World On A Shoe String

Archive for February, 2010

With effect from 1 Feb 2010, Spring Singapore ceases supporting the Letas Grant . Instead the a new more stringent grant called the Infocomm@SME – Integrated Incentives for SME Infocomm Adoption was setup to help SMEs for computerize their operations.

This new grant limits funding of IT projects to more specific areas such as the following:

Types Of Project Support Level Qualifying Costs Packaged solutions* pre-qualified by IDA for:

• Finance/ Accounting
• Human Resources/ Payroll Up to 50% of qualifying cost, capped at S$1,500 per packaged solution • Software
• Consultancy Services
• Training Customised solutions

E.g. Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise Resource Planning Up to 50% of qualifying costs, capped at S$10,000 per SME Consultancy services Advanced customised solutions that requires extensive development efforts and business re-engineering

E.g. Supply Chain Management Up to 50% of qualifying costs

(Grant amount is determined based on a case-by-case basis) • Manpower-related costs
• Consultancy services
• Hardware/ software

With effect of this new more stringent critieria I foresee that most newly sprung up IT companies surviving just on grants provided by the government to help companies build up web sites will slowly but surely evaporate from the market leaving only those that have in the midst of this gold rush found a strategic foothold in the  market.

I foresaw this coming when Garis tried to persuade me into setting up an IT company with him and a recently retrenched IT sales staff. The sales staff who was so confidant during the initial meetup session with us, suddenly disappear after researching that the grant she was going for had dried out. Then again I was not really inclined towards the whole engagement in the first place.

First and foremost Garis was trying to target a part of the IT market that had little to no barrier to entry and relatively low profit margins. 5 web pages for $2000-$2500 sales price. While it might sound lucrative up front. On further calculation it was a really bad deal.

Profit per person would be approximately 1/3 of the sales price  hence around $600++ for me per site. However  based on my previous experience I will likely have to spend up to 4 man days ($400 per day are my usual rates) for each site. This was inclusive of the back and forth liaising process with each clients which Garis and the potential sales girl had already declared a lack of interest in being involved in.

Garis was also having the idea that we would each only draw out a small sum per month as salary which will cut further more into my potential return in each deal. To top it all up, Garis was of the opinion that I should stop engaging clients independently and just concentrate fully on this venture, if not direct these clients to obtain service from this venture.

Directing of clients to this venture was not a feasible option. What my clients required of me was more than just simple 5 page websites. Most of what was required by them were comprehensive e-commerce solutions or backend operations systems. To have done as Garis intended would have meant to commit corporate suicide by introducing 2 redundant free riders to the process as well as complicating the picture.

Also based on information gleaned while furthering the conversation between us, I realized the sales girl was only confidant  in bringing  3 to 4 projects per month and at the  same time not really experienced in the pre-sales of systems more complicated that 5 pages web sites.

After the discussion amongst the three of us, I begged to be excluded from the partnership. As to do so was to incur huge potential loses on my side.

This new scheme that Enterprise One will be finalizing in March 2010 seems to be very promising as the barrier to entry for creating the mentioned systems are high in contrast to the creation of 5 pages websites. I will meanwhile look forward to what Enterprise One has to say.

It took me a 12 hours to setup a Windows 2003 VPC with sharepoint installed.

I was face with quite a few detours along the way.

One of the main issues I encoutered was the order in which I tried to install the pre-requisites.

Point to note : The  order in which you install the pre-requisites is VERY IMPORTANT.

This was the order I took that finally worked.

1. Install Windows 2003 Server
2. Install Windows 2003 Server Service Pack 2
3. Install Application Server with IIS, ASP.net, Email Server
4. Install ASP.NET framework Version 2.0
5. Install ASP.NET framework Version 3.5
6. Install Sharepoint

Please try out this order to avoid painfull time wasting detours

So with my sharepoint server finally up. I navigated to http://localhost:80/ using firefox

This translates into my computer at port 80.

I saw my sharepoint landing page.

Next, i thought to try my hands on deploying a ready made sharepoint webpart. To do this I went to amrein.com

This site has tonns of web parts available for download. Being an idiot for holiday seasons, I downloaded the Merry Christmas web part and followed the instructions there.

Eureka. It worked nicely! Haha.

Next thing I should do it perhaps to write my own.

I tried searching for the longest time on microsoft.com site. It was painful. It seems the site has grown so big and complex and absolutely hard to navigate.

Thankfully Google came to the rescue. I found this URL which you could download the 180 days windows server 2003 Trial Version from.

Good Luck

There are tons of free tools available over the internet and recently while working on marketing research for my own venture I chanced upon this cool tool by Google. It is called Google Trends.

Google Trends allows you to search the most popular searches happening within a specific territory. You could further drill it down to show the trends revolving around certain subjects of interest.

This tool  keeps you up to date of what is happening in the market real time. Use it to respond immediately to market changes.

Try Goog

One of the major problems on using operating Systems on VPC is the hardware detection problem. I tried running my Windows 2003 server on VPC with Windows XP as the host.

I tried connecting to the internet with it but it does not work. I configured the VPC to use my Windows XP Host Ethernet Adapter but still not signals.

Realizing that the issue might be on the Virtual OS. I did an ipconfig to check the details. True enough what I saw was that the Virtual OS could not detect the Local DNS server.

To solve the problem I configured my virtual OS ethernet adapter manually. I did this by specifying the default gateway as well as the DNS address.

Eureka. It worked nicely.  I could now connect to the internet with my VPC.

Yup I am submitting a link to sgblog.com

Last year I set up an Apache 2.2 server on my computer to do some developement work using EzPublish in multiple virtual host environment. One day, I happened to raise a question to Steven on how to get it configured so that mod_rewrite works on my server and I could debug my script locally instead of always having to test it on some remote server. I got the response from him that it does not work in Windows environment. Due to the fact that this particular feature was not critical to the whole operation, I left it as that.

Two days ago out of curiosity, I downloaded this new PHP social networking software called ElGG . Apparently it uses mod_rewrite extensively and provides no other alternative methods to access its function. I was thus forced into a corner. Hence I did what I did. I went to google.com and started researching. Interestingly, I read that some actually got mod_rewrite working on Apache server running on Windows XP.

I spent the next two days researching on the Apache architecture. The result I got was this assuming you already have multiple virtual host setup:

1. uncomment LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so in your httpd.conf file
2. add the following lines to your vhost.conf files

   <Directory “…”>
   #Tells your Apache webserver to detect for the .htaccess file in your directory
   AllowOverride All
   </Directory>

3. The below was copied lock stock and barrel from Joomla. Copy and paste it into a .htaccess file on your webserver and place it at the root location

   ##
   # @version $Id: htaccess.txt 10492 2008-07-02 06:38:28Z ircmaxell $
   # @package Joomla
   # @copyright Copyright (C) 2005 – 2008 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved.
   # @license http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU/GPL
   # Joomla! is Free Software
   ##

   #####################################################
   #  READ THIS COMPLETELY IF YOU CHOOSE TO USE THIS FILE
   #
   # The line just below this section: ‘Options +FollowSymLinks’ may cause problems
   # with some server configurations.  It is required for use of mod_rewrite, but may already
   # be set by your server administrator in a way that dissallows changing it in
   # your .htaccess file.  If using it causes your server to error out, comment it out (add # to
   # beginning of line), reload your site in your browser and test your sef url’s.  If they work,
   # it has been set by your server administrator and you do not need it set here.
   #
   #####################################################

   ##  Can be commented out if causes errors, see notes above.
   Options +FollowSymLinks

   #
   #  mod_rewrite in use

   RewriteEngine On

   ########## Begin – Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits
   ## If you experience problems on your site block out the operations listed below
   ## This attempts to block the most common type of exploit `attempts` to Joomla!
   #
   # Block out any script trying to set a mosConfig value through the URL
   RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=|\%3D) [OR]
   # Block out any script trying to base64_encode crap to send via URL
   RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode.*\(.*\) [OR]
   # Block out any script that includes a <script> tag in URL
   RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\<|%3C).*script.*(\>|%3E) [NC,OR]
   # Block out any script trying to set a PHP GLOBALS variable via URL
   RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR]
   # Block out any script trying to modify a _REQUEST variable via URL
   RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})
   # Send all blocked request to homepage with 403 Forbidden error!
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L]
   #
   ########## End – Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits

   #  Uncomment following line if your webserver’s URL
   #  is not directly related to physical file paths.
   #  Update Your Joomla! Directory (just / for root)

   # RewriteBase /

   ########## Begin – Joomla! core SEF Section
   #
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index.php
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/|\.php|\.html|\.htm|\.feed|\.pdf|\.raw|/[^.]*)$  [NC]
   RewriteRule (.*) index.php
   RewriteRule .* – [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},L]
   #
   ########## End – Joomla! core SEF Section

If you are still having problems after all these steps contact me. I will help set it up for your nicely.

Pasha went tracking in New Zealand in December and brought back a bone penchant from the Maori’s. It is now hanging off my neck along with the previous one I acquired years ago before I left the land. This new penchant symbolizes a new beginning.

14th of January 2010, inevitably I was brought out of Singapore, if not Philippines then Korea.  I eventually arrived in Korea and dropped by at Mansu’s place. We met when we were back in Auckland for student exchange.

Upon my return to Singapore Joseph another friend whom I met back in Auckland dropped by in Singapore for a visit.

The name New Zealand seems very visible of late. Just a while ago, I saw this advertisement by the New Zealand Government specifically targetted at Singaporeans. It was like an open invitation to drop by in Kiwiland to stay for long if we want to.

The northern winds has been blowing incessantly still, despite the fact that it is now February nearing the end of its season. Strangely, I have always this acute case of wanderlust when the winds from the north come visiting in Singapore.

Over supper, I kept turning these occurrences one after the other in the back of my mind. Is this a sign? Has Fortuna finally shuffled her cards and dealt a card from a new deck. This new path seems so clear all of a sudden and it is beckoning me along. And it seems to be pointing to the land of the Long White Clouds once again. Perhaps the stars have finally shifted. Coincidentally it occurred just when the predestined quest of aiding Alena in Singapore came to an end.

Inshallah as Sean always says. Perhaps I should settle all outstanding matters over here in Singapore and explore what New Zealand has to offer. If there is one thing Alena has giving me during the past one year’s quest, it is the knowledge that while my ascendence is ruled by Saggittarius (one constantly struck with an incessant wanderlust), my house of Sun ruled by Leo (The eternal pilgrim seeking the Holy Grail) deems that I will start craving for a glorious battle when the time comes.

I wonder what is the possibility of setting up a supply chain to New Zealand and Australia?

Already I have set my eyes on this office space which I am planning to occupy soon when the next project comes in.