I have a hate/hate relationship with Microsoft Outlook. Having used Outlook for many years I've come to rely on it quite a bit. Periodically when I launch Outlook I get the normal reminders window but populated with large amounts of old reminders. In the case of about two minutes ago it showed 4401 reminders! Normally, I either dismiss all or pick through the list if it's a reasonable size. So I thought I'd do some poking around to see if there might be a fix. What I ended up finding was a hint on  running a command line switch to clear and rebuild the reminders list. (Run>outlook.exe /cleanreminders) I'll have to see if this permanently fixes the issue, but I thought it might be of interest to include Microsoft's list of switches for outlook below. (link to Microsoft Article)

 

Switch	Description
/a	Creates an item with the specified file as an attachment. Example: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Outlook.exe" /a "C:\My Documents\labels.doc" If no item type is specified, IPM.Note is assumed. Cannot be used with message classes that aren't based on Outlook.
/altvba otmfilename	Opens the VBA program specified in otmfilename, rather than %appdata%\Microsoft\Outlook\VbaProject.OTM.
/c messageclass	Creates a new item of the specified message class (Outlook forms or any other valid MAPI form). Examples: /c ipm.activity creates a Journal entry /c ipm.appointment creates an appointment /c ipm.contact creates a contact /c ipm.note creates an e-mail message /c ipm.stickynote creates a note /c ipm.task creates a task
/checkclient	Prompts for the default manager of e-mail, news, and contacts.
/cleanclientrules	Starts Outlook and deletes client-based rules.
/cleandmrecords	Deletes the logging records saved when a manager or a delegate declines a meeting.
/cleanfinders	Removes Search Folders from the Microsoft Exchange server store.
/cleanfreebusy	Clears and regenerates free/busy information. This switch can only be used when you are able to connect to your Microsoft Exchange server.
/cleanprofile	Removes invalid profile keys and recreates default registry keys where applicable.
/cleanpst	Launches Outlook with a clean Personal Folders file (.pst) .
/cleanreminders	Clears and regenerates reminders.
/cleanrules	Starts Outlook and deletes client- and server-based rules.
/cleanschedplus	Deletes all Schedule+ data (free/busy, permissions, and .cal file) from the server and enables the free/busy information from the Outlook Calendar to be used and viewed by all Schedule+ 1.0 users.
/cleanserverrules	Starts Outlook and deletes server-based rules.
/cleansniff	Deletes duplicate reminder messages.
/cleansubscriptions	Deletes the subscription messages and properties for subscription features.
/cleanviews	Restores default views. All custom views you created are lost.
/designer	Starts Outlook without figuring out if Outlook should be the default client in the first run.
/embedding	Opens the specified message file (.msg) as an OLE embedding. Also used without command-line parameters for standard OLE co-create.
/f msgfilename	Opens the specified message file (.msg) or Microsoft Office saved search (.oss).
/firstrun	Starts Outlook as if it were run for the first time.
/hol holfilename	Opens the specified .hol file.
/ical icsfilename	Opens the specified .ics file.
/importprf prffilename	Launches Outlook and opens/imports the defined MAPI profile (*.prf). If Outlook is already open, queues the profile to be imported on the next clean launch.
/l olkfilename	Opens the specified .olk file.
/launchtraininghelp assetid	Opens a Help window with the Help topic specified in assetid.
/m emailname	Provides a way for the user to add an e-mail name to the item. Only works in conjunction with the /c command-line parameter. Example: Outlook.exe /c ipm.note /m emailname
/nocustomize	Starts Outlook without loading outcmd.dat (customized toolbars) and *.fav file.
/noextensions	Starts Outlook with extensions turned off, but listed in the Add-In Manager.
/nopollmail	Starts Outlook without checking mail at startup.
/nopreview	Starts Outlook with the Reading Pane off.
/p msgfilename	Prints the specified message (.msg). Does not work with HTML.
/profile profilename	Loads the specified profile. If your profile name contains a space, enclose the profile name in quotation marks (").
/profiles	Opens the Choose Profile dialog box regardless of the Options setting on the Tools menu.
/recycle	Starts Outlook using an existing Outlook window, if one exists. Used in combination with /explorer or /folder.
/resetfoldernames	Resets default folder names (such as Inbox or Sent Items) to default names in the current Office user interface language. For example, if you first connect to your mailbox Outlook using a Russian user interface, the Russian default folder names cannot be renamed. To change the default folder names to another language such as Japanese or English, you can use this switch to reset the default folder names after changing the user interface language or installing a different language version of Outlook.
/resetfolders	Restores missing folders for the default delivery location.
/resetnavpane	Clears and regenerates the Navigation Pane for the current profile.
/rpcdiag	Opens Outlook and displays the remote procedure call (RPC) connection status dialog.
/s filename	Loads the specified shortcuts file (.fav).
/safe	Starts Outlook without extensions, Reading Pane, or toolbar customization.
/safe:1	Starts Outlook with the Reading Pane off.
/safe:2	Starts Outlook without checking mail at startup.
/safe:3	Starts Outlook with extensions turned off, but listed in the Add-In Manager.
/safe:4	Starts Outlook without loading Outcmd.dat (customized toolbars) and *.fav file.
/select foldername	Starts Outlook and opens the specified folder in a new window. For example, to open Outlook and display the default calendar use: "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Outlook.exe" /select outlook:calendar
/sniff	Starts Outlook and forces a detection of new meeting requests in the Inbox, and then adds them to the calendar.
/t oftfilename	Opens the specified .oft file.
/v vcffilename	Opens the specified .vcf file.
/vcal vcsfilename	Opens the specified .vcs file.
/x xnkfilename	Opens the specified .xnk file.

What if your wonderful web application hits the big time? A hands on guide to Scaling your PHP/MySQL Application. Why wait till you have millions of users? Courtesy Oracle Article

Having only tested noSQL solutions in a small way, I found the following article quite interesting. More important than the article itself is the discussion that follows. See: In Defense of SQL At Codehouse we've created some fairly complex db's and in some cases (to me not our DB guy) maddeningly complex stored procedures and queries, it might be worth digging deeper in to noSQL solutions to see if they would be a better fit for a particular project. It does seem that there are definitely cases out there would this would make a great deal of sense.

At Codehouse we mainly build sites around the CMSMS or WordPress platforms, but from time to time we'll be approached about doing an install or some work with Joomla. While looking for a good "Getting Started" sort of tutorial for a client, I came across this simple straightforward tutorial at Nettuts+. The tutorial can be viewed here.

 

 

A few week ago I ran into a strange problem on a web site running on Apache. The site had a number of excel files available for download. Unfortunately, when a user clicked to download the excel file, the file would appear as a zip file when downloaded. When you opened the zip file you would see a series of xml files. After a bit of searching,  I was able to find a solution. For Apache anyways,  I added the following bit below to the .htaccess file on the root directory.

AddType application/vnd.ms-word.document.macroEnabled.12 .docm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document docx
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.template dotx
AddType application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.template.macroEnabled.12 potm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.template potx
AddType application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.addin.macroEnabled.12 ppam
AddType application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slideshow.macroEnabled.12 ppsm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slideshow ppsx
AddType application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.presentation.macroEnabled.12 pptm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation pptx
AddType application/vnd.ms-excel.addin.macroEnabled.12 xlam
AddType application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.binary.macroEnabled.12 xlsb
AddType application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12 xlsm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet xlsx
AddType application/vnd.ms-excel.template.macroEnabled.12 xltm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.template xltx

This solution was posted by mcupples on a thread started by discorax at webdeveloper.com. There are solutions for other platforms on this page as well. Hopefully this will save someone a bit of searching.