adorr.net

Format Numbers to Currency String in VB.NET

d0rr — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:30:49 +0000

I thought it would be helpful to share this piece of simple code

In VB.NET, it is pretty easy to convert a decimal number (say, 12345.6789) to currency format ($12,345.679)

Just convert the number using the lines of code as shown below:

Dim value_int As Integer = 12345.6789 ' original decimal number Dim digit As Integer = 3 ' to format it to 3 decimal places Dim value_str As String = value_int.ToString("C" & digit, Globalization.CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("en-US"))

Also check out other cultures available here.

Transfer Contacts from Sony Ericsson to iPhone on Mac

d0rr — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 13:34:00 +0000

I was about to manually transfer my contact from my old Sony Ericsson W810i to iPhone when I came across this easy steps to sync all my contacts to iPhone, within a minute.

First of all, you will have to download Sony Ericsson Sync Plugin for iSync. Since my SE W810i has been phased out for long, I’m using the W910i download page instead. The plugin works the same by the way.

After you’ve downloaded it, install it and load up your iSync under: Applications > iSync

Connect your Sony Ericsson phone to your Mac, browse to Devices > Add Device to add your device, and you should see your phone as shown below:

Double click on your phone and you should see the details as shown below.

Click on Sync Device button and your contacts should be sync to your Mac now.

Next, connect your iPhone to you Mac, opens iTunes and select Info tab and check Sync Address Book Contacts checkbox. In my case, I checked the All contacts radio button to sync all my contacts over.

Hit on the familiar Sync button and all your contacts will be in your iPhone now.

Let me know if it works for your, or not.

WordPress & Google XML Sitemaps

d0rr — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:30:10 +0000

One of the most important element in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is to have your site indexed properly (and regularly) by popular search engines.

As of today, Google has a significantly huge market share of 84.96% (resource) and is definitely hard for website owners to ignore.

I’m going to walk you through on how I generated XML Sitemaps for adorr.net (powered by WordPress) and submit the sitemap to Google for in-depth crawling.

Before we proceed further, I would assume that your site is running on WordPress, as per stated in this post title.

Generate Google XML Sitemap

First of all, you will need to download WordPress Google XML Sitemaps plugin and install it on your WordPress site. If you haven’t know how to install WordPress plugin, check out the steps here.

** Do note that if your WordPress has Multisite feature turned on, follow this instruction instead!

Once you’ve got the plugin installed and activated, browse to Settings > XML-Sitemaps

Look out for a link button to “build the sitemap” for the first time. If you get a permission error, check the file permissions of the plugin files.

The plugin will then automatically generate the XML Sitemap file. Mine is located at http://adorr.net/sitemap.xml (default location is on your root, unless you changed it, check the value under “Location of your sitemap file”)

The next time you want to rebuild the sitemap, click on the link button “Rebuild the sitemap” on top of the plugin page.

This is, however, optional since by default the option “Rebuild sitemap if you change the content of your blog” is checked.

XML Sitemap to Google

Next, login to your Google Webmaster Tools account. If you haven’t own one, free registration is just a few steps away.

On post-login page, click on “Add a site…” button and type in your domain name.

** Make sure you have a consistent domain, e.g. www.adorr.net or adorr.net, since they are treated differently. If you need an idea on how to make this happen, check out my another post on this.

There’s a simple validation process, where you are required to add in an additional metadata onto your site header, within tag.

It should look similar to mine as shown below (except that with different content value, of course):

Once done, browse to “your site” > Site Configuration > Sitemaps, click on “Submit a Sitemap” button and type in your sitemap file and location (it’s sitemap.xml by default, unless you changed it in previous steps when generating sitemap)

It usually takes 5 – 15 seconds for Google to download your sitemap file and digest.

If everything goes smoothly up to this point, you shall leave the rest to Google Bot to crawl your site

Last but not least

There are a few other tools that you may find it useful, e.g. Crawl stats, Site performance, but I’ll leave that to you to discover.

Hope these simple steps will help you a little, if not much, on your site’s SEO.

Cheers!

Remove WWW prefix in your domain name, or vice versa

d0rr — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:26:32 +0000

I was doing some SEO for my site the other day when I came across some inconsistencies in my website URL. Some appears to be adorr.net while the rest are www.adorr.net.

Do note that this only applies to Linux hosting accounts.

This can be annoying for search engines listings, and even cause mismatching paths when using Google Webmaster Tools to submit sitemap.

This issue however can be easily fixed by modifying .htaccess, and I decided to go with shorter version of adorr.net without www

Below is how the first part of my .htaccess

* Remember to replace adorr.net with your own domain!

RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.adorr.net$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://adorr.net/$1 [L,R=301]

Do note that the code above is to rewrite all requests of www.adorr.net to adorr.net.

If you want it to be the other way round, use the following .htaccess instead

RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^adorr.net$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.adorr.net/$1 [L,R=301]

Cheers!

Singapore Telcos announce iPhone 4 Price Plans

d0rr — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:51:03 +0000

After a month of waiting, iPhone 4 is finally coming to Singapore on 30 July 2010.

Just yesterday, Apple released prices for the iPhone 4 ahead of the launch. The contract-free 16GB and 32GB models will cost S$888 and S$1,048, respectively, from the Apple online store.

As many of you may already know, only the black iPhone 4 will be available.

And today, the three telcos have finally announced their iPhone price plans. I have compiled them below for easier glance and comparison.

StarHub

	3G SmartSurf 100	3G SmartSurf 300	3G SmartSurf 700	3G SmartSurf Unlimited
Monthly fee (w/GST)	$38	$58	$98	$205
Voice credit (mins)	100	300	700	2000
SMS/MMS credit	500	500	500	2000
Data credit (GB)	12	12	12	unlimited
iPhone 4 16GB	$500	$230	$0	$0
iPhone 4 32GB	$630	$380	$70	$0
iPhone 3GS 8GB	$350	$80	$0	$0

For more information and updates, check out StarHub website

	Value	Lite	Extreme	Unlimited
Monthly fee (w/GST)	$36	$56	$98	$198
Voice credit (mins)	100	300	700	unlimited
SMS/MMS credit	500	500	500	unlimited
Data credit (GB)	12	12	unlimited	unlimited
iPhone 4 16GB	$480	$210	$0	$0
iPhone 4 32GB	$620	$360	$60	$0
iPhone 3GS 8GB	$360	$60 OR $0 with Take3	$0	$0

For more information and updates, check out M1 website

SingTel

	iFlexi Lite	iFlexi Value	iFlexi Plus	iFlexi Premium
Monthly fee (w/GST)	$39	$56	$95	$205
Voice credit (mins)	100	200	500	2000
SMS/MMS credit	500	500	500	2000
Data credit (GB)	12	12	12	30
iPhone 4 16GB	$480	$210	$0	$0
iPhone 4 32GB	$620	$360	$60	$0
iPhone 3GS 8GB	$350	$60	$0	$0

For more information and updates, check out SingTel website

At a glance, M1 and SingTel charges slightly cheaper one time fee, while M1 has the cheapest plan you may sign up.

If you are a heavy voice and data user, you may want to consider M1 Unlimited plan that comes with unlimited voice credits, SMS/MMS credits and data bundle.

Let’s wait for Friday to come!

Updates! You can go down to M1 Shop Paragon on 30 July, 12am, and be the first to own an iPhone 4!