Dossy's Blog

Tonight was the December Northern NJ MySQL Meetup, and Martin Adamec gave a presentation on the Content Management System, or CMS, that he’s implementing at work.

He’s using XML, XML Schema, XSLT and XForms to generate the UI for the CMS, as well as perform data validation to provide data quality controls. The work is done once when defining the XML Schema for a particular data entity, and the web forms are generated using XForms and XSLT. He’s doing this all using PHP’s XML support.

Thanks, Martin, for sharing your work and expertise with us.

Tags: MySQL, Meetup, Martin Adamec, XML, XSLT, XForms

I ordered my LOLbiznes cards on November 25, and they arrived yesterday on December 3, a day ahead of schedule.

I compared two companies, VistaPrint and PrintsMadeEasy.com. I decided to order from PrintsMadeEasy.com, since they offered smaller quantities and I was just experimenting with this batch of cards, so I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, overall.

For cheap on-demand printing at low quantities of personal cards, the cards from PrintsMadeEasy.com came out fine. Some cards–I’d guess, maybe 1 in 10 or so–didn’t print properly, with toner not adhering to the card stock properly or other visual defects. The color profile of their printer is a bit too heavy on the magenta as the front-side art is a lot more purple-tinted than it should have been. The cards are good enough, but if you’re looking for perfection, this isn’t it.

I placed the order on Nov. 25 and it arrived Dec. 3, or eight days later. The guaranteed delivery was by Dec. 4. For 100 glossy, double-sided business cards, it cost $19.99 and $6.95 for shipping and handling, for a total of $26.94. Uploading my own design for the front and back was included, free. The net cost per card is $0.27 each.

Compare this to VistaPrint, whose minimum quantity is 250 cards for $19.99, and they charge $4.99 per uploaded design, plus $9.99 more for glossy finish, and $6.99 for double-sided: $46.95 total. Add $9.15 for 14-day shipping, and you’re talking $56.10, or a cost of $0.22 per card.

Generally, folks order in larger quantities, typically 1,000 at a time, so lets compare those prices. VistaPrint: $71.95 + $11.15 S&H = $83.10 or $0.083 per card. PrintsMadeEasy.com: $79.99 + $8.85 S&H = $88.84 or $0.089 per card.

Costs aside, both sites provide reasonable web interfaces for uploading your own designs and preparing your order. PrintsMadeEasy.com uses a Flash-based interface which I really dislike, but it does work and I was able to complete my order using it. No real surprises here.

In the end, I would certainly order from PrintsMadeEasy.com again for small quantity orders just to test out new designs, but I do want to give VistaPrint a try just to compare the print quality difference. If they can deliver better quality, I would definitely use them for larger quantity jobs, where the price difference becomes negligible.

Have you ordered cards from VistaPrint? How did they come out? Or, do you have any other on-demand business card printing companies to recommend? Let me know about them in the comments. Thanks!

Tags: LOL, business cards, VistaPrint, PrintsMadeEasy.com, review

del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since November 26, 2007 at 09:00 AM:

• Bernstein releases code to public domain
  djb releases all his past code and promises to release his future code as public domain, because OSS licenses SUCK. “Freedom” means “without restriction” and only PD gives that. AMEN!
  Tags: google, video, djb, software, licensing, legal, qmail
• Dossy’s Blog: I CAN HAS A BIZNES CARD
  Tags: business, marketing, funny, meme
• Paper airplane – The best paper airplane – How to build it -1-
  Tags: howto, toy, paper, airplane, tutorial

sixteenbynine asked in his LJ:

Once, a while ago, someone asked me a question I couldn’t answer at the time: “Why do the right thing when you might not even get rewarded for it? Especially when it’s just easier to do the wrong thing most of the time anyway?”

Talk about living in a stacked deck!

Here’s the answer I came up with and posted in the comments:

When your only motivation for doing something is a reward, then when you don’t get the reward, you fail. You may be tempted to do what’s wrong if you believe it will lead to the reward. Therefore, the conditions for success are external to you. You are focused on the effect.

When your only motivation for doing something is doing what’s right, you only fail if you fail to do what you intended. The success or failure is entirely dependent on you and what you do. You are focused on the cause.

The latter–doing what’s right–is a stronger strategy because you absolutely control your outcome of success or failure. Doing what’s wrong is weaker because you can’t always control the outcome–the effect.

In my opinion, doing what’s right is simply the smarter strategy.

I just hope I can find the strength and wisdom to focus on doing what’s right.

Tags: wisdom, philosophy, morality

del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since November 19, 2007 at 09:00 AM:

• jcole’s weblog: On efficiently geo-referencing IPs with MaxMind GeoIP and MySQL GIS
  Jeremy Cole points out that, sure enough, using GIS to find a point in two-dimensional space is more efficient than using plain SQL and BETWEEN to test ranges. Go figure.
  Tags: blog, database, programming, gis, mysql
• OnoTech: Why Google owns your lunch: The “I’m feeling lucky” button
  Ethan Stock explains why Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button could be worth $100M+ for the data it enables them to capture.
  Tags: blog, business, search, google
• 10 Absolute “Nos!” for Freelancers : Freelance Blog + Passive Income
  The key to success isn’t learning when to say “yes” but when to say “no.”
  Tags: blog, business, consulting
• Web Design Books, Subscriptions and Tools – Airbag Industries – Things Designers Want
  My newest to-read list, as recommended to me by Bradley Sepos.
  Tags: reference, books, design
• Alpine Information Center
  “Alpine consists of a UNIX command-line program, a PC version, and a Web version. [...] Web-based version built on TCL suitable for use under any CGI supporting web server.”
  Tags: software, free, opensource, mail, tools, tcl