ProjectX Blog

Last of the Summer of Code bootcamps tonight

On the menu is Introduction to PHP, .NET and Pizza.

Should be fun…

Xlinks is a collections of links as discovered by the ProjectX team.

NZ govt details HTML switch off plans
Added on 07/30/2008 at 02:19PM
The website is down heh 🙂
Added on 07/30/2008 at 09:06AM

Techcrunch on Cuil
Added on 07/29/2008 at 08:37PM

Dark Knight and Game Theory
Added on 07/28/2008 at 04:30PM

Firebug lite – Firebug for other browsers
Added on 07/27/2008 at 03:35PM

Ruby / Rails books for all programmer levels
Added on 07/26/2008 at 11:07PM

Paul Graham – Ideas we’d like to fund
Added on 07/26/2008 at 01:20PM

Batman sets new box office record in US
Added on 07/22/2008 at 07:42AM

Startups and the role of capital and investments
Added on 07/20/2008 at 08:32PM

Four reasons why most startups fail
Added on 07/20/2008 at 08:32PM

Does genuine tech innovation happen in a recession
Added on 07/20/2008 at 08:30PM

Why Silicon Valley should be worried
Added on 07/20/2008 at 08:29PM

GPS tracking device beats Radar gun in court
Added on 07/19/2008 at 12:53PM

AMD loses US1.2 billion and its CEO: Ouch
Added on 07/19/2008 at 12:53PM

Yahoo hires Blaine Cook
Added on 07/18/2008 at 11:23AM

Amazon / McDonalds a lesson in awful cross marketing
Added on 07/18/2008 at 11:22AM

15 resources to get you started on jQuery
Added on 07/18/2008 at 11:04AM

JQuery plugin for smartlines
Added on 07/18/2008 at 10:38AM

What to eat to make you smarter
Added on 07/18/2008 at 10:37AM

Radiohead data visualisation using canvas and javascript
Added on 07/18/2008 at 09:45AM

For the longest time, I’ve been using the concept of “Bus Theory” when talking to our team. ie. ‘What happens if someone gets run over by a bus’. It’s suppose to make you think about contingency plans and all that stuff.

Unfortunately on the weekend, one of my friends was hit by a bus while he was putting his young son into his car seat. Thankfully, he has been able to walk away with only  multiple fractures in his arm. Thankfully, his young son was completely unharmed.

Its humbling to when you think about the whole thing. Its a timely reminder that sometimes we take things for granted and that our relationships with our friends and family are what really matters.

I was just testing the new add place functionality on ZoomIn and I added the Hippopotamus Restaurant in Wellington to the site. Google crawled the page and put it in the Google index in only 12 minutes and it became the top match! A new record for ZoomIn ! (Previously down from just over 30 minutes)

We’ve completely overhauled the add place process on ZoomIn. Now, if you want to add a place to ZoomIn is as simple as 1, 2, 3.

1. Drag the Add place marker onto the map

Position the marker with X marks the spot. You can adjust the position by dragging the marker to the correct location.

2. Refine your address using the drop down box

We automagically figure out the closest address based on your location. All you have to do is refine the address in the dropdown menu to match your desired location.

3. Add your place content

You can add the name of the place / business, a description and tags .

And you’re done!

I’m giving a talk on “How to have a kick-ass ICT career” at Victoria University tomorrow.

How to have a kick-ass ICT career
Tuesday 15th July 2008 – MYLT 101 13:10 – 14:00

Summary:

Getting a job can be tough. In the first of the career seminars,
John Clegg will provide some information on how to get a great ICT job and
kick start your career. John will tell you what the hottest companies like
Trade Me, Sidhe, Weta and a host of start ups are acutally looking for in a
new graduate. He’ll also offer advice on how to get a job, where to look,
who can help you and some tips on how to impress.

Should be interesting, I’m trying to graduate my presentation style to Presentation Zen style. (Looking for good images is time consuming!)

The Xlinks digest is a interestig collection of links as discovered by the ProjectX team.

Yahoo Boss – an insiders view
Added on 07/11/2008 at 10:12AM
Google Lively
Added on 07/11/2008 at 09:42AM

What good is collective intelligence if it doesn’t make us smarter
Added on 07/11/2008 at 09:39AM

Economics of Software
Added on 07/11/2008 at 09:37AM

37 signals on Pixar’s tight knit culture is its edge
Added on 07/11/2008 at 09:35AM

Scaling on EC2
Added on 07/11/2008 at 09:34AM

Amazon and Google discover erlang
Added on 07/11/2008 at 09:32AM

Live full text search on ruby on rails
Added on 07/11/2008 at 09:30AM

First fullscreen demo of Android
Added on 07/11/2008 at 09:23AM

Why Project Management is important to Start-ups
Added on 07/11/2008 at 07:41AM

Auckland University rolls out gmail to 50k
Added on 07/10/2008 at 08:48AM

Understanding YSlow
Added on 07/10/2008 at 08:46AM

State of the web Summer 2008
Added on 07/09/2008 at 05:09PM

B-Trees – Balanced Search Trees for Slow Storage
Added on 07/08/2008 at 02:08PM

Google Zen Master of the Market
Added on 07/07/2008 at 05:57PM

Easy Development setup with mod_rails
Added on 07/05/2008 at 04:41PM

Sparklines – Theory and practice
Added on 07/05/2008 at 04:20PM

LBS developers wary of iPhone
Added on 07/05/2008 at 04:14PM

Rat proxy test out those security issues in your web app
Added on 07/04/2008 at 09:38AM

Why the Helio didn’t connect
Added on 07/03/2008 at 09:33PM

The net is ablaze with all the iPhone pricing rip off.(Although that haven’t stopped some from queuing up already)

My 2c on the whole pricing thing is Vodafone have set the prices so that they don’t marginalise the rest of their smart phone line up.

If you sell a iPhone 3Gfor $500 or $199, then why would you buy a Nokia N95 at $1399 ?

Steve Jobs set the pricing in US so that iPhone would blow away the competition. The pricing here doesn’t reflect that 🙁

Unfortunately, NZ’s probably not big enough to invoke Apple pulling the iPhone from the Canadian marketplace.

We’ve just completed an update to the underlying data on ZoomIn. We’ve just switched to a new suburb set on ZoomIn base onto the “New Zealand Fire Service” (NZFS) suburb set.

Why?

Its about accuracy, we want to provide the most up to date map service around. The NZFS suburb set is being used by all of New Zealand emergency services ie. Police, Ambulance and Fire Service. This update will better represent the way that you think and use addresses in your neighbourhood. The update adds another 1500 suburbs to ZoomIn. We’ve now got a total of 2986 suburbs in our address database.

We’ve completely rebuilt our address system from scratch, which gives us a chance to get all of the address cobwebs out of the system.

Changes to ZoomIn urls

The new address data means changes to the ZoomIn URL’s. Don’t worry, all of the old URL’s will still work, they’ll automatically redirect to the new address url.

Here are some examples:

OLD: http://www.zoomin.co.nz/map/nz/wellington/wellington+wharf/waterloo+quay/28/
NEW: http://www.zoomin.co.nz/map/nz/wellington/pipitea/waterloo+quay/28/

OLD: http://www.zoomin.co.nz/map/nz/auckland/auckland/queen+street/
NEW: http://www.zoomin.co.nz/map/nz/auckland/auckland+central/queen+street/

We’ve just completed the update to the map imagery on ZoomIn. It’s now live on ZoomIn maps API. (There’s no need to change any code, its an seemless update)

We’re in the process of completing the update to the addressing backend and geocoders.