Date: 2008-04-02 00:39 Subject: Some April fools back in January Security: Public

While searching for something else, I just came across this blog entry which was apparently written late january: MySQL: the harpooned dolphin

It is, of course, fairly ill informed and full of errors. I won't even bother going through it all.
Actually, I can't for the life of me work out whether that site is satirical or for real. Looking through some of the more recent posts (election stuff), I'm wondering whether it might actually be real and is authored by some fanatical American republican zealot going nuts online. Or it's some smart person doing a real good impersonation of such a nut. Who knows...

Hmm, the site appears to be running Wordpress and PHP on Linux, and there's phpinfo() output somewhere with a modified PHP logo showing a seal. So, satire after all? Very well done in that case, but scary...

Date: 2008-04-02 11:30 Subject: Dolphins head to Sun Security: Public

So that's what happened after the "So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish".... congrats to Steve Curry (honorary Australian!), Zack Urlocker, Marten Mickos and the rest of the gang who pulled this stunt at Sun HQ. I think it was good clean fun. Check out the video, too. I hear that Sun employees took good care of the 500 dolphins, leaving nothing to clean up.

Looking at the photos on PicassaWeb, I wonder about one thing... browse here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ZUrlocker/DolphinStunt/photo#5184192254851634418 [sorry I can't make the photo show up here with such a url and anything else just downloads it] and consider, why is my good friend and MySQL QA wizard Omer BarNir bothering with a Groucho mask? By nature, he already has suitable glasses, the jewish nose, and respectable eyebrows ;-)

Date: 2008-04-02 11:44 Subject: Joomla! CMS & Freeway eCommerce Security: Public

There was a Joomla! CMS user group meeting in Brisbane yesterday (yes on April 1st but no joke), which featured Joomla!'s main man Andrew Eddie, another core developer Sam Moffatt. It was a good meeting (food & drink was provided, which always helps too). Installation of Joomla! is a breeze, and I'm told that it's now powering 2% of sites around the world now.

A lot of skilled web developers use it, but that's not the reason for the high uptake. It appears that "ordinary users" with little or no web experience are able to install and use Joomla! effectively to set up their little websites, and that is quite an accomplishment. In that context, it's perhaps similar to PHP in the web scripting sphere, and MySQL in the database realm (although one might say that SQLite is even easier in specific contexts).

There was also a brief demo of Freeway, a GPL licensed eCommerce package that also supports services, events, subscriptions, and much more. It offers migration options to move from either osCommerce (which is what it's derived from, years back) and XenCart. There's also some neat integration between Joomla! and Freeway, which although only a few months old looks very good!
And I've heard that Freeway is actually working towards certifying for the new VISA security and auditing requirements; that's just excellent, with so many web shops out there (and growing all the time), keeping it all safe is a concern that needs to be addressed. NetRegistry recently announced that it was adopting Freeway as its favourite eCommerce solution.

Freeway is sponsored by Zac-Ware, a Brisbane (Australia) based company led by Damian Hickey.
And did you know that Andrew Eddie is based in Toowoomba (few hours west of Brisbane).
Two interesting Queensland exports I'm keeping an eye on!

Date: 2008-04-02 12:42 Subject: Web usability and business success Security: Public

An update slightly related to my previous post today. Yesterday I was organising something through a site in the US, which uses a rich Flash app somewhere in the process. Didn't want to work with Mac's Safari, so I tried Firefox 2. Someone else recommended trying Firefox 3 (beta 4) so I did, and that worked somewhat but not sufficiently for me to complete.

So, I went to another company instead where the equivalent app did work, ordered there, and all done. The first company actually lost my business because of this. I told them of the original problem, got a nice email response this morning, after which I gave them the feedback of how I had to work around it in the end (it was US night time so noone to call - if I could've even been bothered... the competitor had similar pricing).

The other company did have one glitch in their payment process, even though the form allowed for overseas billing addresses, it still insisted on me selecting a US state anyway. So in that form I live in Kenmore QLD, CA 4069. Wrote 'em a note about that... minor issue but I hope they fix it.