These are just very brief instructions, specifically on how I did this on my own system. A complete documentation on Phing can be found on at phing.info. You don’t actually need MAMP either, it was just what I was working with to begin with.

Open the application Terminal. You can find pear by doing a locate call: locate pear.
Currently MAMP requires you to install it into /Applications, so you should find pear (for php5) here: /Applications/MAMP/bin/php5/bin/.
Make sure MAMP is using the correct php version, by starting MAMP and checking your preferences.

1: Go to the correct folder:
cd /Applications/MAMP/bin/php5/bin/

2: Make sure pear can locate the package:
./pear channel-discover pear.phing.info

3: Install phing:
./pear install phing/phing

Phing should now be installed. Run the command “ls -al” and you should see phing in the same folder as pear.

You can now run this command:
./phing -h
This will give you an overview of the phing’s options.

From here you can for instance just run:
./phing -f /path/to/your/build.xml

This week I got an e-mail from Rajeev Goel, co-founder and General Manager of PubMatic, asking if I would consider talking with him concerning my recent blog post about abandoning PubMatic. where I decided to stop using it because it would seem as if PubMatic was taking half of my ad income. Well… I was mistaken on that part, and Rajeev also let me in on a few of the secrets behind the inner workings of PubMatic.

Let’s get the misunderstanding out of the way first: I thought PubMatic was taking half of my ad views, and that turned out to be a really stupid mistake on my part. I had set up my ads to display PubMatic ads half of the time, and Google Adsense the other half of the time. To make a long story short: PubMatic would only count the ads it displayed through it’s own system, this being mostly Adsense blocks with colour variations, while Adsense itself would count all the ads it displayed directly AND all the ads served through PubMatic since they too were in fact Googleads. So the joke is on me, and to the PubMatic team: I am sorry you had to take a long distance call from California to Norway to explain this to myself.

Getting a phonecall from California
Yes, Rajeev actually gave me a call and went through my numbers with me, asking me what I did not like with PubMatic and trying to explain and/or find solutions to my issues. As he pointed out, I at least had a 10% increase in ad income, without lifting a finger I might add. This even without letting PubMatic roam free and give it the opportunity to optimize at it’s own accord, which I will start doing from now on to see what it might really do. He was also keen to explain a bit around how their ad selection system works and how they plan on making money on this system, but he also asked me kindly not to reveal this on my blog. I got the opportunity to fill him in on my opinion on the PubMatic system as a whole, which I must admit is pretty nifty now that the whole misunderstanding from last week has been cleared up.

Learning to love complaining clients
To sum up: Yes, he actually scheduled a call three days in advance, and took 20 minutes of his time to take a long distance conversation to one, tiny, insignificant and dissattisfied customer in Bodø, Norway. In return I naturally answered any question he had, like for instance how I came across PubMatic. All in all, I think there is alot to be learned here that many web application developers might not even consider. Sure the world is large and the number of potential online clients is probably insanely large, but attention to the little man might get you alot of well-earned credits and online attention. Brendon Sinclair wrote a small piece on learning to love complaining clients, and I think he makes a few good points there.

[tags]Marketing,Adsense,PubMatic,Google,Advertising[/tags]

The finished chart is placed in a layer above the actual spreadsheet and can be dragged around, resized and edited with ease. It mimics the functionality of MS Excel, but with alot less functionality and alot more simplicity. You’ll probably like the simplicity, but after a while you’ll get frustrated over the functionality it lacks compared to what you are used to from Excel.

Here are some screenshots:

Adding/editing the chart:

The finished chart:

So what do you think about this new feature? Personally I feel it lacking in some areas, but I guess that is the tradeoff when using an online app like this. Same goes for docs and regular spreadsheet use really…

More news can be read here: http://www.google.com/google-d-s/whatsnew.html

[tags]Google, spreadsheets, excel, microsoft, google docs, charts[/tags]

Also, check out this usage example at frank rossi. Nice!

[tags]Mootools, javascript, images, slideshow[/tags]