Ideaticus.com

Some friends and what they are doing - part I

Narcis Radu — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:43:57 +0000

This article resides in my sandbox for some time and this is the big day for him. I will write some ideas about some friends that are running IT business.

Emil Marcoci - Software engineer
Emil is first of all my friend but also a great software engineer. He enjoys a nice mountain city working with .NET Technologies. More about him later.

Remus Cretu - Product and project manager
Working with Remus in Eye Partner was a pleasure. We managed many successful projects together, we had nice conversations over the time and shared ideas about a hobby we both have: search engine optimizations. It’s always a pleasure to read his blog, Seo, Sem & Internet

Krumel - Seo guru
My first contact with Krumel was about 2 years ago. He is a brilliant search engine marketing consultant and gave me a lot of useful ideas over the time. If you understand Romanian, you can read his ideas on http://krumel.seo-point.com.

Keep in touch!

Human Computer Interaction - Episode III

Narcis Radu — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:43:57 +0000

I want to share some ideas about using AJAX in web interface development. Working with Dojo, jQuery or any other JavaScript framework any web developer is able to offer a higher level of usability. In my projects I try to implement the following:

Error checking in forms:
Detecting duplicates of username, e-mail, security number etc requires additional hits in the database without reloading the entire page. Build small AJAX calls to retrieve data from the database and to establish if the user input is correct or not.

Submit user comments:
User should never leave the page of a product to post a comment or to rate a product. (more…)

Alternative PHP Cache

Narcis Radu — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:17:15 +0000

I had a small conversation with a junior PHP developer and I was disappointed about the lack of knowledge on PHP caching. In this article I will cover some ideas about APC.

What is APC? Php.net offers a laconic presentation: ” The Alternative PHP Cache (APC) is a free and open opcode cache for PHP”. That’s awesome, but what exactly this APC does? If you are not familiar with PHP internal process, you should read the following paragraph. If you are familiar, just go to the APC manual and start using it.

Let me describe in few words how a request is processed in PHP: (more…)

PHP and MySQL Query Profiler

Narcis Radu — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 08:25:19 +0000

This is not really something new, but I had to use it few days ago and I decided to write my experience with the new Query Profiler from MySQL. Jeremy Cole from Proven Scaling did a great job and since MySQL Community Server 5.0.37 we have now a built-in tool for performance analysis.

I wrote a very simple class to help me identify slow queries: (more…)

Culture Factor in Team Management and Leadership

Narcis Radu — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 07:31:28 +0000

Maybe you’ve heard the expression: “Managing computer programmers is like herding cats”. I think that analogy is not chosen just happy. Traditional management, through some sort of command-control hierarchy, isn’t what a manager should attempt. Programmers are complex people and have a spacial way of thinking in consonance with the work they provide. Their intelligence is above average but also they have strong personalities which leads to a permanent tension between team members. The situation is not so bad if any idea is very well discussed, everyone understand why it’s good and important to accept a change.

Now, since we agreed that programmers are difficult people, let’s discuss about Culture Factor. (more…)

Windows Live Writer

Narcis Radu — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:19:12 +0000

I found a very interesting tool to write articles on Ideaticus.com : Windows Live Writer. I have to admit that I’m rarely impressed by Microsoft software and in this case I really am.

First of all it was extremely easy to connect this software to my WordPress and if someone has more then one site it’s very easy to manage multiple WordPress instances.

(more…)

Importing CSV files with PHP

Narcis Radu — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:48:37 +0000

Attention: this is a technical article.

Sometimes site owners, with almost zero technical knowledge, want a way to save their database then to import them directly from their web application. For this I usualy save every table as CSV file and for import, I parse every csv file and import in the corespondent table. (more…)

Human Computer Interaction - Episode II

Narcis Radu — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:51:41 +0000

I managed to finish another article about Human Computer Interaction. In the previous episode we covered some rules about search results. Maybe some of you found them useful and I decided to write about Graphical User Interface (GUI).

The most used paradigm in Graphical User Interfaces is “window, icon, menu, pointing device” (WIMP). First approaches on web documents were mostly linear documents with some embedded graphics. In 21 century we have modal windows, tabbed browsing, interactive interfaces and many others that make our life easier. (more…)

Firefox 3

Narcis Radu — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:52:21 +0000

It’s been a while since my first download of Firefox and I’m proud of using the best web browser in the world. This has nothing to do with my sympathy for open source movement and definitely not a manifesto against Microsoft. In my opinion Firefox is the best.

I found today the world record idea of promoting Firefox and I’ll try to help them. So, please go to http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/ and “Pledge Now”.

Code reuse in web context

Narcis Radu — Sun, 04 May 2008 12:51:56 +0000

Hello everyone!

I’ll write today about a code reuse, maybe one of the most interesting controversy of the IT industry. I have three questions that I’ll try to answer in this article:

Why it is good to reuse code and why it is bad?
How and when can we reuse the code?
How to minimize the problems that may appear? (more…)