Zero to Website

When I was teaching Web Development students to use Zope and then Plone I used to have a lab called The Zero to Website Challenge. Students were given a weeks worth of class time minus enough time for them to present the site to me and the rest class, this was usually 4 and 5 hours of design and build time. They worked in teams of 2 to 4 students that I usually chose for them. In most cases the first hour was spent organizing the team and picking a topic. Invariably the good students made really good sites and the slackers made sites that were good enough. I often said that I was willing to take on any comer at that time (2003 - 2005) in a challenge match where they picked the theme, the operating system and most of the rules and still make a better site in less time. I'm not so sure I'd be willing to make that dare now.

That's the impetus for this entry. Tonight at the TCPC Web SIG meeting Curt built a new Drupal site in about an hour for his Word Boot Camp event at the end of March. Drupal and Joomla are as easy to setup as Zope/Plone and easier for people who are proficient in PHP and MySQL but not Zope.

And then there were...

While I'd like to end this with "one" there are at least two electronics chains left in the Twin Cities and that doesn't count Target and Wal-Mart. But let me back up and explain what I'm talking about.

Last week CompUSA announced it was closing all 4 of its Minnesota stores. While I wasn't surprised by this announcement, it is still disappointing. With CompUSA out that leaves Best Buy (more on them later) and Circuit City as the major electronics stores in the Twin Cities. While we have one MicroCenter store I'm not sure how much longer they'll be around. (This is of course unfounded speculation, for all I know they are doing very well.) There are a variety of local shops that also support the needs of the computer geek so its not like we now have to go online or go the Best Buy. Which might be a good thing.

First look at this cartoon. Then read this news article. Then read this commentary from the Head Lemur. Of course my opinion is that if you are going to the store to get a price you saw on the website then print out the page from the website to make sure you have the right product and price. But that's just me. If Best Buy is trying to get people to pay a "store price" vs. an "online price" just publish it that way. On the website have big disclaimers that say "The in-store price for any and all items may be different from the online price." (They might in fact have such a disclaimer for all I know.) Then when somebody comes into the store and complains that the price is not what they saw online the guy or gal in the blue/yellow/black shirt can simply point to a sign in the Customer Service area that says the same thing. But that would make sense. Having an intranet site with different prices must have been easier.

Will it keep me from shopping at Best Buy? Probably not. (see the above discussion about CompUSA) Its like vowing to not fly Northwest Airlines when living in the Twin Cities. Its a nice idea but it doesn't work. Also they might be a retail bully but they are our retail bully.

That's it for now.

If at first...

Once again this blog is starting over. I've removed all old, somewhat crusty posts to start like new in March of 2007. Why you might ask will it be different this time? I don't know that it will. But the incentive to use Blogger over the COREBlog2 blog I was running on my plone site is that I can email into blogger to add posts. You see I swapped my regular phone for a shiny new BlackBerry this week which means I can email from almost anywhere. In fact I've added the mobile Gmail client so I'll probably use that to email entries into the blog. I'd love to use some sort of quickie blog Firefox add-on but it doesn't look like there are to many out there that work at this point. I'll keep searching and if I find something you'll hear about it that's for sure.