State of Ecommerce in PH - 2009

I have a lot to tell but I was too lazy to write anything. The whole November and first half of December is probably my busiest days in 2009. Only 2 more weeks left and it’s already 2010 so I’m pushing myself a little harder this week.

I went to the Ecommerce Summit last Nov. 12 & 13 to understand the state of ecommerce in our country. According to the CEO of Yehey, the state of the ecommerce is not totally 100% transactional ecommerce but more on social commerce. Social commerce, the way I understand it is adding some social networking features in the whole ecommerce process rather than just buying and selling directly. As a proof, Multiple has dominated the “online store” over ebay because of some social behaviors Filipinos have. Some of the limiting reasons why we can’t have full transactional ecommerce:

• lack of trust
• limited credit card ownership
• limited internet and PC penetration

In my point of view — technology and government support must advance first.

Trust - it is only not our issue, it has been always the biggest issue. But the sad thing is, we have no particular law that provides standards and protocols. We have ecommerce law, but not everybody are aware of it. There are probably less than 1% of the Filipino internet population that has heard of it. That is one of my reasons why I also do not trust doing everything online.

Credit cards - it is hard getting credit card here unless you have 10k and above salary and that’s not even a guarantee. It is also too expensive for a small shop owner to even accept credit cards. Gcash might be a good option but there is still no simple and direct way to use it and connect it to outside applications. I haven’t verified how much but my latest info I have is that one has to pay 100k just to get access. I’d rather use Paypal for all my online transactions.

Limited internet and PC? One can avail a PC for only 10k nowadays. Internet access is the bigger issue here. I visited Hongkong and the difference is too great that I think we need 10 years or more. Their rates is .0 something per call and surf. I went on top of a mountain and the signal was still so strong. I guess our geography also comes into play but the point is, my homeplace is only a few kilometers away from the city and only SmartBro is available with very slow connection. When you go to cafe(s), their per hour rate is already at 100 PHP! That’s way TOO MUCH! The good news is, SM malls have free wifis already and that’s quite a relief. I hope Globe, Smart and Sun expands more and upgrade their facilities even more.

My knowledge is probably still too little to understand everything that is happening but the situation is clear enough for me to understand that we are too far from reaching a certain level of transactional ecommerce (I describe it to some as automated ecommerce) in the country.

May ecommerce law pala tayo!

I attended the webinar of DigitalFilipino about ecommerce yesterday because I’m curious up to what extent it covers. I’m still in awe even though I read it before because the Philippines actually have ecommerce law! Can you believe that?! LOL

It was a long discussion but I noted a few points from the webinar:

• The ecommerce law is a broad regulation for many industries — banks, telco, web
• DTI is the gov’t agency responsible for everything electronic.
• Debit transactions are considered REAL transactions. May advantage ang may account online just incase a company declared bankruptcy (mahabang kwento).
• The law is customizable! Biruin mo un!!! Anyone can create their own rules and in case walang nabanggit ang company or service provider, default value ang Ecommerce Law of the Philippines. Parang configuration yan, may default value!
• Walang clear protection for consumers. Kailangan ng total awareness and best practices when dealing transactions electronically. Your safety is in your hands.
• Did you know kapag walang acknowledgement from the other party, they can deny the transactions you had kahit complete na or khit nabasa nila? I simple reply in email saying “Yes I read that” is already a form of acknowledgment pero kapag walang ganun, it’s not valid.

I guess the issue I have is that we are too slow in adopting changes in the latest technologies. This just tells me that we are on our own. Too sad.

If you want to know more about it, contact DigitalFilipino.com. You should know the law too.

How to make technical presentations more interesting to non-technical audiences

During the PHP roadshows, I asked this a couple of times to myself. The audience are considered non-technicals so I have probably been too technical for their taste. I think it’s really a tough job and I admire great presenters because they make it look really easy. I googled this just earlier and I found a great resource. I a few steps and I think I found a good starting point for my next presentation. Here are the links:

1. Part 1: five ways to beat stage fright.
2. Part 2: pitfalls in preparation.
3. Part 3: magic questions.
4. Part 4: telling the story in their language.
5. Part 5: a fail-safe structure for your ideas.
6. Part 6: building a strong body and summary.
7. Part 7: essentials of delivery.
8. Part 8: fine points of delivery.

Business Models and the Social Media Revolution

I am not into music but this presentation is very clever in presenting how businesses should think at their business models. It’s not too hard to grasp. I thought to bookmark it but it will be like throwing a great idea in my closet so I’d like to share it here.

Another that catched my eye today is about social media and how it changed history. I am not into the social media thing but seeing most of my friends engaged in them is something.

PHP Roadshow visits St. Paul QC

Another successful PHP Roadshow was held last August 1 in St. Paul QC. The usual gang are present which makes the roadshow more enjoyable. I discussed my usual stuff, my undying love for cakephp! (wahaha drama). This one I guess was the happiest leg so far (I have only attended 3 legs) because the students were so participative and I had so much fun with the jokes and tease to Mr. Landline and ofcourse the FREE Tarot Reading from Sir Jeff and his GF. I hope next time I can join again. For the meantime, here are some pictures I got from Ridvan.

Topics from the Gang:
Introduction to the PHP Roadshow and PHP User Group Philippines (Jeffrey R. Seracarpio)
Introduction to PHP (Ridvan Baluyos)
Introduction to MySQL (Chean Domingo)
Introduction to CakePHP (Rachel Jaro - ME)
CMS / Joomla (Eric Bangug)
Careers in IT (Jonathan Yap)

PHP Roadshow is an outreach to college students with the goal of reaching the same level of programming competency of our counterparts (Filipino and non-Filipino) outside of the country (including standardizations and value of work).

This is an initiated project of PHP User Group Philippines, Inc. (PHPUGPH), in support of the organization’s mission of advocating and disseminating the use of PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor) as well as Open Source technologies in schools and companies in the Philippines.

Kata - lightweight MVC framework

Got this from tariquesani in twitter, a new framework but a lightweight version of cakephp.

Kata is a lightweight PHP5 MVC-Framework that balances speed and comfort.

I think it’s an interesting piece of software. I downloaded to check on it briefly. The coding is very straightforward, and the size has a total of 172KB! The folder structure is very much like the app folder of cakephp. I’ll be doing a full review on this in the coming days.

Who is stupid: Me or Paypal?

I feel like blogging this today because the emotion is still at it's peak.

For weeks I've been struggling on the error of Internal Server Error passed by Paypal API when I do DoExpressCheckoutPayment. I even posted it in Paypal Developers forum, PHPUGPH, asked a couple of people for help but no one was able to find the answer as well (you'll find later why).

The most trivial for me is that I just copied the code from osCommerce paypal express module and the osc application works flawlessly! While in my application, whatever changes I apply, I can't get it to work! *Starting to scratch my hand while googling*

So today I got my hands dirty because tonight is my due date and this is the only module left unfinished. Playing with the paypal module from oscommerce and with mine, compared them line by line, character by character. And finally, I got it working!

DAMN! That's the first word I shouted when it worked. It's a BIG BIG DAMN!!

So what was really the problem? the Number format. This is what I passed to paypal before I got the answer:

Passing those parameters produced the ffg output:

Internal_Server_Error
The_server_encountered_an_internal_error_or
misconfiguration_and_was_unable_to_complete
your_request_

Please_contact_the_server_administrator,
_ppmtps@paypal_com_and_inform_them_of_the_time_the_error_occurred,
and_anything_you_might_have_done_that_may_have
caused_the_error_

More_information_about_this_error_may_be_available
in_the_server_error_log_

And the fix that saved me from more misery:

Wow! What a simple solution isn't it??? I don't understand how such a small error have brought such a huge problem. *scratching my head again* *sigh* *sigh* *roll eyes* *rejoice*

Hayyyyyyyyy.. Kaya ko to!

Zend Studio Installation Problem in Ubuntu Hardy

I had a very very long weekend tyring to make HP recovery works and Zend Studio show up to me! I messed up the HP recovery of my laptop last weekend and so windows vista won't get installed. I decided then to use Ubuntu Hardy. Everything went fine until I installed Zend Studio editor. After the installation, it gave me the ffg blank screen:

and the ffg errors:

Preparing to install...
Extracting the JRE from the installer archive...
Unpacking the JRE...
Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...
Configuring the installer for this system's environment...

Launching installer...

Locking assertion failure. Backtrace:
#0 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0 [0xb2800767]
#1 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0(xcb_xlib_unlock+0x31) [0xb28008b1]
#2 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6(_XReply+0xfd) [0xaaa661bd]
#3 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so [0xaab3fa76]
#4 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so [0xaab2580a]
#5 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so [0xaab25a51]
#6 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so(Java_sun_awt_X11GraphicsEnvironment_initDisplay+0x24) [0xaab25c5c]
#7 [0xb2896b28]
#8 [0xb2890aeb]
#9 [0xb2890aeb]
#10 [0xb288e1b4]
#11 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0xb76957ec]
#12 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0xb7858828]
#13 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0xb769561f]
#14 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so(JVM_DoPrivileged+0x32d) [0xb76f2d1d]
#15 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/libjava.so(Java_java_security_AccessController_doPrivileged__Ljava_security_PrivilegedAction_2+0x3d) [0xb73a82cd]
#16 [0xb2896458]
#17 [0xb2890a14]
#18 [0xb288e1b4]
#19 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0xb76957ec]
Locking assertion failure. Backtrace:
#0 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0 [0xb2800767]
#1 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0(xcb_xlib_lock+0x2e) [0xb280081e]
#2 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 [0xaaa65518]
#3 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6(XGetVisualInfo+0x26) [0xaaa5c0a6]
#4 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so [0xaab246df]
#5 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so [0xaab24970]
#6 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so [0xaab25b98]
#7 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so(Java_sun_awt_X11GraphicsEnvironment_initDisplay+0x24) [0xaab25c5c]
#8 [0xb2896b28]
#9 [0xb2890aeb]
#10 [0xb2890aeb]
#11 [0xb288e1b4]
#12 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0xb76957ec]
#13 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0xb7858828]
#14 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0xb769561f]
#15 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so(JVM_DoPrivileged+0x32d) [0xb76f2d1d]
#16 /tmp/install.dir.7943/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/libjava.so(Java_java_security_AccessController_doPrivileged__Ljava_security_PrivilegedAction_2+0x3d) [0xb73a82cd]
#17 [0xb2896458]
#18 [0xb2890a14]
#19 [0xb288e1b4]

And it seems Beryl is the culprit! I've never used Beryl before but since this is by default installed in Ubuntu Hardy, so I really never know it was there but the theme looks cool though. Anyway, it seems that Beryl is messing up with the JRE. Here is the complete information from Zend studio.

Zend Studio starts up with an empty window, or other GUI problems, due to XGL-Compiz/Beryl (with JRE) compatibility issues

Symptoms

When running Zend Studio:
1. The ZS's main window comes up totally empty.
2. Sometimes the window has some of the frames painted, but the rest of the window is empty.
3. In the empty ZS window the mouse cursor is changing while moving around the window (as if there are objects: like buttons and other objects).
4. There were erratic mouse/window movements reported.

Summary

Zend Studio starts up with various windowing GUI problems in some linux distros, while using the XGL-Compiz/Beryl product.

Cause

1. Incompatibility between the XGL environment, the JRE, and the Zend Studio Client.
2. The decoration in the 3D environment clashes with the Java Runtime and distorts the operation and visualization of the Zend Studio client's window.

Get the solution

I have very unique problems when installing zend studio in different versions of Ubuntu. Hmp! I hope the next version, it will work flawlessly.

Drupal Asia Conference Cancelled

I was surprised today when I received an email from drupalapc.com about the cancellation of Drupal Asia Conference in Sydney, Australia. Below is the email:

We are sorry to announce that the Drupal Asia Pacific Conference and the Full Code Press website competition have been postponed to a later date.

It was our hope that we could organise the event to coincide with the Open CeBIT conference in May. However the challenges imposed by a tight deadline and the logistics of integrating with the CeBIT expo have been too much to overcome.

We are still committed to running a Drupal Asia Pacific event and a website building competition, but with greater lead-up time to plan speakers and arrange venues.

continue reading here...

I learned about DrupalCon a few days ago and got excited. Right then and there I started on checking on how to process my papers. Unfortunately (or shall I say fortunately?) I will not be able to make it. I really feel pity about those people who already prepared for it. Just praparing for the Visa application is already time consuming, how much more when you have already reserved for plane tickets and hotels?

Hopefully the next one will be a success and hopefully they learned something from it. I still want to feel positive about this event so I'm still looking forward to the next Drupal Con in Asia.

My First installation of Linux - Funny ^__^

Have you ever written your first experiences? Fortunately I did. I visited my old blog written 3 years ago and read some of those when I was just beginning in php and linux. I can't stop laughing at myself specially now I know what was the problem. Hahahaha! I'll share it here but it's written in Tagalog. It's a bit too long to translate it so sorry for non-Tagalog speakers.

Its around 2:30 am now and i have not finished installing any Linux distro! I think i started working on it mga 9pm or 10 na. pero no luck p rin ako! Mejo naiinis n nga ako kaya naisipan kong isulat n lang tong experience n to at pagtawanan ang sarili ko pag dumating ang time n experienced n tlg ako.. hehehe

Nauna kong na try n install ung Suse enterprise server 8 (meron din akon ubuntu 5.04 dito) kc un ang sabi sakin n i-try. so ginawa ko naman. unang attempt p lang may problema na. ayaw magboot sa cd! ngayon pala hindi nakasaksak! hehehe tanga! edi pinlug ko so ok na. nag boot n kc eh,, edi mejo ok n ako.. then may checking ng hardware.. aba cnabi b nmn s akin n not enough daw ang disk space ko samantalang 40G free and hd ko! aba linoloko ata ako ng installer n un ah.. so edi i tried to configure it (as if marunong ako, pero try lang naman eh) kaya lang alam ata n wl akong experience kaya wl p rin.. nagreboot n lang ako at nag try ulit ng same process. malay mo kc may di lang nabasangmabuti ung installer.. at saka nagkaroon nga pala kc ako ng problema kc di ko alam kung anong cd ang gagamitin ko. biruin mo 6 n cd un, 3 ata ung may cd1 na pangalan. eh ang nkalagay lang sa intruction put the cd1 into the cd drive.. hindi b tanga un nun! anyways tinry ko ung tatlo para sure at wl akong namis.. wl p ring swerte.. lalo n at ayaw mag read nung mismong cdrom.. tinry ko n rin pati ubuntu,, ayaw tlg.. disk boot failure ang lumilitaw.. ay nku.. wl n tong pagasa.. humingi n ako ng tulong sa kasama ko thru internet.. ky lang hindi ko madescribe ng mabuti ang problema kaya wl rin syang naitulong.. hanap ako sa internet.. sa mga forums.. sa mga articles.. wl p rin solusyon.. ayaw ko naman magtanong sa mga forums dhil bk okrayin lang ako kc nga di ko alam describe ung hardware ko. as in di ko alam kung anong processor meron ako at ilang ram, memory at kung ano pang pwede nilang itanong.. ang alam ko lang may 40G hd ako(buti nga my alam p ako eh). so un, mahabang pagbabasa ang nangyari pero nagsawa n ako kc nga wl akong mahanap n magandang article.. so nagtry ulit ako. malay mo kc maghimala! Aba nag himala nga! hehehe.. pero hindi sa suse kc wl p ring magandang resulta dun.. n try ko lang ang ubuntu.. nag try akong mag install ng server. ewan ko kung ano un basta nag try lang ako.. edi un ok naman ang process.. tapos nag reboot.. edi akala ko ok n kaso biglang prompt sa akin command line!! hello! malay ko b sa linux command.. acutally ang lumitaw p lang naman dun eh ‘login’ hehhe nag panic n talga ako sa gnun lang.. pano kc di ko alam kung anon isusulat ko.. nag try ako ng root, kaya lang di ko alam ang password.. nagtry ulit ako ng ibang combination hanggang sa makapasok.. so akala ko papakita n sa akin ung color brown n gui ng ubuntu.. hay naku.. command line p rin ang ibinigay!! ano BA!! eh ls at whoami lang ang alam kong command sa linux eh.. ay meron p pl.. man! hehehe wlang pag asa to ang nasabi ko n lng.. pero syempre dpt optimistic tyo so nagsearch p ako.. at saka kc ang alam ko tlg may gui un eh.. un buti n lang may nabasa ako.. ang sabi nya un palang napasukan ko eh minimal lang ang iinstall. ibig sabihin, manual ang installation ng lahat. nge! hindi un ang hanap ko.. kaya no choice ako kundi mag install ulit.. hay.. wlang katapusang installation to! buti n lang at mejo bumait sa akin ang ubuntu kaya un nag trabahong mag isa..and after 30 minutes,, hahah horray!! nakita ko na ang color brown gui ng ubuntu!! horray talaga!!

oldo masaya n ako sa gnun pero alam ko start p lang ito ng mas madugong karanasan.. hay.. ano kaya itong napasukan ko.. just wish me luck ok..

Geez, my composition is horrible! hahahaha. I hope it's better now. Is it?

About Linux, I still have not tried to install a linux distro by myself but I might again and while reading this blog!