From my experience, at least with Safaricom’s M-Pesa in Kenya, there are more outages of their crucial service in a month that I have ever had with Visa, MasterCard or any other major credit card vendors. And when M-Pesa or other mobile payment solutions are not experiencing an outage or sorts, they are experiencing what they like to refer to as ‘delays’.

Now, to the normal person, this is to be expected. Granted, mobile payment solutions are still quite relatively new in any market. They have therefore not had the chance to make mistakes, fail, and grow to be established robust platforms like their competing card platforms. So in a way, the outages and delays are to be expected. But this causes a lot of problems for integration to systems that are used to robust platforms.

Having had experience in building mobile payment gateway plugins for various systems using PesaPal as the mobile payment gateway provider of choice, I must say I can see their problems in trying to seamlessly and securely integrate the mobile payment solutions. There are flaws though.

Most existing payment gateways, whether they be major credit card gateways like Visa and MasterCard or third party gateways like PayPal or 2CO, offer two statuses for any payment transaction. Successful or Failed. Simple. Apart from that, they may offer a cancel URL if the user for whatever reason decides to cancel a transaction.

In fact, not that I think about it, with third party payment gateways like PayPal, they simply never return a failed result back to the originating site. If for whatever reason a transaction does not go though, they will keep you in the payment gateway page asking you to try another credit / debit card or payment method / source until the transaction is successful. The only other option a user has if a transaction cannot go through is to cancel it altogether.

Now while this may sound like common sense, it does not play that way when it comes to mobile payment gateway. As mentioned above, due to downtimes and delays, mobile payment gateways have one more transaction status that just has online system baffled. This transaction status is ‘Pending’.

Majority of the online e-commerce systems do not support this status for use with payment gateways. They support a ‘Pending’ transaction status for more manual payment methods like Money Orders or Wire Bank Transfers. And by manual, I mean that there is no automated electronic method of marking said transaction as paid or unpaid. The system admin will have to manually change the status of said transaction once they get or not get confirmation of the transaction status either from their bank, post office or wherever.

So with mobile payment gateway providers (Like PesaPal) offering a status of ‘Pending’ for transactions going through them, and with this pending transaction status making the site work more like a manual confirmation payment gateway, why use the 3rd party mobile payment gateway at all? If the admin has to keep checking the status of a transaction, either via a cron job or by refreshing their PesaPal transactions page, why not simply get yourself a phone that accepts the mobile payment solution you want to provide, and manually update the transaction status when your phone chimes as payments check in?

All said and done, there are benefits to using the payment gateway. Having a know brand handle you payments saves small site owners a customer care headache when it comes to payment queries. They also help in keeping your books straight and in knowing how much money checked in and for which products or services, e.t.c. Therefore, the transfer fees and commissions you are paying per transaction as a merchant might be paying off to some extent at the end of the day. So it is still beneficial to use the 3rd party mobile payment gateway solutions if you want to provide mobile payment options on your site.

That being said, there is still a lot more they can do to make the automation process smoother and usable for developers to be able to integrate Instant Payment Notification (IPN) systems via their payment gateways.

I will therefore follow up this article with on on how the current 3rd party mobile payment solutions really work (from a developers standpoint) and how they ought to work. So do watch this space if you are interested.

The title of this blog post refers to the captivating novel, Daemon by Daniel Suarez which you can get on Amazon and  Audible, if you are lazy and prefer being read to. It is a worth read for all. The book is so good, I think, that Google went and decided that with their bottomless resources to try and create the Dark Net – or something akin to it.

The official name of the project is simply Project Glass and at the moment, includes of a few photos, a completely blank Google+ page, and a concept video that is still quite a way from reality. At least though, there are some people looking into the future. These glasses might actually become reality in my lifetime and that is exciting. That said, I think the concept video is far from reality. Check it out below.

There are experts who are rightfully saying that this is bullocks and the small screen of the glasses cannot deliver the experience in the video, not to mention the problem ambient lighting will produce as you move around. You can read more about these shortcomings on Wired. Nevertheless, it is exciting and I agree with Chris Matyszczyk of CNET that this might be a marketing gimmick of sorts to make all of us think highly of Google, feel good about Google and buy more of their services. It might just work, now that I think about it.

While browsing about this project, I came across some issues that could occur with such a project, and I think the video below puts in perspective what the social shortcomings of such glasses would be. Have a nice laugh on me and the guy who made this video.

To all those who actually know how to play this game…I think the photo says it all!

PesaPal have upped their game and upgraded their system to fix some flaws that I believe it had. This has of course lead to a better payment gateway but left in its wake a series of non-working plugins. Thus, the older plugin I had written is broken and I am yet to update it. I will get round to updating it once I am done re-coding the newly coded plugin for Virtuemart 2.0.x

The improvements PesaPal have made in their system include finally including a more secure way of transmitting transaction status back to the system. There are some needed requirements that I need to look into more before I can comment on them. I guess I will be writing about those once I am done building testing the two plugins I have to build now.

Despite the improvements in this newer version of PesaPal (V4), I still foresee some more changes coming up soon that their growth will simply see them have to implement. Things like currency selection and also a way of choosing which payment options I want to appear on the page seeing as we may not necessarily need all the options they have there. So in short, I know there is going to be a lot of support needed in the times ahead.

I do apologize for any inconveniences caused while I get round to updating my code to match the improvements PesaPal have made to their system. So please, be a bit patient and watch this space.

Back to code.

ajagwe.

This time round though, I will detail how to actually add fields to the K2 user profile, without affecting the existing Joomla!® profile. The beauty of this hack is that it is now independent of the version of Joomla!® you may be running and only affects the K2 extension. So, here goes…

To add fields to the K2 user profile, please edit the following files as instructed below

1. administrator/components/com_k2/tables/k2user.php – declare your new variables in the TableK2User class which extends the core Joomla!® JTable class. You may also include checking code here by appending your checking code to the check() function of the class.

2. components/com_k2/templates/register.php – edit the front end registration form accordingly, adding the fields you require

3. components/com_k2/templates/profile.php – edit the front end profile edit forms accordingly to allow editing of the user profile including custom fields added.

4. plugins/system/k2/k2.php – edit this file if you need to generate and parse any HTML objects that will go into the register.php or profile.php The function to edit here is onAfterDispatch – edit the control section for registration [if (($option == 'com_user' && $view == 'register') || ($option == 'com_users' && $view == 'registration'))] to add elements to the registration form and the control section for profile editing[if (($option == 'com_user' && $view == 'user' && ($task == 'edit' || $layout == 'form')) || ($option == 'com_users' && $view == 'profile' && $layout == 'edit'))] to add elements to the profile edit form.

Please note that you are not required to edit this file if you do not need to. The hack will work well enough with all your HTML, JS or even php code in the register.php and profile.php

Now that we have edited the relevant files, please add required fields into the k2users table of your Joomla!® installation or the user system will crash. Ensure the field names match the variable names you added in the class of the first file.

Should any of the steps above be too summarized of should you need more details in getting an extended K2 User profile, please do not hesitate to ask in the comments. Also, if K2 changes that way it does things and for some reason I simply do not notice, holla and I will try to update the hack to ensure it always works.

Please note that this list assumes knowledge of other basic windows keyboard shortcuts and it will not include them.

Windows 8 comes with a new Charms Bar which appears only when you move the mouse pointer to the right side of Windows. You can open this Charms Bar using a keyboard shortcut Windows key+C.

The search keyboard shortcut in Windows 8 is Windows key+F. This will open a Metro-UI search bar and the search results will also load in the Metro-UI.

To change settings in Windows 8, you can use the Windows key+I shortcut to open the Settings panel where you can change all the settings related to apps, volume, wireless networks, shut down and so on.

If you are on Windows 8 Metro-UI, you can go back to the Desktop UI instantly using the Windows key+D shortcut.

Find below a longer list of shortcuts!

• Windows key – Brings up the Metro-UI start screen. You can start typing to search for an app, just like the Win7 start menu. (also known as the ‘Back’ feature of Windows
• Windows key + B – Switch to the (classic) Windows desktop and select the tray notification area.
• Windows key + C – Brings up the Charms menu, where you can search, share, and change settings.
• Windows key + D – Brings up the old Windows desktop.
• Windows key + E – Launch Windows Explorer with Computer view displayed.
• Windows key + F – Brings up the Metro File search screen.
• Windows key + H – Opens the Metro Share panel.
• Windows key + I – Opens the Settings panel, where you can change settings for the current app, change volume, wireless networks, shut down, or adjust the brightness.
• Windows key + J – Switches focus between snapped Metro applications.
• Windows key + K – Opens the Devices panel (for connecting to a projector or some other device)
• Windows key + L – Lock PC and return to Lock screen.
• Windows key + M – Minimize all Windows on the desktop
• Windows key + O – Locks device orientation.
• Windows key + P – Choose between available displays.
• Windows key + Q – Brings up the Metro App Search screen.
• Windows key + R – Switch to the (classic) Windows desktop and display the Run box.
• Windows key + U – Switch to the (classic) Windows desktop and launch the Ease of Access Center.
• Windows key + V – Cycles through toasts.
• Windows key + W – Brings up the Metro Settings search screen.
• Windows key + X – Launch Power Menu.
• Windows key + Z – Opens the App Bar for the current Metro application.
• Windows key + Page Up / Down – Moves tiles to the left / right.
• Windows key + Tab – Opens the Metro application switcher menu, switches between applications (both Metro and Desktop Applications)
• Windows key + , (comma) – Aero Peek at the desktop.
• Windows key + . (period) – Snaps the current Metro application to one side of the screen. (Right side)
• Windows key + Shift + . (period) – Snaps the current Metro application to the other side of the screen. (Left side)
• Windows key + Enter – Launches Narrator
• Windows key + Arrow Keys – Switch to the (classic) Windows desktop and enable Aero Snap

For those who know how to properly use Joomla!®, you will agree with me that K2 is one hell of a powerful extension for the content management system and if configured correctly, it can be useful in turning your site into anything!

Of late, K2 has been frustrating me. I have been having trouble trying to add custom registration fields to the core Joomla!® user object while still being able to use the K2 user plugin to populate the extra fields. My first thought was to simply disable the K2 user plugin, which I did. This though, prevented useful features like allowing users to add content from the frontend via K2. Disabling the plugin also seemingly broke frontend moderation and these were core features that I (my client) required.

So, how do you add custom fields to Joomla!® and link these fields to the K2 User profile? Read on!

The first thing you would have to do, I suppose is add the custom registration fields to Joomla!®. To do so, you will need to edit at least three files, namely

1. libraries/joomla/database/table/user.php – declare your new variables in this class. You may also include checking code here
2. components/com_user/views/register/tmpl/default.php – edit the front-end registration form accordingly
3. administrator/components/com_users/views/user/tmpl/form.php – edit the back-end registration form accordingly as well

NB: Please note that the last two files may be overwritten by the template in use. Therefore if edits to the forms do not show up on the site, please look into editing the overriding templates in the html folder of your template.

There are other files around the Joomla!® user system that may be edited for a more complete addition of custom fields but that is a story for another blog post. Moving on.

Now that we have edited the relevant files, please add required fields into the users table of your Joomla!® installation or the user system will crash. Ensure the field names match the variable names you added in the class of the first file.

Now that the Joomla!® core system is able to properly save your custom registration fields, now we need to add these fields into the K2 user profile, and here is how you do so.

Edit the following files in K2 to allow the viewing of the new custom registration fields

1. components/com_k2/templates/register.php – edit the front end registration form accordingly, adding the fields you added into the Joomla!® core system
2. components/com_k2/templates/profile.php – edit the front end profile edit forms according to allow editing of the user profile including custom fields added.

And there you have it! K2 can now manage your extra fields without any hustle whatsoever. And you can now enable the K2 User plugin and take advantage of all its powerful features.

Should any of the steps above be too summarized of should you need more details in getting an extended K2 User profile, please do not hesitate to ask in the comments.

Please note that the above hack is works on Joomla 1.5 only!

Some are easy to get by or find workarounds to; others, not so easy. So, below, some of the things that arched me about this new operating system. I will start with the ones that are easy to live with, and move on to those that really made my life living hell!

Shut down

I know. The above subtitle makes me look petty. The fact that it took me an entire fifteen minutes to figure out how to shut down the system really annoyed me. Windows is supposed to be intuitive. And for me, a power user, it should be a no-brainer to do something as simple as shut down or hibernate the pc. But no. Not this time.

The shut down button has been moved farther away from where we have been used to it. I suppose the reason for this is that Microsoft really do not want you to shut down your system per se. This does play nicely into their plan of Windows 8 being able to work well as a tablet OS but for mouse and keyboard users…tough luck. I have however, gotten used to where it is located now (somewhere in the Charms menu/icons) but it was still a bother.

Start Screen

The start screen is wow….but the lack of a start button in the desktop mode threw me off a bit. Functions like searching for applications and straight running of commands whilst still in desktop view are finished. Now these searches occur in the WinRT / Metro-UI interface. It is not so bad once you get used to it, but unfortunately, that happens to be the problem – it takes getting used to, and it can get on ones nerves.

UI Switching

Now this was a bit of a challenge to get through. It has been a month and I am still getting used to it. Here is the deal with UI Switching.

Windows 8 comes with two user interfaces. The fly looking Metro-UI and the ordinary Desktop UI that we have become accustomed to over the years. Now, the Metro UI is still very much 1.0 software; and for anybody who knows Microsoft, their 1.0 versions of anything are just never good. Always buggy and in very many ways, not complete. And so is the Metro UI.

There are many things you cannot do in the metro interface, and as expected, to do those things, one would have to shift back to the Desktop UI to get it done. The annoying bit is that in as much as quite a bit can be done while still in the Desktop UI, some settings and functions are strictly done in the Metro UI – with Application Searching as an example.

Some of the integrated Metro-UI features are cool, like the Notifications and Network Selection features. Others just get in the way like the adding of a Bluetooth device off the menu options in the System Tray, and the setting of some User Preferences like User Image and password changing. Why these are engrained in the Metro-UI and have no Desktop UI equivalents, only God knows.

I know and appreciate how hard Microsoft has worked on their new UI. I also appreciate how simple it is to use once one learns how to use it. But we are still a very long way away from having that interface as the ‘production’ interface. It is very much a ‘consumption’ interface. I bet you the next version of office will not feature Metro-UI capabilities simply because you simply can’t work from that UI yet. It is nice that the Desktop UI exists to allow us all to use the PC as it was meant to be – a tool to get work done – but the forcing of the Metro-UI down users throats can get quite annoying.

There is a theory that Microsoft is forcing this UI on Windows’ users to force it to succeed. Since the UI is on the most popular OS on the planet, we as users will simply learn how to live with it. That may be the reason why they will not offer Windows 8 in any version where you can get rid of the Metro-UI. I mean, Windows Server 8 has a Start Screen too! So, will the Metro-UI succeed just because it is on Windows or will it go the way of other fatal failures like the Zune? Only time will tell on this one.

Compatibility

In my previous post, I mentioned how it was a plus for Windows 8 that legacy applications work on it just fine. In case you are wondering why I am stating compatibility as one of the pains of Windows 8, here is why.

In as much as legacy apps will work, most need a bit of work to get them to work. Most of the work applications I installed did not work out-of-the-box. Simple clicking next-next-finish was not a remedy to get some apps to work. Drivers are especially affected by this. Most have to be installed in compatibility mode for devices to work like they are expected, if the device does not have explicit Windows 8 drivers.

Small application utilities, that one may use for work (WAMP, Putty, DosBox, Livezilla, even iTunes) simply do not work smoothly out of the box. At least not yet. I am sure if there is anything that this Beta Test is helping Microsoft solve, it is those issues. And I am playing my bit in submitting information to them on these issues. But until then, well, it is at the moment, the worst pain I have to deal with in Windows 8.

So there you have it. The other side of Windows 8 according to me. Watch this space for a few tips and tricks to for Windows 8, as that is what is coming next, in what is quickly becoming a series of articles. Till then…later.

I have been using Windows 8 on my primary PC for close to a month now, and yes, I have marveled at it. I have cried too. I am not too sure though, which I did more, but trust me, this operating system is a whole new cup cake to deal with. Right now, if you ask me how the transition from Windows 7 to Windows 8 has been, I will tell you this much…”It might be easier to move from Windows 7 to a popular Linux spin like Ubuntu, Fedora or openSUSE, than it would be to move to Windows 8!” For details on my joys, read on.

WinRT and the Metro-UI

Windows 8 for the most part, is what I would call a revolutionary system and not an evolutionary system – like what the transition from Vista to 7 was. The WinRT environment – or what is better know as the Metro-UI is nice, and clean. I like the way they have simplified some of the tasks and put things like application settings in large visible charms that are quick and easy to configure. It is also quite interesting the way some aspects of this WinRT environment have been ported into the ‘classic’ desktop environments with Back, Start, Switcher, Charms, and notifications being available throughout the system, whether you are on the Metro UI or the traditional Desktop UI.

The few preview apps available work well enough. It must be noted that the apps are still in preview and are only around 6 months in development so there are some bugs in them, but I will not dwell on those seeing as they are going to evolve to be better apps with time.

Install and Boot Times

So, apart from being wowed by the Metro-UI, the one other major thing that was really cool is the install time, and boot up time. On my PC, and from an optical media, Windows 8 took less that 15 min to fully install (and this includes time for typing in the product key plus going through the OOBE – out-of-box-experience). That is just amazing. But what is more amazing, is that from complete shutdown to lock screen where you input your password – 10 seconds. I kid you not. Ten Seconds. Its boot up time is lightning fast. I do not know how they achieved that but kudos to Microsoft for hacking that. Amazing!

Legacy

One other kind of obvious joy of windows 8 is the backward compatibility with legacy apps. I have not found an application (apart from maybe iTunes and QuickTime which just behave funny) that are broken when installed on Windows 8.  That is definitely a plus for the operating system. Also, power users would find it a plus to note that all their power tools (Command Prompt, Device Manager, Classic Control Panel, Computer Management, etc.) are still available in Windows 8, albeit a bit hidden.

Security Essentials

Now, another amazing joy of the system is – it comes with Security Essentials built in! For those who may not be in the know, Security Essentials is Microsoft’s own freely available antivirus. Windows 8 is the first version of Windows to ship with self updating software to protect itself against viruses and malware! The antivirus technologies have been bundled into Windows Defender and are kept kind of hidden away in the system but it does work. At least to some extent. It was able to detect and delete/disinfect infected files from a flash drive when I was deliberately testing this feature.

Now, as you can imagine, security firms are up in arms crying foul – as Microsoft might be killing an entire industry but as it turns out, there are benefits and non-benefits of having the core operating system ship with an antivirus but I believe the benefits outweigh the non-benefits. This simply means that over time, as people adopt Windows 8 and newer version of windows, you at least have some out-of-the-box protection against viruses and that is a good thing for everybody.

Please note that third party anti-virus and anti-malware can still be installed so the anti-virus industry is not dead yet. Details of the pros and cons of this development in Windows are a discussion for another post, so watch this space.

Core Applications

Last but not least, the one other thing that makes me smile about Windows 8 is the improvements they have made to some of their core applications. Windows Task Manager got a complete do-over and has two modes – simple and complex, and is much cleaner and intuitive to use. Windows explorer has not adopted the ribbon-UI that caused quite a bit of havoc when first introduced in Office 2007 but clearly, we all got used to it and now, it is in explorer as well.

The copy / moving function has finally caught up with the times and Windows has finally moved to the idea of just one copy window, instead of the several that could be created in earlier versions of windows.

Now, I know you might be wondering despite all these good thing about Windows 8, how am I surviving without with Start Button that has been a major feature of windows since Windows 95? Well, the simple answer to that is – ‘with difficulty’. Seeing as I am currently using Windows 8 as my primary operating system and I still have to work, I have experienced some major pains with this new operating system. Pains which I will detail later so do stick around for that.

Read on for full details…

And just for the record, the part in the movie, Social Network, where Zuckerburg is blogging while drunk, trust me, not the best of ideas. Lets just say I thank the Lord that for some reason not known to myself, I could not find the the PUBLISH button. Lucky for me, publishing is not as simple as pressing enter at the end of a stupid post. Enjoy this little snippet of joy below.