Why the new look?

Even though we were well overdue for an overhaul here, the new minimalist look has been forced as a result of a hacking attempt on my server. This act of wanton bastardry has meant that, for the last week, all I have been doing is trying to restore sites, domains and email accounts to a working position. Not fun!

Flex2 shipping module for VirtueMart on Joomla

Just a quick post here to say that I have released a VirtueMart shipping module for Joomla 1.5.

Suffice to say that it provides a flexible mechanism for calculating shipping with separate scales for “Domestic” and “International” orders.

The idea for this module, plus core source code, was derived from an existing module “flex” by Micah Shawn which is contained in the current VirtueMart distribution.

You can download the module from HERE. Installation instructions are in the included README file.

New Hosted Service – MyEasyLinks.com

For a few years now I have used an Open Source software product called “SiteBar”:http://sitebar.org to store all of my bookmarks. Last week I set up a new hosted service based on SiteBar called “MyEasyLinks”:http://myeasylinks.com

New accounts on MyEasyLinks are *FREE* and an account will let you store all of your bookmarks on the MyEasyLinks server so that you can…

* have access to your bookmarks from any browser
* have access to your bookmarks from any computer
* share your bookmarks with friends, family or colleagues

If you use a computer in your office, and another at home, you’ll never experience that “What was that site” feeling!

Sign up now, while it’s still free.

Australia Tibet Council

fter much development, review and some false starts, a new web site has been launched with my assistance. It is for the “Australia Tibet Council”:http://www.atc.org.au a not-for-profit organisation campaigning for a Free Tibet.

The site covers an interesting range of services for its readership, and for members of the organisation…

* an information portal
* a place to purchace Tibet related merchandise
* an email campaign manager for guided lobbying
* online donation and subscription management
* online mailing list manager

I make no claims regarding the content of the site (that is all the work of the excellent executive staff and their helpers), but I am rather pleased with my contribution to the look of the site and the range of services that are provided.

For the record, the site is based on…

* Joomla for the portal elements
* Virtuemart (a Joomla plugin) for the merchantising component
* phpList for the email list management
* subscription management by a ruby on rails application developed by me

BTW, you should seriously consider “making a donation”:https://www.atc.org.au/members/ to this worthy cause.

New Hosted Application

Over the last couple of months I have been diligently working on a new Hosted Application, RSS:Forward. The application finally reached sufficient maturity last night to be exposed to the world! This process makes having a baby look easy…

Anyway, promotion of the service will start over the next couple of weeks, so keep listening.