Today, as i write this article, this blog is officially 9 months and 10 minutes old. I have started this blog last December 13, 2007, and it has done a very good thing of exposing me to the world, and today, i want to announce that my official website is now online, this has been a very long time coming, but here it is, http://www.thepointofwork.com is now live. All my blog posts will now be published at http://www.thepointofwork.com/blog . I feel a little sadness inside me because i’m now leaving this blog, but this is a step to move forward, and Milestone 1 for the establishment of PHILTECH-PDN network, you can read about it in there. http://www.thepointofwork.com will also become my formal portfolio which will contain all my relevant work experience. In the memory of this blog, i will be rewriting and reposting all the important articles in here to the blog section of my site. I want to say thank you to those who have visited this blog, and i hope to see you also again in my new home, i hope you learned something from the articles i’ve shared. I’m also very happy to see that bro. Eli is now blogging again, you can read his latest article here in which he discussed why “the Bible has the Highest Morality Code than any other books published”. So, this is it, as always, know the point of your work, so that your life will have value. Thanks and see you soon!

Google Chrome, Wow, i just finished a post yesterday about IE8’s 2nd beta and there’s something that almost cleared off my radar, it seems that Google is launching a new browser!!! whaazzzaatttt!!!, its called Google Chrome, The first thing that came to my mind when i’ve read about it is that there will now be 1 more browser to put in your checklist when debugging your CSS. Anyway, the premise they made in this comic book, or a comic Google book (i don’t mean that the Google book is comic, what i mean is that the comic strips is published using Google book, sorry.), the premise they made is that…

Today, most of what we use the web for on a day-to-day basis aren’t just web pages, they’re APPLICATIONS

Yup, apps, you know, chat, games, videos, and the list goes, things which they say are not present when the original browsers are created. So they literally started from scratch, wow, thats something some people are telling Microsoft on what they do to IE8, but Microsoft don’t want to break existing web pages and still placed backwards compatibility on IE8. Yeah, believe it a lot of people are still using old browsers, i have created a Drupal theme a few months back for a corporate client, and they want it to be specifically compatible to IE5 because all of the employees of the corporation, a little over a thousand, is using that browser version. Anyway back to the Google Chrome, they have a lot of neat ideas, for example they adopted a process management system like those built in modern operating systems, this means that each tab, yes they will be using tabs, they said that they are taking some ideas from other browsers (but they also want others to get some ideas form them) this new process management means that every tab will run in their own process, basically, if a page is going to a hang, it wont bring the whole browser down with it, only that page. Freezing up happens a lot on Firefox now a days, when you browse too long and open a lot of tabs. Google Chrome will actually have a task manager like Windows, where you can see how many bandwidth each page is using and the amount of memory it is using for its self.

They also created a javascript Virtual Machine to be platform independent, which inherited its interpret once, run only afterwards (JIT) from ASP.net not like Java’s interpret everytime before it runs, so it will be fast. V8, which is the name of the VM, also have a built in “precise” Garbage collection according to them, which solves javascript’s classless problem, and yes, if your a programmer, you might be thinking now that V8 will interpret javascript it will run the code natively in the users CPU? yes it will, and it will provide a huge performance boost over those applications which the code runs over a VM which itself is over a browser, so theres a lot of layers. Its exciting what kind of applications will be coming out because of this new faster implementation.

With a MASSIVE amount of existing websites today, you might imagine again that Google has a burden of testing the new browser with a lot of web pages, no worry, because according to them, they also have a massive web crawler infrastructure, yes they are using their existing search engine infrastructure to make automated tests, now thats very good riddance! Now i understand, why Microsoft was going crazy in acquiring Yahoo! a few months back, because now its clear that IE8 and Firefox 3 is not only the new browsers in town, the previous are only new versions of the old browser actually, so lets hope Google Chrome do not go to the cuil’s way, their idea is good. You can check the comic book here and read about Google Chrome in the official Google Blogs. Filipino web developers will now have another thing to get excited about, or not, if this means additional work for the sites we are maintaining.

Ok, thats it for now, i’m also waiting for the Google Chrome download to be online, its currently not available but do check once in a while, they said it will be online today, below are some screenshots get your juice flowing, lol.

More Google Chrome Screenshots here

Cheers! and ill be with you again next time, i need to go back to work!

Update:

Google Chrome Download is now available here.

Whether you are searching for angola prison, mercenaries 2 cheats, webn fireworks, louisville football or robofly we know here in the Philippines we always use http://www.google.com’s search engine, or http://www.yahoo.com occasionally. But in case you missed its launch, there’s a new search engine in town, its name is cuil (pronounced as cool), though not as cool as many people expected. The new search engine features an index which the developers claim to be 3x as large as Google’s. Cuil is created by some of the minds behind Google’s search engine, you can check out cuil here.

Internet Explorer 8 beta 2, is released for the general public, its was earlier released for web developers but today its available for the normal joe and juan dela cruz, you can download it here. I don’t know if its just me, or the IE8 beta page feels like Win ME, , maybe i just need to sleep, i’ve been researching about SEO and fortunately i was able to make this blog to #6 for the search term “filipino programmer”, it may come down again in the next hours, but ill try too see what i can do. Any way, i hope IE8 doesn’t become like Windows ME, i’ve been always a fan of IE its only that Firefox become so popular because of i dunno, standards according to them, i hope the IE team gets it right this time, but they have to make a really good marketing strategy with this.

Also, if you are wondering where did i got the keywords at the start of the article, i got it @ Google Trends, when i got the itching to discover what people are currently searching Google pointed me to that site, as a Filipino Web Developer discovering advanced SEO tricks, one thing i learned today is that blogging about current events can make your page rank higher, but nothing beats link backs and great content of course. There’s also scripts you can use to see the statistics and will help you move forward from there.

Its nice to see your fellow filipino developers online, but also nicer is to learn about the communities about them, i recently check out JUG-PH, the Philippine user group for Joomla! , Drupal also have one, its at Drupal Philippines User Group . Good job for all the people who had the initiative to start this and help the Filipino developers online. If you know of any Filipino developer user groups out there please do tell me! Thanks!

On another topic, i was browsing JUG-PH’s forums and found this question querying on how to convert US Dollar (USD) and various currencies to Philippine Peso (PHP), you can check out the solution i posted here. Below is the code i posted,


<script src="http://coinmill.com/frame.js"></script>
<script>var currency_round=true;</script>
$1.00 (US) = ₱ <script>currency_show_conversion(1.00,"USD","PHP");</script> PHP<br />
€1.00 (EUR) = ₱ <script>currency_show_conversion(1.00,"EUR","PHP");</script> PHP<br />
£1.00 (GBP) = ₱ <script>currency_show_conversion(1.00,"GBP","PHP");</script> PHP<br />

This comes handy when you are developing a shopping cart that needs to be able to show prices for different currencies, this was the case on one of the projects i finished recently, which the owner, Lisa Freede, a well known celebrity stylist in the US, who had designed jewelry which was used by Paris Hilton, Cher, Destiny’s Child and other popular celebrities, (check the info here). The project involved the cloning of her site to create a UK and Eurore Shop, so that she can assign a different price tag for the said countries, for shipping reasons. Paypal automatically handled the check out but i have to create two new database fields and modified the shopping cart to show the accurate price tag based on the selected currency of the buyer.

PS
I remember just now that i used the javascript currency code for the latest project i am working, which is pinoy360 for my friend Alvin Sia, his site needs a real time currency display for the New Taiwan Dollar (TWD) to Philippine Peso (PHP).

Thanks, and i hope this post helps!

Hello to all!, Whew its been a long time since i’ve post an article, a lot of things has happened, im now on the process of establishing a new Software and Web Development Company, its named, philcoders, and ill be bringing this blog to a new domain at thepointofwork.com. My wife is giving birth to our first baby on January 2009, its been a very good year so far. I’m quite busy now completing my projects and bring philcoders.com and thepointofwork.com online, i can finally have a proper portfolio, that has been my problem since my first post to this blog, lol.

Lesson’s Learned: Regular Updating
I’ve created this blog to share the things i found important, for this post what i want to share is the importance of regularly updating or applying patches to your open source project installations, for example if you are using open-source CMS engines. Most of us who write code, or who developed web sites must have use at least one open source project. Lately, CMS engines, a web application which allow people to quickly create websites has become popular. Two of the most successful CMS applications are Joomla! and Drupal. Unfortunately, the popularity of this two CMS application has attracted some hackers to scrutinize its source code, this lead to the discovery of improperly coded modules, which allow sql injection attacks. Some attacks on Joomla! for example allows an attacker to reset the sites administrative password. I tried the security hole in some of my live site and its true. We don’t have go far for other example’s, Joomla!’s official website has been defaced, a few hours after changing their website’s template. You can read it here. Their mistake according to them:

“This morning, Joomla.org was defaced a few hours after releasing our new design. This is not a new security issue, but only poor system administration practices on our part. When we updated our Web sites with the Joomla 1.5.6 security fix released yesterday, we simply forgot to update one of our small, non-public development sites.“

New patches and updates are regulary released for active open-source projects, that’s also a very important reason when evaluating an open-source project, it must have a very active community so that things which need fixing gets fixed fast. So if you are using this type of application, you better update regularly, a lot of people are getting hacked these days, just look at the official forums of some of the most popular CMS apps. I was browsing the demo section of a template provider’s site last week and their site is being defaced at the very same moment, their site is ok now, so that’s good. Well, lessons learned, always update and apply patches to your system as soon as they become available, always keep a backup though, cause it may break your site, especially if you have third-party components installed, and be responsible, if you have clients who has old installations, tell them to update. You can download Joomla!’s newest update here, its 1.5.6 at the moment and is very critical update, for those who uses 1.5.5 and below.

Well, thats all for now, see you again soon.

PS. i have a good idea for a new section of my site because of this post. I’ll post it soon!

-Arthur Abogadil
Lead Software Developer, philcoders
arthur_abogadil @ philcoders.com
Tel. #: +63 042 795 0238
Mobile #: +63 929 976 3204

Office Address:
#34 Cirila cor Amethyst St
RGR Subd
Lucena City 4301
Philippines

Official Webite: http://www.thepointofwork.com
Blog and Portfolio Site: http://www.philcoders.com

This January, Microsoft, Sun and Apple has the biggest news for anyone related in anyway to IT. I think the biggest is Bill Gates retirement, i really don’t think he got tired, anyways here’s the Bill Gate’s Retirement Video shown at CES 2008.

You can read the official transcript of his supposed to be last keynote at CES 2008 here.

The next biggest thing is Sun’s announcement of its acquisition of mysql, whoaaa! Nice move! You can read more about it here. Do note that Google’s Database is running on a modified mysql databse engine, just one of the many popular website running on this database identified as the most popular open source database.

Third, of course is Apple’s announcement of Macbook Air, yes this is their third biggest product to be announced after iPod and iPhone, its the world’s thinnest laptop according to them. Just be careful you don’t sit on it, or place it in a mailing envelope and send it someplace else! Read all about it @ the Macbook Air’s Official Site. Nice use of the script.aculo.us Javascript library.

Well i’m rethinking my plan of buying Apple’s Macbook Pro now, the laptop PC World says is the fatest Windows Vista Laptop they’ve tested, , maybe Bill Gates will get out of retirement after reading that headline, just like what Solid Snake always do, who would have think of that, the fastest Vista Notebook is a Mac.

Let’s see what will happen on the industry in the next months. Anyways, farewell Bill, you really have done a great contribution on IT.

Hello again, i was recently asked to renovate a site for a web design firm based in L.A. Calif, you can see their old site @ mywebdesignsource.com. The new site which i created is located @ my_webdesignsource v2.0. The site is created in joomla, one notable feature of the new site is the integrated project management module, a section on the site which allows clients and developers to login to their project workspace where they can post tasks, see completion status, upload and download files, etc. all for the sake of collaborating and managing a development project properly. It also came with an integrated calendar, so deadlines won’t be missed. , a situation which is so common in development projects this days because of feature creep or simply because of poor management. Well speaking of project management, you can read articles at developer.com’s project management site
and also do check out Software Produtivity Center’s free webinars and resources on project management at http://www.spc.ca/resources_overview.htm.

Ok, that’s enough project management for now, before i go i want to share this link to DeviantArt, the site claims that they are the largest art community in the world. You can browse for member submitted illustrations and the occasional photoshop brushes and also for artists who want color inspirations please check out the COLOURLovers website.

Finally, i’m not posting this in the spirit of the holiday season, but i want to share this picture from the CNN’s Daily Snapshot website.

Thanks! See you again soon!

-Arthur Abogadil

We launched two CMS websites today, one is the Youth Science Center Website and another, still in beta though, is So Cal Philwomenian, a Cyberpublication both organizations are in LA, California. The choice of CMS is easy, after evaluating two engines, joomla and drupal, i’ve decided to choose joomla for ease of use, that’s base on my experience on the past three days (thanks also to Sir Roy @ http://pinoyworldwide.speedfox.net for the suggestions). The only hiccup i encountered was in setting the engine’s mysql parameters, but that’s not to be attributed to joomla anyway. These two projects also helped me on deciding what CMS engine to use in the q-tech website. I hope to work on the conversion on the next days, God willing.

Thanks to Mr. Ryan G. of [my web design source] for involving us in this project.

-Arthur Abogadil

This is the second day of this blog, and i have put small improvements here and there, i hope to fix everything soon. Anyways, for now i would like to share two of the best sites i know (if you know others, please inform me) that programmers and designers/creative people can use to see how they rank against the best on the world, and earn cash while doing it.

Topcoder
This site contains cash prized contests on algorithm, software design and development, components, etc. Corporations posts projects/coding problems and coders worldwide submit their solutions. Corporations got the chance to have their problems solved by the best minds, and coders get the cash. The current coder on the top of the leader board is a programmer (handle:Petr) from Russia, you can view his profile here. There’s even a high school coding competition. So what are you waiting for, programmers commonly have some feeling inside them telling them that they are the best, you can prove yourselves @ the TOP Coder Website

BootB
This site is still in beta, submissions for the HIGH Prized BRIEFS posted by BIG Companies (Disney, Lego, and others) begins January 1 next year. The goal is to get to best creative ideas and reward the mind behind it with huge amount of cash, sometimes even amounting to $ 100,000.00. You can learn all about it here —> BootB

Well that’s all for now, but of course, before you do anything, you should always know the pointofyourwork, to make your efforts at least have value.

-Arthur Abogadil

It’s been a long time that i wanted to create my own site and blog, but a lot of work keeps me from doing it. It’s ironic that i have created a lot of sites for other people and businesses before but did not get the chance to create my own, i think its a common situation for many web developers. . Any ways here are some of my favorite links which i would like to share, enjoy!

Useful Links

Bro. Eli’s Blog &
Bro. Eli’s Pod Cast

You will learn a lot from this blog, guaranteed!

SANS Top 20

Everyone using a computer in anyway should be aware of these security risks and fixes

CSS Mania

A gallery of some of the most beautifully crafted website using only html and css

ARTZMANIA

This is a downloadable magazine about various forms or art, you should check out the WEB 2.0 special to get some inspiration if you are a web designer

Well i have to go back to work! That’s all for now, see you all on the next post!