Recently started work on a new website. We’re using the Kentico CMS, and came across the following while building some search based functionality:
http://www.kentico.com/Docs/DevGuide/smart_search_overview.htm

The lads have integrated their system with a C# port of the lucene search engine library. From what I’ve seen so far, this gives developers really powerful search and sorting options. A summary of some these options can be found here http://lucene.apache.org/java/2_1_0/queryparsersyntax.html.

Like I say, I’ve only started on this, and will update this post when the project is finished.

An MSN takeover Brando did for O2 last year picked up a bronze at the ICAD awards last week. Congrats to all at Brando

Grab of priority tickets MSN takeover

In the past few months I’ve run into quite a few ‘list’ site. I thought I’d just throw a few on the page here see if can build up a list of lists. So, here we go:

• http://www.engrish.com
• http://failblog.org
• http://www.headsethotties.com/
• http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/
• http://www.bash.org
• http://www.truthbank.ie

Congrats to Brad, Alan, Dave and the whole team who worked on www.bethedifference.ie for the recent bronze kinsale shark win for Brando.

A few years ago I was in my Boss’ office in Interactve Services. He was showing me something on his computer, and I saw that his filing system was a system of folders named according to the date. So he never had a build up of files in one particular place.

I took this system on-board and modified it to my needs, and just thought I’d share it here. I have a folder on the desktop called “_today”. Into this I put every file I create/view/save on a particular day. Then I have a little program I wrote in C# which runs at startup. This runs every time I login and takes the contents of the _today folder and moves them into a backup folder in My Documents named after the date.

Here’s the source for the app. You can have it run on startup by dragging a shortcut to the application into Start » Programs » Startup.

Dowload (zip)

Site implementation

I recently got set up on Twitter. I’ve been hearing about it and scuttling around it for a while now. I’ll preface this by saying that I’ve only been using this for a short while, so I may just not have found some stuff out. So far I’m digging it. The concept is very simple, sms for web. That’s it. Create a user and post a message in 140 characters. Everything about the service (API’s, indexing, twibes etc) is built around this. The website layout is simple and clear, the creators are obviously exponents of the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) philosophy. There is the ability to customise the look of your homepage, follow people, find friends, edit your profile and search your tweets (the name given to your messages). This is one of the sites that is held up as a standard bearer for the Ruby on Rails people (alongside basecamp). Site uptime and capacity has been called into question. I’ve seen the “too many tweets” page now once to often in the two or three weeks I’ve been using it. (more…)

If you’re looking for a bit more information than Task Manger manager provides, Process Explorer, also from Microsoft may be the answer. With it you can view your processess in a hierarchical tree, find out what processess are safe and find out which process is running a particular window.

These are just a few of the capabilities, and you can configure it to run instead of Task Manager at the click of a button. Click here to find out more.

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Brando recently completed work on the truthbank for Rabodirect. The purpose of this campaign was to emphasise the point that Rabo is a truthful bank. So, at the center of a campaign that utilised print/tv/radio/online we had a website dedicated to lifes truths. You can see the site here and judge for yourself.

Grab of the truthbank website

I have recently become addicted to scrolling through endless lists of demotivational posters. For the uninitiated, an ammusing picture is placed into a black box with a caption. That’s it. Class.

Here a few of my favourite:

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After trying out a few of the Irish online shops for our equipment, I settled on Komplett about a year ago. They have good prices, a comprehensive selection and an easily navigable website. All happy out. Not quite.

A while ago, they changed their online delivery options, which I think is very confusing. I needed to purchase a SATA hard drive. Having located the item on their site, I went to purchase it. Everything seemed to go well, and I waited for the product to arrive. Time went by, and I’ll admit, it slipped my mind. (more…)