PanNotes

Danville Walker knows how to make a headline. The Commissioner of Customs gave businessmen some food for thought this week when he spoke at the PSOJ’s Job Creation Awards Ceremony. He made it clear that his major mandate is to root out corruption in customs.

Writing proposals for web development is often tedious because few of the RFPs are clear and detailed. In such an imperfect market it means getting creative in our responses is the only solution.

As of today Panmedia will no longer be located at the TIC building on The UTech campus. We are relocating to 10 Argyle Road, Kingston 10.

An official post will be made on our main website once the move is completed. We don’t have a new number as yet but that information will be included in the announcement.

According to the Gleaner the First Global website was hacked sometime yesterday. Also, according to a release by NCB (originally heard on the radio but the advisory can be found here) their customers have been receiving phishing emails that links to a replica of NCB’s website. The email asks NCB customers to enter/change their personal information.

Things seem to be getting back to normal even as the loud sounds of generators add to the clatter of chain saws and hammers. Power and water are still problems for many, but I’m assuming that traffic in some areas of the corporate area means people are getting back to business. JPS is busy clearing its many downed power poles and the NWC is moving quickly to restore water to everyone.

Zend, the primary company behind PHP, has just released version 1.0 of the web framework they have been developing for the last 20 months…

When delivering a CMS to a client a WYSIWYG editor can sometimes be the Achilles’ heel of the complete product. These editors were created as a means of allowing users to easily create HTML without actually knowing HTML. While the intent is great they usually produce more problems than solutions. I actually agree with most of the sentiments in Why NOT to install TinyMCE.

We do need to provide an easy way for users to update and create content on their website but the current breed of editors are not the solution. So what is? My thought on the matter has always been that users need to know at least a little bit about the system they are using. The CMS is not a word processor. It’s a different paradigm and that needs to be communicated to the users.

First World Technology in Third World Hands

As a tiny dotcom in a part of the world that sits on America’s doorsteps geographically but technologically is far removed, our experience giving clients an interface with the Internet is both rewarding and frustrating.

If nothing else, the engagement reveals that as much as they want access to this new media world, they refuse to leave behind old notions and processes, and their legacy systems. Critically, they have little desire to understand the implications for their business. The result is a strange mix of old and new thinking where ideologies clash and culture, corporate and general, is remixed.

On Tuesday Zend released the final version of its newest PHP based offering Zend Core 2.0. Zend Core is a fast an easy way to install a stable combination of PHP, MySQL and Apache on Windows, Linux or OS X. See my previous post for more details. Overall this release is good news, however there is one big change in the final package that nobody seems to be talking about.

Firebug 1.0 was released today. Firebug takes the process of debugging HTML/CSS/Javascript to a whole new level. I could try my best to extol its virtues, but their website would still do a better job.

If you are web developer and you have never heard of Firebug, you need to stop what you are doing and get it now. Run, don’t walk.

An interesting footnote to this new announcement is that Firebug’s creator almost decided to start charging for the product in order to bring on a full time developer. In the end he decided to keep it open source and continue to fund development from donations.