Atherton: Half the men in this room wish you were on their arm, tonight. Inara: Only half. I must be losing my indefinable allure.

'Shindig'


Buffistechnology 3: "Press Some Buttons, See What Happens."

Got a question about technology? Ask it here. Discussion of hardware, software, TiVos, multi-region DVDs, Windows, Macs, LINUX, hand-helds, iPods, anything tech related. Better than any helpdesk!


§ ita § - Aug 27, 2009 8:27:28 am PDT #11048 of 25501
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

I don't have an iPhone--I have a Nokia e61i running Symbian. I use the Epocware Handy Safe.


omnis_audis - Aug 27, 2009 8:29:11 am PDT #11049 of 25501
omnis, pursue. That's an order from a shy woman who can use M-16. - Shir

Ha! I saw "phone" and my brain read "iPhone". Funny that.


§ ita § - Aug 27, 2009 8:31:27 am PDT #11050 of 25501
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Apple owns your ass.


omnis_audis - Aug 27, 2009 8:32:25 am PDT #11051 of 25501
omnis, pursue. That's an order from a shy woman who can use M-16. - Shir

well, it's mutual. The joys of being a shareholder.


le nubian - Aug 27, 2009 8:36:57 am PDT #11052 of 25501
"And to be clear, I am the hell. And the high water."

ita, I have Nokia as well. Handy Safe - does it have a mac desktop equivalent?


§ ita § - Aug 27, 2009 9:11:52 am PDT #11053 of 25501
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

No. I haven't decided on a Mac app yet. I'd love some way to synch between Mac, PC, and phone, but that's a pipe dream and a half.


Vortex - Aug 27, 2009 12:57:50 pm PDT #11054 of 25501
"Cry havoc and let slip the boobs of war!" -- Miracleman

Software design type folks -- I need a searchable database designed to be used on a website. Basically, I want to create a scholarship search database where a student can input scholarship criteria (like "engineering" "african american" "minimum GPA") and the database will provide a list of applicable scholarships. I want it it to be easily updated by me or one of my staff (i.e. in a spreadsheet or something similarly familiar).

Now, to the question - how much would it cost to hire a freelancer to design something like that? What are the other parameters that I need to think about that affect difficulty or cost?


tommyrot - Aug 27, 2009 3:20:53 pm PDT #11055 of 25501
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

What are the other parameters that I need to think about that affect difficulty or cost?

Are you (your university) hosting it? Would it be part of an existing website?

If you're paying for hosting, an open source solution (eg: Linux OS, PHP web pages with MySQL database) would probably be cheaper to host than commercial software (eg: Windows Server OS, ASP web pages with SQL Server database) but otherwise I can't really say which approach is better.

Would you require a web interface for entering the data? or would some desktop program (eg: written in Access) be adequate? Entering data in a spreadsheet would work, but that would require some sort of export-to-database routine, plus spreadsheets would lack data validation that you could get in a custom program.

As for pricing... I dunno. I'm guessing a consulting company might bill you $120-$140 per hour? with maybe a day's work for a simple solution (take that with a grain of salt - I rarely have to estimate how long thing will take). Maybe less time, or more if I'm underestimating how complex the whole thing would be. For example, setting up a new site and/or database server might cost more than using existing servers.

You could probably find a freelancer at a lower rate.


le nubian - Aug 27, 2009 4:10:45 pm PDT #11056 of 25501
"And to be clear, I am the hell. And the high water."

Vortex,

are you sure you can't do this using google spreadsheet (part of google docs)?


Ginger - Aug 27, 2009 4:15:19 pm PDT #11057 of 25501
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

As Tommy says, the least expensive solution would probably be PHP/MySQL, which is available from many hosting companies but may not be on your university server. One factor would be how secure you want it to be and another would be how much data you're talking about and how many search parameters. There are some off-the-shelf and web-based programs.