Available through www.travellogger.co.za, the online travel log enables users to track their mileage online throughout the year and easily export this data to a CSV file, for use in Excel, when it becomes time to submit their annual returns.
The web-based nature of the app affords users the convenience of logging their travel any time and any place where they have internet access. The app is also compatible with the majority of popular cellphone web browsers – making ‘on the road’ logging a breeze.

Users can feel assured in using this application as their information is backed up on a web server in a secure data centre environment. Users also have the extra option of exporting the information, and backing it up for convenience on their own PC or laptop.

Employees that are required by their employers to log their travel will also find this app particularly useful.

1 March 2009 to 28 February 2010 will be the last year where the “deeming provision” may be used to calculate a business travel deduction. Before, taxpayers were only asked to provide their total business and personal mileage for the year. However, according to the SARS web site, this provision was open to abuse and resulted in excessive deductions, which did not match actual business expenses.

So, from 1 March 2010, taxpayers seeking to claim a deduction for business travel will be required to keep a logbook and www.travellogger.co.za will assist taxpayers in doing so.

“We have just officially entered PersonL (last minute) into this years TechCrunch50 Contest

We had half applied, decided it was too late, and then they mailed me yesterday and asked me to complete the entry by tomorrow…

So we got cracking and churned out a much upgraded web site and content in just two days (planning, writing content and everything).

Well done to the team who did this: Martin (design and input), Pascal (most of the dev and styling), Tim (Powerpoint, Flash and graphics) and Ferdi (making sure it all came together).

Check it out and let us know what you think.

Rob helped out a bit on testing from a usability perspective. I wrote the content.”

The amazing thing is, i think it is the best website we have ever built on such short notice.

So this is how it rolled out… I (Peter) had half completed a very late (only heard about it very late) entry for PersonL on the TechCrunch50 website when the general consensus in the team was “it’s too late.” So I stopped and we focussed again on our 23rd August *internal* deadline to get PersonL out of beta and into commercial-release-still-in-beta-phase .

On of the “background tasks that we just haven’t gotten to yet” list, getting our promotional site up and ready has been sitting semi-permanantly at about number 5. But an email from TechCrunch on the 30 July changed all of that…

So why did we manage to get such a great result in such a short space of time. Some thoughts:

• All the team members involved know our product and business intimately
• We had all the tools at hand (all required technologies)
• We had very fluid and regular correspondence between the business people, the technical people and the marketing people
• We were not too focussed on cost estimates and “big spec upfront” but rather business results best met – basically this was very Agile
• We had a Project Manager on the project with a singular focus on delivering a swift result
• We were all having fun

And was fun! (Note to self, I must work hard to convince more clients to engage with us in this way. It is simply so much better for everyone concerned…)

Now just holding thumbs for TechCrunch50.

I’ve decided to share some of my views on what I think are the pertinent issues this year, and the goals to achieve to that end. Thus, my top personal ‘Web Development Resolutions’ for this year are:

1. See the Year of the Web Standards?

With Microsoft finally being pressured into releasing a standards-compliant Internet Explorer, subsequently revealing that IE8 has passed the Acid2 test in an internal debug build, and hinting at a release sometime in mid-2008, we can finally glimpse the possibility of bringing web standards (at least in terms of CSS/XHTML) to the masses. Additionally, Firefox 3‘s ability to pass Acid2 natively (better late than never!) as well as Opera’s Kestrel builds with exhaustive CSS3 support (on desktop, the Wii and mobile phones), means we’ve never been able to reach as many platforms or people with the same features before. I believe this to be a ‘watershed’ year, where we’ll either see the myriad of Web Standards take off, or if they prove to be fundamentally flawed (they’re already proving difficult to implement), this may well be the beginning of complete dominance from other proprietrary solutions like Flash. There’s an emerging school of thought that standards are discouraging quick progression through lack of competition. I strongly disagree, as if one looks at the greatest problem plaguing the web, incompatibility, a look back into the past reveals that rampant browser competition in the late 90′s (IE Netscape days) resulted in far too many different proprietrary solutions for the same thing – something that still haunts us today.

2. Bridge the divide between the Client and Server Model

Although we’ve seen various frameworks like Ruby On Rails make our lives easier when dealing with user interfaces (especially AJAX), we’re still dealing with several different representations of the same data – on the page HTML, in the DOM, in the application code, in the database. Wouldn’t it be great if the client-side UI object was the same as the server-side one? Why do we need four or more languages and data models to work on the same platform? In my opinion, anyone who can conclusively create a single solution (which I believe is achievable), will elevate web development to the undisputed champion of cross-platform, accessible and efficient software design. I’ll race you there…

3. Go Mobile

Well, by now everyone is quite familiar with that prodigy of effective marketing, the iPhone. I’m sure most of you have considered the possiblity of making your applications work on it’s cut-down Webkit browser. However, consider the number of users you could reach if you could tap into the several hundred million cellphones worldwide with an internet connection. Recently I made the rather serendipitous discovery that Opera Mini 4 – which runs on any decent J2ME phone – was able to [mostly] run our AJAX-intensive WTimer application, which we hadn’t put a single second of mobile development time into. Surely, uncovering the workings of this browser will enable us to bring rich applications to not only the iPhone, but to the millions of normal mobile users out there.

4. Put old browsers to rest

Anyone else tired of dealing with IE6′s (or worse) compatiblity issues? As I aluded to briefly in our Heroes 2007 Conference, I’ve proposed a possible plan to tackle this knife in the side of web development:

• Educate and Upgrade – Politely nag people using old browsers to upgrade to new ones. The trick is to work out a method that doesn’t detract from the value of the site itself. Perhaps via a notice, which links to a tailored, step-by-step guide on how and why to upgrade. If we can roll this out on a large scale, then hopefully we can knock down the figure of 40%+ IE6 users, and spend more time doing real coding.
• Fix – There are a number of great scripts like Dean Edward’s IE7.js that can upgrade and fix a limited number of browser defects. Improving on these and chucking in some resetting CSS for example, could ease the pain of dealing with these browsers in the mean time.
• Embed – With layout engines like WebKit introducing experimental features like offline databases, we may just be better off in some situations with tying applications into an embedded desktop application (eg. Fluid) and forcing clients to download and use them, virtually eliminating the problem altogether.

Perhaps with a plan like this, we can start developing websites and applications that break through the limitations of browsers that are nearly 10 years old. In conclusion, I’m very excited about the possibilities for the direction of web development technologies this year, but also feel that a lot of juggling of the elements and ideas will need to be done to master it. We must persue every avenue to come up with solutions that help us move forward…

“The only real failure in life is the failure to try.” — Unknown

How do you feel about these issues? Any comments you have will be appreciated. All the best to everyone for a fantastic 2008!

Each end of year conference is a culmination of the year’s learnings and industry developments and takes place over two days.

This year WWW plans to do something a little different. “As we have grown in both size and knowledge, we have realized that our conference content has a lot to offer others in the industry,” says Peter Flynn, MD of White Wall Web International. This year, the conference is being opened up to invited and paid guests and the content tailored to be of interest to this new group of attendees. “In 2008 we are planning to host a full paid conference, so this year’s (2007) conference is a bit of a “hybrid” as we gear up for next year’s event.”

“We are excited because we having some great guest speakers. In addition, we will be unveiling some exciting new plans for 2008.”

On Day One, technical topics will be discussed on topical issues in the field such as Agile Development, continuous integration, infrastructure considerations when implimenting AJAX and lessons learned running Web Application Development projects.

On Day Two, management, leadership and vision-casting topics will be discussed including “Getting Things Done,” the dynamics of personal goal setting, finding your strengths and others.

“We are opening up the conference to others in the industry who may have an interest in the subject matter and/or an interest in working with White Wall Web. We already have about 30 attendees and the venue can take up to 50, so places are limited.”

For full information on the conference, topics, speakers, venue etc. have a look at the full brochure.

The conference cost is R600 ex VAT per day and is taking place on the 10th and 11th of December 2007. Day One is very technical in nature, Day Two covers issues of leadership, management and vision-casting for 2008. Attendees can opt to attend either or both days.

Interested people should call 021 462 4969 and ask to speak Bianca. Alternatively email info@whitewallweb.com. Please RSVP by the 28th November 2007.

Update 28th Nov: We have had numerous sign ups from as far afield as Nigeria. There are a few places left still, so remember to get your bookings in today…

In the last two weeks my development team has made a few new discoveries in the area .Net ORM tools. The new additions are Sub Sonic (free) and Entity Spaces (paid – $80).

We are in the process of evaluating and prototyping both of these tools for a enterprise sized web-application that we are about to start building. The team discovered these after struggling to implement the much talked about NHibernate ORM framework.

Both Sub Sonic and Entity Spaces are extremely easy to implement. You are not required to construct XML mapping files required to map classes to the database. These classes are auto generated by the tools themselves. Once this process has finished you are two lines of code away from populating data into your Views. Another great advantage of these tools is that they both support scaffolding.

We will keep you updated with developments of our hunt to find the ORM best suited to our upcoming development. We will also post some more technical articles with example code once we have further prototyped and researched the tools. What has been your experience with implementing .Net ORM’s?

Read more about some of the pro’s and con’s of Sub Sonic and Entity Spaces on Kevin Southworth’s blog.

First up, I have to mention that my first experience in the programming world was with C# .NET. I thought that I would never move to another language never mind leaving the .NET framework.I started working at WhiteWallWeb and the oddity language PHP4. Coming from a completely object oriented approach to the scripting PHP4 pattern really shocked my system – “How clever must you be working with 4000 lines of “if’s” and “else’s” with the occasional “switch case”?” When PHP5 arrived I was back in my comfort zone. We’ve even built our own framework – Muffin. Working with PHP’s unique multiple array structure with the JSON library and the Prototype JavaScript library made me think I was invincible.
Then Ruby on Rails came along…
Having no clue what rails was about – my colleagues and I worked days on winning Rails. Some days it felt like a losing battle, but look at us now – The Ruby Boys.

I have been looking at the ASP.NET AJAX because my .NET colleagues are boasting about it – so I thought I should have a look. My first impression was that it seems to be as simple as Ruby on Rails – for the basic things anyway. Further investigation made me conclude that Ruby on rails is the Mohammed Ali of AJAX development. The best way I could emphasize this statement is by a bout between ASP.NET AJAX and Ruby on Rails Fight Night style.

Tonight’s main event will be the lightweight Ruby on Rails (RoR) VS the heavy weight ASP.NET AJAX

In the blue corner

ASP.NET AJAX

As with all .NET languages, Microsoft Visual Studio provides, according to me, the best IDE interface by far. Drag and Drop what you need on a canvas (web panels), make some minor adjustments and your off. But what if the prebuilt controller fails to meet your client’s requirements? Now that where the all-nighter coffee binges come in. With the weight of .NET’s countless objects, functions and controllers it can take any .NET developer some time to find the exact solutions – to be fair the MSDN is fantastic. If a custom job is needed, the weak MVC framework can easily be decimated by a tired or inexperienced developer. After all the work has been done – you can be assured that your application is built in a prestige language, but don’t ask me to update the code. We can expect fast big punches from this formidable heavy weight.

In the red corner

RoR

Ruby on rails is an enforced MVC framework that handles everything from the database structure and directory structure to the list items in the HTML. The Ruby JavaScript (RJS) is where the real magic lies – with calls to two ruby functions and couple of options inside a hash you can easily generate draggable items with selective properties such as to where they are allowed to be dropped or not. On Drop a specified URL (resource map) will be called and its output will be returned – with the option to update any HTML element on page – keep in mind that this could return more RJS and further the actions. With its Ruby on Rails’ programming language Ruby, its fancy footwork will dazzle .NET’s scripting language and precompiled Framework.

Round 1: Multiple droppables and draggables

Task at hand. Two divs – one is a fruit, the other a vegetable, Two containers – A pot and a basket. The pot should accept vegetables and the basket should only accept fruit.

FIGHT

ASP.NET AJAX makes the first move

I googled comprehensively (about 15 minutes) for a solution. I couldn’t find an easy one anywhere. The best I came up with was this custom extender http://msmvps.com/blogs/omar/archive/2007/03/22/asp-net-ajax-extender-for-multi-column-widget-drag-drop.aspx
Thanks to Omar for his post..NET looks at his trainer (Omar) on the side of the ring with dismay. With after a couple of changes he got halfway through his punch.

RoR blocks and counters it

Setup your draggable items

<div id=”Carrot” class=”vegtable”>Carrot</div>
<%= draggable_element :Carrot %>
<div id=”Apple” class=”fruit”>Apple</div> <%= draggable_element :Apple%>

Setup your droppable containers

<div id=”Pot” class=”container”>Pot</div>
<%= drop_receiving_element “Pot”, :hoverclass => “hover”, :accept => :vegtable %>
<div id=”Basket” class=”container “>Basket</div>
<%= drop_receiving_element “Basket”, :hoverclass => “hover”, :accept => :Fuit %>

RoR made an opening haymaker – The purity of the MVC structure and the help of his two trainers namely Prototype and Scriptaculous made the blow relentless. With all the extra weight of the .NET framework ASP.NET AJAX could not move out of the way. ASP.NET AJAX looks drowsy after the first round.

Judges scores after Round 1

1- 0 to Ruby

Next round: Repopulate cascading select boxes.

Currently Adrian Rossouw from Bryght did a useful presentation on Drupal. Everyone who has the required knowledge seems to agree with our hypothesis that Drupal is the best platform of CMS deployments.

Raoul Snyman did a great presentation on an overview of the technical considerations for SEO and SEM.

Rafiq Phillips provided some inspirational motivation on innovation and facilitated a discussion around what makes blogs more successful than other sites in getting high search engine rankings. A takeway – standards on the web are of vital importance on the web!TYFYC Rafiq…

An Axoim Framework (Python) overview was presented by Moe Aboulkheir

Jeremy Thurgood spoke about Nevow, a Python based framework/”web application construction tool kit.” Looks powerful and I would like to get some thoughts about Nevow vs. other frameworks in the debate – so please contribute if you have any thoughts…

Duncan Withers introduced OpenProject.

I hosted a discussion on programming approaches and focussed on Agile. I was impressed by the interest and knowledge of the other BarCampers.
Laurence Baldwin spoke about antispam software – spam assassin.

I will edit this post as things develop…

• Strong separation of Data, Logic and Presentation (MVC)
• OOP
• Strong naming conventions and smart English recognition
• Web 2.0 support and preferably libraries built in
• Built for automated testing (especially unit testing) preferably with an existing unit testing framework
• A great IDE (preferably Eclipse)
• Rapid development features (scaffolding etc.)
• Robustness (able to handle large volumes of traffic and data)

Due to a number of our existing projects being build in PHP we endevoured to find the best PHP framework for taking those projects and plugin applications forward. We also looked for the best framework across all languages.

The best PHP framework according to our evaluation (all things considered) is CakePHP.

The best framework overall for our needs according to our evaluation is Ruby on Rails.

Another framework that we will be keeping a close eye on is Django (Python).

Some sites/articles worth reading on the subject:

http://www.cakephp.org/

http://www.killersites.com/blog/2006/php-vs-ruby/

Yesterday we published some nice enhancements for the public front end site using some AJAX scripting.

Read on for more details…

1. A suburb filter has been added on the home page for quicker suburb searching

The end user can either search for a suburb without selecting a region:
(libraries – prototype)

Or the end user can search for a region,

And then search within those results,

Once a suburb or suburbs have been located, the end user can select the suburb(s), select step 3 and step 4 criteria and click on “Submit”.

2. Suburbs are now categorized by “Sub Region”

3. You can now view the photo gallery directly from the one liners

Click on the photo gallery link and…
(libraries – prototype, lightbox2)

4. You can now also view more listing details directly from the one liners

This includes the Web Ref number and the Region, Sub Region and Suburb

5. On the details page there is a new improved layout with additional information

Note also a “back” link at the top, the web reference number, the status (“New Release, For Sale, For Rent, Sold etc.) the type, the Region and the Suburb.