WWWalker Staff

Skills and Tools


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.

In November 2006, Orange was not technically savvy so they passed up using wireless internet over dialup. Mobile internet in 2010 in Orange is still a novelty.

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.

In March 2007, we moved to ADSL2+ broadband in Orange opened doors briefly for remote assistance and better inhouse software development and inhouse private online services. We moved location to Brisbane in January 2008 with the broadband but have not used it as we are on the road most of the time from April 2008.

In October 2007, we had a person try to shut our business down by throwing a rock through our window to scare us off. Thugs are pretty anti geeks in Orange so we put our equipment in storage behind a security gate and deal with customers in and outside Orange. After much pressure on us to leave in November 2007, we decided to compromise and stay on in Orange a little while longer.

In January 2008 we moved briefly to Brisbane a better, more law-abiding but heavily congested city but were not able to survive due to lack of sales and affordable housing. While there we did a short Web project

We were not ready for the change in Brisbane. The rough move was tough and we destroyed our confidence by moving with no way to go back easily to Orange and are now working from Orange to let us recover over the past 2 years and were trekking all around NSW, ACT, Victoria and Queensland to build up our resources till funds ran low in December 2008.

This replenished us a little financially after all the dry years in NSW but left us in the lurch when it came to an abrupt end. We tried to operate independently again via a QLD address but were unable to live there personally due to lack of resources so used Orange as a base to seek work and run our little business remotely back in Brisbane till a better time to relocate.

In February 2009 after coming back from his father's funeral in Brisbane, Dwight's bike was stolen outside St Barnabas 'Cafe Barneys' in McLachlan St, Orange. Despite putting his story in the Central Western Daily on 7/3/09, no-one has owned up or handed it back. Nothing is sacred in Orange, not even a church.

Since January 2009 Dwight has done many odd jobs in Orange NSW such as cleaning, busking and incorporated violin teaching into the business to cut the debt built up in 2008 doing his father's book on Mt Margaret Mission and lack of new customers due to the credit crunch. He has travelled to Canberra to build his business, Sydney for training and Brisbane for new sales via his office in Brisbane.

Philosophy and Direction

We go against the trend and use our information technology and information science to go ACROSS many sectors, instead of going vertical in just one chain of products.

We build the glue that holds many disparate parts together - backend, browser, applications, networks, security. So we don't spread ourselves too thin - we use the diversity of the Internet community to go beyond our comfort zone and try to do things that may seem irrational or difficult but will see the way through - a can-do attitude to life! We have a vision that is years ahead so we always read up and are prepared for the next wave before the big guys get there, since we are librarians and can do research worldwide via the Internet. :)

We don't want to become as bureaucratic as other firms as it would ruin the reason for going independent so we push on with making our business better and not falling into the trap of poor customer service and pathetic quality that other bigger companies follow ad nauseum. This is costly and risky but hopefully is better in the long run. We may need to join the rest of the IT industry to survive.

Rubbing off from Dwight having travelled a large part of his childhood, we easily integrate with other cultures. We are cross-cultural. To survive insular communities, we use the Internet to keep in touch with forward thinking groups.

We explore new technology as it comes along. We started the business so we had a vehicle to use to develop new technology. The business is to support us. We carefully manage job size so it does not overload us. This is the beauty of being the boss: we cannot be sacked by ourselves but we can lose jobs, allocate funds or kill off bad jobs as we see fit and not be locked into useless contracts however it costs much to survive.

Workplace Authority (ex Workchoices) does not affect us as we are boss and worker - a working director - no conflict between the parties - we would like better pay and conditions and and sometimes pay ourselves more as we are able or move to a better location for our sanity so there is less stress on us - a very flexible system for managing funds to better our personal interests and maintain the corporate bottomline like other companies.

Sometimes company interests to drive down costs cost us emotionally due to isolation and no local people of a similar educational standard e.g. Western Sydney, Orange, so we change to better locations from time to time to stay on top mentally.

We bear the burden of any losses for months if we are shafted but do not stay locked into dead-end deals for long. That is the freedom and cost of running our own business and not being employed by someone else's business and is one of the main reasons why we continue to keep going all these years! Nothing else gives us this amount of freedom to explore new ideas and we are assisted by music dollars to keep afloat.

There is a discipline of running a business that stops us being locked into dead-end deals which is very helpful for our personality but can hamper our growth financially. It is like flying a little aeroplane: if it starts to dive, we pull on the rudder to give it lift. Remarkably even in the worst storms we have a very resilient business and we usually bounce back though it can sometimes takes months if we ditch dead-weight and change course for the better of the business.

Sometimes harsh billing decisions have to be made to kick off bad customers who want to milk us for all we are worth so our billing grinds those kinds of jobs to a halt and stops more red ink and debt killing us off. We then have pump in more capital from music to resuscitate our business and give it legs. Music is a great marketing arm.

The reality is there is a huge downturn in the world in April 2009 and our business is on hold so we are doing lots of new sorts of work in this business such as music now to live!

Managing Director

Dwight Walker's video
Dwight Walker
Qualifications:
Professional Associations:
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
Interests:
Contact details:
  • Email: info at wwwalker.com.au
  • ICQ chat id: wwwalker, UIN 4631678
  • Yahoo! Messenger id: roorythmics - Webcam and USB Phone available
  • Windows Live Messenger id: wwwalker - Webcam and USB Phone available
  • Skype id: dwightwalker - Webcam and USB Phone available
  • Jabber id: dwalker7 at jabber.com
  • Twitter id: dwightwalker
  • Mobile: +61-(0)412-405727
  • postal: PO Box 1476, Orange NSW 2800 Australia

Skills

Hexley: Darwin We have experience in these systems:
SystemPoweruserProgrammerSysopWeb programmer
Debian Sarge, Knoppix, Ubuntu and Xandros Linuxes1 mth1 yr4 yrs
Fedora Core 3 Linux1 mth1 mth
Slackware and SuSE Linuxes2 mths8 mths1 yr
CentOS 3.61 yr
FreeBSD 6.22 yrs
Apple Mac OS X 10.3.9, 10.41 mth1 mth
Apple Darwin1 mth
Red Hat Linux 5.1, 7.02 yrs3 yrs
SunOS/HPUX UNIX2 yrs1 yr
Windows Vista1 mth
Windows XP Pro2 yrs1 yr
Windows 20001 mth1 mth
IBM OS/2 Warp1 yr1 yr1 yr
Windows NT 4.04 yrs1 yr6 mths
Windows ME4 yrs1 yr1 mth
Windows 95/982 yrs2 yrs
Microsoft, TCP/IP, Novell LANs10+ yrs1 mth10+ yrs10+ yrs
Intel, AMD and Emerson Network Power (ex Motorola 6800 and 68000), Z80 microprocessors10+ yrs4 yrs8 yrs10+ yrs
virus scanners and backup/restore10+ yrs5 yrs
setup of cable/ADSL modems, wireless broadband and WLANs, routers and firewalls for Telstra Bigpond and Wireless Broadband, Optus, Unwired, AAPT, MySoul, People Telecom, Netspace:
  • 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/WAP mobile Internet2 years
Skype VoIP6 mths
Aldi HDTV USB DVB-T receiver1 mth

We build sites using:

Language Platform Development Tool Applications
WAP/WML internet, GPRS/CDMA mobile phone networks WAP Mobile Phones, Openwave.com emulator, PHP, MySQL dynamic WAP sites
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
ASPinternet, intranetASP on Windows using Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Accessportals, mailing lists, member-only areas, form processing, Web databases
C++internet, intranetC++ CGI-BIN applications on Apache on Windows, GNU GCC on FreeBSD, Linux and Mac OS Xform 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) internet, intranet Linux, FreeBSD 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, wi-fi (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
Difficult Areas
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

Links were removed 1/9/10.


Created: Tuesday, 16 September 1997, 8:02:31 PM
Last Updated: 1 Sep 2010 18:29

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