A few weeks ago I was asked to come up with a solution for sending out outlook meeting requests through our membership emailing server ( which has no ties to exchange ).

The solution I came up with was to embed a hyperlink in the email using a meeting I had created and used the 'Save As' option on to create a linkable file.

After a little research and some help from Wikipedia I found out we have quite a few options to play with in the requests.

Creating this file is super easy; if you already have outlook you can create a meeting as you normally would but instead of a simple save you choose the 'Save As' option and make sure you get a .ics file as the result.

If you do not have Outlook but you do have notepad or any other simple text editor you can copy and paste the code above and save it as "something.ics". After you save it anyone with Outlook can double click the meeting request and save it to their calendar.

Create Meeting Requests Manually

The structure of the request is pretty straight forward, it has opening and closing "tags" and properties to set such as a summary, and start / end date.

You can copy and paste the following code into your requests without worrying about what it does, and paste your custom properties in where I have marked [custom properties].

Custom Properties

Location

Location is easy-peasy!

Start / End Date and Time

Meeting start / end date and time is fairly straight forward although I had to play around with the time as it appears to be offset for me by five hours. As an entire string it looks like the following:

This means the meeting starts 05/20/2010 @ 12:00:00 AM and ends 05/20/2010 @ 7:00:00 AM. You can keep changing the time until you get it correct.

Written out in easy-on-the-eye format would look more like this YYYYMMDD T HHMMSS Z, or 2010/05/20 T 12:00:00 Z ( May 20th, 2010 @ 12:00:00 PM ).


Subject

The next property is summary or subject to everyone else. I think this code is pretty self explantory

Meeting Description

Last on our simple meeting request is the meeting description; again this is very simple and should be straight forward.

Optional Extensions

All Day Event

Paste this code right below the description property and your calendar item will be automatically marked as an all day event.

This is really all you need to get up and going; if you want to find out more information and what iCalendar can really do check out the Wikipedia entry here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar. iCalendar can go way beyond a simple meeting request and practically do everything Outlook's calendar request can, have fun!

For the last year I have been listening to the podcasts from managertools.com. The show focuses on developing your self in the business world to become a more effective manager, leader, and employee. They have an amazing amount of information and a highly active community full of professionals that you should not wait to jump into.

I have tried my best to put their discussions into use in my own career ( as an employee not a manager ), and without a doubt have changed my appearance with staff and have built relationships that before were just not possible. To one-up my new self I have also added a great deal of confidence as I now feel I know how to better deal with an amazing amount of situations.

The site has two sections, my favorite happens to be the career tools section as it pertains more to me as a grunt. The manager tools section is my insight into the leadership roles of an organization and I am learning all that I can from it to better prepare me for the day I step into the big shoes. Both sections are equally valuable to me as it lets me push myself further as a staff worker and push my knowledge on groups and projects in a more leadership-based position.

A series I would highly recommend would be the DiSC model, this tool is invaluable to everyone; if you want to start improving your relationships and feedback this is a must.

• Improve Your Feedback With DiSC
• DiSC Model ( PDF )
• The "D" in DiSC
• The "I" in DiSC
• The "S" in DiSC
• The "C" in DiSC

Don't pass up this site, it is one of the best things to help out your career!

I've officially started up my independent web development side-business. I am hoping to bring quite a few small businesses into the present with a simple, cost-effective package that provides them with a presence on the web.

The package is a really great deal; for $250.00 the clients get up to six pages with a custom theme, a free year of hosting on my VPS, and free domain registration for a year.

Click here to get all the details!

I've been messing around with positioning a footer at the bottom of a page for a few hours now and finally after trial and error have a workable solution that seems to be cross browser compliant.

My first thoughts were to absolutely position the footer element at the bottom of the page, but I knew that it would overlap content if the viewport was too small. I messed around with it for awhile playing with margins, heights, and padding with little success. The final result ended up being a combination of previous attempts minus the absolute positioning, and we found a winner!

The basic run down goes a little something like this

The cool part is that this works in IE6-8, Safari, and Firefox. The key components to cross browser compliance are the height attributes. The height 100% attributes of html and body are inherited by IE and mimic ( by bug? ) the min-height attribute stretching the wrapper element the entire length of the viewport.

The spacer element along side the negative margin attribute ( make sure that both numbers match ) help to offset the footer and keep it snuggled at the bottom of the page.

Why does it seem like some of the worst things happen to the absolutely most undeserving people? How many times have we seen a child with brain cancer, a single mother of three with terminal breast cancer doing all that she can to keep fighting for her family, or your own father diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. Unfortunately for us the later is the story for Mark, an amazing man, one of those undeserving individuals that should never spend a second of their life suffering for anything.

On Friday January 15, 2010 our father Mark was diagnosed with colon cancer while visiting the hospital for kidney stone pains; to push that knife a little deeper into our hearts we were also told that it has spread to his stomach and liver which are both inoperable.

The doctors sent him off for emergency surgery that occurred a couple days later where nine inches of colon was removed along with bits and pieces that were attached to his stomach. His recovery from the surgery was amazingly quick ( he passed three kidney stones while on the pain medication so he was ecstatic about that also ), and ten days later he was up and about like nothing had happened.

We need to meet with the oncologist to find out the details for the next phase of treatment, but we do know that it will include six months of chemotherapy where he will receive two day-long doses of the drugs pumped into his body through a port they installed in his chest.

We have reached out to everyone we know, and they have reached even further. Before www.prayersformark.com was built we had been tracking the prayers on a printed map and received at least one prayer from every state in the united states and more than twenty countries from around the world. Knowing so many strangers ( at the time ) were thinking about him, and took the time to say a little prayer, even for someone they didn't know is an amazing feeling that has made each day so much more enjoyable and easier.

Our spirits have been greatly lifted by all the support we have received and it is physically possible to see how much it has helped our father; to try and keep the high rolling, prayersformark.com was created for him to stop by and see how many people really do love and support him.

Thank you all for your support, love, and prayers, they have not gone unheard and have changed the lives of an entire family. If you would like to show your support stop by www.prayersformark.com and leave a little remark for him or our family, we would all greatly appreciate it. God bless you all, and may you and your family stay strong and healthy.