The ezPalm Blog

It’s gonna happen whether you like it or not. Your beloved collection of treasured VHS tapes will soon be sitting next to your 8 Track tapes and vinyl record albums. It is a format that is slowly, but surely, coming to its demise. The replacement? DVDs, of course. By basic definition, the DVD is an acronym for digital versatile disc, and by rapidly growing in popularity, this optical disc is making DVD duplication a growing market as well.

Thanks to smaller, more powerful and more affordable chips, technology of every variety that once was available to only the largest corporations is now within reach of nearly any size business, and many consumers for home usage. First it was computers and digital printers–now DVD duplication systems have become an affordable commodity.

DVD duplication is a awesome technology. If you want an extra copy of a movie you bought, or want to produce backup copies of your games, DVD’s or VHS tapes, this is your solution. DVD duplication is similar to the process used to print information on a CD. It’s a burn-and-print technology that involves very little set-up and is quite simple using some of the new software that is currently available.

The technology to reproduce DVDs, once available to productions studios and giant corporations, is now available at affordable prices for businesses and organizations both large and small. Churches, in particular, are using this new media technology. “In the past, churches recorded sermons and music on cassette,” recalls Tony van Veen, Disc Makers’ Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “These tapes often lacked quality and took hours, even days, to reproduce. Today, with consumer demand for quality, and the popularity of DVDs, churches must embrace this new technology or risk falling behind.”

Even if you do not want to become and independent film maker, DVD duplication is useful for a multitude of reasons. Maybe you would like to create a training product demonstration, a Power Point presentation for work, or make a how-to-video to help employees understand new software. Perhaps you want to video the annual company softball game/picnic and give copies to everyone. Or you would like to provide a DVD of your wedding ceremony to each of your guests. With prices starting below $1,600, these new technical marvels are fast becoming a main stay in many businesses.

A money-saving word of advice: DVD duplication and DVD-ROM replication sound similar, but there is an important distinction. The burn-and-print duplication process is the way to go for short runs–usually fewer than 1,000 copies. However, if you are a major player and need more than 1,000 copies duplication will end up being an expensive choice. DVD-ROM replication is a more cost effective method of producing large quantities. The company you select will produce a “master” disc, then “press” copies that are perfect duplicates of your original.

Another tip: DVDs are not immortal. The thin aluminum layer that reflects the light of the player’s laser, is susceptible to oxidation which causes the discs to “rot”. Never use off-the-shelf markers or ball point pens to write on the discs or labels. Most markers contain chemicals which create oxidation, allows air to penetrate the aluminum, which is eaten up much like iron rusts in open air. Special pens are now sold which are made specifically for writing on media.

Whether you choose to purchase your own DVD duplication system or “farm out” your project to a professional duplication service be sure to do some comparison shopping. No matter what your project or how many copies you need, there is the precise product or service out there for you.

About the Author

Larry Denton is a retired history teacher having taught 33 years at Hobson High in Hobson, Montana. He is currently Vice President of Elfin Enterprises, Inc., an Internet business providing information and resources on a variety of topics. For a control
room full of information, resources and suggestions about DVD duplication visit, http://www.DVDDuplicationSpot.com

Drought is usually talked about as single event. In reality, there are two types of drought: agricultural and hydrologic. Drought is further defined by its duration.

The earth’s water or hydrologic cycle is a closed system, meaning the water is never lost. The rainfall we lack is a surplus somewhere else on the planet, either above ground, below ground or in the atmosphere. Rather than a spontaneous change in the weather, drought is the cumulative affect of moisture deficit. The cumulative affect also works to relieve drought.

Last year’s rainfall was close to normal across the West River plains - certainly better than the year before - and that is starting a positive accumulation of moisture. There is at least hope that the drought will be overcome by additional moisture this year.

The Black Hills, however, remained very dry last year and suffered a net loss of moisture. This winter’s snow-pack was minimal and they are starting the wet season with a cumulative loss of moisture. That is not a good position to be in.

Agricultural drought is the most familiar type of drought and it can vary in duration from a few weeks to a few years. Plants do not have enough moisture when this type of drought occurs. Agricultural drought can be remedied when there is enough rainfall to bring moisture several feet into the soil.

Hydrologic drought has a more significant impact on society because it affects reservoir levels as well as the amount of water in underground storage or aquifers. Hydrologic drought occurs during long dry spells and it takes a much longer time to recover. Rainfall and snowmelt must drain into reservoirs and seep deep down into the earth to reach aquifers.

It is very important to understand the context when you talk about drought.

Agricultural drought is more common and its visual affects are clearer than hydrologic drought. It is easier to see parched soil, dry stock dams and withered plants than peer down into limestone aquifers. We identify with agricultural drought because it dries up our lawns and forces livestock producers to buy hay because pasture grass will not grow. We become aware of hydrologic drought when wells cannot keep up with demand and springs dry up.

I still think that the West River plains will see significant improvement this year. The higher elevations of the Black Hills, eastern Wyoming and eastern Montana are a different story because they still very dry.

The dry condition of the Black Hills is even more troublesome because a lot of the rain and snow received at the high elevations is used to recharges aquifers. Therefore, the drought in the Black Hills has a far-reaching impact.

I am devoting the month of April to exploring the impact of drought on you and me. I will dispel myths about how long it takes to recover from drought and suggest ways you can help minimize the impact of drought. I will also take the bull by the horns and answer that burning question: Is there ever enough rain?

About the Author

Chris Orr is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist with more than 25 years of experience. His private practice includes work as an expert witness, weather forecasting and forecaster training. His column appears in the Rapid City Journal every Sunday. He can be contacted at weather@rapidwx.com or through his Web site www.rapidwx.com .

If you have ever tried loading a large number of records into a drop down box you know that this can significantly slow down the page. A great solution is DbCombo (www.dbcombo.com). DbCombo is a managed ASP.Net control that uses a datasource to auto complete and display matching results in a drop-down box without using a page postback.

The data is provided from the datasource dynamically so you can virtually have an unlimited number of results returned. This is all done without sacrificing the speed of your application. Can you imagine loading 100,000 records into a standard box? It is virtually impossible but DbCombo can easily handle this and it’s literally done in a matter of seconds.

If you have visitors that use your site with older browsers there is no need to be concerned about compatibility. DbCombo gracefully degrades to HTML 3.2 on older browsers without losing any functionality. In the degraded state a postback is necessary but it all happens dynamically without having to write additional code.

For the advanced developer DbCombo contains over 40 properties. There are also numerous JavaScript functions that allow you to interact with DbCombo on your page and do things like easily get the selected text or reset the control. These properties and functions allow the component to be easily customized for a variety of needs.

DbCombo is easy enough to use that even casual developers can incorporate it into their site and it only takes a small amount of code to get it working. Here’s a simple example of how to include this powerful control in your page.

First you need to create a file called DbComboServer.aspx and place it in the root of your site or application. This file is needed in order for DbCombo to work properly and is in addition to the page(s) that you are going to actually use DbCombo on. Delete anything from the file that might have been automatically generated from your editor and replace it with the following:

<%@ Page AutoEventWireup="false" Inherits="Cambro.Web.DbCombo.ServerPage" %>

Important: The above line is the only thing that should be in that file. If your editor created a code behind page for DbComboServer.aspx you can also delete that. It isn’t used or needed.

Next you need to ensure that DbCombo will work on the production server. Add the following inside the tag of your web.config and replace REGISTRATION KEY with the one you were provided. If you are testing locally on your development machine you can leave this as is or leave the registration key blank.

If you happen to have a hosting provider that provides the license key already, you don’t need to add this to web.config. ORCS Web (www.orcsweb.com) provides dbcombo at no charge for all shared hosting accounts so it isn’t necessary to add this to your web.config. The component along with the .xml file also needs to be uploaded to the /bin folder of the site. If your site is hosted with a hosting company they can place these files into your /bin folder for you.

At the top of the page where you are going to use DbCombo, you need to add the following lines:

<%@ Register TagPrefix="DbCombo" Namespace="Cambro.Web.DbCombo"
Assembly=”Cambro.Web.DbCombo” %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Data.OleDb" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Data.SqlClient" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Data" %>

Add the following between the tags of the page to add a Server Method. Make sure you change the connection string and query to reflect your settings as indicated in the comments below.

Add the following to place an instance of DbCombo wherever you desire on the page: Note: Since this is an ASP.Net component it needs to be inside of a

tag.

You now have a functioning DbCombo control on your page. You should install the latest version on your development machine to test with before uploading it to a live production server. You can get the latest here: http://www.dbcombo.com/download.aspx. The download includes over 15 various demos and tutorials along with a comprehensive help file and a user manual. The manual is thorough and includes code samples in VB.Net and C# to get you up to speed quickly.

Rick Barber is a support specialist with ORCS Web, Inc. - a company that provides managed hosting services for clients who develop and deploy their applications on Microsoft Windows platforms.

About the Author

Rick Barber is a support specialist with ORCS Web, Inc. - a company that provides managed hosting services for clients who develop and deploy their applications on Microsoft Windows platforms.