Web 2.0 Entrepreneur

The iPhone is going to dominate the Web 2.0 world

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on June 16th, 2008 filed in Ramblings, Thoughts, Web2.0, Technology


• 3 Comments »
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The iPhone is probably the coolest and the most useful gadget I have ever owned. I have been playing around with the iPhone for several months now and mark my words when I say this, “by the end of 2009, everyone will have ditched their existing phones and convert to the iPhone”. Yeah, so that means you too, dear reader!

I initially wanted to get an HTC phone, but after comparing the price and functionalities between these two “touch-technology” gadgets, I came to the conclusion that the iPhone is the better choice. And I was right. It’s wayyyyyy better.

Why iPhone? Well first of all, we all already know how cool the iPhone’s multi-touch technology works. The ability to enlarge pictures by stretching apart your two fingers on the screen, moving things around here and there, zooming in and out, flipping pages and stuffs, all by using the gestures of your fingers on the screen… plus the iPhone’s ability of knowing whether you’re holding the phone vertically or horizontally… these things has never failed to awe anyone who’s new to it. It is just unbelievably advanced and “intelligent” - and soooo cool…. again - that you’ll feel like you got hold of a device from the future. That’s right folks, The Future is Now.

Okay, enough of the sales talk. Three reasons why the iPhone is going to dominate the Web 2.0 world:

1. Browsing websites in the iPhone is exactly the same as like browsing websites on your PC/laptop

Yes! Thanks to the multi-touch technology, the Safari browser inside the iPhone will render webpages just as it normally would in a normal computer! No more impractical WAP-based pages and phones - they are so dead. I hate seeing broken pages and minimalist sites on a slow GPRS connection anyway. The iPhone connects to the Internet via WiFi (now even 3G!), so iPhone users can actually sit at Starbucks and browse the Internet without even needing to carry that heavy laptop. And remember, it renders the actual page! AJAX, Javascript, all will be working correctly. So that means Web 2.0 apps are going to be used for a long, long time ahead!

2. Affordable price

Priced at only USD199 for the new Version 2 iPhone, anyone can afford one these days. I am pretty convinced that the iPhone is going to be the next Windows PC of this era. Everyone is going to get themselves an iPhone, and once everyone starts using it, more and more web apps will be exposed to those people who previously was never really Internet-savvy users before.

3. iPhone apps can be developed

Lots and lots of ever-increasing number of apps can be freely downloaded from the net and installed in the iPhone. If you’re a Web 2.0 developer, it doesn’t hurt to build an iPhone app for your web app as well. More and more iPhone apps are being developed as we speak. The iPhone apps will help boost the functionalities and practicalities of your web app. Take it to your full advantage!

The iPhone is just too awesome that I’m warning other mobile providers like Nokia, Samsung and LG…… YOU GUYS BETTER START WORRYING!

Is Flash still appropriate?

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on February 15th, 2008 filed in Thoughts, Flash


• 4 Comments »
• (441 Views)

A few years ago when Ajax started to get really famous as an alternative solution for creating Rich Internet Applications (RIA), a lot of people started bashing Flash, saying that Flash is bad considering its implementation - its loading time, its scalability issues, and especially the part when Flash contents can’t be easily indexed by search engines or be bookmarked. As a huge Flash user back then, I get pretty frustrated over this new development. As I remembered correctly, a few years before Ajax, Flash used to be the king of all. People praised it for delivering the only proven cross-platform solution over the net and putting Java Applets to shame. People were magnified by Flash’s ability to create stunningly eye-catching effects and interactivity that no one has ever thought possible to be done inside a web browser before. Websites like 2advanced.com got very well respected within the Web community of that era.

A few years later, things started to change. Topics like SEO and “friendly URLs” get tossed here and there. Online bookmark applications like del.icio.us and BlinkList started to get into the mainstream lane. All these new adoptions has revealed Flash’s weaknesses in Internet’s content indexing.

However, there were a crowd of people who still believed in Flash and injected it into the Web2.0-sphere. Suddenly web apps like Geni, Scribd and SlideShare sprung up into the Web 2.0 scene introducing Flash as their core technology and proving the true power of Flash in interactivity. People started to realize that with the right application, the strength of Flash can actually be put to good use. This is for the people who keeps bashing Flash out there

“A 100% Flash website” may be somewhat impractical at this age, but Flash itself, is not. It is still playing a huge role in the Web 2.0 scene for its flexibility and cross-platform adaptability. Think about it… there wouldn’t be YouTube if not because of Flash.

CakePHP vs Ruby on Rails. And the battle continues…

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on September 12th, 2007 filed in Web Programming, PHP, CakePHP, Web App Development, Thoughts


• 6 Comments »
• (1,751 Views)

When the funny guys at RailsEnvy.com published a video comparing RubyOnRails with PHP, they received a lot of criticisms from the viewers for making an unfair comparison between jets and cars, when they should be comparing jets with jets. The viewers were right. PHP is a language. RubyOnRails is a framework. If they wanted to compare RubyOnRails with something, they should be comparing it with another “framework” instead of a language.

So here is the video commercial I’m talking about (I find these guys to be very entertaining):

Soon after they realized their mistake, they created another video comparing CakePHP with RubyOnRails to be fair to the PHP community. While it’s not really a “comparison”, I still find it so hilarious. Check it out

LoL. These guys should seriously consider becoming movie actors Anyway, it’s true that CakePHP functions the same way RoR works, and I don’t think any Cake Bakers would deny that Cake was initially designed to work like RoR, only in PHP. In fact, there were times when CakePHP used to be nicknamed as “PHP on Rails”. But the way I see it, CakePHP is starting to move on its own way now and becoming more independent the more it grows. Bravo to the CakePHP developers!

CakePHP vs Ruby On Rails. Which is the better framework?

It’s not for me to judge since I never fiddled around much with RubyOnRails before.. at least not as seriously.

What I do know is that both of them follow the MVC design pattern. Both adhere to the “Convention over Configuration” philosophy and Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) concept. Both of them also support AJAX. They have an almost identical directory structure. They’re built with testing in mind. They are very OOP-like. They have their own shells for command-line interface stuffs. They both support caching. They support different databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc…). And they’re both released under the MIT license.

The reason why I’m sticking with CakePHP instead of jumping into the RoR bandwagon is because I know I’m already fluent in PHP, so why would I want to learn a new language (Ruby) and a new framework (Rails) when I already have a very Rails-like framework written in PHP? If you strip off “Rails” from Ruby, you’ll realize that Ruby is just another programming language. Sometimes I keep wondering myself why some of those hardcore PHP-ers would migrate completely to RoR and go through the hassles of learning the new syntaxes & built-in functions of Ruby all over again when there’s Cake that does almost entirely the same thing. Even the 37signals guys (the brilliant minds behind RoR) uses PHP in many of their sites. Get real.

To set things straight, RubyOnRails is an awesome framework and I have nothing against it. CakePHP is also an awesome framework. I am no way saying that one is better than the other. They both have their own place and strengths in the web development scene. What I’m saying is unless you want to learn all the programming languages that exists out there, why not just stick with the language you’re currently strong at and use the available framework which works with your favorite language to build the applications of your dream. Save “learning a new language” for your next spare-time hobby.