centre{source}

Want to know the perfect formula on how to create a frustrating system, provide terrible customer service, and manage to drive a loyal customer to hate? Just take lessons from PayPal - they are doing a great Job at really screwing up.

Here’s the magic combo:

First, PayPal created some security restrictions that ‘automatically’ triggered on my account. While they won’t say, I’m guessing its because I accepted 20-30 payments before I attempted to make a full-withdrawal. Regardless, this sparked their security system and it asked that I certify my account (this is different than verify). To do this, I have to ADD MY PERSONAL CREDIT CARD to the account ?@?#$@#$# I also have to verify my SS#. The first step takes 1 week for the transaction to show on my personal CC#… The second step fails because they say that I’ve used my SS# at some point in the past.

Continue reading "Bad PayPal! - When security becomes ridiculous"...

From the symfony-project.com website, they announced the release of symfony 1.0.2.

The bug fixes include:
* r3785: fixed getCookies() call in sfDebug when using sfConsoleResponse (#1666)
* r3775: fixed _compute_public_path() when using a query string
* r3754: updated Propel to 1.2.1 (http://propel.phpdb.org/trac/query?status=closed&milestone=1.2.1&resolution=fixed&order=priority)
* r3746: fixed output escaping and _get_object_list() (#1593)
* r3699: fixed highlight_text() doesn’t work with / (#1621)
* r3692: fixed i18n support for errors in sfRequest

Here is the full link on symfony-project.com.

Today, symfony-forge.com has officially launched a beta version of the site. The site will remain beta for the coming weeks, and later a Trac/SVN migration will take place from symfony-project.com to symfony-forge.com.

When we first moved to symfony, my only major concern was Propel. I was pushing to move to Rails, but we gave symfony a shot and ended up absolutely loving it. The two best features of symfony are the plugin architecture and how configurable it is. The only thing we could not live with was Propel. It could not provide the functionality+performance we needed out of our database. Some of the common features like calculated columns, aggregate functions with grouping, etc. are not supported in Propel. Although, a enhancement ticket exists in trac for Propel 2.0.

Continue reading "Doctrine vs. Propel in symfony…"...

I just found a great backup app (utility) for my USB drive. The app that comes with PortableApps isn’t very flexible and it drove me to finding something better. Luckily, I found Freebyte Backup through PortableFreeware.com. They even told me how to ‘make it more portable’ by avoiding the installation and simply running the .EXE & creating my own profiles. Hope this helps others looking for a stable, feature-rich USB backup utility.

In the early years, some could argue that having a website, albeit bad, was still superior to not having one at all. Websites were not the ‘norm’ and having one proved that your firm was unique and cutting edge. Fast forward 10 years and this is no longer the case – every business and organization is expected to have a website. But times are changing again! It is no longer acceptable to simply have a website. Now organizations are at risk to the dangers of a bad website.

Continue reading "Dangers of a Bad Website"...