I went home late yesterday night. My team and I had to finish up a few important documents based on the system that our developers have been working on for the past couple of months. The problem arises when things needed to be done or change in the last minutes. That’s when everybody started to jump off from their comfort zone and disregard their working hours to finish off their main objective for that time in order not to have a pay cut. Of course that would include me as well.

I realized one thing, after indulging my own work for quite a while, it is so easy to forget that not everyone knows what you know. I’ve been keeping a lot of stuff that might be beneficial for someone else to know and utilize. I also realize that when you are used to digest a lot of stuff related to a specific task, you will know every single short cut that would enable you to finish off something a lot faster than the rest of the people. It’s time to give back what I know for the benefit of others.

Being in a web developer shoes, I know that bulk data might overwhelm a lot of developers or data entry personnel. This normally would lead to a lost interest of the work you have thus decreases your productivity. It’s a tedious job but someone has to do it. There is however a few tricks to overcome this challenge and one of the tricks when you are constantly online is to use the search engine to find a solution. Still you need to know what are the stuff you are looking for in order to acquire those tricks. I’ll cut the chase for you. One of my system developer needed to resized a batch of images to the same size in order for the system to display it properly. There wasn’t much time left so I helped her out in finding a way for this. I soon discovered a free software called Picture Resizer 2.0:

Picture Resizer 2.0

It took me a few minutes to familiarize with this new tool. After that, a resizing job that would take a batch of 50 images maybe an hour or so to get it done is now can be completed in just under a minute. How cool is that? Then comes another challenge, in order not to replace the origninal files, the software created an extension name to differentiate. After moving all the new resized files into a new folder it’s now time to rename all the files back to what it was before to avoid another job for script editing inside the developed system. If it would be done manually, it will take the same amount of time just as resizing the images manually. I found another software tool for that called Bulk Rename Utility:

Bulk Rename Utility

Now this software may seems complicated at first because you see a lot of buttons and fields to fill up. Our objective is just to removed 4 characters extension and we’ll be done with it. Check out the screenshot above on how to do it or try it out for yourself.

Now here’s an interesting point of view. From a management stand point, I’ve already saved a few valuable hourly pay for my employer for not hiring data entry personnels if they have to do it manually. Secondly, these softwares are free so the company saved some money from buying commercial softwares. Since all this can be done faster and automated, a lot of the existing data entry personnel/system developers would like it since it makes their lives a lot easier. However, it might be a threat to their job position if that’s the only thing they are doing.

That’s my friend is how the management think! Be Productive Everyone!

It has been a very busy week lately. However, that doesn’t stop me from being idle. When you work for a company, you can’t really work throughout the whole 8 mandatory hours, it is advisable to take a short break. What normally what happen is that break becomes a long break where for most PC workers would wander around in Cyberspace. That’s when it affects the productivity of a company. I am guilty of doing that as well but eventhough it is unethical, I kind of redeem myself by not claiming for overtime hours when I come home late so that it is fair for both myself and the company. I think everybody do this type of thing, I even saw my superior got caught by me in the act.

Because of that reason, unlike home network where all the network ports are accessible directly to the internet. The IT department in my company deploys a proxy server and a dedicated network port for accessing the internet. To make it more comprehensible, here’s a diagram taken from “Punching Holes into Firewall“.

The reason of this deployment is because:

1. To prohibit the idling staff to surf time wasting websites such as blogger.com, friendster.com, youtube.com that can eat up a lot of your office time thus reducing your productivity
2. Instant Messenging is blocked because it is also considered time wasting as well. Think about it, which one do you spend more time on, chatting on Yahoo Messenger or calling people up on the phone?
3. These kind of social networking activities can consume a lot of bandwitdh and bandwitdh is expensive (except if you have chosen an unlimited plan). For critical moment, these activities can clogged the router’s performance (if proxy server is not installed) and affects your internet connectivity
4. To prevent intruders/hackers from entering the network from outside of the domain beside protecting the network from any harmful viruses, malware or network attack
5. Why are you doing personal stuff on the internet during office hours? You are breaking the agreement you have signed when you were employed, right?

All those reason are so valid. I must say that I can even get fired almost everyday if I get caught of doing personal stuff during working hours but then again, as human we are not robots. We need some loosen up a little so that we can cope with the busy hectic environment or the quiet idling moment.

Luckily, Google Search website is not being restricted. This is where creativity take place. Using a combination of the right keywords, I found, “How to Bypass Most Firewall Restrictions and Access the Internet Privately aka The Surf At Work Page“. I find the page to be quite technical and time consuming for me to understand how the method is. I saw an advertisement on the page and soon downloaded a software called HTTP Tunnel. Now this is what I am looking for all along, a simple Windows-based software that I can install and easily configure.

I wasn’t happy about the restriction especially being blocked from Youtube. Using this software, I can now watch Youtube eventhough the corporate network has blocked the website. At first, I used the free server to connect but it was painfully slow. I wanted to pay the High Bandwitdh Subscription using my Public Bank Visa Electron but accidentally paid it using my Paypal credit. Oh well, it’s only USD4.99 a month. Doesn’t burn a hole in my pocket though.

Voila..I can now watch my favourite Youtube videos and my company wouldn’t know what my online activities are. Although it says high bandwitdh, it is still limited to the internet connection my company subscribed from the ISP which in this case, TM Net Streamyx. I can now access Meebo, Friendster, Youtube and Blogger without fear of being blocked. The only problem right now is my Yahoo Messenger client program wouldn’t work even after using this service. I then learned that the port for Yahoo Messenger is being blocked so I can only access the web-based Instant Messenging service such as Meebo. Oh well, that’s not so bad.

It is good to know that there is no boundary what you can do over the internet. You just need to be a little creative and a little work to find the solution that you need. Happy proxyless surfing everyone!

I guess being used of multi-jobs/multi-tasking for a company creates activities that is quite beneficial. As always, I’ve moved on to do something else already. This time it’s called Customer Relationship Management. You can read all about CRM at Wikipedia. I decided to learn about CRM after the event last 2 weeks, now that I got all the contact lists, I am left with questions such as:

1. What should I do with all these leads?
2. How am I going to manage it?
3. What tools can I use to make my marketing and sales job more easier?
4. Is there any ready to use FREE CRM web-based tool that I can install and use straight away without a steep learning curve?

Based on my experience, if you have a software whether it’s a windows-based or web-based, you don’t need to read all those thick books that explains stuff from A-Z and take weeks to understand about the subject. You just need to play around with it for a while, getting used to it and applying it. It’s just like playing Monopoly. So, after Googling around, I found out about SugarCRM. It’s basically a web-based package that has all my answers to the above questions. To add further convenience, the application has a free open source download package (same as Joomla) and the installation is easy (if you can install Joomla, you’ll definitely know how to install SugarCRM).

Two days after I’ve installed and putting in data into it, I’ve actually mastered almost 70% of it’s use. The only thing I need more is more data to build up my database. Here’s a screenshot of how my SugarCRM Dashboard looks like:

I was surprised by this web-based CRM engine when looking at it under the hood. It has all the CSS and AJAX components which is really cool. You can change the colour of your theme instantly by selecting the colour tab at the above page. You can also set the size of your font and drag and drop the dashboard box. I was blown away with it’s features and capabilities.

Now, the next thing I need to learn is to try and find ways of how I can implement this system and train the staff to use this application in my company. Sometimes, I just can’t believe an IT company or even worse, a web-based application developer company that doesn’t use CRM to track their sales and marketing activities. At the moment, I am the only one that is using this system in the company. Oh well, I’ll give it some time for me to get used to this system and then I’ll show my boss about it.

I just love web-based tools! Especially FREE ONES! ;-)

I wonder where have all the good web programmers gone? The company’s website loads even slower than my blog. Making it worse, it’s created using plain HTML. Being a pro-active person, I just can’t sit around and not do anything with all that I’ve learned. Armed with my short period of Wordpress experience, I suggested my company to adopt an open source web content management system (CMS). The reason for that is that we can save up a lot of time in developing the company’s website and focus more on creating the content, that is what I think visitors would always want in finding out more about the company. Read “What is a CMS & why should you care?“, a very enlightening article.

So, the initial phase of the website development was discussed in a meeting and it was decided on my suggestion to adopt Wordpress for the website since my experience with Wordpress is quite extensive. 2 weeks had gone by and I later found out that my web designer wasn’t able to customize the layout template without me guiding her through. Her designing skills kind of amazes me since she has some artistic view but technically, she barely knew how the system work. I couldn’t blame her for that because it took me months to figure out how Wordpress work. I knew I was in trouble because the development process is way behind schedule. I then took a brave move, I tried Joomla instead.

Quite a while ago, after I have used Wordpress (at that time version 1.5 I guess), I tried out Mamboserver. Although I really like how the system can create useful portals, I find it difficult to understand how the system work. After a while, I made a quit on it and return to use Wordpress. Since Joomla is a derivative of Mamboserver, I had no issue on installing the package. The only issue was to try and understand how to use the system and how I could apply the portal for the company use. I was left with little time to do that. I then spent half a day figure out how the settings are and used a basic template layout which I think may suite the portal design.

The next day, my big boss suddenly came over and wanted to know how the development is going on. Lucky for me, I had a mock up already being built so I showed it to him and pitched the idea of how the portal is going to be used. He was sold on my idea and we decided to ditch Wordpress and develop a portal using Joomla. I got only a week to develop the portal prototype and present the portal for the management to see. I quickly called my web designer, briefed her on my new idea, guided her through the administration area in Joomla and asked her to create 3 customized template for the presentation. At that time, I was also swamped with the tender document submission I went to during my first week there. It was a hectic moment.

My web designer and I made it in time for the presentation. We presented our prototype to the management, got some new feedback and we were given another week to complete the layout and the portal should be online and replacing the current website by the 1st of October. For me, I’ve handle numerous Wordpress website before so it shouldn’t be problem. The challenges subsequently that I had to face is to deal with the technical department since the company having their own web server in-house and there are no Cpanel settings for me to fiddle around with. The prototype were also built on a different web server and the new web server proposed were on a Linux based web server which I have no idea of how to configure it.

Pushing the project in making our prototype live, I had to bug the technical department on a public holiday Saturday. We then migrated the prototype customized Joomla application and MySQL database onto our new web server and setup the DNS to point to where the new location is. 2 hours later, after several tests and tweaking, the new website is now up and running. I was so relief. We finally made it in making the web portal live before 1 October 2007. I would like to thank the technical department for that. Here’s slideshow of my office along with some hardware tech stuff.

If you are wondering why did I changed my mind from suggesting the use of Wordpress to Joomla. One of the main reason is, I found out that the company needed some sort of centralized place to keep the staff updated with internal news. With more than 50 personnel and most probably more people joining in soon, a portal is needed for a lot of internal use plus personnel can access the portal from anywhere as long as they are connected to the internet. We find that Joomla is capable of handling this kind of requirement. However, further testing need to be done to make sure that this project would be a success.

Here’s a screenshot of company’s website. My web designer colleague designed the header:

The Web Portal

The AJAX Admin

The new web portal that we have created is now faster in terms of loading time and functioning a lot easier than before. Alright, I’m off to explore more Joomla extensions that can be utilized by my company. Hhmmm…I could become a Joomla developer by then..hehe..