Category: Main

Categories
Main

Empowering the disabled, poor, and distant

I’m fascinated by the way computers and the Internet can empower people who might not otherwise have opportunities because of disability, poverty, or distance.

The NY Times has an interesting article on a quadriplegic man from Centerville, Utah, who works from home as a call center operator for Office Depot. Technology makes this and other jobs possible.

Computer Technology Opens a World of Work to Disabled People

MIT is leading a project called One Laptop per Child that is producing, in partnership with several tech companies, a laptop that costs just $100. This price point will hopefully make it so accessible that countries like Brazil and Thailand can buy one for every child. This would give them access to a wealth of information and the opportunity to communicate with the entire world.

Sites like Elance bring outsourcing to the masses. Anyone can post a project there and gets cheap bids from programmers, designers, or writers from all around the world. It’s not right for every situation, but you might, for example, get a great deal on a programmer in India who will welcome the work for an amount we’d consider cheap. I recently met an entrepreneur that used Elance to get 200 quality articles of 500 words each for $5/article. The articles were written by a college-graduated, stay-at-home mom in the midwest who bid on the project. What a great deal.

I’ve mentioned this before, but Amazon’s Mechanical Turk pays out small amounts for completing tasks that computers can’t do. It doesn’t amount to very much per hour, but on the Internet these tasks can be done by those whose time is worth it to them. That might be a 14 year-old in Utah or a mother in India, in any case a paying job for someone who wants it.

I think the Internet will continue to have an equalizing influence on the world economy.

Categories
Main

UPHPU meeting on custom 404 pages

When you try to visit a web page that doesn’t exist, the server usually returns a 404 error message — “Page Not Found”. At the Utah PHP Users group meeting last Thursday, Mac Newbold presented on custom 404 pages. Custom 404 pages can help maintain your website branding, help you fix broken links, and help your users find something useful when they don’t find what they’re looking for.

For example, if you visit a page on Apple.com that doesn’t exist, instead of giving you a generic black & white error message that you might normally get, Apple gives you a “friendly” page with their logo and some links to things you might like.

Custom 404 pages are even more powerful when you combine them with PHP. I certainly didn’t expect the flood of ideas that Mac presented for using custom 404 pages:

  • To use a PHP-based custom 404 page, put this in your .htaccess file:
    ErrorDocument 404 /my_404_handler.php
  • Send yourself an email whenever someone gets a 404 message. This will let you know which page to fix on your site.
  • One local programmer (dataw0lf) set up his custom error page to automatically send an email to the webmaster of any referring site that had broken links to his site.
  • Have your custom error page search your site for something similar to what the user requested and forward the user to that page. Php.net does an excellent job of this. You can type in “php.net/” followed by function name or topic and it will find the documentation for that topic or a close match. This is great for usability.
  • If you switch site structure, keep a table of old URLs and new URLs. If someone requests an old URL, redirect them to the new one. …and without having to bother with mod_rewrite.
  • John Taber suggested you could use custom error pages on an unfinished site. Keep a tally of the unbuilt pages that are clicked the most, then build those first.
  • Use custom 404 pages for “virtual marketing campaigns.” Use URLs like example.com/tv or example.com/radio in your marketing, but then forward the user to the same place without having to build separate pages.
  • Mac uses custom 404 pages to build logos on the fly. He links to a specially formatted URL in his tags and then dynamically creates the logos with GD and ImageMagick.

It was a great presentation by Mac.

Categories
Main

PHP needs a while-else statement

I think PHP ought to have a while-else statement. There is, of course, a while statement and an if-else statement, but a while() else statement would be perfect for returning a bunch of rows from a MySQL database:

<?php

$q = mysql_query("SELECT name FROM people WHERE age >= 21");
while ($person = mysql_fetch_assoc($q))
{
    echo "$person[name] is at least 21 years old.";
}
else
{
    echo "No one 21 or older was found in the database!";
}

?>

This hypothetical code queries the database for everyone age 21 or older, looping through all the results. If no results were found, it very conveniently says so. Because there is no while-else statement, the programmer has to nest the the while() loop inside an if() statement. A while-else statement would be much cleaner.

Categories
Main

Generous sharing of knowledge

I’ve always thought if I could be smart enough and creative enough, I could build some innovative thing and earn a fortune. And then I would generously share that fortune with others. But today as I was reading Paul Allen’s blog, I felt a flash of insight that shifts my mindset:

If the goal is to get rich, then individuals will obviously not share [information] with others. But if the goal is information democracy leading to more economic equality, then people will freely share it. (Paul Allen on What Motivates Me To Be Foolish)

I think it has always been in my nature to share what I know, but I’ve never considered that knowledge sharing IS a form of generosity. No need to wait for a pile of money. And best of all, it’s a “fishing lesson” instead of a “fish”. I’m going to be better about sharing anything I know.

Categories
Main

Dave Bateman on 75.1

Today I heard Dave Bateman, founder of DearElder.com and PropertySolutions.com, speak at the Marriott School in their entrepreneurship lecture series. The talk went well and he’s entertaining to listen to. Here are notes from his speech:

  • 75.1 — that’s the life expectancy of the average American. That’s not a lot of time. There’s no better time than now to start your own business.
  • Get out and do it. The longer you wait the less chance you have of succeeding.
  • Obstacles get larger as time goes on.
  • In studies old people say their #1 regret, by far, was not taking more risks
  • There are lots of people that want to start a business, but not many do. Why? It’s “not hard to get a profitable business going.”
  • Popular reasons: No money, too many financial burdens, no ideas, no experience, lack of motivation, my spouse doesn’t want to give up something, no time
  • How do I come up with an idea? Find out what pains people and solve it. Or find a way to bring more pleasure to someone.
  • With DearElder.com, Dave took away the pain of sending an email to a missionary, by getting rid of the hassle of the letter taking so long and of having to use an envelope and stamp.
  • A girl in Orem makes $15K/month selling doormats online.
  • Use BYU professors, play the student card, entrepreneurial scholarships
  • They worried first about getting users, then worried about a revenue model later
  • “Care packages” to missionaries are their revenue model. Last holiday season they sold 2500 care packages with a 90% markup. They send 4200 letters per week (for free.)
  • Strike while the iron is hot — mold yourself while you’re still young
  • Running own business requires two things: passion and hard work

Dave’s lecture slides [pdf]