Toluu

Jochem Prins

about search, Web2.0 and things I like

Mobile device detection with PHP: 2 methods comparedSeptember 29

I’ve been working on a mobile version of the (dutch) translation website I founded. Apart from releasing the mobile site itself, it’s of course also important to make people aware of the existence of it. That’s exactly the reason why I started looking for a script that performs mobile device detection. The aim of such a script is to detect who visits the www-version of my website with a mobile device and automatically redirect those visitors to the mobile site.

Within a couple of minutes I already found a couple of php-scripts that perform the trick. After reading through the code and checking some comments on blogs I ended up with two candidates:

1) A script by Andy Moore on mobiForge
2) A script by Russell Beattie

That left me with the next dillema, which one to pick?

In order to answer this question, I defined the 2 main criteria that are important for the implementation on my website:

1) Code execution time: on a high traffic website, you want the code to be as efficient as possible
2) Mobile device coverage: detect as many mobile devices as possible (coverage)

This is probably a good time to mention the great WURFL project (o

New exalead website and product offeringSeptember 25

Yesterday Exalead released a new website, great compliment to my colleague’s who worked on this project. I think the new site is a huge improvement compared to the old one and it provides a perfect overview of Exalead’s (new) product offering.

I really recommend to have a look at Exalead Cloudview which, in my humble opinion, defines how the future of enterprise search will look like. And, while you’re at it, give Exalead’s Desktop search a try. The new desktop version can be accessed using your webbrowser and provides you with the same handy refinement options as can be used on exalead.com.

Lifehack: use Gmail to manage your tasksSeptember 23

I have this habit to send myself an email to remind me of something. I do this for everyday tasks, things I need to buy or things I want to read when I have some spear time. The problem however is that these reminders ‘get lost’ between all the other email I receive. That’s why I took some time to configure Gmail to manage this. I’ve been using it for a couple of days now and it really saves me time!

It’s very easy to setup, this is what I’ve done:

1) In Gmail, go to settings -> filters -> create a new filter
2) In the subject field, enter “todo:” -> click on ‘Next Step’
3) Check ‘Skip the inbox’
4) Check ‘Apply label’ -> new label -> enter “Todo” as label name
5) Click ‘Create Filter’ and your done!

Now write yourself an email with a subject like “todo: put out the garbage” and you’ll notice that Gmail will automatically list the mail in your todo list. You can do the same for a shoppinglist or readinglist, just use another prefix and label when you create the filter (e.g. “to read:”). Once you have finished the task you can either mark it as read (for your archive) of remove it completely.

You can now easily manage your todo’s anywhere & anytime using a webbrowser, email client or your

Leaving ilseAugust 31

After 4,5 years at ilse media I have decided to leave the company and start with a new challenge. To be honest, it took me quite some time to make this decision. I’ve always loved working at ilse and I will definitively miss the atmosphere and my collegues around there. Nevertheless, I feel it’s time for a change. A short while ago, I read a blogpost by Charlene Li about the best career advice she ever got. She describes the various phases you go through while you’re on a job. Basically, her advice is to switch jobs every 18 months, be it within your current company or to another:

At a career management course for HBS alumni, I learned that a person typically gets sick of a job after 18 months. This is a natural cycle, as you go through the excitement of learning a new job, become expert at it, and then gradually, it gets routine. So the advice I got was to plan for job obsolescence every 18 months. This didn’t mean that I had to leave the company and go to a new place – it had more to do with redefining my current job first to incorporate new challenges.

I reflected this on my own situation and came to the conclusion that I indeed arrived in the phase were a lot of things become a routine. For my job, it’s crucial to stay creative and come up with new innovations so routine is often a bad thing.

So… what’

How to open up the social webMay 26

The social part of the web is a hot topic these days. We see a development in which a lot of webapplications are incorporating some way of social interaction with friends, collegues or family. New applications arrived which enable us to inform our friends about what we’re doing, where we are or what we would like to share. The big players like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft understand the importance of online social activity and are rapidly taking steps to adapt their platforms (see yahoo opens up) or introduce new platforms (e.g. Google’s OpenSocial). I think this is a good thing, social activities often enrich the experience of online applications and it will become a more important aspect of the web in the coming years. However, this also introduces a couple of new problems (or should we call it challenges). A friend of mine, @kleverlaan, wrote an interesting post