History
Beginnings and Pressures
We formed our own business to capture opportunities in Australia being let go to USA and UK too much! We are an Australian-based, agile, niche, hi-tech, international, competitive microbusiness started in 1997 with a rich diversity of experience to draw on. We are basic contractors on small, specific jobs - no open-ended work. We have tertiary qualifications (BSc, Grad Dip IM-Lib) to draw on.
We are an incorporated service-based company in the knowledge economy. Dwight Walker is our creator, director and manager. We have our own online resources and use the Internet heavily. We travel to other cities outside of where we are based to setup jobs for customers or work onsite.
We started in 1997 because we could see opportunities for working on the Internet and most Australian companies were sitting back waiting for USA to do it first then copy them. In 2010, most other companies have caught up and overtaken us. We decided to get in first and not lose the opportunity. This took risk on our part but we were not willing to see Australia left in the dust yet again but be the leading force in the World Wide Web industry, so we went for it.
We have hit a few disasters in the IT industry. We barely survived the dot com crash in 2001 due to being agile and willing to change and grow with the world economical conditions, going mobile from 2003 after moving to Orange from Sydney which saved on rental and storage costs.
Most of our customers used to contact us via phone, fax or email but now our local presence is more important. Before it was just our internet and mobile phone connectivity.
Most of our early customers were in USA, Canada and UK, not Australia (as usually is the case with our remote country), so we got very good at dealing with remote customers and still have our customers nearby and away from where we are based, using the Internet and onsite as our main vehicles for business.
From 2000, we moved into open source software such as Linux and away from Microsoft to cut costs and remain competitive - it was a risk but we have built up a niche now which has been steadily overtaken by hundreds of Indian Web developers at a much lower price point than us.
Managing Director
- Dwight Walker
- Qualifications:
- BSc (computer science and chemistry), UQ 1987 - UQ ITEE Alumni LinkedIn Group
- Grad Dip Info Management-Librarianship, UNSW, 1991 - this course no longer exists
- Cert IV Small Business Enterprise, TAFE NSW, Baulkham Hills, 1998
- Registered Indexer, Australian and NZ Society of Indexers, 1996
- Basic Methods of Instruction, TAFE NSW, Gymea, 1993
- Professional Associations:
- RFID Business Association, Inc
- Affiliate of Western Sydney IT Cluster (WSITC) (2009-) - WSITC Linkedin Group
- Affiliate of IEEE Computer Society (till 2003)
- AALIA (till 2002)
- Industry Capability Network (ICN)
- Reseller Associations:
- Microsoft Partner Network, 2011
- Exetel Partner, 2011
- NETGEAR Powershift Partner, 2011
- Skills:
- Software Engineer/Programmer: C, C++, Pascal, Ada, Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, BASIC, SQL database programming
- Technical writer, editor, researcher
- Webmaster, information architect, librarian, information manager
- Network Manager, Sysop: PC and LAN systems support
- Languages:
- English - fluent
- German - good
- Interests:
- Contact details:
- Email: info at wwwalker.com.au
- ICQ chat id: wwwalker, UIN 4631678
- Yahoo! Messenger id: roorythmics - Webcam and USB Phone available
- Skype id: dwightwalker - Webcam and USB Phone available
- Twitter id: dwightwalker
- Facebook id: dwightwalker
- LinkedIn id: dwightwalker
- Jabber id: dwalker7 at jabber.com
- Github: https://github.com/wwwalker
- Mobile: +61-(0)412-405727
- postal: PO Box 1476, Orange NSW 2800 Australia
Skills
We have experience in these systems:
-
System Poweruser Programmer Sysop Web programmer Debian Sarge, Knoppix, Ubuntu and Xandros Linuxes 1 mth 1 yr 4 yrs Fedora Core 3 Linux 1 mth 1 mth Slackware and SuSE Linuxes 2 mths 8 mths 1 yr CentOS 3.6 1 yr FreeBSD 6.2 2 yrs OpenSolaris 6 1 mth Apple Mac OS X 10.3.9, 10.4 1 mth 1 mth Apple Darwin 1 mth Red Hat Linux 5.1, 7.0 2 yrs 3 yrs SunOS/HPUX UNIX 2 yrs 1 yr Windows 7 6 mths 1 mth Windows Vista 1 mth Windows XP Pro 2 yrs 1 yr Windows 2000 1 mth 1 mth IBM OS/2 Warp 1 yr 1 yr 1 yr Windows NT 4.0 4 yrs 1 yr 6 mths Windows ME 4 yrs 1 yr 1 mth Windows 95/98 2 yrs 2 yrs Microsoft, TCP/IP, Novell LANs 10+ yrs 1 mth 10+ yrs 10+ yrs Intel, AMD and Emerson Network Power (ex Motorola 6800 and 68000), Z80 microprocessors 10+ yrs 4 yrs 8 yrs 10+ yrs virus scanners and backup/restore 10+ yrs 5 yrs setup of cable/ADSL modems, wireless broadband and WLANs, routers and firewalls for Telstra Bigpond and Wireless Broadband, Optus, Vodafone, Unwired, AAPT, MySoul, People Telecom, Netspace, Exetel: - D-Link - D-Link Australia
- Belkin
- Apple Airport Extreme
- Maxon MiniMax
- ASUS Eee PC
- DrayTek
- Siemens Speed Stream 4200
- Linksys (GPL code)
- Netcomm
- NETGEAR
2 yrs CDMA/GPRS/3G/mobile Internet/wifi 2 years Skype VoIP 6 mths Aldi HDTV USB DVB-T receiver 1 mth
We build sites using:
| Language | Platform | Development Tool | Applications |
|---|---|---|---|
| HTML | internet, intranet | PFE (Programmer's File Editor) | static Web sites |
| Standard CGI | internet, intranet | Apache Web server on Linux or Windows | interactive Web sites |
| Perl | internet, intranet | Perl on Linux and FreeBSD using MySQL and Postgresql | guestbooks, form processing, Web databases, file uploads |
| PHP | internet, intranet | PHP on Linux or CentOS or Microsoft Windows using MySQL or Postgresql or Microsoft SQL Server or Interbase, Firebird, ADOdb, Phalanger PHP Compiler, Roadsend PHP Compiler, BPAY integration | form processing, Web databases, ecommerce integration, PDF invoice generation |
| ASP | internet, intranet | ASP on Windows using Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Access | portals, mailing lists, member-only areas, form processing, Web databases |
| C++ | internet, intranet | C++ CGI-BIN applications on Apache on Windows, GNU GCC on FreeBSD, Linux and Mac OS X | form processing, open source internet tools |
| JavaScript | internet, intranet | JavaScript on Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers, Nokia S60 Widgets | bookmarking, hierarchical navigation bars, mobile applications |
| Graphic Design, Page Layout, Image Processing, Flash, Web Design | internet, intranet, printing | Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Xara3D, The GIMP, Adobe PageMaker on Windows, Adobe InDesign CS4 on Mac OS X, Adobe Flash CS4 on Mac OS X, Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 on Mac OS X, ImageMagick, bash (UNIX shell), custom Web-based indexing | wallpapers, images, animations, 3D, simple logos, icons, user interfaces (UI), books, newsletters, online publishing, batch image processing, mobile book indexing, interactive Websites |
| SQL Databases | internet, intranet | MySQL, Postgresql, Microsoft SQL Server, Perl DBI, Interbase, Firebird, KinterbasDB Python DB API 2.0 module | membership databases, competitions entry forms, interactive online trading sites, mobile IT support system |
| Microsoft Databases | internet, intranet | ASP.NET, ASP, Access, ADSI (Active Directory Service Interfaces), IIS Web server on Windows, Microsoft SQL Server, MSDE.biz, .NET Framework, PHP with Phalanger PHP Compiler for .NET | online catalogues, virtual Web server management, content management systems |
| Apple Databases | internet, intranet | FileMaker on Apple Mac | intranet sheet music catalogue for orchestras |
| ASP, ASP.Net, PHP and Perl scripts | internet | iNETStore, Microsoft Access, SSL on NT, XP and Linux, ASP.Net, ASP.NET Developer Center, Phalanger PHP Compiler for .NET | integrating ecommerce, open source portals |
| Content Management Systems | internet, intranet | PHP, MySQL, Struts, Smarty, MySource Matrix, Zope, PHPNuke, XML, MagpieRSS, IAPR Commence, Joomla!, Wordpress, Drupal, Django Project | company and community Web portals, conference management, blogs, wikis and newsfeeds |
| Project Management | internet, intranet | methodologies: Waterfall, Incremental, Object-Oriented; modelling: UML | large Web portals |
| Python | internet, intranet | Python on Linux or FreeBSD; KinterbasDB, Firebird Database and Squid Cache, PyS60, Django Project | content filtering, network programming, Symbian mobile programming, content management systems |
| Fedora Linux | internet, intranet | New kernel (2.6.x), libraries (libgtk), compilers/interpreters (gcc, Perl) and drivers and modules for USB modems (acm) for wireless Internet, HTML/XML compatible browsers, later version databases, configuration management tools | wireless internet, USB, tools, browsers and interactive Web sites |
| PHP, XML, SOAP, WSDL | internet | PHP 5, Linux | Web services |
| New Services, Back End Systems and Development Tools | |||
| SAP Sybase SQL | Internet | SAP Sybase SQLAnywhere | Web services, mobile services |
| VBA | standalone PC, intranet | Microsoft Office Outlook | Outlook integration |
| C | internet, intranet | Debian Linux and MySQL C API | large scale data imports |
| awk, sed, bash, shell (bash, csh, sh), python | internet, intranet | Linux, FreeBSD, BeautifulSoup | text processing for large data imports |
| Data Importing and Exporting | internet, intranet | MYOB from MySQL (QIF), parsing various delimited flat files into central MySQL database using PHP | finance, bookkeeping, billing systems, information systems |
| UML | internet, intranet | object-oriented system modelling tools and methodologies: ArgoUML | large Web portals, real-time, embedded or messaging systems |
| Ruby | internet, intranet | Ruby with Ruby on Rails Framework on Apache and Mongrel Web servers on Linux or FreeBSD or Windows | dynamic HTML Web sites, network programming, string processing |
| Java, JSP, XML | internet, intranet | Oracle Sun JDK, Tomcat, Ant, XML, Geronimo; IDEs: Eclipse, NetBeans | Web services, mobile applications |
| Java, C#, Python | internet, GPRS/CDMA/3G mobile phone networks, wifi (802.1X) | Mobile Phones, PDAs, embedded systems, MySQL, Java ME (Java Micro Edition), Visual C#, Oracle WebLogic, Wi-Fi Alliance, Mobilinux, ACCESS NetFront (ex PalmSource), ACCESS DevNet, Consumer Electronics Linux Forum, MontaVista Linux, Linux Smartphones, Linux PDAs, Open Source Operating Systems for Handhelds, Microsoft Windows Embedded, Microsoft Windows Mobile, SharpDevelop IDE, .NET Compact Framework, open source at Nokia, Nokia Qt, open source at Motorola, MOTODEV, AMD ATI embedded devices and handhelds, Android, Open Handset Alliance, Funambol, LiMo Foundation, Python for Nokia S60, Mobile Linux, MobLin, Maemo for Nokia, BlackBerry | dynamic wireless sites, Web services, SMS messaging, location-based services |
| C++, Python, Symbian | internet, GPRS/CDMA/3G mobile phone networks, wifi | Mobile Phones, PDAs, embedded systems, Symbian OS, Forum Nokia, Symbian Foundation, Eclipse CDT (C/C++ Development Tooling), PyS60 | dynamic wireless sites, Web services, SMS messaging, location-based services, network programming |
| CIFS, NFS | internet, intranet | Network Area Storage, Samba | backup, mirroring, disaster recovery |
| ColdFusion, Flex, AIR | internet, intranet | ColdFusion 8 - CFML, JDBC, MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, JRun, Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, XML, Eclipse IDE, Adobe Labs, Adobe Developer Center, Adobe OpenSource, Railo Technologies | interactive Web portals, wireless applications, Rich Internet Applications |
| AJAX | internet, intranet | PHP, XML, Java, SQL Databases, JSON | interactive Web portals, Web services, Web 2.0 |
| Virtualization | internet, intranet | VMWare, VirtualBox to run Windows XP on Linux or Mac OS X, or vice versa | hosting, testing, disaster recovery, outsourcing |
| Identity Management | internet, intranet | Various standards - Web 2.0 | single sign on, portals |
| Pascal | PC | Free Pascal, BMP files and the GIMP on Windows | graphics generation (maths) |
| meta data | Internet | Google AdWords | search engine optimisation |
| Configuration, Bug Tracking | internet, intranet | repositories: CVS on Knoppix, Subversion, Bazaar, custom using PHP and MySQL; IDEs: Eclipse, NetBeans; clients: TortoiseCVS, TortoiseSVN; tickets: trac and python | project management, portals or complex Websites, open source projects |
| Library Management Systems | internet, intranet | Windows, Z39.50, Greenstone, Resourcemate, Collectorz | library system setup and consulting, copy cataloguing, research, editing, publishing, indexing, Web services, mobile applications, barcoding |
| Difficult Areas | |||
| Library Management Systems | internet, intranet | Koha, Debian Linux, Perl, MySQL | library system setup and consulting, copy cataloguing |
| multimedia | Internet, intranet, radio | Rivendell on Linux | radio broadcasting automation, audio scheduler, ripping, streaming |
| Hadoop, MapReduce | internet | cloud computing in Hadoop at Apache, MapReduce | grid and cluster computing and high-end search |
| routers | Internet, intranet | Cisco IOS | network configuration for small business |
| Java, J2EE | internet, intranet | IBM WebSphere Application Server Community Edition, IBM JVM 1.5 on Windows XP, Linux, Eclipse IDE, Tomcat, Geronimo, Apache Derby database | interactive Web portals, Web services, enterprise messaging |
| PHP/Postgresql | internet, intranet | reverse engineering CodeCharge IDE generated pages for Linux, Postgresql, PHP, PgAdmin, phpPgAdmin | Web portal for managing EFTPOS terminals |
| Data Importing and Exporting | standalone PC, intranet | MYOB from/to MySQL (ODBC, .NET, C#); manipulating documents using OpenXML or ODF Toolkit; reading MYOB company file using MYOB ODBC in Open Office, Microsoft Access ODBC in Open Office | finance, bookkeeping, billing systems, document repositories, meta data indexing |
| .NET, Mono, ASP.NET, PHP, C# | internet, intranet | Novell Mono Project on Linux with Microsoft .NET Framework with Microsoft Sharepoint, SQL Server, Office, Outlook and Groove; DotNetNuke | portals, complex Websites, groupware |
| Apple Databases | internet, intranet | MySQL on Mac OS X | network marketing portal |