViewData. The designer can insert these values wherever they please. For example, lets say I make a simple have a PersonController with the action Person. This action accepts an id value. So the url might be http://www.example.com/People/Person/32. Using my DataContext from my SQL to LINQ I use dc.GetPerson(id) to retreive a single person. From there I simply use RenderView(string viewName, object viewData) to render the view and pass the person object to ViewData. The Person object will be automatically placed into the ViewData dictionary and be accessible on the view using ViewData["FirstName"] for example.

 
The controller.

The view.

The end result is a very maintainable piece of software, a very nice URL for the end user and clean HTML output. It will be interesting to see how this project progresses and how we can fit this into our software at Atlas Bay.

Today, I downloaded Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate and my first impressions of the changes are good. There are not many user interface changes, but the performance issues and annoyances are noticeable. The one user interface change is most notable is the removal of the search button from the start menu. To clarify, this isn't the removal of the quick search box as some had though. The search box is still there and very easy to use. Another change in search is that third parties, such as Google, can now build their search tools right into Vista. In terms of performance, I noticed a few things right away. First, copying files and folders was MUCH better. This was one of the biggest annoyances of Vista, and it appears to be fixed. I haven't played around with this long enough to notice if program stability is improved, but I never really had a problem with that pre service pack 1. There are other improvements in the areas of security and more back end stuff that the user won't really notice, but are still important. Overall, I think this is a good step forward for Windows Vista especially for businesses who have been holding off.