I started to wonder recently with the phenomenon that is Social networking how social is it really. The concepts of connectivity, where I can create a space that describes me, my interests and allow others to see/or interact with that space does not seem that social. Interaction is with a computer, or device (phone) with a computer. In most cases you are sheltered from emotion or intent and in the grander scheme of things the nuances of face to face interaction can expose. The information posted can be true, false or anywhere in between with a general feeling of protection from the outside world.

Our true online substance can become nothing more then a marketing campaign focused on the number of views, or virtual friends one can get, based on an online persona. We have now gotten to a global popularity battle.

I get social networking. I understand its strengths and its contribution model, but I really do believe that some of its weaknesses are rooted deeply in how the human interaction model changes to a more flat gated community. 

Knowing my own life some of the best experiences occur outside, with real people having real interactions and seeing the intent (happiness, sadness, anger) in their faces and being able experience all of those emotions on a more personal level that a computer cannot provide. Hopefully Social 3.0 will bring physical human interaction back into the equation.

– Mark

On the Sage Mobile news groups Johnathan Langley of Pythagoras posted a question to an strange issue they were having. When trying to start up the connector service the error logs would report that the connector was already registered.  Since this was happening It was not possible for any of their users to synchronize. I gave him a call this morning and discussed the connector table and suggested that with in the connector table he set the location of the offending connector back to ‘localhost’

Once the value was set back and he restarted the connector it started to work again and the problem is solved. Sql to set it back is as follows and is very simple

Update Connector set Location = ‘localhost’ where Name = ‘default’

– Mark

When using SalesLogix web client with Vista or windows 2008 IIS 6.0 compatibility needs to be installed. Generally this is not a problem but I have found when removing a virtual directory from the IIS 7 does not actually remove it from the IIS 6 Metabase. To actually ensure that your virtual directory is gone since deployments can fail if locates the virtual directory in the IIS 6 Metabase but not registered in IIS 7. So to get around this you will need to install the IIS Resource Kit . In the tool kit is an application named Metabase Explorer.

When looking the default web site on my development machine note that the SlxIntellisync folder is just that and not a virtual directory like the SlxClient application.

Now looking at the default web site in the Metabase explorer you would expect there not to be an entry. However there is one there as shown in this image:

Now in SalesLogix Application Architect If we try to deploy to the Intellisync virtual directory we will get the following result

Note that the virtual directory was found so no configuration will be done. This will not add the entry back into the IIS 7 Catalog. Now if we delete the virtual directory using the Metabase Explorer by selecting it in the treeview and pressing the delete key and redeploy the site will successfully be configured.

So download the SDK and keep it handy.

– Mark