See also USA | Intellectual Property | Project Management System | Google AdWords SEO
Collaboration with UQ ITEE | Web Indexing and Search Engine Optimization | WEBIX Web Indexing Tools | Web-Based Indexing and Updates Tracking Tools | Webmaster for American Society for Indexing Digital Publications Indexing SIG | Indexing ANZSI Newsletter 2007 | Standard Business Reporting Integration | Services instead of Software to Protect Intellectual Property | Remote and Onsite Assistance | Linux | Wireless internet and Google Maps | Open Source Projects | EU-Microsoft Interoperability Ruling 19 December 2007 |
In November 2015, 2016 and 2017 we attended UQ ITEE Innovation Showcase at UQ Advanced Engineering Building as we studied at UQ ITEE graduating with BSc in computer science in 1987.
Students have budding ideas and can collaborate with businesses like mine to commercialise their software and hardware products.
It is good to give back to the alma mater who started my IT career by listening and teaching up and coming students how to commercialise and grow in the IT industry.
This includes gaming, biomedical monitoring devices and data analysis, wireless smart devices and power grids with smart meters.
We supply quality Search Engine Optimization using metadata coding.
From 1996-1998, Dwight Walker was involved with the Australian Society of Indexer's (AusSI) Web Indexing Prize (now the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers) with Maureen Henninger of UNSW and Kerry Webb from ALIA. This went on for several years. Dwight went to the American Society for Indexing's Seattle conference in 1998 to share his insights. He also ran about 6 months of online training with US, Canadian and UK students. Those notes later were sold to several corporations and individuals in Australia.
Dwight wrote several incisive articles on Web indexing which were published in The Indexer (UK), LASIE (State Library of NSW), Online Currents and 'Beyond Book Indexing' (American Society for Indexing) to educate indexers who were used to back-of-book indexing to stretch the envelope and try to get their heads around HTML, meta data and XML. This led to the ASI starting a Web indexing group which later became a Yahoo! Group.
From May 2007, we decided that all the work we had published in The Indexer will be published online on The Indexer's site as a PDF 2 years after publication for personal use only. We decided to do this as we were working as a volunteer in 1997-1998 for Australian Society of Indexers as Newsletter Editor, Webmaster, Web Indexing Judge and corresponding editor for The Indexer so the Society seems to have taken over ownership over anything I contributed.
We have written off substantial losses we suffered when we were starting up back in 1998 due to content we produced being used for free over in USA by other businesses which basically destroyed our incentive to invest in this area. All publications now go through our private company WWWalker Web Development Pty Ltd. We decided to get out of Web indexing and leave the industry and give up on this area. We will try and get over the bitterness we had as it destroyed our life for 9 years and lost us so much money.
Publishing on the Internet is a risky business and gives very low returns in the long term and destroys intellectual property wholesale. Short term our writings opened opportunities such as visiting the American Society for Indexing Conference in Seattle, USA in 1998 and networking with indexers in USA and UK but this produced very little value for us in the long term due to all the copying and wanting to get information for free from us by other indexers and Web developers worldwide which ate away any money we could make. Now as the knowledge from our articles in The Indexer will be free, others may benefit more than if we locked them away to protect them.
Here are the 2 articles in PDF Dwight Walker has allowed free access to:
In 1996-98, Dwight, as AusSI Webmaster and Newsletter editor, helped bundle and distribute a group of tools he dubbed WEBIX (Weblinkr for Windows by Jon Jermey and INDTOHTM for DOS by Tim Craven plus Netscape and notes on Web indexing). The indexing programs are very similar in output but give different ways of achieving the same goal - a Web index. Dwight had the vision of indexing the Web and he combined these tools to further research and education into Web indexing through the Web Indexing Prize he helped start with AusSI. Dwight Walker later designed his own version of WEBIX which is still to be released.
In June 2008, Dwight wrote a Web-based indexing tool in PHP and MySQL on Linux to be used to index a book by his father S Preston Walker. He uses this tool inside his business anywhere on the Internet and is part of his project management system. There are no other Web-based tools on the market he knows about so this idea is unique. The tool can be used to create an index or a bibliography which can be imported into Adobe InDesign as a text file.
As part of the project management system, he also wrote in August 2008 an updates tracking system to track updates to an InDesign file versus change requests so the proofer knows when the printer has actually inserted the changes correctly into the document. This was because the printer stuffed up the changes and it was very tedious to track the numerous omissions so this system accurately tracks and reports on status of updates to keep a project on track.
In September 2011, Dwight Walker became Webmaster of Web and Electronic Indexing SIG and tested and updated dead links on old digital-publications-indexing.org site using CURL in PHP in a custom script he wrote for his own business.
In April 2013, Dwight fixed up the membership area database system allowing users to login and update their profile. From this he added more reports for administrators to slice and dice membership data to better grow the group based in their profiles and importing new membership data using CSV. He also researched and updated links to articles, web indexing software and presentations and sent out an irregular newsletter to members.
In 2014 and 2016, Dwight Walker was judge of the Web Indexing Award of the SIG. In 2014, the Award was given for a Web index and in 2016 for an ebook/Web index.
In August 2016, through internal ballot, Web and Electronic Indexing SIG of ASI was renamed Digital Publications Indexing SIG. This marks end of era when Dwight started Web indexing in 1996 with ANZSI. It was a waste of time as Web indexing never made much money and ebooks indexing by 2014 or so has replaced Web indexing. This is evidenced by 10% shift in membership by 2016 from Web and Electronic Indexing SIG to Indexes for Digital Publications LinkedIn Group through which ASI Digital Trends Task Force fostered EPUB indexing which evolved into Digital Publications SIG and replaced Web and Electronic Indexing SIG. Original merger of SIG and Indexes for Digital Publications failed back in March 2016 but when no SIG manager could be found for SIG in July 2016 onwards, the name debate surfaced and focus changed to digital publications indexing from Web indexing and forced the change in direction of the SIG.
In September 2017, Digital Publications Indexing SIG of American Society for Indexing manager kicked me out as Webmster without warning and replaced site with WordPress site.
In Dec 2012 and June-August 2013, Dwight Walker indexed 10 issues of ANZSI Newsletter 2007 using his inhouse Web-based indexing software. Material discovered from this was fed into digital-publications-indexing.org articles page. It is searchable on the Web (indexdata.info).
In September-November 2012, Dwight Walker did a test run of Standard Business Reporting on an Ubuntu cloud server on Cloud Central. This was to be used to integrate with ATO.
As of 2006 onwards, all these software packages we developed to fix certain technical and management problems are inhouse, commercial and private owned by WWWalker Web Development Pty Ltd as previous attempts to make things open source failed as people would not support us in return for our generosity. Now we own the software and provide services based on our inhouse software but do not license or sell the software as we lose control of our intellectual property and no-one will compensate us for that loss. We control and care for our own software much better than any customer would.
Australia seems to be as bad as China in not protecting software assets but openly pirating software to save money but destroying local developers' livelihoods so we have stood up to them and own all our software assets and will not lease, hire, license or otherwise handover the assets but only use them on the customer's behalf as a service. This way we capitalise on our assets rather than let someone else squander them!
It has worked as the slide of constantly fighting off people trying to not pay fully for our development work has stopped dead as we don't readily do this any more and own and edit our own software and use it then remove it when it has done its job.
Investing in our own business has been a great step forward so that all costs are soon paid for by the use of our own tools and not squandered on smart alecs that will not pay and just reap the benefits and don't send any money back to us for the benefit to their business. Greed has killed off our attempts to license or develop software for the customer. Now being smarter and wiser we only write software for ourselves and use it to supply a service to the customer. We are in control, not the customer, and we are much freer to build and expand without being pillaged and destroyed by devastators.
In July-September 2005, Dwight Walker used Telstra CDMA Minimax in Orange NSW in a tin shed to run his business as he had no phone line. In November 2006, he attempted to create on his own the Orange Wireless Network, a community project to get a wifi network up and running. He spent about a month creating a portal out of his own pocket for the Orange area using Google Maps and PHP/MySQL to locate points on a map, work out the distance between them and the azimuth needed to point them at each other to create a point-to-point wifi network. This involved Web services and XML integration of maps, latitude/longitude tables and map overlays for location-based services such as chat and gaming. He researched latitude/longitude by getting Orange City Council survey maps and data. Long-distance links over 12km were anticipated to link up all the outlying areas of Orange with a low-cost wifi network but this was knocked on the head due to 3m height restrictions on antennas in Orange City. Cabonne Shire only had a 10m restriction on antenna height but was further out of town to integrate. No momentum was achieved so the project was moth-balled in December 2006 till a better time or place and a more viable situation re startup costs and high expectations of consumers.
Since December 2006, we have used the wireless database to plot areas all over Australia, South Pacific, Europe, North America and the Middle East using Google Maps maps and satellite pictures - very useful technology used solely by us now to plan logistics and routing. We have also started mapping software development areas of our business to capitalise on location-based services that wireless and Google Maps have given us an opportunity to develop.
So the investment in wireless database technology did not go to waste. We just used it ourselves and benefited from it despite local apathy. In fact going wider after the initial flop made us realise how powerful this technology was! Why reserve it just for the local people who are generally very computer illiterate and apathetic? Why not use it for the whole world? Australia is not on its own. It has to be connected via the Internet to the rest of the world. Here is how I can do it: use the long arm of Google and the Internet to reach out and connect and make products that meet needs the world over.
In September 2008, we intended to start working on porting mapping software to Nokia phones (S60) but there is still no progress by 2010 due to lack of capital.
In 2010, mobile phone applications to assist wifi are being developed. The wifi hotspot database developed above can be used as a source of data for the mobile phone applications to increase internet penetration via 3G.
In 2014, 2 mobile phone applications were developed, one for Translink and one for groundwater for salt table measurements using Queensland Government open data.
Since March 2007, we have explored using broadband to do computer work more efficiently and cheaply. Down one broadband connection, we can contact and talk to the customer about the problem and then remedy technical problems or update Websites online using Skype VoIP calls, FTP, chat and special remote assistance software. It has proved a very efficient way to do business in remote country areas as we can service within minutes anyone who is online without high phone costs or having to travel to the location. This is quite a revolution for our business which has been cut-off in Orange for 4 or 5 years now. The only downside is the benefits only flow to those who use broadband which limits it to enthusiasts or other small businesses both in Australia and overseas.
In May 2007, we found this does not help if there is a hardware problem like a cable not being pushed in properly into the back of a PC's network adaptor in which case we will visit the site and do the physical troubleshooting.
From 1996 or so, Dwight Walker built the first Sydney Linux Users Group Website. He indexed the HOW-TOs as a gesture. In 1998, he also created a mini online course for US customers seeking to learn Linux skills online. He also attended CALU at Monash University in 2000.
In 2002, Dwight Walker contributed Perl code to integrate password login of a portal with wwwboard to stop spammers, available under GPL. The site has since changed and the software is no longer used.
In October 2007, Dwight Walker joined the IAPR Commence project on Sourceforge, run by Prof Brian Lovell, ITEE, University of Queensland, where Dwight did his BSc in computer science in 1987. He wrote PHP software to improve reports and improve administration. The venture paid off handsomely in saving many hours of development and also letting his old alma mater get some hands-on experience in his commercial world, small though it be, to foster up-and-coming software engineers from UQ where he started 20 years ago!
IAPR Commence was integrated by us with our own ecommerce system into the MEPSA site in November 2007, a terrific trade-off as we gained $1000s worth of software written by computer science honours students for a small contribution from us.
In January 2014, MEPSA switched to WordPress and got rid of IAPR Commence.
In May 2013, I learned this has been disbanded now as Microsoft CMT (Conference Management Toolkit) is offered free.
100th anniversary of UQ in July 2010 did not lead to any recontact with old classmates but we saw the new Axon IT lab/teaching room which was very impressive.
The UQ School of ITEE is interested in businesses providing scholarships for their students.
In November 2014, Paul Gampe, a past student and now very successful IT professional, gave an award at the Innovation Showcase. Dwight Walker went along to this too. It was very impressive with robotics and information systems on display.
In June 2008 in Brisbane with Arjen Lentz of Brisbane Web Tech (ex MySQL) Meetup and a UQ computer science undergraduate named Kim Hunter, Dwight Walker worked on the logic and data structures for an Obfuscator for MySQL data using his background when he worked at the Australian Bureau of Statistics anonymising data. The idea was to obfuscate real data so tests could be run without invading privacy. This project stalled in July 2008 but in October 2008 Dwight Walker worked briefly on an experimental branch but did not complete it so it can be used. The software is stored in a Bazaar version control repository running Python which can also be browsed online. The software is best viewed by a PHP developer, not an end-user. The Google Summer of Code 2008 and Obfuscator for MySQL links are dead or changed as of April 2022.
In January 2012, Dwight Walker worked out how to install Open Australia Parser on Windows 7 and commited the new install-parser.textile documentation to wwwalker fork of Open Australia github.com repository.
It required RubyInstaller 1.8.7, DevKit, ImageMagick etc etc and took 2 or 3 days and communicating with @dracos and @openaustralia to find missing specifications for twfy/conf/general etc. hpricot 0.6.164 required Ruby 1.8.7 to compile.
Open source projects need much better project management and version control to get consistent builds. Google code searching was invaluable to find missing files. I have documented blow by blow all the steps I had to go through to get the parser to work on Windows 7 Ruby and PHP with XAMPP. All the parliamentary files are stored in XML so I could rewrite this in PHP or Python or Perl too.
In November 2012, Dwight Walker installed opensource Zurmo CRM on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. It took some effort re folder permissions, PHP version and my.cnf database settings.
Total testing is listed in the Zurmo forum. This was dead in October 2020 and redirects to EspoCRM/Zurmo site in April 2022.
Dwight now has an opensource CRM to use on his business. Ray Stoekicht approached him to help out.
In January 2015, Zurmo CRM was bought by Gravity4 (archive) and renamed CRM.me as part of 6 marketing software suites.
In October 2020, zurmo.org is dead but opensource of Zurmo is available on Sourceforce.
In December 2020, Dwight Walker installed Zurmo onto Linux Debian 9 server with PHP7.4, MariaDB and Apache. He had to debug many PHP 7.4 errors using application.log and on-screen PHP errors.
In March 2018, I exported all bookmarks from pinboard.in for myself as JSON and imported it into MySQL and wrote PHP to manipulate it. This happened because adding tags was not working due to table error in pinboard.in. The result is much better control over my bookmarks.
In 23/4/2014 I went to April Issue sprint evening with Drupal Brisbane at Woolloongabba and fixed issue Tour module popup stays fixed when toolbar moves.
Andrew Tridgell gave talk in 2009 at Open Source Developer Conference in Sydney on how Micosoft had to help Free Software vendors like Samba implement competing products using Microsoft Protocols by giving them full documentation. This is a landmark victory for free software developers!