New Business <-> Enterprise Collaboration
There’s always excitement when, as a new business, you get an enquiry from an enterprise business. In sales, the slang for this is catching a whale. However, the excitement often turns to dismay when it’s realised that landing the whale is much harder than the initial catch. The whale moves in ways that prevent it…
Your Password Hashing Algorithm Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad
No Where md5() = sha1(), base64_encode(), etc. This type of password hashing is still widespread and susceptible to rainbow table attacks. Yes (Source) Uses bcrypt, this particular implementation auto-magically hardens itself over time. How to use You are responsible for new \Pdo(), $condition, maybe asking the user to make their ‘password’ not suck. Read the snippet and reason about it. Don’t just copy/paste, it won’t work. Keep on…
Prequalifying Potential Customers
Prequalification is the assessment of potential customers, usually business to business (B2B), to determine if they are a close fit for your company. Progressing with leads that aren’t a good fit wastes both their and your time. You should only engage with people who have a likelihood of becoming a successful customer. This post explores…
Git Squash at the Command Line with a Bash Script
Useful if the commits on your branch are sloppy, and you want to clean them up, and you don’t mind that your new commits will be file based instead of time based. What does that mean exactly? Let’s say you worked two days on 3 files. (One of the files was a class, another a config, and the…
PHP and Go, Together at Last!
This blog post is about Spiral Framework and Roadrunner Server. I’ll briefly talk about what they are, then show how to compile a custom Roadrunner server, start developing with Spiral, using Docker. Explain Like I’m 5 PHP Developers Roadrunner works by creating a HTTP server with Golang’s excellent net/http package, and using Goridge as a bridge to pass PSR7 Request and Responses between…
The Perils of Mobile Cross Platform Tools
Most new business requires a mobile app. Developing for iOS and Android can be time consuming and expensive such that people are often tempted to turn to cross platform tools to write once and run on multiple platforms. Cross platform tools are beguiling. They offer easier, higher level, development and the ability to run on both iOS…
Venture Funded, Built to Fail?
For a long time now I have been sceptical of the venture funding route to creating businesses. Over my career I have worked for VC funded companies most of which no longer exist. I believe this has less to do with my contribution and more with the economics of startups. I have seen the problems…
Analytics for New Business
It’s no accident that the more successful ‘new business’ clients I have worked with have been those that have used analytics to gain a good appreciation of what’s happening over time. Hence, it’s surprising that analytics is something that’s often forgotten by people developing their new product or service. Analytics are sadly nearly always the…
Crapware At Every Turn
On Windows 11, to import and view MOV files I need to install QuickTime from Apple. Regrettably, the QuickTime installer doesn’t work on Windows 11. One “recommended workaround” is to install the K-Lite Codec pack. When I tried to install it I was prompted by this crap: This is the primary reason why the Windows software ecosystem sucks. Searching…
Google Ads for New Business
This article covers gives some tips for using Google Ads for your business. It’s intended for new small businesses as opposed to large e-commerce operations for which the approach is very different. Strategy Google Ads is great for bootstrapping web traffic for a new business or a new product/service. However, it’s not a long term solution as it’s…
