Colin Charles Agenda

I would’ve written sooner about Joomla! Day Malaysia 2008, but I spent most of Sunday cringed in between the bed and the toilet. Here are a bunch of quick notes I took at the event, with some thoughts tacked on to it.

Overall impressions? It was good for a Joomla! beginner. While I would consider myself a Joomla! beginner, I’ve seen many a CMS and maybe am a tad bit jaded. There is a great amount of interest in Joomla! – about 200 people registered for a paid for event (not cheap either – RM70 for a Joomla! forum member, and RM150 for regular visitors). So there’s definitely money to be made in Joomla! and CMSes in general.

Location? This is the first time I’ve been to the rather infamous Cititel hotel, tacked to MidValley. Held at the 5th floor, I noticed that people were allowed to smoke within the corridors. I consider this a massive FAIL for a hotel – a smoke free environment within air-conditioning is so much better. I couldn’t find a single power socket, which was rather woeful considering I’d have wanted to write more notes had my battery lasted longer. WiFi seemed non-existent, but I had my broadband modem.

On to it. The day started of with Toby Patterson, from Green Mountain Information Technology and Consulting, a joomla.org developer for the last year and a half, and all round nice guy, who seems to be based in Thailand. It was an introduction to Joomla! 1.5, in where I learned that Joomla! finally makes use of UTF-8 by default.

The templating system is simple: it just makes use of HTML and PHP. I was wondering if it also made use of CSS, so a quick Google showed me that it did (duh to me!).

I then learned that Joomla! is really three separate, yet related applications:

• Installer Application
• Site Application
• Administrative Application

Apparently, you can use the Administrative app, without ever touching the Site app. Interesting.

In Joomla! 1.6, access control lists will exist. I’m wondering, why not just use database GRANTs, but from what I understand they want some group grants and so on…

Today, you can authenticate against your GMail account. I’d also like to presume that OpenID is supported (a quick Google sort of tells me it is) . Apparently, there is also logging in against LDAP.

Next up, I found out that azrul.com isn’t actually a one man show, but an eight person company! They describe themselves as “The Joomla Expert” (really, should be experts now!), and one of their most popular products are Jom Comment.

Its interesting to know that the Joomla! community has got an active amount of extensions, and some are commercial while some are open source/free. A lot of the extensions also have a similar Enterprise/Community model attached to it.

There was a HOWTO install Joomla! which seemed easy enough. The guy from azrul.com, a Mark, mentioned that you could use ext/MySQL or ext/MySQLi, and mentioned that you get some benefits from ext/MySQLi, but didn’t go deeply into it. During the example, he went on to use ext/MySQL, so during the Q&A, I chimed in on why ext/MySQLi would rock harder.

Later on, I found out that Joomla! URLs by default are not human readable, so you have to use some form of plugin, to enhance your SEO. The speaker, Syed Ahmad Fuqaha mentioned that his site had a Google PageRank of 3 when he started, and its now moved up to a PageRank of 5 after using SEO tactics (kudos! I wonder if I should apply some SEO magic to my blog and get it up from a PageRank of 6 to maybe a 7? I wonder if I’ll even be bothered…).

The SEF-url engine comes with every installation of Joomla!, but it has no URL caching (so the server will take the load). It can work with or without Apache mod_rewrite. A cached URL is created and saved in the database… its faster, there’s a little overhead to parse the URL, and it requires a single database call. Apparently, the preferred magic is: sh404SEF.

There was good chat on security, and while I’ve not audited the Joomla! code, its safe to assume that an SQL injection means the code needs some fixing. There were suggestions for security through obscurity. There were also bits about configuring PHP, MySQL and Apache “correctly”.

Joomla! also has got compatibility issues between versions. There is some old compatibility mode that exists now in 1.5, with 1.0, but come 1.6, the old compatibility mode will only exist with 1.5, so if you’ve got a 1.0 site, its soon to become EOL – start porting your stuff now!

Lunch was provided, buffet style. Imagine competing with 200 folk… There were t-shirts, but surprisingly, no more Large ones available the moment I got to it.

A little later, @wariola Twittered that there was some interesting message on the Joomla! forums by a Sam. Interesting reading, but it was deleted (sigh!). Azrul has a good response, and I have a few quick suggestions:

1. The entrance fee is costly, and can be made cheaper if it wasn’t held at a hotel. Do it at a university hall, or something.
2. Community event vs. “training” session. If it was meant to be a community event (ala Barcamp), its usually free. If people fork money out, they expect to be trained. Its simple economics.
3. I wish I had known about the CfP before. I’d have definitely submitted a talk topic.
4. While Azrul totally expected speakers to suck at presenting, I didn’t find them to suck in general. But for first time speakers, some form of “speaker training” might have been appropriate. No harm, no foul, public speaking in front of 200 people even trips up experienced speakers from time to time.
5. Google is useful. It was even more useful at the event, as I could not only learn from the speakers, but go on and absorb further via the Interwebs
6. Assuming everyone paid RM70 (untrue, I’m sure), and there were 200 registrants, that’s RM14,000 (lowest bar – highest bar, RM30,000). Throw in sponsors, and if run well, there can definitely be a profit in there for the organisers. Naturally, I don’t know what the hotel costs, but a hotel tends not to be the best location for a community event…

All in all, here’s to the next Joomla! Day. Remember folk, there’s money to be made here (and in CMS’es in general). /me smells a DrupalCon, etc. coming up :)

Today marks a big day in the history of the Malaysian Government – they’ve released their first fully open source software package, MyMeeting.

Poking around their Trac installation, they use PHP and MySQL 5 (5.0.51a from Ubuntu, even!). Of course their install documentation suggests a lot of Windows usage, but this is a step in the right direction.

Give it a twirl. Report bugs. How many more governments out there are writing and releasing open source software packages? Or is this a first?

Anyone that knows me, knows that I am not a big fan of Malaysia Airlines. However, I have to hand it to them, with their new blog, titled Living Malaysian Hospitality (eating, breathing, sleeping MH; MH, their airline code, is now being themed as Malaysian Hospitality, something I think is utter bollocks from their service quality, or lack thereof).

Powered by WordPress 2.5.1, the blog is well-themed, and has been going on since April 2008. For a government-linked company (GLC), I am impressed that they’re embracing modern web technologies, and starting to speak to their customers. They’re giving the company a visible face, and going by the buttons, are not afraid to support Digg, del.icio.us, myspace, and Facebook. They are even hosting videos on YouTube!

They’re brave enough, to print customer letters (from our guests). So far, its all rosy, and they naturally reserve the right to publish only articles that put them in a good light, but Idris Jala has stated: “We want to hear from the customers, whether good or bad.”

This in my opinion can open up the floodgates of complaints, which can then help improve services eventually. There are 30 bloggers at present, and while the blog will not be published in real-time (it takes 24 hours for “approval” – pretty good for a corporate blog), I’m wondering why “Both comments and pings are currently closed.”

Congratulations on opening up MAS, and I sincerely hope that comments will be opened up soon as well. Remember, the whole idea of a blog is not a one-way conversation, which in itself isn’t a conversation. Note that your great competitor, AirAsia’s Tony Fernandes, already writes comments on random blogs…

In Singapore the last few days, I found some time to visit Orchard Road on Sunday. I thought about the best place to get an iPhone 3G and headed to Lucky Plaza. To my surprise, zip, zilch, nada.

Disappointed, as a long-time Apple user and developer, who has bought a lot of Apple gear, and been to several WWDC’s, and still continue to buy Apple gear (latest acquisition: MacBook Air), that Apple constantly assumes that there is no world outside of the USA.

So I asked myself over a very late lunch, why am I roaming the streets of Singapore, just to get myself an iPhone 3G, and have to go thru the hassle of “cracking” it? I am a legitimate user, who’s willing to pay the actual fees, yet I’m shoved for being in the wrong country.

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I’ve recently changed my location from Melbourne, Australia to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This is a problem for the iTunes Music Store, because while the iTunes Music Store is commonplace in America, it wasn’t long ago that it came to Australia. It still doesn’t exist yet in Malaysia. In fact, my Malaysian-issued credit card is discriminated against by Apple’s online store.

This I consider to be a large failure – I guess this will change at some stage, as the iPod Touch is sold legally in Malaysia, and applications for it must be available now (I haven’t checked this week, I’ve been pre-occupied).
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I was extremely overjoyed that I got invited to a Facebook group (this doesn’t happen often, believe me), called iPhone 4 Malaysia. Louis Pang compares Malaysia against Equatorial Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Madagascar, showing the number of mobile phone users, GDP per capita, and population of each country. Impressed I was, seeing the Malaysian statistic:
Population: 25.3 million
GDP per capita: USD$13,000
Mobile phone users (2006): 19.4 million

77% of Malaysians have a mobile phone! This statistic is surely a fib (I think; then again, some people have more than one mobile phone), as the adult population in Malaysia is nowhere near 77% (I’m unsure what the statistic is, I’m wondering where the census data is…)

Then again, if true, how is it possible that Apple is selling iPhones in these other countries, and not in Malaysia?

Naturally, I looked at the article at The Edge Daily, and Sharmila states that Maxis gets right to distribute the iPhone 3G. There is no reason to speculate, but the cost is expected to be under RM1,000. Will this happen by year end? Who’s to say…

So, if you’ve read this far down, and you’re Steve Jobs (or someone close to him, and will pass the message on), here’s my advice:

• Give Malaysians access to the iTunes Music store – Seriously, you’re missing out on a good opportunity. With disposable incomes amongst the large majority of the iPod toting crowd, buying music via the iTunes Music Store will definitely be easier than firing up a BitTorrent client, and waiting for the download, thanks to the throttling of traffic
• Malaysian credit cards are not fraudulent – Amazon, Paypal, and the list goes on, they all have no issue accepting a Malaysian issued credit card. Why should you be any different, Jobs? With the proliferation of Visa Debit cards, surely you can’t be worried about fraud?
• Don’t cripple access to the iTunes Music Store – by this, I mean, it should not only be for applications for the iPod Touch, but also music, TV shows (I imagine people buying BBC’s Top Gear rather than downloading it), and movies

After all, proliferation of broadband is great. There is already a large amount of users who are on the Internet. There are more and more Mac users, after all, there are a tonne of new shops selling Macs (Apple Authorised Resellers/Partners). Everyone in urban areas is using the latest, greatest, mobile phone (I dare say, the average Malaysian in urban areas are more mobile phone crazy than the average Australian in urban areas),

Make a bang with your presence, Apple.

— Current multiple-time Apple customer, dormant Apple developer, iPhone 3G owner-to-be

Update: There’s also an online petition to sign. And the Facebook group is standing at 1,019 members now…

Here’s a packed schedule. There will be a Sun crew visiting these universities between 16-17 July 2008. Will you be there? Where you’ll meet the rock stars:

• Wednesday, 16 July 2008, 9am – noon: Multimedia University, Cyberjaya
• Wednesday, 16 July 2008, 2pm – 5pm: Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam
• Thursday, 17 July 2008, 9am – noon: Management & Science University, Shah Alam
• Thursday, 17 July 2008, 2pm – 5pm: INTI, Subang

And what exactly will we be talking about? Besides the keynote, and tech demos, there will be focus on NetBeans (a fabulous IDE), an introduction to OpenSolaris, JavaFX, and of course, MySQL.

We all have 30 minute session slots, and the focus is rather developer centric, so I’m wondering what is best to cover in 30 minutes (what one can probably talk about in 5 days even)? Condensed talk on storage engines, index types, etc. ?

My fear is that I’ll largely be talking to a crowd that has seen and used a database, and its called Access. MySQL will be new to them. Not having a “front-end” per se, ala Access, might be scary. Then again, hooking up OpenOffice.org Base and Workbench might be the way to go for a glitzy presentation…

So, it seems that with effect from July 1 2008, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) has decided that those that don’t settle their credit card bills in full, will not be granted the 20 interest free days on new purchases. So, 18% starts the the day you make a purchase!

So for those making minimum payments, watch out. This move, will bring you deeper into debt! Yet another thing you can thank the Badawi government for, as more and more Malaysians are putting their fuel on credit.

Statistics show that one-third of the 2.7 million credit card holders in Malaysia settle their bills in full, every month. I wonder what the demographic of this is like, though.

All in all, I’m glad I started out with the practice of using a credit card as a replacement for cash, and settling the bills in full, on a monthly basis. Maybe, this move will make the idea of a debit card, a little more friendly?

Tough(er) times ahead for Malaysians, I’m sure… You think RM2.70/L is bad? Wait till it goes up (crude oil prices are at an all time high now).

Will this move, by Bank Negara, have an effect on you?