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One of the major weaknesses of an open source package like ZenCart is the lack of support for third party applications. Sure you can insert products by hand and process orders, but what if you already have products in another form such a Point of Sale system or inventory management system? What about integrating the sales process into an existing accounting package like QuickBooks?

EZ Populate is a ZenCart contribution that can solve the product importation problem for some uses. I have used this module successfully with a few clients, but for the majority, it lacks support for much outside the basic realm of importing products in a specific CSV format.

What about converting from another application like osCommerce to ZenCart?

Sites like Froogle and Shop.com and most affiliate programs have specific formats they expect data to be submitted in.

What can be done in situations like these?

• Have a custom import or export script created by a professional developer
• Write your own
• Contract a database developer to run a one-off import or export

If you are skilled in PHP, rolling your own import/export shouldn’t be prohibitively complex.

To export products, first query the products and products description tables to get the base product record. Queries suitable for copy/pasting from the original ZenCart source for this use are readily available just check out the product detail view template. Once the product record is available, product options and attributes can be easily sub-queried using the products_id. Now that all of the product data is available, it should simply be a matter of printing out the data rows in the order and format expected by the import application and iterating over each product and product option row.

Exporting orders is a similar excercise in that the basic order information is queried, then the products, product options and any secondary order information (such as payment records and comments) are queried. Then the result sets are iterated over printing out the data in the required format.

One-offs are a viable option only if the data manipulation needs performed only once or rarely (such as year end reports) and the steps are difficult to automate accurately.

Popularity: 23%

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adj.

1. Walking about or from place to place; traveling on foot.
2. Peripatetic Of or relating to the philosophy or teaching methods of Aristotle, who conducted discussions while walking about in the Lyceum of ancient Athens.

n.

1. One who walks from place to place; an itinerant.
2. Peripatetic A follower of the philosophy of Aristotle; an Aristotelian.

Popularity: 16%

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MailAnnounce is an AppleScript which can be used to speak the sender and subject of incoming mails using Mail.app. Due to the great feedback I received, I have cleared up a bug and added a few new features.

v1.2 Changelog

Download: MailAnnounce.app

Popularity: 18%

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Why do we shop?

We need things. We want things. Things necessary for our day to day lives, things to make our lives easier, things for work, things for fun, sometimes just things.

Traditional shopping is an experience. We look, we touch, we try on, we smell, we listen, we walk, we talk, we get coffee. Bricks and mortar shopping involves all of our sense; it can be a recreational activity and it can be a social one. Sometimes we have something in mind, sometimes a list, but sometimes we haven’t a clue and we still just want to look.

Online shopping is a very different experience. We look, we read, we compare, we buy. Very little tactile feedback is involved. It is not highly recreative, it is not social. It is a solitary excercise, carried out alone in our offices or our homes (and sometimes in our underwear).

Why do we shop online?

If it doesn’t fullfill us in the same was as traditional shopping does, then what do we get out of it that makes it one of the fastest growing markets in the world?

CONVENIENCE

Thats it… Convenience. We can shop when its too late to go out, when we don’t have time to drive all over town. We can shop in the comfort of our own homes. Through our computers and broadband connections a whole world of suppliers is just waiting to take our order on any obscure book, toy or item we desire.

Anyone not capitalizing on the key differences between traditional shopping and online shopping is missing the boat (and losing revenue).

Popularity: 8%

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Receive a call from a number you don’t recognize? Google it and see what pops up. If its a call from a business, they’re likely to have their telephone number listed on a website somewhere.

I have found these forms work the best:
###-###-####
###-####

You can always Google the three digit area code to find out where the call is coming from.

Popularity: 16%

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I have a computer in my living room to check email and do some lite work sometimes in the evenings. As I cannot see the screen from my old school easy chair, I found myself frequently getting up to check my email when I heard that familiar new mail ding.

I found a post on MacOSXHints.com that worked through several iterations of an Applescript that could speak the sender of new mails. It is a pretty ingenious script app that spawns itself using an on idle construct to ‘listens’ for Mail.app to tell it the header information of any new mails. I cleaned up the script a bit and modified it to also say the subject.

Download: MailAnnounce.app

Instead of being annoyed by every incoming mail, I use a restrictive Mail.app rule to only run this script app on mail from certain address groups such as clients and friends and some limited use email accounts (like incoming Paypal funds ;).

Popularity: 25%

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