Zoho Creator is still in it’s early stages, and I hope to see many improvements, but it’s already a well designed and useful tool.

I’ve been working with Creator for a few weeks (a bit of time here and there) developing an event registration application for a non-profit group where I volunteer some time. Building a real application has given me some insight into this tool that I’m planning to share here via a series of posts. I thought I would start off with some general information.

Costs:
Fist, let’s talk money. At this time, Creator is free, but the Zoho team is planning a professional version with pricing TBD. More on that as info becomes available.

Overview:
Creator is a database application development tool. I think the easiest way to understand Creator is to think of it as very much like an online version of Microsoft Access. The key features include:

• Form Creation
• Data Table Creation (via the form creation process)
• Views of your Data Tables in various formats (List, Spreadsheet, Summary, Calendar, and Chart)
• Scripting
• Sharing

 The Scripting is powerful enough to really set Creator apart from the competition, and Creator offers several options for Sharing your application or part of you application.

Uses:
As I mentioned, I’m using Creator to build an application for a non-profit group where I volunteer. The group has a website with an older version of the event registration application built using Cold Fusion, but the old version suffers from various problems. 1) The developer who build the app for a bargain price has moved away. 2) The developer used his own copy of Cold Fusion, so my non-profit would need to buy an expensive license (or hire an expensive developer) just to have a chance at updating the app. 3) The old Application/Data/Tool/Source Code are all in different places and require different different skills, not to mention different accounts, etc.

So, Creator is a great solution to these problems. With a Creator application, the Data, the Source Code, the Development Tools, and the Application Environment are all in the same place, accessible with nothing more than your Zoho user account.

Also, Zoho Creator is a good choice if you’re looking for an application development tool that’s pretty easy to use. Creator takes care of most of the painful development tasks like linking forms to tables, building add, edit, and delete functions for everything, and even the messy hosting work. Even if I build a fairly robust app, I feel like I could hand it over to someone with modest tech skills for additional development.

Features:
Creator has so many features that the only way to understand them all is to sign up for a free account and dig in. Here is a partial list:
- Drag and Drop form creation
- Automatic creation of views for your data
- Scripting via a script builder or free form scripting
- Scripting attached to events such as form load or selection from a drop down list
- Built-in and user created functions
- Send email features that can be used in forms and scripts
- Ability to share applications and/or embed in other websites

Screen Shots:
Here are just a few screen shots to give a quick feel for the tool:

The Form Builder:

A Script:

A Data View:

Dialog box to get link for Embedded Form:

Competition:
I needed a real tool to solve a real problem, so I hunted around the web and found many, many choices before settling in on Creator. Many of these solutions would be ideal for circumstances that were a little different than mine, but none fit my needs as well as Creator.
- Coghead: Nice option. Free account available. Work flow designer. Ability to build some rules via dialog boxes. I didn’t see robust scripting.
- LongJump: This looks like a very good solution. I wish they offered a free version instead of just a 30 day trial. Also, they claim to have something they call JumpScript for scripting, but I could find much information about it.
- WuFoo: Excellent choice if you need forms online. I don’t see how you could build an entire application, but there are so many times when you don’t really need an application. If you just need to capture some info via a form, this would be a good place to start.
- Dabble DB: Interesting option. This tool is mostly focused on the back end and has limited UI options. But the database options are serious.
- QuickBase by Intuit: Very nice solution, but at $249/mo, it’s also very expensive. Built by the people who brought us Quicken, this might be the right choice for business users.
- myWebDB: Has potential, but looks like a pretty early Beta.
- Caspio Bridge Database: Only offers a 14 day free trial.
- Iceberg: Could be a great one. At the time I was researching solutions, they were several weeks away from the 4.14.08 launch.
- Rollbase: Offers a 60 day free trial, but no free account.

So, that’s the overview of Zoho Creator. I’m planning to post some insights I’ve found on how to use the tool as well as issues. If you’re interested in the product in the meantime, I suggest you sign-up for a free account.

Live well.

remove duplicate files
find duplicates
delete duplicates

I needed a utility that would let me match files based on name and size, since the modification dates had been changed after I restored my files. Several utilities also offer to match using a CRC (checksum). I don’t feel that I’ve found the perfect utility yet, but I found two very good ones that I’ll cover here.

Duplicate Cleaner 1.2

The interface for this tool is a little clunky, but the functionality was great. Here is a shot of the main screen:

After pointing the program to the places you want to search for duplicates, you press the Start button and the program switches to a screen full of the results. Here is a shot of the results screen with the Selection Assistant:

The selection assistant is one of the best features of this utility. With the selection assistant, for example, I was able to select only duplicates that came from my external drive where I keep backup files. The one and only problem I had with this utility was that after using it to compare very large sets of files and selecting the duplicates found on my backup drive, the system gave me a warning message (before deleting, thankfully) saying that I had selected all the files in 11 groups of duplicates. One the one hand, this was a very helpful warning because the whole point of my effort was to confirm that I wasn’t about to delete unique files on my backup drive. On the other hand, the utility didn’t tell me which 11 of the 5,000+ sets where the problem. I had to break my effort into smaller sets, and I was still grateful for the warning.

Double Killer 1.6.2

This is the second utility that I liked. You can see from the shot of this setup screen that you can choose search paths and select matching criteria:

This utility allows you to select the first duplicates in a set or the last duplicates in a set, thus, avoiding the problem of selecting every instance of a given copy. Your other selection options are pretty limited, however, so I think this utility is a better choice for someone who has files that are pretty organized to begin with.

Before deleting large sets of files from my backup sets, I wanted to confirm that those files were properly in place on my C: drive. I set off to find a good directory comparison utility, and, as usual, I was hoping to find a good freeware solution. I set off searching for a utility using the following search terms:

compare directories
directory compare
directory difference
folder compare
compare folders
folder difference

There are lots of great shareware solutions, but not too many choices in a free utility. Finally, I found a utility called FreeCommander that was a terrific surprise. I was primarily interested in comparing two directories, but this terrific free utility offers much more than that. It could really replace Windows Explorer.

Here’s a screen shot of the main window:

The utility opens with two panels – a pleasant surprise to a guy looking for directory comparison help. The software allows you to configure your directory comparison based on  file name, date, size, or a combination. There is a toolbar button for starting the compare:

After comparing the directories, the program either pops up a message indicating that the directories are identical, or it highlights the files in each pane that are different. You can open, copy, delete, or otherwise manage the highlighted files right from those panes. This little gem is fast and simple, and I was trilled to find it. However, I soon realized that I was dealing with such a large volume of files and directories, that comparing directories one at a time wasn’t going to get the job done. I went back to my searching, and discovered that what I really wanted to find was a utility that would find and help me delete duplicates.

More on that in my next post.

Having setup the “sister house” blog, I figured I needed some other basic stuff, like email. Since I’ve been interested in exploring the free email Google offers through their Google Apps offering, I figured I would use that for SisterHouse email.

If you’re interested in Google Apps, you can get started here:  http://www.google.com/a/

I signed up and went right to the email setup, and I learned a few things:

1. Google makes you prove that you have control of the domain by posting a web page or using DNS settings. I chose to post a web page, and it was very easy. Clever too, if you ask me.
2. Google provides very good instructions for setting up email. Here’s how to see them:
   1. from your Dashboard click the EMAIL link
   2. about three quarters down the page, click on the “Instruction on how to active email” link
   3. follow the instructions for setting up accounts
   4. read the instructions to “Setup email delivery”
   5. click the link to “Change MX records”
   6. this is were it gets nice – select the company where you registered your domain, and the rest of the instructions will be customized for that company
3. It takes Google up to 2 days to validate and/or finish the setup for your email

Alas, in spite of the great instructions, I had some problems setting up email using Google Apps. I registered my domain with Yahoo! (very happy with Yahoo!’s registration, BTW). Per the Google instructions, I setup seven MX records using the Advanced DNS Settings area in Yahoo! Unfortunately, I couldn’t successfully send any emails to my SisterHouse accounts. I kept getting undeliverable errors.

When I went back to the Advanced DNS Settings page on Yahoo!, I discoverd something a little odd. Even though I created the seven MX records by copying and pasting from Google in the exact order presented by Google, they were saved in a slightly different order on Yahoo!, with the priority 20 and 30 records listed first, followed by the priority 10 record, then the remaining records in order from priority 40 to 70. I killed all the records and started again, but got the same results, including the errors when trying to send emails.

So, I had to resort to the help pages for Google Apps. I didn’t find any pages for troubleshooting or anything that addressed my situation specifically. However, I did find a page that talked about how servers shoud be prioritized when you created your MX records. You can see that page for yourself here: https://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=34181

While that page wasn’t speaking directly to my issues, it explained that the most important of the mail servers at Google was aspmx.l.google.com. And, the page said to give that server the lowest number when setting priority. It also said that if your DNS provider only allowed one record, then you sould create a record for that server.

I went back to Yahoo! and I deleted all the MX records except for the one for aspmx.l.google.com. A few minutes later I sent my first successful email to a SisterHouse.com email address.

Now if I can only think of some reason why I would want someone to send me more emails.

So, here I am blogging. Why another blog? Well, I guess I’m like most people who start a blog in that I think I have something to say.

The main thing I hope to accomplish with this blog is to chronicle and share my experiences as I venture out into the world of entrepreneurship. I’m at the very beginning of this journey, and I plan to share as much as possible along the way.

With that, let me begin:

I am an artist. 

Yes, I am an artist pretending to be an operations manager with almost  twenty years of software development and enginneering experience. I even have an Electrical Engineering degree to complete the disguise. In fact, I’ve been so committed to this deception that I’ve spent most of the past twenty years building software and working in corporate America, and I’ve spent very little time on artistic creations. My farse has been effective. I’ve fooled almost everyone.

Alas, I can not fool myself. 

I am an artist, and I’ve decided to start living life as an artist. To do that, I’ll need to make lots of changes. I’m somewhat conservative by nature, and I’m not a fool (I think), so I plan to change gradually. And, I have lots to learn. I want to run my own business. I want that business to be related to arts and crafts, and I want that business to be an outlet for my personal creativity. That’s about all I know right now, and it’s not enough to pay the bills. Nonetheless, I need to press on, even if I have to figure out the answers along the way. It should be a fun ride.