How To Scrape Email in Microsoft Outlook - C#

26. March 2008
Make the body of any email (ie. newsletters, press release's, etc) in your Outlook 2003 client putty in your hands with this C# code (sorry had to do a screenshot):

Don't forget to add a reference to Micorsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook. "Done" is a subfolder i created under the default inbox in my Outlook to hold emails that have been processed by my scraper. When you run this app you will get a security MessageBox in Outlook asking you to grant permission:

The box can be avoided using Outlook Redemption (which does work, I have used it) or you can do what I do, and just manually run the app and allow access for 10 minutes. Happy mail scraping! Money mouth

web development

 Guy Kawasaki asks Steve Ballmer: Why do you want to buy Yahoo?

25. March 2008

Guy Kawasaki interviewed Steve Ballmer at MIX '08 at the Venetican in Vegas earlier this month. It's very very interesing! Smile Here are a couple quotes from the first 4 mintues of it:

  • Guy Kawasaki : "Why do you want to buy Yahoo?"
  • Steve Ballmer: "We made an offer. It's out there baby!"
  • Guy Kawasaki : "Why didn't you hire me back in '87?" ... "I think it's racist"
  • Guy Kawasaki : "Steve Jobs never invites me to do this"
  • Guy Kawasaki : "Don't pick up any chairs and throw it at me. Don't go monkey on me either!"
  • Guy Kawasaki : "The Y word is all about the G word"
  • Guy Kawasaki : "Do you think you have to do Google in?"
  • Guy Kawasaki : "you can't even bring yourself to say the Google word can you?"
  • Steve Ballmer : "Google, Google,Google,Google"
  • Guy Kawasaki : "Do you have little pictures of Larry and Sergey that you throw darts at?"
  • Steve Ballmer : "We're just the little engine that could."
  • Guy Kawasaki : "What do you think about Apple? Is it a little chiwawa that you kick away?"

LOL, good stuff. Awesome interview! The whole time Kawasaki is sitting there with a MacBook Air on his lap! I highly recommend everyone check it out. 

Clickety: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/mix/default.mspx

web development

 5 Things To Watch For When Selling A Website Online

8. March 2008

I have a little bit of experience selling websites online now and there are a fews things that happen every time. I'm not talking about large websites here, just smaller one-man-show sort of sites - the kind you find for sale on eBay or SitePoint. Here they are:

1. By putting your site up for sale, you are basically exposing your sites entire business model for the world to see (and to copy).  So don't put your site up for sale unless you truly plan on selling it. Keep in mind it may not sell so be careful what you tell the world about it.

2. Everyone and their dog will hammer you with questions about your site. Not because they want to buy it, but because they are trying to extract information from you that they can use to monetize their websites. They will say they are interested, pepper you with questions, then disappear forever. This happns A LOT on SitePoint.

3. People will bid on your auction, when they have no intention whatsoever of buying it. Strange/weird but true.

4. A LOT of people that have no clue how to run a website will want to buy it. Be careful here because you could wind up selling your site to someone, only to get emailed hourly/daily with questions on how to do this, and how to do that. If you are selling smaller sites like I do, you can kiss your profit goodbye given the amount of your time they will take up with questions.

5. Selling a site is like selling a used car.  You will spend your time talking about the great things about your site, and buyers that contact you will spend their time talking about how your traffic is declining, profit is declining, etc, etc, even though it isn't true at all. Btw, I find this is the mark of a true buyer as well. People that really want to buy your site, will be the ones that are most critical of it. If they aren't being critical, chances are they are just trying to extract information for use elsewhere.

 There you have it, some things to watch for that will happen if you decide to sell your website, so prepare for it!

web development