October 23, 2008 • 10:04 pm 0
What do YOU do while you’re waiting for your Ubuntu 8.10 Release Candidate ISO to download?
I played THIS GAME for quite a while.
(btw, my wife is WAY better at it than I am)
Filed under: Software, linux, the webernets, wifey , 8.10, game, Intrepid Ibex, Release Candidate, Ubuntu
September 9, 2008 • 7:40 am 1
For the few of you following along at home, waiting to see what sort of eCommerce decisions we’re making with wiredchurches.com, we’re taking some steps towards using Ubercart. There were a few driving forces behind this desicion.
We met with Mike this past Friday. Since he just lives a couple hours away, he drove down to spend 4 hours crammed into a small meeting room with all of us. We threw a thousand questions at him, and I think he got a pretty good idea of how complex we want our system to be (he also answered the questions).
That’s it for now. We’re waiting to hear if Mike is going to run screaming from this project now that he’s met us and knows more of what’s involved.
Filed under: GCC, Software, the webernets , Add new tag, ecommerce, magento, Ubercart, wiredchurches.com
August 27, 2008 • 1:29 am 3
*edit* i’ve noticed a lot of traffic coming here from people searching for “ie tab Firefox 3″ and similar. if you need the .xpi, just leave me a comment and I can email you the file.
From what I can gather, I was extremely lucky to get the IE Tab extension for FireFox 3 during a tiny window when the download was working. Everyone I’ve heard from on the issue says the .xpi won’t install for them. In any case, I’ve got the .xpi on my computer and my wife’s computer, and it’s working great on both, so if you are wanting it, just let me know.
In other news, we’re sort of settling in on an eCommerce solution for the new and hopefully improved wiredchurches.com. More info on that coming very soon.
Filed under: GCC, Software, the webernets , firefox 3, Firefox extension, IE Tab
August 14, 2008 • 1:52 pm 0
This came into my Bloglines from the indexed blog today. It’s the most concise explanation of web 2.0 I’ve ever seen.
This is what 2.0 Means
Filed under: pictures, the webernets , 2.0, indexed, Web 2.0
July 27, 2008 • 1:44 pm 1
I know most people who glance at this blog don’t give two hoots about all this eCommerce stuff. To those folks, I apologize for wasting your time.
However… I KNOW there are some people reading this who have experience doing this kind of thing, so to you folks I ask: Have any of you used shopify.com? I stumbled accross it the other day, and so far I’m in like with it. I didn’t find it earlier because it’s a different kind of solution than I had been searching for. It’s fully hosted and charges monthly fees+transaction fees. Nevertheless, I really like how easy and clear everything is. I’m still looking under the hood to make sure it can do everything wiredchurches.com needs it to do.
One BIG thing it does that I L.O.V.E. is fetchapp.com, which is more or less a plugin for shopify (though it has an API to work with any site) that makes digital download products a breeze! I’ve emailed briefly with one of the developers, and I’m excited about the potential here.
Filed under: Software, ecommerce, the webernets , fetchapp.com, shopify.com
July 26, 2008 • 2:51 pm 0
Well apparently there was/is a lot of confusion in the Magento community regarding “Virtual Products” vs. “Downloadable Products.” While the roadmap and the buzz seemed to indicate that they were going to be basically the same, more research shows that the developers had to split “Downloadable Products” out of the 1.1 release as it was not yet ready. “Virtual Products” are simply products that do not require shipping (perhaps an event registration). The developers say that “Downloadable Products” are high on the list, and should be in the next release. They may be too late.
Filed under: Software, ecommerce, the webernets , ecommerce, magento
July 24, 2008 • 11:41 pm 4
I’ve been geekishly excited with anticipation for this day. Magento 1.1.1 is finally available. (this means digital downloads are now an option with Magento) I’ve narrowed the field of Open Source eCommerce solutions down to Magento and Ubercart (powered by Drupal). Either of these look like they will suit our needs, and I’ve had some contact with an Ubercart developer who may be willing to jump on board and help us, but I’m still clinging to Magento’s VERY impressive admin panel. Oh my. Decisions, decisions.
Filed under: Software, ecommerce, the webernets , Drupal, ecommerce, magento, Magento 1.1, Ubercart
July 11, 2008 • 10:38 pm 1
Well, I tried using Microsoft Popfly on a tip, and it looks pretty cool, but I was not able to save any of my projects (getting error codes). Anyone else used it with success? It looks like a lot of fun, but it’s only fun if it works!
Filed under: Software, the webernets , mashups, microsoft, popfly
June 26, 2008 • 4:13 pm 1
After much searching, tinkering, installing, re-installing, re-re-installing, etc., I’ve sort of narrowed down some options that look like really good possibilities for open-source, fully featured eCommerce solutions.
Magento: Very obviously an extremely professional product. Though relatively new, it’s got TONS of support and buzz. Right now I see two drawbacks: it looks like it’ll take a good bit of tweaking and designing to make it look REALLY good (it looks “just good,” though professional, out of the box), and it does not yet support “virtual products” (aka digital downloads). For the first, we’ve got a crack team of website gurus here at GCC, and if they ever feel over their heads, we can hire some outside help to get it up and running. For the second, the Magento team promises that virtual products will be an option in the next release, slated for sometime this July (and the alpha I tried out does indeed have it as an option, just not a working option yet)
PrestaShop: Looks very, VERY nice out of the box, was EXTREMELY easy to use/customize. Probably wouldn’t need any outside help to make it look how we want, with plenty of flash (the aesthetic, not necessarily the technology). Downsides: it’s currently in Release Candidate 4 for the stable 1.0 version. Hopefully that means full stable coming very soon. Downloadable product size limited to 7MB, so we’d be restricted to users downloading PDFs with links/passwords to actual product. Also, on my first run (today), the whole backend/admin panel suddenly stopped working. Not sure what’s going on. Time for one of those re-installs.
*update* before even posting this, I checked again, and was able to get to it. I blame our lack of good connection here at work, as it had been timing out
Drupal with Ubercart: Actually has pretty much everything we need. TONS of free modules, ability to have calendar with workshops scheduled, final releases of the software, all the options we are looking for. Drawback: it just doesn’t seem as professional as the other two. Oddly enough, it seems like a CMS that has an eCommerce layer on top of it (hmm, wonder why that is). Things are relatively clearly laid out…. it just doesn’t FEEL as nice as the others (we’re talking admin panel here). The store itself should be pretty easy to make it look nice.
SO HERE’S MY QUESTION: Has anyone used any of these, and can provide feedback/advice on the good, bad, and ugly of using them in production? These seem to be three of the top dogs in the open-source eCommerce community, but are there others that are so amazing that I simply must check them out? Let me know!
Filed under: GCC, Software, the webernets , digital downloads, Drupal, ecommerce, magento, open-source, PrestaShop, Ubercart
June 17, 2008 • 2:09 pm 3
I finally got though (at 12:05pm PST) and got my official Firefox 3 download! I’ve been running the release candidate for weeks, and I hear that this is pretty much the exact same thing, but hey, it’s official now.
If you’ve never used Firefox, I would encourage you to go to www.getfirefox.com and take it for a spin! You just might like it! (and if it’s any help, Bill Gates WON’T like it that you’re not using his browser)
Filed under: Software, the webernets , firefox, firefox 3, firefox download day
• 1:13 pm 0
Firefox 3 was released today at 10am PST. It’s now 11:10am PST, and all Mozilla sites are unreachable. I’m assuming and hoping that this is because so many people are downloading it that the servers can’t respond to more requests.
Filed under: Software, the webernets , firefox 3, firefox download day, mozilla
June 2, 2008 • 1:08 pm 1
I’m a big fan of firefox, so I thought it was cool they’re planning a cool event like this:
They don’t actually have a launch date yet…. but isn’t it fun to get in on the ground floor? I’m posting a badge on the left, and I’ll update as more details become available.
Filed under: Software, the webernets , firefox, firefox 3, firefox download day
May 15, 2008 • 3:56 pm 2
Is it just me, or has twitter been unavailable a lot lately? It seems to go in and out. If it’s not just me experiencing this, I wonder if it’s just a side effect of its exploding popularity?
(please remember that “a lot” probably means a few times in the past few days)
Filed under: the webernets , twitter
March 27, 2008 • 1:44 pm 3
In preparation for my upcoming move, I’ve been working hard on consolidating my webby life into easy-to-use online services. The biggest struggle for me has been deciding on a feed reader. I like the simplicity of Google Reader, but… it just feels like there’s something…. lacking. I had used Bloglines in the past, but again there just seemed that there should be something more. I think I was wanting an online reader that felt more like an offline application. Enter Bloglines Beta. Tony Morgan mentioned in a recent post so I thought I’d give Bloglines another shot (plus I’m always a sucker for betas).
I like it!
I’m still in the honeymoon phase with it of course, and I don’t really have anything concrete to say other than it “feels” like they got it right. He also mentioned something about Feedburner not working right lately, so I suppose I’ll be taking the Feedburner chicklet down too (I had just put it up, so last I checked, no one had subscribed through it).
My question is, what feed reader do you use and why? I’m still open to jumping camps if there’s one that proves to be better.
*update on gOS* It’s not at all what I expected it to be, but I really do like the OS, so I’ll be leaving it on my linux pc for a while. I’ll review when I’ve had some more quality time with it. And while Joel told me that the Wal-Mart cheapy PCs got pulled, all I can find on it is that the first 10,000 sold out, and apparently had good reviews. I’ll do some more research.
Filed under: blogging about blogging, the webernets , Bloglines, Google Reader, gOS, RSS feeds
March 26, 2008 • 7:34 am 1
There’s no quicker way to get me to close a webpage than to have music playing as soon as it loads. I’m all for having music available on a page, but when your social networking page with a flashing, moving background starts blaring the latest annoying pop song, *poof* goes your firefox tab.
Filed under: the webernets
March 12, 2008 • 6:47 pm 0
Reading a post from Tony Morgan about Facebook, and the subsequent comments got me thinking a lot about the topic. I actually had a draft of this typed up for a while, but really, all you need to do is check out a recent post on the Facebook Blog about impending changes to the Facebook profile, and things they’ve already implemented. (that one’s a good link, czech it out) It pretty much covers all of most people’s complaints.
I’m also currently working on a post about Windows Vista BitLocker. We’ve been having mixed success with it at work.
Filed under: everyday life, the webernets , Facebook
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