Marcie, my ConnectAround business partner and I did a guest post over at Women 2.0!

Head on over there and read what we have to say about

Navigating an Unsexy Market Through the Sexy Startupsphere

My site is secure!

The process of getting a wildcard SSL cert from GoDaddy installed on AppHarbor took me much longer than it should have. I’m a web dev, so SSL stuff is pretty new to me. Usually a Google search will fix me right up but no one had outlined the entire process from beginning to end so I had to patch it together. Here’s how it works… hope this saves you some time.

Step 1 – Generate Your CSR

First, I had to generate a CSR (certificate signing request) on my local machine’s IIS. This part is where I got tripped up for a while because I didn’t realize that I had to do it on my local machine so I kept looking for how to do this on AppHarbor. Once I realized I had to generate it locally, it was pretty easy. Follow the instructions given by GoDaddy for IIS 7 or IIS 5 or 6. If you’re using a wildcard SSL, pay special attention to those instructions. Also, leave the Console1 window open where you add the intermediate certificate. You’ll need it later.

Then, I had to find the generated CSR file… I have IIS 7 and Windows 7 and it ended up in this folder: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools

Step 2 – Add Your CSR to GoDaddy

Open your CSR in Notepad or TextPad.

Head over to GoDaddy and go to manage your SSL Certificates. At first, my newly purchased certificate didn’t appear to be there. So I called and they said it was in the “credits” folder even though it said 0 next to it. So, I clicked “credits” and then a “Click here” to update your list link and it magically appeared. Bad job GoDaddy…

Paste the CSR file contents (all of it) into the Godaddy screen where it asks for the CSR. Click all the way through. You should be seeing big green checks as you click through and then it will say you’re good to go.

Step 3 – Complete Your Certificate on Local IIS

Now, still in GoDaddy’s SSL Cert management, click on your certificates folder and you should see your certificate. Click its name and then click the download link above it. Choose your IIS and download.

Then, go back to your local IIS and complete the certificate signing. Instructions are on GoDaddy’s page – here for IIS 5 or 6 and here for IIS 7. Note – do not “bind” or assign the certificate to any of your local sites. Skip that part of the instruction (its at the end).

Step 4 – Generate pfx file

Now, still in your IIS, right click on your certificate and choose export. Choose a filename and location and a password.

Step 5 – Upload your pfx file to AppHarbor

Head over to AppHarbor and your application. Click on the ‘Certificates’ link on the left. Choose pfx file and upload the file you created in step 4.

Step 6 – Generate an Intermediate Certificate

Export the Intermediate Certificate

This one was documented NO WHERE! Grrr…

Go back to the Console1 window you opened back in step 1. Find your GoDaddy certificate, right click, and choose All Tasks –> Export.

Click through the welcome window and choose Base-64 encoded X .509 (.CER). Note: I tried doing the pb7 option and it didn’t work.

Click Next. Choose a file path and name and click ‘Next’. Then click ‘Finish’ on the confirmation page.

Step 7 – Add Intermediate Certificate to AppHarbor

Head back to your app on AppHarbor and click Certificates on the left nav. Magically, a link will appear to add an intermediate certificate. Click it then click “Add a New Intermediate Certificate”. Open the certificate file you created in Step 6 in Notepad and cut and paste the contents into the AppHarbor window. Save it.

Step 8 – Verify it Worked

That’s it! You’re done and should now be able to navigate to https://yourdomain.com! But just to be sure, head on over to http://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-checker.html and enter your url to see if it worked!

RequireHttps Attribute

Out of the box, the standard MVC RequireHttps Attribute won’t work. This is because Https is terminated at the load balancer level on AppHarbor as explained by rune at AppHarbor support. He also very kindly created a custom RequireHttpsAttribute class to fix the problem. Head over to https://gist.github.com/915869 and grab the code. Thanks rune!

I wanted everything to be https so I added the custom RequireHttpsAttribute to my global filters and now all is well in the world of https on AppHarbor! See for yourself at https://demo.connectaround.com

PS – Don’t forget to make all your external links (such as using Google’s hosted jquery libraries/fonts/etc) point to https versions or your https won’t be pretty and green in the address bar.

In August 2012, I joined a startup called ConnectAround as the technical cofounder. It’s a startup focused on the We’ve been HUSTLING to make stuff happen and it’s been incredibly interesting.

Read a little more about us or better yet, check out the site.

What is ConnectAround?

ConnectAround is a private online network where residents and staff in large active lifestyle adult communities can connect and communicate. Outsiders are not permitted to view any information.

Who is ConnectAround for?

ConnectAround is designed specifically for 55+ active adults who would like to create more connections within their lifestyle communities. It is also designed to be a great communication tool for the administration and management.

What are ConnectAround’s intentions?

Our vision is to promote active lifestyles by revealing people, opportunities, and activities that are in your neighborhood. We do this providing a safe, online website that only includes neighbors, places, and events in your community. We protect you from outsiders and scams.

Test of IronMQ on Rackspace Cloud Sites

Ah, messaging. How fun is it? So fun! I went looking for a great messaging system to handle my small messaging needs (20-50k/day tops) and found RabbitMQ. It looks amazing! However, I’ve chosen to host on Rackspace Cloud Sites which means that I don’t have the ability to add RabbitMQ. What’s a dev to do?

Well, I could create my own cloud server just for RabbitMQ. Bleh. I don’t want to do that… it defeats the whole purpose of paying for my elastic cloud sites.

So, I did what every good dev does. I turned to Google. And Google sent me to Iron.IO which “provides hosted message queue, worker, scheduling, and cache services. No servers required.” Nice! I checked out their sell page, dev center, and pricing. There is a comparison chart and it looked like it would handle my needs at a price I could handle. (250,000 message requests per month free with each additional 10k requests costing a penny)

But would the MQ service work on Rackspace Cloud Sites? A simple test was in order.

I’m happy to report that it works! You can see an example at http://ironmq.zeetestsite.com

How I Tested

1. Create an Iron.IO account
2. Start a new Iron MQ project
3. Start new VS2010 Empty MVC project
4. Downloaded the Official IronMQ .NET Library from Github
5. Opened that Official Library and built the project with the release settings
6. Moved the Official Library dll to my project’s bin folder
7. Added a reference to the Official Library dll
8. Add deployable dependencies to my project (this is for Rackspace)
9. Added config items for the IronMQ token, project id, and host in my web.config file. I left the host empty there and created an override in my web.release.config file with the actual string – “mq-rackspace-dfw.iron.io”
10. Coded up a test controller and simple index page to click and view the results.
11. Ran it locally and all worked!
12. Created a new subdomain on and existing url I have at Rackspace Cloud Sites
13. Deployed via ftp to Rackspace Cloud Sites
14. Tested on Rackspace! It worked like a charm!

Source code is on github: https://github.com/monicabirdsong/test-ironmq-.net-mvc-rackspace

A Few Things to Note

• The sell page of the IronMQ had the only .NET examples. The page where you “get started” on your Iron.IO MQ project doesn’t have .NET. Hopefully they add that soon.
• They give you an iron.json file to download and use but I didn’t use it. It contains the token and project id. I just put them in my web.config files.
• They promise real-time queue sized but that’s not what I saw. During testing, none of my messages or my queue appeared on the Iron.IO activity interface.  It took 2+ hours for them to appear.
• It looks like when you don’t specify a host, it uses AWS since several of my messages showed up under that host. Interesting as I don’t have an AWS account.
• Each get “reserves” the message for a configurable amount of time and the default is one minute. The documentation says that but I had to go specifically looking for it so I thought I’d make a note of it.
• There’s an unofficial library for the Iron.io API that I didn’t use but looks interesting.

Hope that helps you if you were wondering about IronMQ on Rackspace Cloud Sites! Now I’m off to code the actual stuff I want my messaging service to do! Comments are always welcome.

This month’s See Magazine is all about the power of compassion. It’s definitely worth your time to read.

My article this month focuses on Startup Weekend. What happens during the weekend and what happens when you win!

Here’s a sneak peek:

“I think you guys might be the dark horse”, Chris declared on Sunday morning as he checked out my team. Turns out he was right… We won Startup Weekend.

 

Startup Weekend is a 54-hour competition where 100 people turn ideas into companies.

 

Here’s how it works. On Friday night, everyone that has an idea pitches. Then, we vote and slash the ideas to around 12 that form teams. The teams work their booties off until Sunday night building a prototype and validating the market. On Sunday night, the teams pitch to the judges, a panel of successful entrepreneurs and investors.

 

Winning is a big deal.

 

Zaarly won a year ago and is now in Fast Company as one of the “Most Innovative Companies”.  The top three winners from last Startup Weekend, Look.io, Skilloop, & Omaze have all raised money and two are available to the public. LA Startup Weekend winners excel so people in the startup scene pay attention.

 

In August last year, I stressed, cursed, cried, and learned through my first Startup Weekend. My team placed fourth. Since then, I’ve started my company with Ben so I didn’t even want to go to this weekend. Ben talked me into it, saying I’d learn something. Oh my, was he right.

 

Friday night, Gregg pitched an idea for a visual shopping cart widget that would go on a single shopping site. Yawn. He asked me to join his team and I said yes only because we are friends. The rest of the team was Scott, a marketing/biz guy, Jake, another dev, and Nina, a 17 year-old with her own fashion site.

 

To the whiteboard!

 

As we were talking the idea out as a team, both Nina and I were adamant that cross-site shopping was how we really shopped online. I whipped out my “Kristi’s Wedding” doc that had multiple outfits and accessories from multiple sites to show the guys how women really shop.

For the full article, check it out in See Magazine. It starts on page 22.

Our Winning Feb 2012 LA Startup Weekend Pitch

Thanks TechZulu for making this!

Here are the Tips from Tyler We Tried to Follow

I say tried because we didn’t get them all right. Startup Weekend is fast-paced and there’s very little time to truly polish the pitch. I only had 10 minutes to practice the demo part…

The tips from Tyler are the headers and bullet points. My thoughts are in the paragraphs below each.

1) Create a Story

• Use a persona – tell a movie about John, Joe or Jane.
• What do you want the audience to think or feel a week later?
• Never say “we” or ‘I’ – use the Company Name instead.
• Keep the story dramatic.
• As a hack, use a judge/person in the room as your main character.

I think we got about half of these right. I was terrible at saying the Company name. Also, I was the persona and the presenter so I said “I” a lot. However, I think it worked well for our situation because I am also the target user and could believably tell the story of trying to online shop with my bff Liza. People related to the story and me as the teller pretty quickly. The visuals helped a lot there but if there was more time, I’d spend more time on this portion of the pitch.

2) Get Right to the Demo

• Everyone is there to see the demo.
• If your demo can’t tell its own story, you’re probably in trouble.

I think we nailed this one. We got to the demo pretty quickly and it told the story pretty well.

3) Make the Audience Feel like They are Part of the Meeting

• Make sure they are talking with you or engaged.
• Leave out some things that they can ask. They will.

4) The Q&A is a “Startup School” Gauge

• In the Q & A, they are trying to figure out where you are from Kindergarten to PhD in “startup school”
• For example, say they ask “What are you going to do when Google does it?”
  Kindergarten answer: Google wouldn’t do it.
  PhD answer: Google’s already working on it (that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be too)

I think our Q & A went pretty well. Gregg and Jake had great answers and I got a compliment from a judge on my “We have the Snazzy Bar” comment. He said it was the perfect way to handle that. Woot!

A BIG Thanks to Tyler for sharing! I know he shared more than that and I just didn’t write it down so if you ever get to hear him talk about it again, listen.

Good luck during your Startup Weekend pitch or any other pitch you give!

Also Check Out

5 Lessons from my Aug 2011 Startup Weekend

7 More Lessons from my Feb 2012 Startup Weekend

#1 – Have your Wallet Ready.
Tickets Sell Out in 10 Minutes.

Seriously, one of my friends went to get her wallet and by the time she got back, tickets had sold out! I hear that it’s not like this at all Startup Weekends but for #SWLA it is. If you want in, you better set an alarm and have your credit card handy.

#2 – Pitch your Idea

Get over your fear and pitch Friday night. You’ll regret it if you don’t because by the time you’ve listened to all the pitches you’ll find yourself thinking “My idea is better than all of those!” And remember, it’s only 60 seconds of your life and if your idea isn’t picked, you still get to work on something cool.

If you want to practice, follow the tips from Tyler on creating a story and don’t forget to mention what kind of help you need (marketing, dev, design, etc).

#3 – If You Pitched the Idea,
Lead the Team or Choose a Leader

This didn’t happen in our team but I’ve seen it in other teams at both Startup Weekends I’ve attended. The person who pitches Friday night isn’t really ready to lead a team. Maybe they are a developer that prefers to code all weekend or they hate speaking or hate taking charge. These teams flail.

If you’re that person that doesn’t want to lead, pitch anyway. Then, go find a leader for your team. You’re looking for someone cool that can listen to a lot of input make decisions fast. Maybe someone with a project manager background. And of course, someone that loves your idea.

If you do want to lead the team, then lead! Accept the responsibility. Make the decisions. Say no. Coordinate people and tasks. Make sure things are being executed with a goal of having a solid demo and presentation ready on Sunday night.

#4 – Hash out the Idea Friday Night
then Become a Secret Agent

Matthew Fox from Vantage Point or as a Startup Weekend Secret Agent

You only have TWO DAYS. There isn’t time to be brainstorming for half of it. So, set aside Friday night to brainstorm and get the ideas out. If your team isn’t agreeing, the leader needs to take charge. By the end of Friday night, you should have a game plan for getting you to winning O’s – preso with demo.

Then guard that plan like it’s the President and you’re the head of the Secret Service (black suits optional).  Your team members, investors, other entrepreneurs, and super successful people will come around and inject their thoughts into your idea. Of course these ideas will be great, these are very smart people. Listen but reject 97% of them for the weekend. Unless the suggestion totally blows your mind and it really can be done in the time you have, SAY NO. Otherwise you might find that trying to implement these ideas totally derails your ability to deliver your big O’s.

#5 – Bring Your Own Snacks and Advil

Unless you live well on Redbull and chocolate, you’re going to be outta luck. Also, it’s loud there so headache medicine is helpful. Extra points for bringing enough for your team. Triple points if you share with Avesta, Cam, Chris, Bex, Tyler, and any other organizer. Quadruple points if your snacks are from Healthy Surprise, an Aug 2011 LA Startup Weekend company that’s growing like crazy.

#6 – Learn and Teach

With such a small team trying to do so much in a short time, there’s gotta be something new for you to learn and someone that needs to learn what you know.

The other dev on my team taught me the basics of coding MongoDB, a NoSQL database. Together we learned how to deploy to AppHarbor. I taught one of my friends some new CSS tricks and helped one of my team members write her first lines of C#.

Even if you’re not a techie, there’s gotta be a business or marketing technique you can learn and/or teach. Do both.

#7 – Take Pictures and Video

So that you can write awesome blog posts and share. I forgot this time and am regretting it now!

More on #SWLA from Around the Web

Those are my tips but don’t just listen to me. Check out what others are saying.

Susan Emmer’s Experience - 10 Lessons from a SWLA Virgin

Simon Christian’s Experience of the Weekend

My Experience from the Aug 2011 SWLA 

My Experience and What Happened after Winning Feb 2012 SWLA

TechZulu’s Recap

The Official Recap from Tyler Koblasa, Startup Weekend LA Co-organizer and Founder/CEO at Mingly

All the Final Pitches

My team, Snazzy Room, starts at 1:22:48

See Magazine March 2012

It’s time for another issue of See Magazine! I just finished reading it and am so very inspired by the women featured this month.  Dr. Catherine Hamlin’s created a hospital in Africa that helps women deal with something most of us could never imagine. It stole their lives, forcing them to live in shacks as outcasts. Dr. Hamlin gives them their lives back.  [starts on page 4]

And then there’s 16 year-old Nicole Muller’s Neighbor-4-Neighbor program has helped feed so many people in need of food right here in the USA. This amazing young woman was cold-emailing governors to get her program spread to every state. [starts on page 10]

Of course, it also includes “Diary of a Startup Gal”. This month gives you an insight into my history and how it took me 4 years to figure out what I really wanted. It was a struggle and I hope you can’t relate. For those of you that can, hang in there. [starts on page 19]

There are so many great things in this magazine! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I do!

New Setup with Surf Shelf

It’s been a month since I setup my treadmill desk so I thought I’d share what I’ve learned so far.

Setup Changes with Cost and Height Updates

In the original setup, the monitors were too far away. So, I ordered a SurfShelf Treadmill Desk and Laptop Holder from Amazon and now, it’s much better. It only holds my laptop so I don’t have my second monitor. Surprisingly, I don’t miss it as much as I thought I would.

With the new surf shelf, I got to take everything back to Home Depot except the shelf for my keyboard. That made my total setup cost about $50, not including the treadmill.

A note about the right setup for you. I’m 5’1″ and the monitor and keyboard are at a perfect height for me. If you’re tall, this setup may not work for you. A 6’3″ friend used the desk and he was more comfortable using the keyboard on the laptop instead of  the one I use on the shelf across the treadmill handlebars. Of course, this meant he was looking down at the screen, which isn’t ideal. Also, the treadmill deck (mine is 55″) was a little short for him with the keyboard on a shelf across the handlebars. So, finding the right setup for you may take some adjustments.

Stats, including Weight Loss

In total, I walked 20 days out of the month. I logged a little over 65 miles which averages to 3.25 for each day that I walked. The least I walked one of those days was .6 miles. The most I walked in one day was 6.66. I almost always walk at 1 mph since I’ve found it’s the best rate for me.

I’m estimating that I burn about 125 calories per mile walked, therefore 65 miles is 8125 calories burned. Since 1 lb = 3500 calories, I should have lost about 2.3 lbs. I lost a little more than that, around 4 pounds. I think that’s because my cravings have changed so I’ve been eating differently. It’s weird but when I walk for a long time on the treadmill, I’m not as hungry that day. And when I am hungry, I crave meat and veggies instead of my normal sugar cravings.

Other Observations

Besides the change in my cravings, I’ve noticed a few other things that are interesting.

• My skin looks much healthier. I haven’t been wearing makeup as much lately because I don’t feel like I need to… and I’ve had men comment on how good my skin or makeup looks! Woot!
• I’m sleeping much better. I’ve always been a good sleeper but in the past month, I’ve noticed I feel ready to sleep at bedtime instead of staying up watching tv or reading. As a result, I wake up much more refreshed.
• I have more energy overall. That’s been really great.
• My knees don’t hurt as much as they did when I was sitting all day. Now, if I sit for too long, my bootie starts hurting!
• I shower more often.  Since I work from home, if I wasn’t meeting people, I might skip showing for the day. That doesn’t happen if I log several hours on the treadmill.

Overall, it’s been awesome! I really, really love my treadmill desk and recommend it to anyone that can do it.

FAQs

People have been asking me all kinds of questions so I’m going to answer them here. If you have more questions, write it in the comment and I’ll do my best to answer it.

How fast do you walk?

I’ve tried several speeds and 1 mph works well for me. At that pace, I don’t really notice that I’m walking and it doesn’t affect what I’m doing.

What is the fastest you can go and still actually do something?

2.5 mph is the fastest for me. Faster than that and I can’t read.

Aren’t you distracted by the walking?

Sometimes. I find that I can easily do stuff I have figured out but if I need to think or solve a serious problem, I have to stop the treadmill. Other than that, it’s not distracting at all.

How loud is it?

It’s not that loud. There’s a low hum the entire time, sorta like white noise. It’s not distracting and I don’t usually turn my music up any higher than I used to. I’ve also done speaker phone calls without a problem.

Does it make your electric bill go up?

If it does, it’s not significant. My electric bill for the month I had the treadmill was less than the previous month (and I was out of town for a full week the previous month). However, I haven’t been in this apartment for over a year so I can’t compare to last year’s bill.

Can you  really get work done or just surf the web?

You can really get stuff done. A lot of it actually. I’ve been very productive in this month, launching and supporting 3 different websites, one that was fully coded during that time. I think the treadmill desk helps with productivity.

That’s it for now! If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments.

First, the URL is wrong. The base should be http://www.imnicamail.com/v4/api.php – not what they have listed.

Second, if you use the JSON result, they add a “true(” to the beginning and “)” at the end (both without quotes). Again, no where in their documentation.

Third, you need the List ID, not the name. While this is mentioned, it’s confusing and sorta hard to find if you’re not technically inclined. Here’s how you find it. Navigate to you list and then grab it off the url. Show in this screenshot:

So, I thought I’d try and save you some time and give you the code I used to integrate as I didn’t find any when I googled.

Here it is. You’ll need to get a JSON deserializer, I used SimpleJson which you can install with NuGet.

One more note: This will return true if the user is a new subscriber or already subscribed.

//API Reference: http://support.imnica.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=32&nav=0,4
private bool ImnicaSubscribe(string email, string listID)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(email) || string.IsNullOrEmpty(listID))
    {
	return false;
    }

    //This variable is specific to Rackspace Cloud Sites, you may want to use another
    string ip = string.IsNullOrEmpty(Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_CLUSTER_CLIENT_IP"]) ? "127.0.0.1" : Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_CLUSTER_CLIENT_IP"].Trim().ToLower();

    string url = "http://www.imnicamail.com/v4/api.php";
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    sb.Append("Command=Subscriber.Subscribe&ResponseFormat=JSON&JSONPCallBack=true&ListID=");
    sb.Append(listID);
    sb.Append("&EmailAddress=");
    sb.Append(email);
    sb.Append("&IPAddress=");
    sb.Append(ip);

    string sret = string.Empty;

    try
    {
	WebClient client = new WebClient();
	client.Headers["Content-type"] = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
	byte[] bret = client.UploadData(url, "POST", System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(sb.ToString()));
	sret = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(bret);

	//Imnicamail likes to wrap its JSON in a "true()" so let's remove it
	if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(sret) && sret.Length > 7) 
	{
	    int l = sret.Length - 6;
	    sret = sret.Substring(5, l);
	}
	else
	{
	    throw new Exception("value returned is formatted incorrectly = " + sret);
	}

	//Deserialize the JSON
	dynamic a = SimpleJson.SimpleJson.DeserializeObject(sret);
	if (a["Success"])
	{
	     return true;
	}
	else if (!a["Success"] && a["ErrorCode"] == 9) //9 is already subscribed so it's ok
	{
	    return true;
	}
	else
	{
	    throw new Exception("Imnica Mail Exception - " + a.ErrorCode);
	}
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {   
	//log for manual investigation
    }

    return false;
}

Hope that helps! If you can make the code better, please feel free to leave it in the comments.