Replicating Excel Functions in PHP

Excel is a great tool for setting up complex calculations and business users love it. But if you need to convert all those calculations into a dynamic web based application, the process may not be as straightforward as you think. You see, PHP doesn't have built-in functions to match all those great functions that are built in to Excel. That means you need to recreate them from scratch or dig through several disjointed resources online to try to find what you want. We put together a few of these for a recent project and we thought it would be good to share them here to hopefully make things easier for others. These aren't ALL the functions of course, but here are the ones we had to use recently. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- function PMT($i, $n, $p) { return $i * $p * pow((1 + $i), $n) / (1 - pow((1 + $i), $n)); } -----... Keep Reading

Categories: Web Tips & Advice 

Thursday Think Tank - 10/25/2012

Join WebLift CEO Pedro Sostre and Product Director Misty McIntosh as we review the latest in business and marketing. http://www.spreecast.com/channels/weblift... Keep Reading

Categories: News  Web Tips & Advice  Search Engine Optimization  Social Networking  Marketing 

Marketwire Debuts New Brand; No One Cares.

I got an email last week regarding a 'Brand New Look for Marketwire'. Marketwire is a newswire (think PRNewswire, Businesswire, etc.) that is admirably trying to differentiate themselves. According to their boilerplate: Marketwire is a social communications company that provides everyone, from Fortune 500 enterprises to start-ups, with powerfully simple solutions: global press release distribution, industry-leading social media monitoring and analytics, and a fully integrated marketing communications platform for content creation, optimization, distribution and measurement. From a design perspective, I love their new logo and brand identity. It's beautiful and modern. And their new vision is smart... the problem is, they are still a newswire. The reason people use newswires is to get the word out. To broadcast news to the masses. That's a good thing right? Businesses still want tha... Keep Reading

Categories: Web Tips & Advice 

5 Reasons to Switch to a SaaS Solution

A recent research report by the Aberdeen Group, "State of SMB Retail: Top Business Process and Technology Strategies for ROI Success" identifies five compelling reasons why SMB retailers (and the majority of businesses in our opinion) should be using SaaS solutions for business processes. According to the report, SMBs have an "overwhelming need to be able to repidly implement new, improved customer-centric initiatives", and "to be able to provide applications anywhere, even globally. As long as there is browser availability, SaaS is a completely viable deployment option". The report then identifies 5 specific advantages of SaaS applications as follows: Vastly improved scalability options Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) - only pay for what you use Economies of scale: due to many users of teh same applications, the vendor is incentivised to deliver functionality on a frequent ba... Keep Reading

Categories: Web Tips & Advice 

Shady Advertisers 'Like' Tricking Facebook Users into Joining their Page

I hate it when companies trick users into doing something they don't want to do. Facebook users had come to understand that "Becoming a Fan" of a brand on facebook meant they would get updates from that company in the future. Today I came across this ad from 411-PAIN which is CLEARLY misleading facebook users. It encourages users to "Click 'Like' if you think Nicki [Minaj] is the bestest!" I like Nicki Minaj, but I am not even a little bit interested in adding 411-PAIN to the list of companies I want updates from.  How this ad even passed the quality review is beyond me - but I guarantee you that there are tons of new facebook users that "Like" 411PAIN without intentionally wanting to. This is not smart advertising but spam tactics. If you ask me, Facebook should delete this ad campaign and figure out how to notify users that they signed up to receive updates from... Keep Reading

Categories: None