Archive for April, 2008

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New jobs board at jobs.webdevradio.com

April 29th, 2008

I’ve been meaning to do this some time, and finally found the time to do it – jobs.webdevradio.com is up and functional (though quite empty at this point!) One of the things I mentioned on my podcast (webdevradio.com) one more than one occasion is that I tend to attract recruiters. Rather than just politely decline, I thought offering a web board focused on web development jobs would be more useful. Yes, there are many other boards that have come up in the past couple of years, but I might be able to do something different.

Pricing

I plan on keeping the postings and main system free for use, though I reserve the right to remove spam/mass posting.

Future plans

I have a somewhat unique opportunity to also promote jobs via the podcast. I’d planned a webdevjob podcast some time ago, but have too many projects on my plate as it is. If this new jobs.webdevradio.com web development job board becomes useful for enough people, I will revisit the jobs podcast idea again.

Category specificity

I’ve got categories for PHP, .NET, Java, etc.  I’m wondering if this is the best way to go, considering that many positions do require multiple tech.  Is this too narrow of a focus?  Or do you still think of jobs as primarily a Java job, even if some Python may be involved, for example?

Please post any open positions

If your company has any openings, please consider posting (or reposting) them at jobs.webdevradio.com.  I’m looking to have a few base jobs in many of the categories before I announce it on the webdevradio.com podcast.  As I said before, this may turn in to more of a hybrid job service, with a podcast series to go with it as well.

Thanks!

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Posted in Business, Database, Development, Job, PHP, Software, Web

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New WebDevRadio podcast up – SilverStripe CMS interview

April 26th, 2008

SilverStripe is a PHP5-based CMS from down under (New Zealand!).  I had a chance to meet with Sigurd Magnusson, one of the project’s founders, and discuss the project’s history, current status as an open source project (BSD-licensed), and where it’s heading.  Have a listen!

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Posted in Conferences, MySQL, PHP, Podcasts, Software, Web

Continuous Integration with phpUnderControl

April 26th, 2008

I’ve put together a small page with some notes which have helped me during my recent set up of phpUnderControl.  I will probably add more to the list in the coming weeks, but these are a couple stumbling blocks I hit the past few days.  If you’re not using phpUnderControl, you owe it to yourself to check it out, as I think ‘continuous integration’ will likely change the way you think of development.  I’ve used CruiseControl in the past for PHP, but the PHP-specifics phpUnderControl brings to the project are too much to pass up.

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Posted in Development, Ideas, Java, PHP, Software, Tools, Web

facebook or linkedin app I’d like to see

April 25th, 2008

TechCrunch has a story on a recently funded Facebook app which, frankly, seems stupid.  Buying and selling ‘friends’ as ‘pets’.  People have already sold me somehow on Facebook, and I just ignore it.  I don’t get it.  I thought MySpace was the place for stupid/flitty ideas, but it seems Facebook is moving in that direction, having grown their network to towering heights.

So, perhaps LinkedIn is the place to turn for apps with some sense, but I don’t see that you can write your own apps for LinkedIn, yet, anyway.  Can you?

What I’d like to see is a time tracking/project tool with invoicing capabilities.  This would turn LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever into a social business portal.  Guru and ODesk and others seem to be doing OK with this, but you’re relying on people you’ve never met, with a race to the bottom in terms of price competition from overseas.  If LinkedIn had a job/work type thing which would allow people to put out small chunks of work, the ability to find quality, recommended people from inside your own network would be huge.  They already have a ‘jobs’ thing, but it’s pretty limited.  Extending it to allow project tracking would rock.  However, it’s probably outside of their core focus, and it may never happen.

Will someone be able to build something like this on top of Facebook instead of more stupid ‘zombie’ apps?  Technically, probably yes, but I fear Facebook has devolved so much in to a place where professional stuff won’t ever take place on any real scale.  Am I wrong?

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Posted in Blogging, Business, Design, Development, Ecommerce, Ideas, Society, Software, Web

Highest MPG yet

April 25th, 2008

Not too much to say on this, but I filled up last night and calculated I’d managed 32mpg in the car.  Mind you, I had only gone through half the tank (but with gas prices continually going up, I figured I’d refill now) – 6.4 gallons took me 205 miles.  I had usually had anywhere from 28-30 – the highest I’d ever recorded before was 31.  What changed?  I had perhaps been a bit more aggressive in my coasting activities, and I’ve driven slower than normal.  I found myself hitting 70 a couple times on the freeway and dropped down to 62, for example.  I guess that really can make a difference.  What’s strange is that the car (2004 Sebring) is only rated at about 24mpg anyway.  I’d love to keep getting 32, or even higher, throughout the summer, but I’m not sure it’ll happen.

What mpg do you get, and what steps have you taken to increase your mileage (if indeed you’ve taken any at all!)?

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Posted in Energy, Society

Future of Detroit automakers – car bundles?

April 25th, 2008

I just read a comment over on a blog at BusinessWeek and it got me to thinking about the car industry. Being from Detroi, I still have some friends there involved in the car industry at the Big Three – Ford, GM and Chrysler.  The Big Three are having their lunch eaten by foreign companies on (perceived) quality and price, but also on fuel economy.  I know darn well that Ford produces cars in other markets (Europe and South America, for example) that easily get over 40mpg.  Here’s an example.  So why do they insist on continuing to pump out F150s getting 15mpg to the American market?  Profit,  of course.  SUVs and pickups are far more profitable.  And people love their pickups and SUVs – the driving height, power, supposed status and more have continued to drive their sales for far longer than I would have supposed.  If Ford (for example) abandons the SUV market for smaller vehicles, even if they sell more cars, they make less profit.  What to do?

Sell car/SUV bundles.  The sad fact is most people finance cars anyway, so financing a small commuter car (like the ‘Ka’) on to the price of an SUV would be ideal.  People would get their ‘play’ car, but also have a commuter car getting 40mpg for every day driving.  They don’t even have to make a profit on the smaller car – just roll the actual cost of the car in to the SUV bundle price and let it go.  Heck, perhaps they should even just resell the incoming Tata motors cars *at cost* and use that to keep the SUV market afloat.  With enough finagling, they might even convince the government that this ‘bundle’ counts are one car for CAFE standards compliance.

Insurance might be an issue for regular drivers, but I’m sure a ‘split usage’ schedule could be created, or the car companies could even subsidize that out of the SUV profits.

What do you think?

4 comments »

Posted in Business, Ideas, Society

Aptana and jQuery

April 24th, 2008

Nathan from onWired (a local web company) gave a presentation on jQuery, which has repiqued my interest in it. The docs were always a shortcoming, but Aptana has had scriptdoc support for jQuery for awhile now. I think if I need to do more AJAXy stuff, I’ll try jQuery for my next project. If it’s too hard, I’ll go back to YUI. :)

Here’s a screenshot of Aptana’s code assist feature for jQuery…

3 comments »

Posted in Development, Javascript, Web

SaysMe.tv

April 24th, 2008

Just had an interesting conversation with Morgan from SaysMe.tv, and newly launched… um… service.  I paused there cause I’m not really sure what to call it.  Advertising ASP?  Are ASPs fashionable anymore?  In any event, the service looks very interesting, though limited right now to political fodder due to the primaries and election season.  I suspect that before the year is out we’ll see SaysMe.tv quickly branch out in to other types of advertising.

The quick rundown of the service is as follows.  You can purchase an ad to run in a specific TV market, on a specific network, for a specific price.  Prices I saw started at $35 to run an ad on Comedy Central in Raleigh (on Time Warner cable).  You get your name on the ad at the end (‘paid for by Michael Kimsal’, for example).  For election ads, I at first thought there’d be campaign financing issues these might be running up against, but Morgan assured me there’ aren’t any.  You’re an individual person paying for an ad directly (assuming you have no formal ties to a campaign or candidate, of course).

I can see this quickly blossoming in to a service where you can upload your own video, and run it on whatever network slots you want (for a fee, obviously).  This *may* revolutionize television advertising, though at the same time I think Tivo and VOD services might have already done a lot of damage.  I rarely watch live TV any more, generally watching DVDs, Tivo’d content, or bittorrents.  Having said all that, the model is still really interesting, and the fact that they’re getting cooperation from Time-Warner and Comcast is pretty interesting too.  Keep an eye on them.

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Posted in Business, Ideas, Society, Software

My project checklist – what are yours?

April 23rd, 2008

I’ve been taking on a lot of small projects lately, and have been noticing the same problems over and over.  I’ve seen these for years, but I’ve dealt with far more projects in a short time than I ever did in the past.

The checklist below wouldn’t necessarily determine if I’d take a project or not, but would likely influence the rate and schedule.

  • Does the current project already have unit tests (or even just an integration test plan) in place?  (I don’t expect 100% from anyone, but having *some* in place tells me something)
  • Is there any continuous integration in place?  Will you (client) balk at me spending time to set it up?
  • Is the current codebase even *unit testable*?  Most codebases I’ve come across, at least in the PHP and Perl world – are not.
  • Is the code portable?  I would like to be able to recreate a development environment on a brand new machine in 30-60 minutes with minimal configuration (which should be documented).
  • Can I speak with previous team members?  Being able to send some emails to ask questions to someone who worked on the project before can save a lot of time.  I try to make myself available for code I’ve written in the past as well (to a point – I can’t remember everything!)
  • Where is the documentation?  Locally written is OK, or on some web-base project system is OK too.  On your office whiteboard may even be OK as a start.
  • Where are the specs?  I fully expect written specs to change, but you’ve got to have some semblance of written specs to start with.
  • What sort of project management / project tracking system do you use?
  • How available is someone to answer my questions via im/skype/phone/email?

This is likely not a full list, but some of the basics that I’ve seen over and over plague multiple projects.  What would be some qualifying questions you’d use in a checklist like this?

I’m setting up phpUnderControl right now, and configuring it with phpUnit, and will need to start a test plan process for a client in the next few days.

4 comments »

Posted in Design, Development, PHP, Software, Testing, Web

Voice-based “captcha”?

April 23rd, 2008

Was talking with a friend last week who suggested the idea of voice-base captcha services.  The main idea is that you’d record some basic words up front, then when prompted to say a word or collection of letters to authenticate, you’d say them to the site.  The authentication system would do a voice analysis between the stored words and the new words.  What do you think?

3 comments »

Posted in Ideas