Archive for June, 2010

With the introduction of HST in several Canadian provinces, some of our clients have asked us how this will impact their e-commerce stores. As the majority of our clients are using osCommerce, we have decided to write a short how to in order to help them prepare for the switch.

From the osCommerce admin, the first thing that needs to be done is to create some new tax zones. Since we are from BC, we will write this how to from the viewpoint of a BC based company (but don’t worry, if you live in another province, we will explain at the bottom of the post).

We created the following tax zones:

BC HST Zone

• British Columbia

Canada GST Zone

• Alberta
• Manitoba
• Northwest Territories
• Nunavut
• Prince Edward Island
• Quebec
• Saskatchewan
• Yukon Territory

NB / NF / ON HST Zone

• New Brunswick
• Newfoundland
• Ontario

NS HST Zone

• Nova Scotia

Once we created the Zones, we then created a tax class so that it could be added to our products. We called the tax class Taxable Goods.

Under the tax rates section, we then set the tax rates for each of our zones and associated them with the tax class.

1 – Taxable Goods – BC HST Zone – 12%
2 – Taxable Goods – NB / NF / ON HST Zone – 13 %
3 – Taxable Goods – Canada GST Zone – 5%
4 – Taxable Goods – NS HST Zone – 15%

If your company is NOT in BC, and requires you to charge PST in your province:

Create a new tax zone: Province PST Zone
Associate your province to the new zone.

eg.
Manitoba PST Zone

• Manitoba

In the tax rates section, set a new tax rate for your zone at the amount that PST is set at.

eg.
5 – Taxable Goods – Manitoba PST Zone – 7%

We hope this post was helpful to those of you with e-com stores. Remember, HST goes into effect July 1st, 2010 in BC!

Please contact us if you have questions or need assistance configuring your osCommerce website.

Wind Mobile is the new and upcoming mobile telecommunication company in Canada. They have over 10 years of experience in 2 large markets in Europe (Italy and Greece). Their plans are affordable in comparison to other Canadian carriers.

One of the nice things about Wind is their long distance add-ons. The ability to customize your long distance for unlimited usage in certain countries – being able to call for as low as $10/month.

The Wind coverage map does not look like it really supports rural communities (which is fine for 90% of people), and their phones are not subsidized (because of no contracts!), so you will pay the full amount of the phone cost in the beginning.

Their concept seems interesting though, pay a little more up-front to get started (full cost of the phone), then pay less for a plan over time. We will keep our eyes on this and see how they do over the next little while. Hopefully they will support iPhone data plans in the future, for those of us who… well, who have phones which work with them.

You can view their website at http://windmobile.ca

And my favorite page of their site at Why Wind?

For a while, 604media has been keeping a close watch on the developments regarding the Google Chrome browser. Chrome was launched officially in 2008 and has slowly been building a dedicated user base. It is currently, the 3rd most popular browser (behind Internet Explorer and Firefox) according to Net Applications – (a trusted source of browser usage statistics).

One of the major items with regards to Chrome is the speed in which it renders and loads pages. To that end, Google made the following video:

What we liked:

• The speed of Chrome is nice (both load time and navigation time)
• Stability – Chrome splits your browsing tabs, so in the event of a crash, you don’t lose everything.
• New tab/history page – when you open a new tab, the sites you view the most are displayed to make your browsing experience even faster.

What we didn’t like:

• Chrome extensions – there are not enough extensions or the ones there are, don’t feel as useful/polished.
• New tab/history page is a nice touch, but it feels like there may be privacy issues there as you can close the pages manually so they don’t show, but that is only after you have opened a new tab and done so. If you left your computer on and someone else used your browser – you could be in some trouble depending on the type of content you have been “researching”.

Final thoughts:

Google Chrome feels quite polished now, from its original inception. It appears to be a good alternative to Firefox – if you are looking for an alternative that is. For the most part though, there is no real outstanding reason to switch browsers if you are happy with what you are currently using.

If you are interested in seeing how the Chrome video was made, see the following video:

For those of you who have not yet heard, we have moved offices once again. This time we are located farther east from our last location by about 12 blocks.

We are now situated at 1822 Franklin St., Vancouver, BC.

View Larger Map

We will at some point be having a social meet and greet, office-warming party… keep your eyes peeled for details!

The new iPhone OS4 has just been released. It contains features such as multitasking, application folders (finally!), enhanced mail features, Apple’s new iBooks (which was launched with the iPad), playlist creation, tap-to-focus video, home screen wallpaper and more.

Not all of the previous iPhones are supported for all features – for example, the 3g and original phones do not support multitasking or video enhancements.

The new iPhone 4 is slated for release in the US within the next couple of days, us Canadian’s will have to wait a little bit (hopefully not too much longer).

We are excited, are you?