Getting started with Kentico’s Data Query API can be a bit confusing, even if you’ve read the help and a few blog posts. The examples online are often quite basic, and when you need to implement more complex queries (or run into unexpected errors doing something you thought was simple), it can be time consuming and frustrating. I’m sharing a collection of Kentico Data Query API examples which could be useful for you.
Volunteering at the GovHack Melbourne Open Data Hackathon
Open Data, Open Government and Civic Tech are super interesting to me, and I’ve had my eye on the Open Knowledge Foundation‘s GovHack event for a few years now. GovHack is a competitive hackathon run across Australia and New Zealand, using open data published by all levels of government. This year everything lined up in terms of my location and availability, and I decided to get involved. Being a hackathon n00b and knowing very little, I decided not to compete, and instead signed up to volunteer at the Melbourne event. Volunteering at the hackathon turned out to be a brilliant idea (well done, past Carly!).
Australian Free Range Eggs: Augmented Reality to the Rescue?
Yes, I didn’t expect it either. Eggs and augmented reality? I promise I’m not talking about free ranging your Pokemon. There’s an AR app that can help you identify free range egg brands. Who knew?!
Historical Maps of Melbourne
Last night I had the pleasure of attending Night School: Historical Maps of Melbourne, a free event by Melbourne Library Service. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and was curious about both the event and Boyd Community Hub. I was delighted with the Hub, the relaxed vibe, the enthusiasm and humour of the hosts Natalie and Ivy, and the open dialogue with the others in the audience. And pleasure of pleasures: all of the presented material is available online and free to the public! Not just a list of maps, but high res maps and in some cases even interactive map tools and full scans of map books. Oh, the joy!
Coworking on the Island of Koh Lanta, Thailand: Kohub.
On the small island of Lanta, off the west coast of Thailand, there’s Kohub: an increasingly well-known coworking space which suggests you trade your office for tropical coworking, and a magnet for digital nomads in South East Asia. How could I not try it?
[The above image is released under Creative Commons, credit to Thai National Parks, via Wikimedia]
Microsoft Flow – an alternative to IFTTT and Zapier
A few days ago, Microsoft decided to release a preview of Flow – their alternative to IFTTT and, I guess, Zapier. This seemed like a very interesting thing to do, and a little un-Microsoft-like. But then, Microsoft have been quite un-Microsoft-like lately. I was curious about this new service, so I had a poke around.
Have you secured your Kentico Reporting module?
If you haven’t set a connection string for your Reporting module, some of your Kentico administrators can run database-changing SQL on your site. Don’t worry! This security concern is easily fixed, and you can do it on your site now – it only takes a few minutes.
Coworking in Phuket: Blu Monkey Phang Nga Rd, Phuket Town
In Phuket Town, Blu Monkey Phang Nga Road is a modern hotel and coworking space. I checked it out in January 2016 to see if it was a good place for a digital nomad to live and get some work done while enjoying Thailand.
The Patch Verb in Web API 2 with JSON
I wanted to use Patch to update a single field on a large object in a .NET 4.6 Web API 2 project, and realised I’d somehow never implemented a Patch verb before (I know, right?). This seemed like the perfect time to learn.
Conditional tabs in Kentico’s content admin UI
Kentico 8’s Admin UI control is pretty flexible – you can easily add pages to any part of the admin area. Here’s a quick walk through on how you can add a tab to the content area and make sure it only displays for a specific page type.
Where we want our new tab