Category: Web work

These days, most of my work is very related to the online world. Building web sites, reviewing web applications, integrating with web services, coordinating people who are far away from each other, etc. Whenever I find a new tool or service or an innovative, interesting idea about working online, I share it in this category.

CakePHP 2.0 released!

I’ve been a bit all over the place these last few days, but I knew that this was coming shortly – CakePHP team released the new and much improved version 2.0 a couple of days ago. There are a lot of changes. And I do mean a lot. Here are some of my favorite:

  • PHP5 support. CakePHP was working with PHP before, of course. But in this release, support for PHP4 was dropped and all code has been updated to utilize PHP5 goodies.
  • Lazy class loading. Previous versions of CakePHP could easily get slow with a lot of models. There were solutions like Containable behavior and others. But it was annoying never the less. CakePHP 2.0 is much improved in this regard. It only loads things that are actually needed and used. That is a huge performance improvement.
  • Improved Console. The new Console is so much better that I’m even considering using CakePHP 2.0 for some of my non-web-based projects. It’s that good!
  • PHPUnit. Previous versions of CakePHP were using SimpleTest framework for unit tests. CakePHP 2.0 switched to the de facto standard PHPUnit. Tests are now easier to write. And integrating CakePHP projects with other Quality Assurance tools should be a breeze.

There are, of course, more changes. These are just the top few that I am particularly glad about.

Also, CakePHP 2.0 release is special to me. It’s been a long while since I participated in the development process of an Open Source project. I usually just report bugs and provide help via forums and blog posts. I did more than that with CakePHP 2.0. I actually wrote a couple of patches that were accepted and merged into this release. They were no rocket science, but a contribution nonetheless.

If you haven’t tried CakePHP before, now is the perfect time to do so. If you have tried older CakePHP versions, you’ll find this one to be much of an improvement. If you have tried it already, please share your thoughts in the comments. Let me know what you think of it.

Flickr vs Google Picasa : The Battle Continues

As some of you know, I’ve almost abandoned my Flickr account. I haven’t uploaded any photos there in the last couple of years. And I’ve also voiced my increasing preference of Google Picasa on several occasions. I’ve even started re-uploading all my pictures to Picasa and tagging people in it. Which is how you probably know about it, since that stirred a massive wave of notification emails.

Anyways. There has been a sudden and unexpected development in this area, which I want to share. Google replaced Picasa link (‘Photos’) in its navigation bar with Google+ Photos. And while Google+ Photos is an improvement over Picasa in some areas, it is an inferior product at this stage. And that was done when I was almost done with my Flickr-to-Picasa migration. I felt it was a blow below the belt. And that gave me yet another opportunity to reconsider my reasoning for the move.

These, to the best of my memory, were my reasons to move from Flickr to Google Picasa.

  • Uploader. This was one of the main reasons. Back a couple of years ago, Flickr web interface only allowed me to upload 5 or 6 pictures at once. If I had to upload much more, the only option was to install a browser addon or a desktop client. Which I tried too, of course. But all of them sucked in general. And required constant permission fiddling. Google Picasa had an excellent web uploader. All I had to do was drag and drop a bunch of pictures into my browser.
  • Mobile integration. Google Picasa had a client for my Android smartphone since the day I needed it. Flickr was a different story. A different story with Yahoo authentication on top of it.
  • Price. Flickr’s Pro account is $25/year. Google Picasa uses my extended Google disk space, for which I pay $5 / 20 GB / year. But those are magic Google gigabytes. Somehow I can fit 40 gigabytes of laptop’s disk space into about 11 Google gigabytes.
  • Image editor. Google Picasa had a built in editor which I could use to do minor editing like rotation and cropping. FLickr didn’t have anything.

Of course, these weren’t all my reasons, but they were the most significant ones I think. So, did any of that changed during my inactivity on Flickr and during my Google Picasa migration process? Yes. Let’s have a closer look.

  • Uploader. Flickr now features an excellent batch uploader. I tried it and it works very well.
  • Mobile integration. Flickr recently released Android app, which works pretty good. It’s not as useful as the Picasa one yet. But it covers the basic needed functionality and I’m sure it will improve in the nearest future.
  • Price. That is always something to consider. In relative terms, Flickr seems to be 4 times more expensive than Google Picasa. But in absolute terms, $25/year is really nothing. $2 or so per month won’t make much difference to me. That was a stupid argument on my part.
  • Image editor. Flickr now has one too.

So why would I want to move to Google Picasa now? There is really doesn’t seem to be any good reason right now. On top of that, Google Picasa is being phased out and replaced by Google+ Photos in which I don’t have any confidence yet.

Therefore, my thinking now is that I shouldn’t really move. Not at this stage at least. I will upload pictures from my camera to Flickr. I will take a bit more time to figure out what I want to do with my mobile pictures – either keep them in Picasa, or upload them to Flickr, or just use them in my blog only. But other than that, I think, I made up my mind about the move now.

What do you think? What is the best photo hosting/sharing option?

What Was Your First WordPress Version?

James Huff of Weblog Tools Collection asks the questions: what was your first WordPress version? Since I’ve been using WordPress for a few years now, my memory got hazy and I didn’t quite remember. It took me a couple of minutes to dig the truth out.

According to my archives, I’ve migrated this site from NucleusCMS to WordPress on April 9, 2005. A quick check with WordPress versions history suggests that my first WordPress version was 1.5. It was released on February 17, 2005. Version 1.5.1 was released on May 9, 2005 and I’ve upgraded to it, not migrated.

So, for six and a half years I’m using WordPress and I’ve never regretted it even once. That’s quite an achievement, I think. Huge thanks to WordPress folks. I hope that you will continue to bring us more WordPress awesomeness for years to come.

What was your first WordPress version?

Google Map Maker – wisdom of a crowd

Official Google Blog shares yet another milestone in the life of Google Map Maker. Google Map Maker is the tool that allows anyone in the world add and correct information on Google Maps. Google might know more about famous places, but there are millions and millions of neighborhoods in the world with local businesses and other tiny little features that only the locals know. Google Map Maker makes sharing and accessing this knowledge possible and easy.

Yes, it is yet another one of those “wisdom of a crowd” things. But no matter how skeptical you are about the approach, it is hard to argue with the success Google had in utilizing the masses. Have a look at this before and after comparison of Tbilisi, Georgia map and you’ll be amazed as to how much “after” has improved.

As with anything that humans do, there might be mistakes and inaccuracies there. But given the will and the right tools, these are getting fixed and corrected. Have you tried it? If no, please do. You’ll be amazed as to how easy and intuitive it is. And as they say in the video, try adding your local coffee shop. Share the knowledge.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znCPgldRWTc]

Flickr celebrates 200 million Creative Commons images

Flickr blog post yesterday celebrated 200,000,000 images published under Creative Commons license.  According to the same blog post, this makes Flickr the largest Creative Commons image repository in the world.  This is indeed a huge and important milestone and I congratulate Flickr and everyone involved in achieving it.  I’ve always said that there are many photo sharing websites that serve different audiences, tastes, and preferences.  But Flickr goes beyond that by providing an excellent Creative Commons platform.  I hope that this will grow and flourish.