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It looks like Google is going to enter the eCommerce market. My basic understanding is that Google will be allowing people to upload product information to Google Base and then when Google Payments is released they will be able to set a price for those items and accept payment.

There is no indication of how fulfillment will be handled, but it does sound like there will not be a transaction fee. I would imagine there is also not a need for a merchant bank account.

As always at CentreSource, customer service is our top priority. Today we launched the new Martin Methodist College website. The client had some very nice things to say about their new site and our company.

CentreSource is the web design company that customized SiteMason’s tools into an extremely functional, easy to use, and stylish website.

Read the entire article.

Time for a post about the killer app du jour: Listmixer.

By the looks of it, it probably only took Sid Stewart maybe an evening of programming to whip up this site’s functionality: proof of the value of a good idea and a simple, clean interface. Listmixer basically gives you disposable bookmarks. They expire after 30 days, allow quick tagging, and an RSS interface.

It seems that directory assistance (411) is getting more expensive every year. Cell and local carriers continue to charge more and more – all while more and more Internet sites offer it for free. The good news for carriers is that people continue to use it, to the tune of 6 billion directory assistance calls made per year (in 2005). At $1.00+ per call, that’s pretty lucrative!

Alas! Now you can have your directory assistance free (again)!

Zend should be releasing a preview of the Zend Framework sometime in the next 7 days. At least that is what Andi said in his talk with Marcus.

I am anxiously waiting ;)

This week I installed and setup VMWare Server Beta, which as we noted was released for free last week. I haven’t used it enough to provide a comprehensive review, but here are some things that stand out right off the bat:

Recently, I heard another CEO say “If I could get rid of all my employees and all my clients, I’d be the happiest CEO in the world”. While this definitely deserves a good chuckle, it makes you wonder how many businesses actually feel that way. As I thought about our team and internal culture, I began to wonder how many firms actually address attitudes specifically related to their customers. I know, I know – many firms state they’re dedicated to Customer Service – but that can be completely unrelated with how customers are internally viewed. Burger King says I can ‘have it my way’, but that doesn’t ensure that the workers love me when I order.

I have been teaching myself a bit of Ruby on Rails lately (a lot more on this to come around here, I am sure).

I was going through the section in the Agile Web Development with Rails book, and ran into a problem. The book says quite clearly:

Here’s the bottom line: even if a test method updates the test database, the database is put back to its default state before the next test method is run. This is important because we don t want tests to become dependent on the results of previous tests.

One of the worst thing Microsoft Outlook ever did for the Internet was decide that when someone forwards a message, they don’t need to include any of the SMTP headers along with it.

This, of course, renders the message useless to any poor administrator trying to track down a problem that a user is reporting. When someone, for example, forwards a message and says “Hey, I keep getting this spam message — can you do something about it?”, this is what it looks like from Outlook:

We have started a new initiative at CentreSource. We are getting all of our PHP developers Zend Certified. We have a really talented bunch of developers, but we feel the Zend Certification will serve as an outside validation of our talents and capabilities.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting updates and thoughts about the process. We are all working through the Zend PHP Certification Study Guide. We are having weekly lunches to discuss the material that we are preparing for each week. We are planning for the entire process to take about one month.