Category: General

A Workshop on “Freelancing IT Jobs – How to Make Yourself Ready”

 

Today I facilitated this workshop on Freelancing, organized by BDjobs.com. The primary focus of the workshop was to introduce the concept of freelancing to the attendee’s as well as to provide them with a general hands-on path on how to start freelancing. The total workshop covered a variety of sections starting from freelancing overview, freelance site reviews, tips on building a professional profile, the bidding process, tips on successful bidding, client management techniques, payment pitfalls, payment methods, etc.

You can download the presentation file here in two formats: PDF and Powerpoint.

The full workshop description is provided below. If you’re interested in attending the next workshop on April, get in touch with BDjobs.com.

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Code Updates (HTTP class, Extended CodeIgniter Model, Cross-domain AJAX transport)

   

Greetings to all the readers of my blog.

Many of you have been writing to me in the last couple days when I took the site down. The main objective was to add the new theme and push a few code updates of the existing libraries. I really appreciate your concern and would like to reassure you that the site is up and will be up as usual 🙂 Now, besides the slightly customized theme from Elegant Themes, I have put a few code updates. They are detailed below:

Extended Model for CodeIgniter

The original version of the Extended Model for CodeIgniter has been serving many people well. Although most users loved the nifty functions of the Model, many (including me) didn’t like the hacking of CI core to get this functionality. With the release of CodeIgniter 1.7, we can avoid that as we can now overload the Model class of CI like the other libraries. Follow this instruction:

1. Download the updated version from here
2. Put it in your application/libraries folder
3. In your model files, use it this way: class Product extends MY_Model
4. Everything else is same just like the original one

HTTP Class

There is not much update in this class except for a few bug fixes (thanks to you guys). Also, I have included a license file in the package as many of you have asked. It’s released under the MIT license. The original post is here for reference.

Download the update from here and the API reference is here.

Cross-domain AJAX calls using PHP

A minor bug fix in the code. Thanks to a few of you who pointed them out. Original post is here. Download the update from here.

I have accelerated plans for the blog in 2009 so stay tuned for some worthy posts in this month. And do write to me if you feel you have any questions/ideas/suggestions.

Cheers!

Increase productivity with Todoist

 

If you’re like me, you’d want to keep your ever busy life a bit organized. Being a techie, you’d first find a tool that will facilitate you in doing so. Most of us are fan of a number of such tools: RememberTheMilk, BackPack, Ta-Da List, 30boxes, Microsoft OneNote, Stickies etc. I’ve also tried all of them and a few others, stuck with them for a few days, but later lost the interest. This happened until one of colleagues, Anis, suggested me to have a look on Todoist.

At first sight, I thought it as “okay…another web 2.0 brainchild”. It seemed too simple to handle my complicated needs and I did not have high ambition with it. But as days passed, I was discovering new new features of it and gradually it became a part of my life. I’m a big fan of Getting Things Done (GTD) approach and Todoist became my dropbox for all the tasks in my mind.

If you ask me what’s so special about Todoist, I’d mention the following few features:

Simplicity

Todoist is damn simple and hosts one of the most powerful yet sleek web 2.0 interface on the web. It allows you to have an unlimited nested category/project list and under each of them, unlimited nested task list. This is something that most other tools miss. For me, it’s a super MUST feature.

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Repository of DB Models

We all have designed databases in our life in various occasions. Its quite a fun job for small scale db, but gets hectic when lots of relations come into play. What if someone helps you out with a sample db model on the topic that you are going to make? Wouldn’t it be helpful if you can get an idea about the various entities, know some of the basic business rules and see a sample E-R diagram before starting?

Barry Williams thinks so and has built Llibrary of Free Data Models to help the database makers out there. Its a collection of over 400 ‘Kick-start’ data models that he created in the last 5 years. The top 10 most demanded models of the library are (full list here):

  1. Libraries and Books
  2. Inventory Control for Retail Stores
  3. Hotel Reservations
  4. Video Rentals
  5. School Management
  6. Clients and Fees
  7. CD collections
  8. Customers and Invoices
  9. Payroll
  10. Apartment Rentals

So, bookmark this site and use as a reference for any new data model you need to work with.

Bangla Unicode Phonetic Parsing Script

The Bangla Unicode Phonetic Parsing Script is here !!! This has been a great development and the bangla web community will be delighted to use this script wherever they want to write Bangla in UNICODE (in phonetic way).

The ease of implementation of the script gives a kick-start to the developers who want to harness its value. And a intuitive keyboard switching mechanism sets the users at ease – no need to take your hands off from keyboard while you want to mix English and Bangla !

The next steps would be to make it a standard solution in this arena – having support for all major browser versions. We are looking forward to seeing more development of it!

Hats off to you Hasin !