So novella has been out for a week or so, and so far the reaction has been quite positive (yea!). A few of the people who are getting their hands dirty have been asking me questions about the architecture and how everything works.

So to help them and the others who are too shy to ask, here is a detailed look at the various layers that make novella tick. Before I begin, I should note that if you just want to use novella, you don’t need to know any of this. However, if you are taking things apart or you just like to know what does what, this might help.

Also, if you are a relatively new ASP.Net developer who doesn’t care at all about novella, this architecture is useful for building all sorts of sites, and is a good learning tool. I have used this architecture in one form or another on all the sites and desktop applications (with some tweaking) that I have built in the last year or so.

Lets get started. Read the rest of this entry »

So I found an issue with the steps in the help file for novella. Basically I forgot to mention that you need the ASP.Net Ajax Library 1.0 installed on your computer if you are going to run it locally. Kinda important.

I updated the help file to talk about this little requirement.

You can get the latest version by clicking here or you can visit the download page of the novella home page.

On a related note, novella has been downloaded over 100 times in about 1.5 days. Sweet.

Whew…it has been a long week, but I am proud to announce the first version of novella is out the door and ready for consumption.

You can go check it out at www.devmade.com/novella.

If you get a few minutes, check it out and let me know what you think. There are bound to be some bugs here and there in the sites and in the code so if you find any please let me know. Also, I would love any feedback you have.

Ok, so I have been reading all about the MacBook Air, just like most of the tech world, and I just don’t get it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a Mac hater by any means. The iMac revolutionized how computers looked (thank God!), and I have been drooling over the iPhone since I saw the first pictures leaked onto the web (I would have one if it wasn’t for the $200 cancellation fee from my current carrier). I also think the iPod is inspired and a great little device (although I will admit I got a Zune 2 for my wife, but it was a tough choice).

Before MacWorld I was as excited as the next guy to see what Jobs and company were going to come up with next, but the more I read about the Air the more I get confused.

From a design/ui perspective I get it. Its sleek and sexy and has that cool “apple” look to it. Where I stop drinking the Kool-Aid is when I think about it from a business perspective. Who is the market for this thing?

I know there are the mac addicts…chalk up a few thousand sold. Then you have the first adopters who just have to have anything with a power button. There are a few more thousand. But outside of that, whats the point?

Is there really a large audience looking to spend $1,800 on a laptop that has less functionality than one half that cost just because it fits in a manilla folder? I understand that road warriors needs a lightweight device because they are always on the move, but its not like you can’t find a great laptop (even a mac) that weighs 3 or 4 pounds for a lot cheaper.

Now if it were cheaper…say under $1,000, then that might make it more drool-worthy. Or heck…maybe even if it were actually smaller (like a UMPC) or maybe a sexy tablet (now we’re talkin’). I would be in heaven to have a tablet with the look and functionality of an iPhone on steroids. Mmmmm….tasty.

But as it stands now you get a fragile device (imagine dropping that little thing?) with a funky touchpad that costs almost two grand (for the cheap one).

Am I missing something?

As luck would have it…I am an idiot. I prove that little fact over and over (just about daily really), but this was a case of just not paying attention. You see, while I was building my little CMS app I chose the name simpleCMS without paying attention to who else might be using that name because it fit. Big mistake.

As I got closer to completion I did a bit of searching for other apps with that name. What did I find? Apparently simpleCMS is quite a popular name. So is simplyCMS, and just about any other variation of the name. I shouldn’t really be surprised. Its not like the world of CMS applications is a small one or anything.

I was a bit disappointed at first. Partly at my own stupidity, but also because I thought the name summed up my little app perfectly. So I began the gut-wrenching process of finding a new name that summed up what I was trying to build.

After several days of hunting and swearing the word novella popped into my head.
Easy to remember? Check.
Easy to spell? Check.
At least tangentially related? Check.

A novella is a book that is shorter than a novel and longer than a short story. As such they are not a complex as a full sized novel. It works as a nice parallel to my app when it is compared to the big daddies like wordpress and the like. Those apps do more, but are more complex and therefore a bit harder to wrap your head around.

So there you have it…

With that said, I hope to release novella in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

A while back I built a very simple CMS system using .NET for a client. That little tool became very useful and I have been able to use it over and over for various clients.

As I have worked with it, it has slowly improved, a few new features here, a little bit of polish there…and *poof*…simpleCMS was born.

The goal of simpleCMS is…well…simple. It is built for developers to give to their clients so they can have easily managed content. Its not for blogging (yet) nor does it have all the bells and whistles that some of the bigger guys out there have. However, the features it does have work well and it will be easy to deploy and even easier to rebrand for your own companies.

Best of all…it will be free. Free to use, free to customize, free to do whatever.

In the next few weeks I will be releasing it under my new DevMade brand which will contain all of the tools that I and my company, Visionary Online, release to the community. When it is available I hope all you freelancers and web designers/developers give it a shot. If you do, please tell me what you think of it.