Build and Deliver

Paris Hilton is my role model

buildanddeliver — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:44:59 +0000

No, not because of her clothes, or her lifestyle. But because she embodies many of the ideas in two great articles I read today.

The first was Where Attention Flows, Money Follows on Kevin Kelly’s blog (found via a TechCrunch article). Kevin has many very interesting articles that I’ll have to spend some time looking through. This article was about how once you have enough people’s attention money will follow. “Almost anything else except attention can be manufactured as a commodity.”

The second was a simple piece with a great title promoting a Radio show: Paris Hilton Success Secrets. This one lacked detail – I didn’t listen to the radio show - but made the same point: Get attention and the money will follow.

So the challenge now is to:

“Maintain an incoming flow of attention and money will follow.” – KK

Chrome is here

buildanddeliver — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:33:19 +0000

Google has launched the Beta version of it’s Chrome Browser. I’ve just downloaded it and started using it to view a few sites.

So far the biggest asset is the simple design of the interface. Also, when you open a link that would normally start a new browser it just opens a new tab which I think is a nice touch.

I’m not noticing any great speed improvements.

get Chrome

Using vs2005 for .net 1.1 apps

buildanddeliver — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:40:43 +0000

Okay, this is a little behind the times but I have a client who uses VS2005 and yet still needs sone of their code to be targeted to .net 1.1 framework. So I did a little googling and came up with this early article on doing just this with the Whidbey Beta2. So I tried it out and it still works!

With the simple console/service apps I’ve tested so far I’ve got it running on VS2005 Team Edition for Developers and C# Express. Next up is a web app and then a windows forms app (which is where I think I’ll have the most issues).

I also have some vb.net apps which I support so I’ll be creating a “CrossCompile.VisualBasic.targets”.

But if I can get them all running then I’m ditching VS2003 off my machine because I can maitain any of my legacy code inside a much nicer IDE.

Update:

And then I find a MS product calledd MSBee. It’s old (download dated May 16 2006) but I’l have to give that a try too.

cuil weirdness

buildanddeliver — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:12:21 +0000

I’ve been trying to use cuil but their results are very variable. Sometimes they are great – at least as good as google but other times they just don’t seem that relevant.

My www.bellhop.com.au site now has 999 results but one of the first page links is to a page on Ashanti witchcraft. And another is to a page that does not exist, although the whole site (budu) has gone so I’m not sure what that means.

one way travel links

buildanddeliver — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:59:02 +0000

I’m trialling adding user-generated content on my sites. But as unmoderated comments can often be a nightmare of spam – I’ve decided to try to limit the content to city descriptions. I think this will help to create a better experience for visitors to my sites.

It’ll also be over great use to webmasters who want to get more one way links to their site as I don’t require a link back form them. Just the effort of creating a few lines of original content.

The rules are the description must be original and at least 100 words. In return I’ll credit the source and add a link to their site. I think this offer of one way links will work for us both and for my audience.

So if you want links form a site that offers Australian hotels, or New Zealand hotels or hotels in Aisa then find a page without text and send me some content.

Oh, and no porn, gambling, pharmaceutical or links to other sites that would bring mine into disrepute.

too Cuil

buildanddeliver — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:06:58 +0000

Okay, so a few days on and cuil have not indexed any new pages from my sites – but I’ve uploaded another couple of hundered pages to these sites so there is something new to index. But the content isn’t hugley different so they may just be ignoring those pages (these pages are part of another trial I’m doing with google but more on that later). I should stop being so lazy and go and look at the log files to see if their spider has come by again.

I’ve also sent the two sites they were not indexing through to their email address to see what happens.

not so Cuil

buildanddeliver — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:00:16 +0000

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.

Foundations of Programming

buildanddeliver — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:55:16 +0000

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!

five star luxury hotels on the cheap

buildanddeliver — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:44:48 +0000

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.

Currencies of the world unite (it would make my life easier)

buildanddeliver — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:23:55 +0000

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 …