I’ve been working on a project using the Google maps API recently. I’ve been using it to return the latitude and longtitude of an address and then comparing it against a geo-coded file in a database.

The Google maps API is pretty extensive and fairly easy to use. However, there are some things that you need to be aware of. The first thing is that Google does not want you to use the GClientGeocoder object to geo-code large files. If you want to do that, they want you to sign-up for an enterprise version of the geo-coder, and the cost is an astounding $10,000!

More on that in a later post. For now, here’s a map to play with…

As, you can see, it’s pretty easy to insert a map. You need to get an API key from here. Once you have that, you’re pretty much up and running.

I’ll post some more on the API later and show you some AJAX code that returns the latitude and longtitude results back to the server side for processing.

I was lucky enough to get a great deal on the RadControls for ASP.NET by Telerik recently.

I’d been looking at their RADEditor offering as a replacement for my Content Management System rich text editor. The editor looks awesome and supports lots of browser versions, whereas my editor only works in Internet Explorer (its quite old now(the editor not IE)).

Anyway, I leaped into the RADGrid and began to put it into a project but stumbled upon a problem where I couldn’t get an event to fire. This has been quite a pain in the butt! I finally worked out the problem a few days ago and wanted to share it here in case anyone has a similar issue.

The RADGrid is fantastic and very powerful. It is in fact, huge in terms of it’s functionality and capabilities. After I’d got the grid loaded with data, I wanted to edit a row and save that data or add a new row. At this point I had a problem where I couldn’t get the some of the grid editor events to fire. Specifically the Update and Cancel events of the edit form.

You can find the full post and responses at the telerik forum.

I had thought it was maybe a ViewState problem, which it turned out to be. Even though I had enabled viewstate in properties I found I had to explicitly enable viewstate in the asp.net tags of each form, usercontrol and control that was in the loaded control hierarchy.

It works like a charm and I’m very happy with the results. I’ve only just scratched the surface and I’m looking forward to developing more solutions with this control.

I’ve seen a lot of posts recently about web 2.0 and it seems there are a lot of different ideas about what it is exactly.

I guess this is not surprising as it is marketers and marketing departments in companies that are trying to define it. If that’s the case I think those camps will have as much success defining web 2.0 as they did defining the .NET Framework. They are related any way right?

I’ve seen Web 2.0 described as social networking. Community sites that allow people to create profiles and share information and resources. Well, though we do now have some huge social networking sites like mySpace and it seems like everyone and their brother needs to get online and slap up a profile and some pics, that’s hardly a new concept is it? Readily accessible to the masses now yes, but we’ve had bulletin boards for donkeys years and forums too.

I’ve seen it described the merging of web with video to an online experience more like TV (Oh God Noooo, we can’t allow that to happen). But if video and streaming media is becoming more prevalent now, isn’t it bandwidth that has allowed that to happen? With 2/3 + US users having broadband internet access according to a recent report by Nielsen-Netratings.com.
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I’ve seen it described as this fabulous new technology called AJAX but little or no discussion of how this works etc (mainly marketing talk remember).

Here’s my take on web 2.0 just for the record. Web 2.0 is the merging of the www with the desktop of your computer. Eventually, you won’t really know if you are online or not. Your user experience will be the same when you are using installed programs or using a website (to the untrained marketers eye anyway). So AJAX and related technologies will play a large part in making Web 2.0 happen.

Yes web 2.0 will include streaming video and audio and chat and email and signups and downloads etc. The key thing is it will all be pretty transparent to the end user. You won’t be aware of being online (we aren’t so much anymore with broadband now right)

Maybe it will be Web 3.0 before its truly transparent…

I’ve been promoting two software tools that I use to do keyword research. They are Keywords Analyzer and Keyword Elite. Both are excellent tools and I use them both regularly.

I am promoting them on what is known as a ‘Squeeze Page’. This is a page that is setup to collect a name and email address before passing the visitor to their desired destination.

Anyway, the point for this post is that the survey box uses an AJAX callback using the ASPXLAB callback control. So if you want to see how that works try it at Keyword Analyzer or Keyword Elite.

If you do fill out the form on the website linked to above you may be redirected to either one of those products. I’m doing a ’split test’ of each to see which one is more popular.

Ajax, shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML basically allows you to post back to your web server and return without a full refresh of the page. It’s very nice for the website visitor as just the requested area of a page can be refreshed, so the interaction with the web server seems almost non existent.

I was looking for a new tabstrip control for a website project that I’m working on for Cannons Marina .

The control suite I bought is from a company called ASPXLAB. All of the controls are nice and easy to use and code and the AJAX component is really good too.