Month: June 2008

Categories
Technology

SVN – Subversion Version Control

I am a little annoyed with myself.  When I first started at bowlingball.com I made it a point to rewrite their code and use a version control system.  SVN was the one I chose over CVS.  I am not sure why I made this decision, but through the research I did, it was the right choice.

The problem was I maintained my code for quite some time, however I am a person that make changes on the fly.  If someone asked for a change, I would make it to the live code and over time I gradually forgot to make the commits.  Sometimes I would end up doing a mass commit, and the comment would not make sense.  So I just gave up.

I know it was wrong, and I am making it correct.  I just set up new repositories and will make my commits properly from now on.  I have broken my projects into multiple repositories in an effort to make my checkouts and commits move convenient.

Version control is very important.  Being able to turn back time and know for a fact what was changed (if anything) is critical.  You may not know it yet, but a few months down the road you are going to be asked “Did we make any changes that cause sales to increase/decrease on this date?”, you need to be able to give a precise answer.  I feel I have failed in this category on a couple of occasions and I will not let it happen again.

Take it from me, use some form of versioning software.

Categories
Latest Tech

Firefox 3 Download Day 6/17/2008

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 is going to be Mozilla’s Official Download Day.

Firefox wants to set the world record for the number of downloads in a single day by having everyone upgrade to Firefox 3 on the same day.

Want to know more, checkout Spread Firefox.

Categories
Latest Tech

Woopra.com, Watch Your Internet Traffic Live

Woopra.com is a service that combines web analytic data like Google Analytics in a real time fashion. What’s more is they offer some really interesting features.

We all know that we can monitor traffic in real time by watching our web server logs. However the average user doesn’t necessarily understand the information that is available to us. I have shown a couple of people the Woopra interface, and while they are very impressed, they are also taken aback by the “creepy” factor.

You are able to spot what pages customers are looking at, what browser they are using, operating system, screen resolution and more. By doing this you could see a customer looking at a blue widget, and start a chat with them. You can see if there is anything you can help them with, possibly upsell, or more.

I feel it is a GREAT service and a move towards the future of the Internet. The Internet is becoming more and more interactive, not just a one way connection. I feel that soon you will be purchasing on the Internet, almost like walking into a store.

Categories
PHP Snippets

Calculating This Day Last Year in PHP

Have you ever wanted to know what the date was last year on this day?

Example: You want to compare sales from Wednesday of this year to the same Wednesday of last year. There is a very simple solution in PHP.

[code]
function ThisDateLastYear($date_in) {
// date_in = input date in form of YYYY-MM-DD
$days = 364;
return date(‘Y-m-d’, strtotime(“-364 days”, mktime(0,0,0,$m,$d,$y)));
}
[/code]

Categories
Latest Tech

The Twitter Explosion

Twitter has seem to come on to the tech stage very strongly. However, will it be for the masses?

It seems that everyone that I follow is very much in the tech genre. They get it, use it, and live it.

The people in my everyday life that I try to explain it end up just staring at me with a very puzzled look. Not understanding when I use phraseology such as Following and Tweeting. I have tried to point people to Lee Lefever’s Common Craft Show Twitter in Plain English, but I do not get any reassurance that they understand.

If you are into it, please follow me. I would love the chance to reach out to the community. Leave comments and I will be sure to respond.