A couple of years back I was investigating collaborative web tools for one of our clients. At that time all were priced per user which was one obstacle against adoption. The other main problem was the amount of configuration required to get things up and running as near to our client’s requirements as possible. The bottom line is you would end up with an application that did 80% of what was required, didn’t behave as you’d like, and which cost too much money to run.

A year later, we revisited the requirement and trialed QuickBase internally. It did the job, but was still too complicated. QuickBase had the look and feel of a database application, which is not what clients want. What they want is something that models and reflects their real-life behaviour.

We’ve recently been discussing the problems with Content Management Systems. All of the ones we have looked at suffer from the same kinds of problems:

• Extensive configuration required for look and feel
• Inevitable customisation required for client-specific needs
• One or more modules or features lacking from a preferred choice
• Much of our time is spent learning the application rather than meeting our client’s needs

This lead us to the conclusion that the best way forward is a bespoke Content Management Solution. With Ruby on Rails, we believe we can do this now. But let’s go back to QuickBase:

QuickBase gives people a quick and easy way of creating custom databases, views and queries. Added to this, you get e-mail notifications. That’s pretty much it. And you have to pay for it. But you can do all of this in Ruby on Rails:

1. Create the required database structure in MySQL
2. Develop the controllers reflecting the relationships between tables
3. Generate and adapt the Scaffold for the views (and reports)
4. Add a Login and Authenticator Generator
5. Add Access Control List support if you need it
6. Use cron jobs and an ActionMailer for e-mail notifications

No doubt QuickBase has its target market, but when Ruby on Rails takes off and becomes a more generally known architecture amongst web application developers, what will happen to it and similar web application providers? The future for them has to lie in providing exemplary niche applications, such as Basecamp.

So it was a fairly unremarkable pre-election budget. One of the nuggets for small business owners such as myself is the intention of the government to remove red tape. They will remove the obligation on small businesses to pay tax credits direct to their workforce (which was actually seen as a positive move when it was introduced). Inland Revenue and Customs are to consult on simplifying tax administration, including a single tax account.

We all know how difficult handling three accounts is, don’t we? Well, it’s not. We currently have one for VAT, one for PAYE and one for National Insurance (NI). Our accounting software used not to distinguish between PAYE and NI, which meant we had to add up to work out what went in which Inland Revenue account. Today I just reconfigured the settings so they’re separated. All nice and straightforward now.

What the government needs to do is persuade people to use professional accounting software. I’m dismayed at the amount of time and effort many companies spend doing everything manually, or contracting out payroll, when for a few hundred pounds they could do it all themselves.

The Sonos distributed music system has been out for a couple of months now and I decided it was time to have a look at peoples’ experiences of it. Generally the reports are very positive.

But there are issues with integrating with iTunes – especially hassle with playlists (they need to be converted to .m3u format), you also need to update the music index on the controller and there are limits to the size of playlists. For something consumer oriented, there are plenty of ‘techie’ things that need doing.

My home grown set-up, which is a bit like this one, simply works. All in, it’s still cheaper than a Sonos system, although there are some things that an iTunes based set-up cannot currently provide.

I just got another contract ad. Someone wants their search results page to show product images rather than just the name of the product. Budget is £100. Sounds reasonable, except when you consider the probable hassle with learning someone’s website, its configuration and how the application hangs together.

In any case, can’t these guys go back to their original developer? Perhaps not. Maybe ‘my previous web developer has disappeared..’.

I used to get excited when these contract ads popped into my e-mail box. Not any more, they go straight in the bin. Quite a lot of them tend to be of the nature ‘my previous web developer has disappeared..’. It’s ghastly to think there must be quite a number of unethical or otherwise incompetent people who call themselves engineers or web developers. But that wasn’t the point of this post.

The point was: Who needs PHP? Okay, let’s rephrase that: In 5 years’ time, who will need PHP? I’ll tell you: the ‘unethical or otherwise incompetent people who call themselves engineers or web developers’. Everyone else, you know, the ones who get the job done and who know what they’re doing, will be using Ruby. And Rails too if they have any sense.

I’m not too convinced by Podcasts. Apparently they’re all the rage at the moment. Virgin Radio have just started podcasting their breakfast show. To quote the BBC, it is “a half-hour edit of its four-hour breakfast show with all the music, news, weather, traffic and travel cut out.”

Sounds well worth downloading, don’t you agree?