Globe Dashboard Experiment

While browsing through the Web, I've recently found interesting collection of experimental web apps from Google, built using HTML5, WebGl, and other technologies.  I was amazed by the WebGl Globe application - an open platform for geographic data visualization.

Nearly at the same time, Sitecore announced Digital Marketing System 2.0 with optimized analytics API, new dashboards and reports.

Today we'll create a delicious cocktail from newest technologies and tools. Let's take some WebGl and mix it with jQuery, put it into Sitecore DMS and add some DatePickers from jQuery UI. Add a few pieces of WCF Service and transfer into the Shared Source.

Mobile Device Detector - Performance

The last blog post about Mobile Device Detector was so popular, that I've decided to post updates and some results of performance profiling without delays.

WURFL-based mobile device detection for Sitecore CMS

Mobile web browsing is so popular nowadays, that I was confused by the fact that there is no plug'n'play mobile detection solution for Sitecore and many people still use odd code like "if(userAgent.Contains('iPhone')...".
The best mobile device database is WURFL, and it has a great .NET API from 51 Degrees... so what are we waiting for? Let's create a new module!

Visualizing Sitecore Roles Inheritance

Have you ever needed to review the security model of existing website? If yes, then you probably know how to use the Role Manager and "Member of" / "Members" buttons, or extract roles information via API. But how to get the quick summary if there is a hundred of roles? If A1 is a member of A2 where A2 also has members A3, A4, ... Can't imagine? -Visualize it!

Persona Changer update - testing any personalization rules in a few clicks!

Some time ago, we've got amazing Shared Source module called “Persona Changer” from Steve Green. Testing personalized websites became much easier in a very user-friendly way.

Live visitor tracking with Sitecore OMS and Bing Maps

Real-time information delivery is the one of the most important elements of our online experience. When information being available at the moment it's produced, you can act really quickly and efficiently. That is why the words "live", "instant", "real-time" are so popular in modern web applications.
There are lot of fun apps that show people's tweets, photo galleries on the map, but how about getting similar(and useful) app for your own website?
If it's build on Sitecore, it's incredibly easy. You just need to create a UI and a service that will retrieve your data.

In this post I'll show how to create application that will show Web Forms submissions on your website using Bing Maps.

Count users online with Sitecore OMS

When you have a web application, you might want to know how many users are currently online. If you have visited some of web online forums you can see (usually on the first page) the number of currently online users.
This information might be also used to postpone some website jobs if there are too many users online, etc.
How do we know / count how many sessions or users are currently connected to our website in Sitecore?