Great PHP Datetime Conversion Snippet

Using PHP you can easily convert just about any date or time to the format of your choosing.

function strototime() which accepts English textual datetime strings and outputs timestamps can be combined with the date() function to output a formated date.

For instance,

date("n/j/y",strtotime($someDate))

will accept a datetime of pretty much any format and output it as mm/dd/yyyy.

This can come in handy when working with dates stored in a database as strings or when converting between International and US formats.

Conference Registration System

I spent the better part of this week banging out a Conference Registration System in an effort to beat one our competitors (Goldman) to the punch, which I'm pretty sure we did. The system uses php for server side scripting and database interaction, MySQL database, and javaScript for form validation.

The system features

• Registration form
• JavaScript form validation
  
• Email confirmation
• Database backup
  
• PayPal Payment Processing
• PayPal Instant Payment Notification (IPN)

We rolled it out today with relatively no issue and dough has already begun coming in.

FC Progress Report

As promised... Here is a screen shot of the individual FC Progress Report

It features a pretty flash graph and pdf for saving and printing

What I'm up to: FC Comission Reporting System

I have been working on a Financial Consultant (FC) Commission Reporting System. It is written in Coldfusion (CF) and takes advantage of some the great user interface enhancements in CF8 including:

• tight pdf integration
  
• enhanced Flash charting
  
• ajaximified data grids utilizing the awesome Ext JavaScript library.

This system takes data from the Thomson Beta back office system, the dark side as it's affectionately known around here because of its black screen terminal look, and presents in a clear and compelling format which the FC can use to gauge progress.
Data presented includes:

• Assests Under Management
  
• Production
• Distance Targets
• Distance to Next FC
• Firm Ranking
  

We are using an iterative methodology with monthly development cycle which allows us to deliver a high quality product quickly while continually improving the system as user feedback comes in. For our 3rd iteration, this month, we will be adding additional graphs and an aggregated view for Branch Managers. (screen shots coming soon)

echo[Ability] 2.0.1.2 alpha

After an arduous weekend of WordPress hacking by Kelani with support of the moral and technical variety provided by yours truly, the new and improved Echo[Ability] has been rolled out.

It is still a work in progress so expect quite a bit of change over the course of the next few weeks.

It is meant to serve not only as a point of contact and representation of our work and philosophy but also as an eventual jumping off point and resource for the like minded, interested in learning more about the technology and tools with which we are working.

For the weekend play-by-play and a good starting point for hacking together your own custom wordpress theme check out this post by Kelani: Building a Wordpress Theme

PANMA Web Tools Shootout

Last night I had the opportunity to attend and present at the PANMA Web Tools Shootout. PANMA stands for Philadelphia Area New Media Association. PANMA hosts networking and educational events, where we encourage the connections among our members, offer business opportunities and enjoy good times with friends. We are web designers, graphic artists, database developers, programmers, information architects, marketers and other professionals.

Topics presented on included:
Blogging
Johnny Bilotta – WordPress
Kelani Nichole - Blogger

Content Distribution & RSS feeds
Michael Klusek - feedburner
Howard Ross (me) - digg

Web Analytics & Reports
Johnny Bilotta - Mint
David Speers - googleAnalytics

Social Networking
Cheryl Anscombe - Facebook
Nick Floro - LinkedIn

Business Automation & Project Management
Geoff DiMasi - Basecamp
Nick Floro - Highrise

Video Sharing
Aaron Couch - YouTube
Rob Sandie - Viddler

Wiki knowledge collaboration
Juan Leon - mediaWiki
Alex Hillman - pbWiki


Photosharing
Aaron Couch - flickr
Johnny Bilotta - shutterfly

Webconferencing
Nick Floro – GoToMeeting
Nick Floro- Webex

Email marketing
Nick Floro – constant contact
Tim Dodd - emma

Bonus Category

Alex Hillman -- Twitter

The Event was fast paced and a ton of fun and all attendees received expert certification in these tools.

Notes on Forrestor Research IW vs ECM

Notes on Forrester Research:

For Enterprise Collaboration, Focus On Information Workplace Platforms, Not ECM Specialists

by Erica Driver

for Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

June 26, 2007

This article distinguishes between Information Workplace (IW) Platforms and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Systems. It covers the similarities and differences and when and where each should be implemented. This article goes into detail about the offerings of the major vendors in the space.

While Both IW platforms and ECM Systems offer collaboration and productivity services ECM is trending towards more industry specificity allowing IW to offer more general, core services. These core services include messaging, team collaboration such as on documents and social computing tools like blogs, wikis, and tagging. It has not yet been fully determined which services should be included in IW and which should be specific to specialized collaboration applications. Examples of Specialized collaboration applications include drug approval process facilitators and collaborative software development tools.

Of particular interest for our team are the comments about Microsoft including:

“• Microsoft is a leading collaboration platform vendor.
• Microsoft offers the core collaboration platform pieces: messaging, team collaboration, real-time collaboration and communication, and some basic Social Computing tools.“

The major recommendation of the paper is to implement IW and look for ECM providers for process specific collaboration needs that provide integration points and synergies with IW.