Google Checkout and PayPal Integration

One of the important capabilities offered by WuFoo is the ability to integrate with payment systems. These include:

1. PayPal
2. Google Checkout
3. Authorize.net

We use PayPal to pay and get paid on eBay, however they are not a trustworthy processor in terms of ethics (has no one brought up the fact that eBay’s poor business ethics are responsible for its drastically slowed growth?), and they have certainly gone down hill since being purchased by eBay. Here is a great article on epinions explaining the difference between PayPal and Google Checkout.

http://www.epinions.com/review/Google_Checkout/content_455948144260

However, the problem is that Google Checkout does not do monthly billing and a number of the sites we manage do need monthly billing (unfortunately). 

As for Authorize.net, we are not familiar with it, however, their reviews on epinions are awful, and make them seem something closer to a fraud. Here is one excerpt..

“The worst customer service I have ever seen, and some
(to me) strange business practices. Right now, after 5 days, CSI will
not release our funds to us but has reached into our bank account for
their fees. They are holding a pretty substantial sum of our money and
no one took the time to call us or try to rectify this situation. “

Furthermore, the company’s positive reviews seem suspicious, as if they are planted there by someone who works for the company. They seems to have all 1 star ratings, then a few 5’s which bring them to an average rating of two. Sounds like their real average is 1 star.

http://www.epinions.com/bsrv-Financial_Services-Merchant_Account_Processing-All-Authorize_net/display_~reviews

Thus, we thought we would document our attempt to connect WuFoo with Google Checkout as it seems to be the best of the payment processors that can integrate with WuFoo.

Digression

[As as side issue, it is truly amazing how bad the business ethics are of so many companies. Not many people mention this, as most of the argument seems to focus on taxes, however, how is the US supposed to incubate new companies if they can't rely upon non-fraudulent web services? This is where regulation comes in, regulation is often pitched as stopping companies from flourishing, however, regulation is required in order to create an environment where companies can exist, unmolested from companies that are more powerful than them. Again and again Google leads the way in business ethics, and providing opportunities through things like Adwords, and Google Checkout, Google Apps, to actually run their business with. As soon as I write this, I imagine some raving Bill O'Reilly watcher scolding me for being either a communist, socialst and or homosexual -- for even proposing the idea that businesses should have ethics, or that there should be rules and standards in society. That is how poorly educated vast vast groups of Americans are presently]

Setting Up WuFoo with PayPal

We already have a PayPal merchant account setup with the different items setup. However, we don’t like the PayPal buttons and think they will drive away business. You can add multiple your own custom buttons to PayPal, however, we have two or more alternatives for a number of our websites, and we want it integrated in a from selection, rather than offering two separate buttons on one page. We have that currently, and here is how it looks.

Not so good, not professional, and guaranteed to drive some business away.

So in order to create payment form we first need to create a new form by going to the Form Manager. Next we need to add both fields like Name and Email and then enter a drop box with two different options.

Next we save the form and then goto the payment selection on the Form Manager and select the payment button.

Now we need to select the drop down field that we selected and enter the two different prices. Next we do the same for the second item (Gold Plan Price). Then save this form.

Now we will test the form.

Actually, after testing this we decided to simply stay with our regular PayPal, but use our custom buttons, instead of the rather unattractive ones provided by PayPal.

The first step here is going to PayPal and finding our old Buy Now buttons. This is highly confusing, but we go to create a PayPal Button, and then underneath it is a link called our saved buttons.

Now we need to enter a link to an image file that we have saved to our host.

This is what our button looks like.

We can then copy the code and enter it into the webpage. Now our button is ready to use.

WuFoo API

As we have just begun working with WuFoo, we have begun thinking of different ways to use it. For instance, WuFoo aggregates the form input from users into a database. There is a front end where the data can be evaluated. However what if you want to interoperate the data as if it were an online database (which of course it is)?

This database can be queries by something called the WuFoo API, which is still in development. For some time we have had an application that takes in user input and can perform calculations and push out results. However, it is built in Excel, and we would like to migrate it to the web at some point. We have been thinking of whether we could work with the WuFoo API to accomplish this goal.

More on this as we learn more.

WuFoo First Form

We have starting using the form software, WuFoo, to develop some forms for our site. As WuFoo deals with integrating data on the web and building front ends, we thought this would be applicable for this blog. So the next few posts will deal with WuFoo.

To begin, WuFoo does the backend work allowing you to develop forms within their online form development site.

This is perfect for us, because we don’t code, but even if we did, we doubt we could come anywhere close to the forms that WuFoo makes, and they offer 10 forms for just $10 per month. We want to create forms to:

1. Setup the payment to Paypal
2. Obtain information from customers related to their orders. (our service requires input from users in order to customize what we give back to customers)

After we sign up for a trial account, we are sent a link in the mail. This link takes us to the dashboard or control panel.

Our first step is to try to figure out how to use this panel.

This video helps us get up to speed http://s3.amazonaws.com/wufoo-videos/getstart1.mov

The administration panel is very easy to use. Many different field types can be inserted and moved. We learned that fields could be easily copied, which is a real time saver. Here is an example of the initial state of our first form.

Another issue to consider is the sequence. We are taking visitors from WordPress, to a WuFoo Form, then to PayPal, to a WordPress Thank You page, and finally to WuFoo again to fill in this form so we can complete this order. So the workflow looks like this.

We use a delayed redirect from the Thank You page to the Entry Form. This is because the Thank You page has a Google Analytics code embedded in it to help us with web statistics. We don’t anticipate everyone being able to immediately fill in the information that is required for the Entry Form, so if they bookmark it and come back, we don’t want it clicking up the Google Analytics code. That code is used to track conversions. We use this delayed redirect code to do this, since our host does not have a delayed redirect feature in the hosting control panel.

We chose a 3 second redirect. Long enough to show the thank you message, but not so long as to allow the user to mistakenly close the browser.

Now we will create a new form by going to the Form Manager.

We can create the form with this control.

Here we have filled in the introductory part of the form.

We can edit each of the fields by selecting them and they highlight and open a control panel to the left, like so.

Now we can select our theme and add a custom theme. You can see we have already added a custom header.

We can go and apply this theme in the Form Manager.

After we are done, this is what our form looks like.

We will now fill in the sample form by going to the Form Manager and selecting entry.

This will take us to the entry manager.

Now we have created an entry.

Now we get a notification for the entry we just made.

Now we can go and look at our entry.

We can search through all the entries (we only have one right now)

We can also delete it.

Broadcast Model, Google and the Distibution Costs of Information

While doing some time thinking about the future of how people will consume information, we came upon the following ideas.

One of the most important developments over the past 15 years is that information technologies are creating the capability of offering customized content like never before. Television, newspapers and magazines all allowed the individual to read what they wanted, but there was a relatively high price in terms of time by the consumer of information to find what they wanted, and often this required being exposed to many things they were not interested in seeing. Furthermore, under the logic that there was a cost to the distribution of this information (costs of printing, television production costs, etc..) the requirement was that the consumer accept a heavy burden of advertising. This is often around 1/2 in print and around 1/3 in television. These outlets are extremely silent when it comes to how much influence advertisers have. They give two sets of answers to two different audiences. To advertisers they say they can deliver hearts and minds in different demographic groups. To consumers they say advertising is just the way they pay the bills, and it has absolutely no impact on their content.

If television is a good model for information distribution, why are its consumers so poorly informed? One relationship with television is clear. The more they consume the less they know, and the more false information they provide on questionnaires. A no thought zone is the actual goal of advertisers who prefer a blank slate on which they can superimpose desires. This is how both children’s adverting as well as adult advertising works. Employer communication with employees and government communication with voters works the same way. People who specialize in marketing Milky Way candy bars can easily transition to corporate comms or to political campaigns. The less informed the consumer of information, the more happy and the less work is the required of the producer of information.

Distribution Costs of Information

What has occurred with the web is the distribution costs of information (which were always exaggerated with traditional media, much like a pharmaceutical company exaggerates is R&D budget) have dramatically declined. Therefore, the logic for the necessity of providing unwanted messages has also declined.

Without realizing it, this has become our interface to information we seek to find and know. It is far superior to the methods that proceeded it. Google tells you nothing to begin the process, you tell it what you are interested in knowing and where you are interested in going. While it is impressive, it has some flaws. One of the biggest is its ranking method called back linking selects popularity over quality. It also has a class of influence peddlers who seek to cheat Google’s rankings called SEO consultants. As of 2008 Google is the king of the web. It is to be commended for having innocuous advertising compared to other media. However, will it always be the case in the future? Is something more customized to each user better?

Mix and Match

The web has its own costs for finding information, and they are much lower. With blogging software, which in a way automates the information publishing function, in addition to RSS feeds and feed readers, the ability to mix and match various streams of information leads us to wonder how this will affect information display in the future. Here are a few ideas.

Offline Media

1. The current broadcast model is not designed in the interests of information consumers but instead is designed for the needs of information producers. It exposes the consumer to many things they have no interest in and produces a rather mindless or automatic way of consuming information. For instance, it one is not interested in the stock market or the scores of various sports teams, and one resides it the US, one will be hard pressed not to be exposed to this information one way or another.
2. The current information model is based upon idea of the editor having control. Editorial control has always been justified in order to maintain journalistic “standards” but has often been used to prevent the publication of controversial topics that are critical of concentrated power. Concentrated power controls media outlets  through both direct ownership and through purchasing advertising. Thus editorial control can also be seen as a smokescreen for controlling the distribution of information that sides with concentrated power and manipulates the general population. Blogs have demonstrated that editors are not all that necessary if the writer is capable. This is not to say that all blogs are good or of high journalistic standards, but many are, and they are often one person operations. Furthermore, they are fare less censored, which can be just as important as following journalistic rules.
3. Traditional media is quite “Soviet.” It is based on the concept that large groups of people should be interested in the same topics (stock market, football scores). Most importantly, advertisers must be courted, so criticism is greatly muted.

Online Media

1. Many traditional media sites, along with corporate sites, have tried to
   make their online presences as sterile and thought controlled as their
   offline presences. Corporate websites have become so filled with false
   statements and misinformation that they are simply not reliable sources
   for what a company does or how they behave.
2. The current model of internet usage is based upon going to several sites the user is comfortable with and using most often Google to find new content
3. Too much time spent in repetitive searches
4. Many online databases that contain information important to people such as PubMed or the MLS are still far too difficult to search. Furthermore, PubMed is continually lobbied by publishers to pull medical information out of the public domain. The MLS is entirely Realtor controlled and has no regulation or data auditing. These two examples highlight the fact that often online databases have a pretense of following an objective data standard, when in fact they follow only, and publish only, what is in their narrow political interests to publish. We know that difficulty in finding information reduces the standards of evidence. People who can navigate the web tend to have higher standards for evidence than those that watch TV. People who are expert at navigating the web have higher standards of evidence than casual web users

These trends and technological developments lead us to the following conclusion

1. Targeted filtration is the future. The questions is how will this be done. We think feed technologies are a strong possible contender for becoming part of the future solution
2. Does a customized personal website, which is customized to person’s needs (both of personal and for business information) begin to replace the current model? Or on the other hand do a series of personal websites (one for science interests, one for cooking interests, one for work interests) begin to replace the current web searching model?

WidgetBox for RSS Feeds

We have been trying to find a solution which will allow us to embedd RSS feeds into WordPress. We tried a number of WP plug ins, but were not happy with the results. We tried Widgetbox to see if it could provide the answer.
 

The first thing to do is select what type of widget you want to make. We select RSS feed. We then type in the RSS feed URL.

We can select the color and then copy the widget code and paste it into WP. Here is how it looks.

Its a very slick interface and based in flash. There is also a lot of capability for altering the interface, and they have an interactive builder that shows you what the interface looks like before you paste the code.

Then one can copy the code when they have the widget the way they like.

The only downside we can think of is it loads a bit slow. We test the links to be sure.

Very cool and very well done.

Feed Organization with NetVibes

Feed management is a challenge. Something we also found irritating was the difficulty with finding RSS feeds on a page (i.e. having to poke around for it)

NetVibes has solved both these issues with their Firefox plug in. It can be found at this URL.

http://eco.netvibes.com/tools

After installed it creates a green box plus symbol. When there is an RSS feed on the page in question it colors itself green.

When there is no feed on the page it greys out. Adding a feed is a simple as selecting the green plus box.

We wanted to test this functionality in the face of many RSS feeds. So we went to the New York Times RSS feed list which is quite considerable.

When we selected the NetVibe button we received this response.

So it gives us options, every option on the page. Here it is when we select it.

And here is how it appears in our NetVibes.

If you would like to learn more about NetVibes see our post which investigates the functionality of NetVibes. This post has been related to just looking narrowly at the Firefox plug in.

http://personaldashboards.wordpress.com/2008/12/19/dashboard-review-and-netvibes/

RSS Based Dashboards

Something that we have been wondering about is when a service will come out that allows you to tie together all of your feeds into a single dashboard. It should be easy to configure. We came upon 24 eyes. While we applaud their attempt, we don’t think this is what the future of the RSS GUIs will look like, furthermore, they need to cache their feeds to an intermediate database, becauase these feeds take far to long to load. However, they have the right concept.

Operating Systems and Web Apps

Once applications become increasingly web based, the operating system, and its compatibility with applications becomes less and less important. Instead, the compatibility issue falls the the browsers used. Thus as long as the browser is written for the operating system that is compatible with the the web application, a number of operating systems could be used to access the application.

Why Important?

This is important because for quite sometime, Microsoft has been using the fact that applications run on their operating system to limit choice in the marketplace. This Microsoft API is what locked many consumers and businesses from buying Microsoft regardless of whether they found merit in the operating system.

Who Benefits?

Well its not Microsoft. One obvious beneficiary is Apple. However, this also means that small OSs can develop (similarly to how Linux developed, only with fewer hurdles as Linux developed prior to online apps). This could make for a very interesting time for operating systems, and can allow for small niche players to be successful, even without a large installed base. The example we give is Opera. Opera Browser is a very good brower that can run on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. However, it has something like 1% of the brower market. Although it is small, it is still a successful browser with a passionate following. In fact, for some time, Internet Explorer had over 90% of the browser market locked up. Now that people see that different browsers like Firefox can run on any type of of operating system, and that they are superior to Internet Explorer, IE marketshare has significantly erroded. This is what could happen to the operating system market under a scenario where applications are run from the web, rather than from the computer.

BOMs Management and Arena Solutions

In our previous post we discussed the different vendors and services offered for reliability testing and prediction. One of the important issues with relation to MTBF management is the product structure. The product structure is the hierarchy (or at least at first glance) of materials which make up an overall product. This has different names depending upon the application. In SAP ECC it is referred to as a Material BOM or an Equipment BOM. In MCA it is referred to as the product indenture network.

BOM and PLM Software

Being able to deal with the BOM in a flexible and distributed manner is increasingly a capability with what is referred to as PLM software. We dislike this term and would prefer “BOM management software,” but we don’t make the rules.

Companies like Agile are leaders in this area. Having powerful BOM management software is important for many reasons which include improving the efficiency of product development and building quality into products as well as product costing for contract development. However, it is also important for service parts planning and MTBF. MTBF calculation integrates with the BOM.

ERP for BOM Management

There is increasing evidence that BOM management greatly benefits from specialized software. ERP software manages how the BOM relates to exectution and planning, but does not tend to have advanced capabilities with regards to BOM management. (of course Oracle purchased Agile in 2007, a leader in PLM, however, software mergers often kill the aquired company’s innovation and product. Look how little Oracle has done with the Peoplesoft functionality). Here is an interesting quotes regarding ERP for PLM from Arena Solutions.

“There is a misconception that Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems can be used to manage all product information after design, including changes and communication. Unfortunately, even though the final production BOMs, the Item Master, and costing information are ultimately loaded into ERP systems, these systems do not have integral processes for ECOs or file management. Therefore they cannot be used to control BOM or item changes or manage associated files. Furthermore, as a tool primarily for internal groups, ERP systems cannot be used by external partners and suppliers to obtain product information.” – http://www.arenasolutions.com/images/pdf/rc_docs/whitepapers/Arena_Turning_Great_Designs_Into_Great_Products_Whitepaper.pdf

“ERP systems are not designed to be change control or file management
tools, and must be manually updated to reflect approved product
changes. To update and change product information across electrical and
mechanical CAD tools and ERP systems, many companies employ spreadsheet
software, such as Microsoft® Excel, to manage part changes, SOPs and
BOMs and to communicate them to project teams.” – http://www.arenasolutions.com/images/pdf/rc_docs/whitepapers/Arena_WP_Med_Device_Doc_Control.pdf

Reinforcing this statement is the poor track record of SAP PLM. We personally analyzed this “solution” several times only to find that it did not involve new software as much as simply leveraging the old structures with a few bells and whistles added in. http://www.sap.com/solutions/business-suite/plm/index.epx (in the past several years, SAP product management and marketing is increasingly following the Oracle model of presenting vapor or stretching pre-existing functionality to fit new solutions)

Spreadsheets for BOM Management

Exporting BOM information to a spreadsheet and managing it there for MTBF and other purposes is not a very competitve solution with the other alternatives that are present. In fact, even using an online spreadsheet like Google Spreadsheets, while better than using Excel with its isolated files, is still not really capable of managing the complexity of BOMs. Furthermore with the rise of contract manufacturing and distributed product development and manufacturing, islands of data created by Excel are even less useful. Amazingly PLM software is still lightly implemented out in the marketplace.

Graphic from Arena Solutions – taken from an online webinar – not a formal study.

As far as ERP systems, while ERP systems have BOM functionality, it is not the functionality offered by Arena. Rather ERP BOM management was developed in order to support transaction processing. This is quite a bit different from what specialized BOM management software does.

Arena Solutions

Arena Solutions’ website is quite good and for anyone interested in PLM and BOM management we recommend a visit. It is of course selling a service, however it is also very educational and most the statements made on the site are reinforced by our consulting experiences.

http://www.arenasolutions.com

In one of their white papers we found a very good explanation of the needs of modern BOMs.

“As the design progresses toward production, the part-list-like engineering BOM must transition into a detailed manufacturing BOM that includes all the items required to make sub-assemblies and the final product. During this process, numerous project teams contribute to the BOM and item changes (Figure 2). The resulting manufacturing BOM is highly relational and includes various associated data and files, such as design drawings, software files, item files, costing information, compliance status, specification data, and supplier information.” – http://www.arenasolutions.com/images/pdf/rc_docs/whitepapers/Arena_WP_Beyond_BOM_101.pdf

The Relational Model for BOM Management

One easy way of understanding this is that one sub-component often is part of more than one parent component. Therefore, by using a relational BOM configuration (which is different from a relational database, you can use a relational database, but still follow a restricted hierarchical model in your BOM configuration.), when the sub-component is changed once in one location it affects all parent components immediately. This is the desired end state, that all parent products be instantly updated when a change to a subcomponent is rolled out.  This relates to all lifestages of a produt’s existance. This updated part data is then sent over the planning sytem where a flag is changed that tells the planning sytem this part should no longer be planned. Having this data updated is as important as the algorithms you use to produce a forecast.

This complexity really requires a software specialized software solution. Furthermore, this is perfect application for a hosted application. (we increasingly wonder why companies continue to ask for software they have to install and manage, particularly when the application is shared.) With hosted applications, as long as the software provides a standardized feed of some type (such as RSS), application integration can be managed completely online, so a BOM Management – PLM service provider like Arena could be integrated with an online version of a transaction processing system and the service parts planning system. To learn more about RSS feeds and their relationship to application integratin see this article in another one of our blogs. (http://semanticwebs.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/rss-and-application-integration/)

Application Screen Shots

Arena has a nice interactive demo on their website, so we decided take a few screenshots. This screen shows the different status of notifications.

Below we have a listing of notifications for particular BOM numbers. We also see the people (users) that have the ability to view or edit or comment on the BOMs.

When we select one of them we get taken into the detail.

Here we can see who is part of the notification distribution list.

Here we have a flowchart of the process status.

Here we can see that suppliers are involved in this process and can log in.

Also, the individual products that make up the BOM are listed as well.

For each product, there is a coding for the items compliance requirements as well whether the prase of the item (if its in production, obsolete, etc..)

If we select the files, we can see all the attachments to each product.

In conclusion, we find this software very compelling. Furthermore they offer a fully hosted solution which they call on-demand. In our consulting experience, Arena is providing answers for a lot of problems that plague BOM management at many a company.

Open Question

One of the questions we do have is where an MTBF value is located. For the purposes of service parts planning, Arena just needs to feed
one number per part. Both SAP SPP and MCA can perform their forecasting
(if the option is selected) from a simple MTBF value associated with
every product record. This is called leading indicator forecasting in
SPP and causal forecasting in MCA. At least MCA has some involved ways of calculating the overall service level, and one of
the inputs is the MTBF of the underlying items – related to the
inventory coverage for each item.This is something that should naturally be maintained in Arena. How this value is obtained is a different topic and is covered here.
http://spplan.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/vendors-and-software-for-determining-mtbf/

However as far as how Arena holds the MTBF, we will update this post when we find out.
 

References

Wikipedia on PLM
Arena Solutions

SOA Blather and Institutional Incentives

SOAs have been discussed for some time now. However, not much has happened. One of the reasons for this is the companies doing a lot of the discussing on it (such as IBM, Accenture, Oracle) don’t really make their money on this method of application development and integration. Lets just take these three examples to see where the money is made.

1. IBM: Money is made (in the Global Services) from large and long implementations
2. Accenture: Follows roughly the same model as IBM
3. Oracle: Creates ever more complex databases and has a lagging applications unit that also prefers installations at customers and long implementations. They also diminish software innovation by purchasing companies like Agile and then frustrating their development units until the engineers either leave, or just settle into not doing much more creative work

SOA is Hot! (just not prevelant)
 
The issue with SOA is not that it is not possible, or desirable, but that SOAs and web based hosted applications connected by standardized feeds, is not universally positive for the large companies that are the agenda setters in the industry. What history shows is that in order for a new approach to take hold, it must somehow line the pockets of the agenda setters. A perfect example of this is the US energy policy. We could create ethanol from switch grass or hemp which has a 1 to 8 input ratio (energy in to energy out) however what do we use? Corn, which has a 1 to 1.3 input to output energy ratio. Why? Because senators approve bills and there are at least 20 states that grow corn. 

Corporate Incentives

Every new technological method or software solution must go through a filtering process. All the large consulting and advisement firms have at their top directors and partners. These are highly motivated individuals who need to produce a certain amount of revenue per year to justify their large salaries. Because of this, when they listen to a new idea, they are thinking of one thing above all others “how does this help me meet my numbers.” If the technological method can not answer this question, the director/partner etc.. will not back it or even bring it to the attention of their client base. As the successful relationship between firms like Oracle, SAP and the large consulting houses has shown, these firms like large complex solutions that poorly integrate with other applications and have high barriers to entry in addition to high maintenance costs.

Conclusion

Because the SOA approach changes things and alters who gets paid, you can not expect companies like IBM, SAP, and those that make their money from the high barrier to entry and long implementation timeline to bring you the truth about SOA. SAP talks about SOA because it is trendy, and there is a need to publish white papers and presentations with topical buzzwords in order to seem hip and with the times. However, SOA as a core principle is the last thing they would want because it represents freedom and openness for clients. Secondly, SOA move the focus away from their solution as the center of the company focus and would reduce the large barriers to entry in the ERP market. Once a many to many integration basis is developed, it would open the market to the concept of selecting the “best of breed” solution. Difficulty in integration and a lack of integration standards and technologies was exactly why large ERP vendors were so successful in selling monolithic solutions that are mediocre in many areas, but come integrated out of the box.

Our Approach

We will be writing more on the coming revolution in how applications are stitched together over the web to provide flexible enterprise solutions. However, we will not be paying much attention to the “research” that is produced by large entrenched companies in the IT space. They have no reason to change, change threatens their revenue model and when change does come, they will reluctantly follow, but they will not be leaders of it.