I added a rating system to my San Diego Business Directory so that users could add reviews of companies in the San Diego area. It works like a charm to enter ratings for businesses. I was able to add my own embellishments to the script that allows users to reset the control after the user has locked in their rating. This way users can make a number of changes in the process of editing the review before making the final submission.

You can test and download the star rating script at ReignWater Designs. It is very simple to add to your website and modify to suit your needs.

You will see there are two options on this page. One for “More Options” that allows you to change to a different payment option and another to use your “PayPal Credit Card” to do this payment. First, lets try to click the “More Options” to change the funding source for our payment. When you click this, the following PayPal screen comes up:

Of course, this page is totally useless, clicking on “Click Here to Retry” doesn’t help at all either. It jus brings up the same page over-and-over. You would think that E-bay would have tested this feature before they launched their new checkout process. Of course, they probably don’t care, and probably prefer to only get money direct from your banking account so they don’t have to pay any fees. Remember, this feature has been broken for several days now, and nothing has been done to correct it.

Now, lets revisit the original E-bay checkout screen and this time try to change to “PayPal Buyer Credit”. This should use my PayPal credit card which I received over a year ago and I’ve already used to make purchases in the past. This should work right? Just click the link that reads: “Switch Now to Use Your PayPal Plus Card”. So when I clicked this button (and I have tried this around 20 times so far already on different days with different browsers and different computers), I get:

Okay, great, it looks like this is working, should be smooth sailing now right? So, I click continue to finalize my payment and up comes:

Thanks a lot E-bay. Once again, you’ve proved your incompetence. I’ve always been dissatisfied with your service, because of your wreckless price gouging of your customers and endless fees and upsells. It turns out your service is not worth my time, and I have vowed never to use your services ever again. Your multi-billion corporate greed, has finally destroyed you and you will rapidly decline over the coming years just as Yahoo has fallen to Google.

I encourage everyone to flee from this sinking ship before it screws you over and steals all of your money like it did mine (that’s a topic for another day). I am developing a free auction site available at www.goswap.com which provides a free auction service for everyone. What E-bay has done is appalling and an insult to the world.

Social networking has been growing at an exponential rate. Initially made popular by teens in high school and students in college, it has grown to encompass all demographics. It has also been helped by the popularity of blogging, and to a lesser extend, Wikipedia. Many schools have configured their Internet filters to block these social networking sites because their systems are intended for educational purposes and not socializing.

Given the price paid by Microsoft, the total estimated worth of Facebook would be around $15 billion dollars. Not bad for a company started by a 23 year-old only 3 years ago. The application that Facebook has built is simple and easy-to-learn. It makes it easy for anyone to create a profile and connect with their friends. Although instant messaging and e-mails also accomplish the same goals, there is something special about putting yourself out there for the whole world to see.

Part of the deal that Microsoft made with Facebook allows them to partner on advertising displayed on the site. Microsoft will manage the ads and split the profits 50/50 with Facebook. This is a pretty sweet deal for Facebook, since the Microsoft advertising machine can get some high paying clients and allow Facebook to focus on serving their community. Only time will tell if Facebook can stay on top - if the history between Yahoo and Google is any indication, being the first to market is not the most important criteria for success.

So far, I’ve just been reading the documentation to get a feel for how it works. It has some nice URL rewriting features to help your site rate well in the search engines. It also uses a lot of object-oriented methodologies to manage code modules. I really like the fact that it comes with a lot of helper classes to do common things like build HTML code. This was one thing I had built into my own framework.

It uses a helper class to access the database as well. I’m not sure if this is beneficial or not because there appears to be some limitations in how you can use it.

Some people think that PHP is not ready for the enterprise because it lacks the backing of a major corporation and doesn’t have the support that some of the big players have. I have been developing for over 3 years now and I can tell you that’s just not the case.
If you are just starting out in PHP, I think the Code Igniter framework like this is just the ticket to get you started creating powerful web applications. Of course, a knowledge of MySQL database would definitely be a major plus.

My parents who live in Poway were nearly hit by the Witch fire which went through Poway. The firefighters did an excellent job of controlling the fire (as much they could due to the Santa Ana conditions we have here.) I’m looking forward to all of the fires being out soon. I hope this is the last of the big fires. Like most of the other areas of the country, San Diego has been experiencing a drought. We sure could use some rain in this area.

I’m looking forward to things getting back to normal. I should be going back to work tomorrow (barring any drastic change in the fire.) I need to catch up on a few projects that I left unfinished.

Since I do need to keep on top of things, I really should be familiar with the most popular blogging platform. At least it is the most popular if you are going to host your blog yourself and not pay for a service like bloggger.com. Plus,

Another benefit is that this type of blog (with the theme I have installed) should make the entries much more readable. By that I mean the size of the text and the whitespace to format the articles is easier on the eyes. It may be rather boring to look at, but if you are a technical person like myself, you won’t really care too much for the frills and cutting-edge design.

I’m thinking of having two different types of themes. One set of themes will be for the public site while the other will be strictly for the control panel. Users are free to mix and match themes so that the theme for the public site doesn’t need to match the one used on the control panel. Although they share a lot of the same components, it’s better to keep them separate so there is no confusion over what elements are specific to the public and which elements are specific to the control panel (and which elements are shared by both.)

Another feature I would like to have is the ability to customize a theme. So if a user doesn’t like one particular aspect of the theme, they can use a web-based theme editor to tweak the parts that they wish to improve. This should provide maximum flexibility when working with themes. I’m really hoping to get the theme support done quickly so I can open up the demo site to everyone.

In the past I’ve used a system where the settings would be accessible from each page of the control panel. This makes the settings easily accessible and relevant to the current section you are in. The only problem with this setup is that you don’t see all of the configuration settings in one place.

We could put all of the settings for each module in one common area. However, this would require that users navigate away from the section they are currently in to make changes. Then, once their changes are complete, they would have to navigate back to the section they came from. Not the ideal situation.

Another issue I’d like to address is having global settings for the entire site. These are settings that are not specific to on specific module or feature on the site. Usually, I’d put these settings on the home page of the control panel or in a special Configuration area of the site.

I think I’ll put the settings in both areas. Make all of the configuration settings accessible from a centralized location and also make module-specific settings appear in their related sections. This should provide the best of both worlds and (hopefully) won’t be too confusing for the operators.

I’ve submitted my opinion to my local newspaper. It is imperative that the American people take action. Please take the time to convey your opinion to your local media, your local congressmen and all of your friends and family. I don’t want to see my children grow up in world bogged down in World War III. Our country has long been a moral standard for the rest of the world to follow. Thanks to our current administration, it has become the laughing stock of the entire world.

Long gone are the days when you could pick up a console for $125 bucks and get a free game bundled. Actually, this is not entirely true because the Wii does come for $250 and it includes a bundled game. The one difference being that they bumped up the price to pay for the game instead of just selling it for $200. In light of the shortages, I guess this is a good business decision.

I’m sick of all of these Customer’s Choice or Gamer’s Choice bundles that everyone seems to be offering. The only way to get a console is to shell out $800 for a Wii or $1100 for a PS3. I doubt that either of these would be chosen by the average customer or a gamer. It is just another way greedy corporations are trying to take advantage of the consumer. If you really want a game system for the holidays, why not buy yourself a Nintendo DS or a playstation 2 to hold yourself over until supplies are plentiful and these ridiculous bundles are shunned into non-existance.

I’ve become so frustrated with the situation, I’ve decided to wait another 6 months. By then, at least we’ll know which system is really going to dominate the marketplace. By then we should see a major price drop in current generation systems (especially true for the XBox 360). Also, it will benefit the consumer greatly to know which system is going to serve their customers better and provide the most compelling features. So far, the odds look to be in favor of the Nintendo Wii (very few hardware issues and the most bang for the dollar).