Archive for July, 2008
July 29, 2008 at 11:00 am
· Filed under fun, software development, web site tools ·Tagged cuil, indexing, search engines, web site tools, webmaster tools
I had a look at the new search engine Cuil. I didn’t think it’s that great so far. Design-wise I’m not that happy with the black background on the home page. I guess its meant to say “we’re not google but we are as simple as google to use”.
The major hassle people seem to be having, and I’m one of them, is that the site does not always return resilts – instead giving a too busy message.
The addition of columns and images to search makes the results appear interesting but the results I got were not all that relevent. Perhaps they need more people to search before the real results start to flow.
The extent to which they are indexing sites is also interesting. For my own sites I’ve listed how many pages they index and so far Cuil has more than Google, Yahoo or Live.
A quick search for www.bellhop.co.nz gives 2,087 results, while www.bellhop.com.au delivers none 
www.hotelbuddy.co.uk has 2314, www.hotelbuddy.asia (my new site) has none, while there are 11,291 results for www.hotelbuddy.us
These are gross results – not all of them from my sites, or even about my sites, but they will be indiicative of the volume of indexing that these Cuil does.
Over the next few days I’ll also be testing how quickly they index new content.
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July 22, 2008 at 11:55 am
· Filed under fun, software development, web site tools ·Tagged .Net, developer, domain driven design, nHibernate, Programming, unit testing
Every so often I come across a site that spurs me on to become a better developer. Today I cam across Code Better, and in particular the Foundations of Programming post by Karl Seguin. I downloaded his e-book and then sat down and read the book from cover to cover (it’s only 79 pages and very readable). And I know I’ll read it again soon.
Most of it will be familiar to experienced developers (unit testing, nHibernate, domain driven design, etc.) but some of it is new. But reading a book that puts it all together in one package and boldly says “this is the way I do it” without being arrogant … that’s what impresses me.
I genuinely enjoy writing code. It’s one of the great pleasures of my life. Sometimes I do it well. Other times I do less well. But I’m always looking to do it better.
So thanks, Karl.
Reading your book reminds me of why I love developing and inspires me to want to do it better!
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July 14, 2008 at 9:44 am
· Filed under Asia, fun, hotels ·Tagged five star, hotels, luxury hotels, star ratings
I’ve extended my hotel search to include five star hotels … Some of the deals look very good.
You can see on the Channel Islands page how I’m highlighting a few five star hotels in with the other hotels.
On another site I’ve taken it a bit further and you can view only 5 star + hotels by city e.g. Tashkent in Uzbekistan or Five star luxury in Nantou, Taiwan.
I’m not sure how many people search by “star rating” and in some countries the boundaries seem to be very flexible. Many hotels seem to be ’self-rating’ rather than by an ‘official’ accreditation process. As always the international hotel chains should be more reliable, which can be good or bad depending on how adventurous you want to get.
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July 7, 2008 at 11:23 am
· Filed under Asia, hotels, monetising sites, new zealand ·Tagged Asian hotels, currencies, hotels, Tajikistan Hotels
I’ve started adding rates to my hotel comparison sites. As the sites cover several countries, they also cover several currencies which has added a new twist: how to display the correct currency symbol. Not all browsers support unicode currency characters so should I use an image? Possibly, so now I’ll have to look into that and find simple solution to check which currency it is then dispaly the correct symbol in the correct way.
Still, I’m pleased that the provider of the data ( www.HotelsCombined.com ) has started adding minimum rates in. It will make my sites sdo much more valuable.
Now if they’d just add brief descriptions …
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July 4, 2008 at 11:44 am
· Filed under fun ·Tagged c#, Click Scheduler, click software, ClickSoftware, Netweaver, SAP, systems analyst, vb6
I’ve recently started a new contract as a Systems Analyst working on an upgrade of a ClickSoftware scheduling system from version 7.1 (VB6) to 7.5 (.Net).
It looks like it’s going to be lots of fun. Lots of challenges getting my head around the problem domain (scheduling resources in utilities is not like scheduling trains) but the software seems well thought out and structured.
There are connectors to SAP and a Net-weaver front-end which is new to me so there’s some learning to do there but the base product is .Net so I’m at home with that part. And most of my role will be analysis whch makes for a change form the heavy coding I’ve been doing recently. I’m starting with a Gap Analysis between the two versions and updating the existing documentation as I go.
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