October 31st, 2008 |
2 CommentsYep. Primal Skill’s first personal project is ready and online at: www.serversidemagazine.com
It’s called Server Side Magazine
The website will host quality server-side, mainly PHP, Ruby, ASP.Net (for now), tutorials, how-tos, tips & tricks. I will slowly transfer all the PHP tutorials on this blog to the site, but this doesn’t mean that this blog will be shut down. On the contrary I want it to restructure a little and get more into the blogging business. 
Also YOU can contribute with articles on the new site. I can’t offer any money for now, just a little coverage for your website, by linking to you from this blog and also from serversidemagazine.com
First, I formed the company mainly to have a legal activity to create websites, web applications, etc. This was the original idea. It’s a lot of hard work, but worth the satisfaction.
Now, I have a tendency to slowly turn towards personal projects and try to monetize them. I have a bag of ideas that sooner or later will be put in application.
So stay tuned and enjoy.
October 29th, 2008 |
1 CommentGoogle just got new icons in the search results. Became more sociable.
Google
I found 3 new icons:
- Move the result entry up on the page
- Remove a result entry
- Comment on a particular result entry
I wonder that this is visible for other users too searching for the same keywords? Or it is just for logged in users who cand customize their preferences…
October 25th, 2008 |
No CommentsI’m adding another day to my work free days. Earlier I wrote about Tech Free Sundays
Saturday will be the day for my personal projects, mostly. On this day I will work on my super secret websites and web apps. that will be online very soon.
If you can afford it then make it too your personal day. It’s worth every minute!
October 25th, 2008 |
3 CommentsI’m thinking to open up the opportunity for you to guest blog on this site.
So, if you’re a developer, designer, blogger and want to get a little coverage for your website then please contact me here: http://www.primalskill.com/contact or simply write an e-mail to office@primalskill.com
This blog currently has around 11000 page views / month and around 8000 visits / month with an average 75 RSS subscribers and 25 e-mail subscribers.
Google Pagerank is 4, Alexa Rank is 245268, Compete Rank is 263935.
October 24th, 2008 |
No CommentsIf you’re a fan of CodeIgniter then you should download the latest version.
The changelog is here: http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/changelog.html
Let’s see the most important updates:
- Session is now saved in the database rather than in a cookie
- Libraries can be stored in sub-directories now
- Full path column and table name support in the Active Record class (that’s nice)
- (Finally) Removed the added newlines (\n) from the helper functions
- Improved xss_clean()
October 24th, 2008 |
3 Comments
Photo from Flickr
I have a couple of advice for the freelancers who are just starting out in the web design / development business. I can say I have an experience in this field, because I started out on the wrong foot, unfortunately.
The first and most important thing is do NOT underestimate yourself and your skills, even if you’re a student and want to earn some cash in your free time. Many developers who just beginning the freelance journey are tend to lower the price of the work to have the guarantee that they will get the job. This is wrong, because small prices usually attract cheap clients who wants to negotiate even on $5. These type of client are better to let go. If you do quality work clients will come.
Clients can see if someone selling his/her services cheap and they will instantly deduct that the cheap service equals cheap quality.
If you’re in the shoes of a developer who has nothing in his/her portfolio it’s not that big of a deal. It’s true that you will find clients harder if you don’t have a single reference, you have to work twice as hard than the rest, but it’s not impossible to pull it off.
Don’t try to get on every job that pops up in your inbox. Even an experienced developer can’t do more than 3 - 4 jobs at once. When you’re starting out you can select the offers using 2 simple rules. First select those jobs that you think you can develop in a relatively small time-frame AND select those jobs that pays well, therefore you can maximize your return on investment (ROI). As a side note, in our case return is the money you will have and investment is your time and labor that you invest in your client’s project.
Beginner freelancers are usually underestimating the time that the project will take, therefore missing the deadline. Don’t miss the deadline. If you’re heaving trouble figuring out the time-frame that the project will take then try this little trick.
Photo from Flickr
Break down the project into smaller pieces. Repeat. Give each small piece a time estimate that will take to finish. These estimates will be your total time-frame. Optionally you can add 5% - 10% to the total time, this is reserved for surprises that could happen during the work.
Humans can’t future estimate anything. I bet that you don’t know what will you do EXACTLY on next week, or even the day after tomorrow. Sure, you say you will work, but you can’t say exactly how many hours or how productive you will be.
The next big question. Hourly based or fixed budget.
I usually use the following method. I just convert the estimated total time into a fixed price then add 5% - 10% to that value. It’ easier to think in hours than in prices.
Let’s say you’re hourly rate is $20 and the project will take 90 hours. The fixed budget will be 90 hours * $20 +10% from total.
How to inspire quality ? With the following simple, but hard to achieve rules. Over deliver under the project’s deadline. Don’t just finish the work, add value to it. Many developers don’t do this, they just want to finish the project as quickly as they can and cash in.
Another thing, try to offer your suggestions. In the client’s eye you’re the expert, they don’t say it directly (because they know what they want), but they expect to get some suggestions on their project. It is definitely a plus if you do this.
One other important thing, be honest with your prospects, clients. Just say: hey this is who I am. It’s that simple. Many beginner freelancers are tend to multiply things. They say ‘we can do this job‘, ‘we discussed about your project‘. It’s not the way, clients will eventually realize this and they just move on.
Laslty, this could sound a little selfish, but don’t feel sorry for your prospects. On every occasion, on every offer try to come up with the best possible deal for them AND for you, but if can’t decide on a final price than this is how it will end. Don’t try to lower your prices just, because your client’s budget is limited. A good managers budget is always lower than your estimate.
October 22nd, 2008 |
No CommentsI’m looking for articles preferably tutorials, tips and how-tos in the following areas: PHP, Ruby, ASP.NET, Java (JSP)
If you’re fluent in English, have the knowledge in the above areas and you want a little coverage for your blog or website then contact me, let’s see what can we come up with.
If you do so, please just pitch an article idea first.
October 22nd, 2008 |
No CommentsWow. I just read that the Linux kernel is worth $1.4 billion and the Fedora 9 is around $10 billion.
You can read the whole report here:http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/10/linux-kernel-worth-1bn.html
Linus Torvalds did a pretty good job there.
October 22nd, 2008 |
No Comments
Image from Flickr
The important thing is that Yahoo mail never listens, it doesn’t learn from my mailing behaviour. If I get spam messages and mark it as spam, not just once, but twice then it’s obviously that I don’t want to see messages from that account again in my inbox.
On the other hand in Gmail this works perfectly fine. Even if I mark a message as spam from a firends’ address, next time it will arrive exactly there and not in my inbox.
October 21st, 2008 |
5 CommentsMany web developers use Firebug over Web Developer Toolbar. It’s true these two plugins have many features in common, but still it’s worth the visual space and amount of memory that Web Developer Toolbar uses, because it has many not so obvious but useful and interesting features.
1. View Generated Source
Path: View Source -> View Generated Source
This feature is very useful when DOM insertions are made on the fly by Javascript. To simply just view the source code of the page will not show the DOM modifications, but with this feature we can see those too.
Generated Source
2. Disable Javascript and CSS
Paths:
Disable -> Disable Javascript -> All Javascript
CSS -> Disable Styles -> All Styles
This is particulary useful when we’re developing a page and we want to see how the page looks and handles without Javascript and CSS.
3. Find Broken Images
Path: Images -> Find Broken Images
This feature gives you detailed information about broken images on a page.
4. View Image Information
Path: Images -> View Image Information
This loads a page with all the images on the website and shows you the image path, width, height and file size.
5. View Element Information
Path: Information -> View Element Information
This feature let you select a page element and shows detailed information on that element.
Element Information
6. View Color Information
Path: Information -> View Color Information
This is particulary usefu feature of Web Developer Toolbar. It creates a summary of all the colors that is used on the web page including hex color codes.
Color Information
7. Display Line Guides
Path: Miscellaneous -> Display Line Guides
It lets you add guides to your page, to check line height for example.
Line Guides
8. Display Ruler
Path: Miscellaneous -> Display Rules
Lets you measure almost anything on a page, it’s useful when you want to know for example the space between two elements.
Ruler
9. Small Screen Rendering
Path: Miscellaneous -> Small Screen Rendering
If you want to see how a page is viewed on a mobile phones then make sure you check out this feature. It gives you an appropiate mobile phone rendering.
Small Screen Rendering
