The Internet on Computers?

A few years ago, my company was contracted to build a restaurant portal similar to some other Toronto-area websites at the time, with the important addition that it would focus on searching, kind of like a Google for restaurants. A few years later ZEE4 built a second search engine for them, this time based on a system of tags. In late December 2007 I took a full-time position with them as the senior developer (aka, CAA: Chief Applications Architect).

In these articles, I’ll talk a bit about these past projects how it evolved and maybe give readers some ideas some ideas if they want to take on such a project themselves.

But lets start with the obvious (and not followed too many times early on): the solution to many problems starts with looking at how other people have approached a problem, before starting. This bit of advice might have saved a lot of problems early on, and saved.

An an example, and a teaser, if you want to build a search engine ten readthis article on the building a search with the symfony framework.

Until next time…

It looks like Sitepoint noted YYZtech’s list of best books for web designers 2007 a few weeks back - thanks guys! Seriously, SitePoint seems to be one of those publishers that is really improving, I remember their one of their early checklist books, good information, but very functional layout, flip forward to something like their CSS Anthology and you see how far they have come.

A critical hole in coverage of all things food has been patched with the launch of NachGrid.ca - Toronto’s guide to Nacho-serving bars and restaurants.

Basically this is our newest website that reviews places (mostly pubs), that serve particularly good nachos. Simple really - we can’t help but wonder wonder if there’s going to be an all-burger or all-poutine (ok, maybe more of a Montreal thing - though there are a few places on and off wheels that do it right - Mel’s anyone?) site coming from somewhere.

While finishing up some reviews for NachoGrid, in anticipation of putting it up today, a search for Artful Dodger yields this lisiting on alltorontopubs.com. In fairness, their’s is on pubs in general, ours is a bit more nitch, but at least it shows there’s life beyond the big three Toronto restaurant guides.

Hats off to the folks at AllTorontoPubs.com - they’ve done a nice job on their site. We’ll just have to make our nicer

Well since moving to DreamHost a few days back, there’s been no problems so far - in fact, I’m finding their organizing to be much better than the previous hosting solutions I’ve used. As of today, the under-maintained ZEE4 site is running on it as well… now about that under-maintained part…

Just checking the stats for YYZtech.ca, oddly they’ve been down this weekend. Since most of the site’s visitors are Canadian, I’m thinking, “What? is this everybody getting ready for the Grey Cup or something?” So much for Hockey Nation - or does that I should be looking for another downturn in the spring, about the time the Leafs start falling (apart)?

Well after running ZEE4 since about 2002, I’ve decided it’s finally time to get a server. Basically the high cost of semi-dedicated machine has been the major hurtle. Thanks to a 1970s-style Canadian dollar (means an automatic 2% discount on U.S. prices as of today) and general price drops in servers, it’s about time.

Well this summer’s project, Halifax-Restaurants.com was a bit of a disappointment (stillborn would be a bit cruel), mostly due to my unfamiliarity with the CakePHP framework I used as the underlying framework, I was surprised to see that it was actually starting to attract visitors from the Halifax area, according to Google Analytics.

That’s the good news. The bad is the time I have to work on it. Ideally, I’d like to re-write nearly everything about it, then fix up the layout, which is too ad-heavy, as opposed to content for me right now. I have a few ideas about how that can be improved, but the fact is, adding content is the biggest task right now.

Found this posting on the author’s experience with WiFi in Toronto and Montreal via the Wireless Toronto mailing list. While Toronto doesn’t come off so well, he promising a second posting on some of the good spots he’s found.

I’m always looking for good explanations of technical subjects. Over at CBC.ca there’s a good write-up on Bluetooth, the wireless protocol widely used in mobile phones for everything from wireless mics to file transfer.

On the topic of phones, there’s a new series starting on CBC.ca next week, read about it here while fuming over the slow pace of adoption of phones in Canada - case in point, Fido is just now rolling out a G3 service, nice Flash animation, but we’ve got one phone for now.

The CBC series will will be hosted over at http://www.cbc.ca/technology/ and feature a number of industry people from Research In Motion co-founder Mike Lazaridis to Sir Richard Branson. Should be good.