JQuery Validation UI Plugin 1.2.1 Released - Client Side Validation without writing JavaScript

I would like to announce the JQuery Validation UI Plugin 1.2.1 Released.

The JQuery Validation UI Plugin will bring Javascript Validator, Custom Constraints, Remote Constraints, jQuery Validation plugin and qTip (jQuery tooltip plugin) under the same root and deliver comprehensive client-side validation solution.

What's New:

• Fixed Issue #9: Validation matches [a-zA-Z]+ doesn't support single character
• Fixed Issue #10: In the java.lang.Bigdecimal also thrown an error for unique and range.
• Fixed Issue #11: Type mismatch custom error message not working.

Find Out More:

• Project Site and Documentation: http://code.google.com/p/jquery-validation-ui-plugin/
• Support: http://code.google.com/p/jquery-validation-ui-plugin/issues/list
• Discussion Forum: http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-validation-ui-plugin

Resurrection of Malaysia Groovy and Grails User Group

Two days ago, I google "Grails Malaysia", I found this thread "Groovy/Grails folks in Malaysia or Singapore?" in Grails User forum and Malaysia Groovy and Grails User Group. As commented by Steve, the Malaysia Groovy and Grails User Group is look like non-existent or spam mailing list. I look into the threads of Malaysia Groovy and Grails User Group and find out that there are handful of threads related to Groovy and Grails, many are spam as per Steve's comments.

If you are Malaysia's Groovy and Grails supporter, will you join a user group that have full of spam messages? I doubt it. Like many people, when I saw so many spam messages in the front page (I hate spam!), I quickly move my mouse pointer to "x" to close my browser window and leave the user group, when I move my finger and just before I press a left click button of my mouse, a "light bulb" pop up from my mind - What if every Malaysia's Groovy and Grails developer visited this user group and leave, this user group will become ghost town as commented by the group owner.

So, I decided to join the user group and try to remove all spam messages, in few minutes time I find out that group member only can report spam, not delete spam. So I send an e-mail to the group owner to request for ownership of the user group. Thanks for his quick response and granted me the owner right on the same day and ask me "What's your plan for the group? I'd like to be involved."

The following message was my response to him:

The short term plan is to make the group a "clean" place for local groovy and grails developer to hang out:

1. Clean up spam messages

2. Kick out spammer(s) from the group

3. Make an announcement (this group come back "live") and blog about it (need your help to spread the news)

Long term....? I hadn't think of it yet. :)

After I responded to him, I continue my work and plan to re-visit the user group in the evening. You guess what? When I re-visit the user group, the group owner had completed item 1. and item 2 above. Thank you so much! So, it is my turn to do item 3.

If you are Groovy and Grails supporter from Malaysia, please join the user group, invite people like you to join the user group. Do you see the orange button on right top of this blog? Do you like it? Please embed code snippet below to your blog, twitter, etc. to help to promote Malaysia Groovy and Grails User Group.

<a href="http://groups.google.com/group/malaysia-groovy-and-grails-user-group" title="Join Malaysia Groovy and Grails User Group"><img alt="Join Malaysia Groovy and Grails User Group" src="http://grails-activiti-plugin.googlecode.com/files/malaysia-ggug-bg-black.png" height="100%" width="100%" border="0" /></a>

If you are using blogger.com, you can embed the code above to your blog using HTML/JavaScript gadget without any adjustment. Otherwise, please adapt the code above to your blog, twitter, etc. (Please let's me know if you not sure how to do so). The code snippet above support black color background, if your background is white, please change malaysia-ggug-bg-black.png to malaysia-ggug-bg-white.png.

Thanks for reading. It is your turn to take action!

Action Notes of How to Make Money in 6 Easy Steps

Today, my friend share me an outstanding article written by Jason Fried, How to Make Money in 6 Easy Steps. Initially the title of this post is "Reading Notes of How to Make Money in 6 Easy Steps", this post is to capture my thoughts after reading the article. If you really enjoy reading as I did, it is great! However, what matters most is what you do after you read. I change "Reading" to "Action", so it become "Action Notes of How to Make Money in 6 Easy Steps".

This is quite a long post, feel free to skip.

Why making money?
The question above seems no-brainer, right? Did you think of what money means to you? Take few minutes of your time and think deeply about it... At the end of this post, I will tell you what money means to most people.

6 steps from Jason Fried:

1. Understanding the buyer is the key to being a strong seller
2. In which I sell electronics, knives, and throwing stars—and learn that it's all about passion
3. How, and why, to charge real money for real products
4. There are different pathways to the same dollar
5. The true value of bootstrapping
6. A word about practicing

By reading the description, the 6 steps above doesn't sound like actionable, let's take one step at a time:
1. Understanding the buyer is the key to being a strong seller
Jason's lessons learned and discovery from working as tennis-shoe and tennis-racket salesman in his 14:

• People's reasons for buying things often don't match up with the company's reason for selling them
• When you describe things in terms people don't understand, they tend not to trust you as much
• When customers shop for shoes, they do three things. They consider the look and style. They try them on to see if they're comfortable. And they consider the price. Endorsements by famous athletes help a lot, too. But the technology, the features, the special-testing labs—I can't remember a single customer who cared.
• Understanding what people really want to know—and how that differs from what you want to tell them—is a fundamental tenet of sales.

My understanding:

• Understand what make people buy and what they look for in your product and your competitor products. Most likely it is not features. From the example above, it reminded me about the process of buying car, are they look similar?
• Speaking terms and language that customer understand
• Be a great salesman

2. In which I sell electronics, knives, and throwing stars—and learn that it's all about passion
Jason's lesson learned from working as reseller:

• Sell only things you'd want to buy for yourself.

My understanding:

• Do things that you passionate and believe.
  
• Build things that you will use it yourself, a.k.a prosumer. This lesson very similar to Scratch My Own Itch, build a product to solve your own problem and dogfood the product and sell it to people that have the same problem.

3. How, and why, to charge real money for real products
Jason's lesson learned from selling his Audiofile program:

• People are happy to pay for things that work well. Never be afraid to put a price on something. Even if there are free options.
• Charging for something makes you want to make it better

My understanding:

• Make a product that so much better than free options and aimed to charge from day 1 by using Free Trial model (Try first, buy later if you like it).

4. There are different pathways to the same dollar
Jason's lesson learned from 37express:

• Don't just charge. Try as many different pricing models as you can.
• Try to remove the fear and uncertainty, and people will be more willing to pay you.

My understanding:

• Be creative and flexible about pricing of your product or service
• A/B testing is good way to test for different pricing models for SaaS product.

5. The true value of bootstrapping
Jason's lesson learned from bootstrapping:

• Bootstrapping forces you to think about making money on Day One.

My understanding:

• Monetary constraints and pressure make you work hard and think hard seriously to create a profitable business. When you have a lot of easy money, you tend to spend it easily without giving a thought.
  

6. A word about practicing
How and where to start?
In this last step, Jason suggestion on practice making money: Buy and sell the same thing over and over on Craigslist or eBay.

Key takeaway about actions you (and I) can take:

• Be reseller or online seller to practice your selling skills
• Learn about what make customer buy (your product or service)
• Learn about pricing models by experiments (If you sell SaaS product, pick up A/B testing to test different pricing models)
• Get inspired? Act now!

That's all about it, thanks for reading. I'd love to hear comments from you as usual!

Oops! Almost forgot Why making money? With money, you have freedom and autonomy. Jason Fried make a good point in his article:

Making money is about freedom. When you owe people money, they own you—or, at least, they own your schedule. As long as you remain profitable, the timeline is yours to create.

Form Builder for Grails Developer

Along the way I am working on JQuery Form Builder Plugin and Grails Form Builder Plugin, I find out that some of you (Yes, I means you... Grails developer) would like to have a form builder plugin that targeted to developer instead of end-user.

I'm keen to find out that is there a real need for such a plugin, is this plugin a "must have" to you?

Please click the image below to sign up for early access to the prototype.

Edited on 07 March 2011: Total 18 Grails developers signed up, many thanks for trusted me by sent me your e-mail address (I hate spam too. I promise anything I send to you via e-mail will be relevant).

Edited on 08 March 2011: Total 24 Grails developers signed up, thanks for your support and trust.

Edited on 11 March 2011: Total 32 Grails developers signed up, many thanks for your support and trust.

Edited on 14 March 2011: 1 more Grails developers signed up (hm... seems like slowing down), many thanks for your support and trust.

The Grails Activiti Plugin 5.3 Released

I would like to announce the Grails Activiti Plugin 5.3 Released.

Grails Activiti Plugin was created to integrate Activiti BPM Suite and workflow system to Grails Framework.
With the Grails Activiti Plugin, workflow application can be created at your fingertips!

What's New:

• Upgrade Activiti's jar files and examples to 5.3. Ported the Activiti's examples from JUnit3 to JUnit4.

Find Out More:

• Project Site and Documentation: http://code.google.com/p/grails-activiti-plugin/
• Support: http://code.google.com/p/grails-activiti-plugin/issues/list
• Discussion Forum: http://groups.google.com/group/grails-activiti-plugin

Looking For Developers Working On Open Source Project In Malaysia

On last Thursday, 24 February 2011 I sent out the following message with subject "Looking for Web Application Developer" to 80 friends of mine who working in IT industry via Facebook Messages:

Hi there, I am looking for Web Application Developer experienced in JQuery (http://jquery.com/), Subversion (SVN) and optionally server-side technology such as Grails (http://www.grails.org/), PHP, ASP or etc. to work on an open source project. If you are interested, I can be contacted via e-mail: myemail@mydomain.com or my mobile: +6012 9999 999. Otherwise, If you know anyone who have the development skills mentioned above included students, junior developers, experience developers or whoever involved in web development or working in IT industry, kindly help me forward this message to them. Thank you very much. Best regards, Chee Kin

Also, I personally contacted 25 people out of 80 via one-to-one instant messaging or phone conversation and managed to get their agreement to help me forward the message to their friends who working in IT industry. Highly appreciation to 25 helpful friends, thank you so much for your support and effort to send out the message.

The same message also published or posted to two popular Malaysia Open Source Developer Communities: jobs-list@lists.foss.org.my (Mailing List) and http://groups.google.com/group/osdcmy-list (Online Group), which pending for approval by moderator at the moment.

Few close friends of mine commented that it is tough to get local developers working on open source project based on common interest and voluntary basis, I tend to agree with their comment. But I insisted to try it out and interested to see how things turn out. We'll see...

Edited on 08 March 2011:
Highly welcome to experience developers below who agreed to join my open source projects:

1. Eswara from India (based in U.S at the moment), joined the JQuery Form Builder Plugin project.
2. Liu Chao from Shang Hai, China, joined the JQuery Validation UI Plugin project.
3. Yang Qing from Beijing, China, joined the JQuery Form Builder Plugin project and Grails Form Builder Plugin project.

Where are you, my dear Malaysian developers?

I'd love to hear your comments for any great ideas on recruiting developers working on open source project.