ProjectX Blog

A big day in the web optimisation space tool, we have a second new tool to help web developers in the quest for faster web pages. Mr YSlow Steve Sounders has just released a new tool - Hammerhead.

Here is Steve’s explanation behind the rational for the tool

* real user data – I love real user metrics. JavaScript frameworks like Jiffy measure page load times from real traffic. When your site is used by a large, diverse audience, data from real page views is ground-truth.
* bucket testing – When you’re getting ready to push a new release, if you’re lucky you can do bucket testing to gather performance metrics. You release the new code to a subset of users while maintaining another set of users on the old code (the “control”). If you sample your user population correctly and gather enough data, comparing the before and after timing information gives you a preview of the latency impact of your next release.
* synthetic or simulated testing – In some situations, it’s not possible to gather real user data. You might not have the infrastructure to do bucket testing and real user instrumentation. Your new build isn’t ready for release, but you still want to gauge where you are with regard to performance. Or perhaps you’re measuring your competitors’ performance. In these situations, the typical solution is to do scripted testing on some machine in your computer lab, or perhaps through a service like Keynote or Gomez.
* dev box – The first place performance testing happens (or should happen) is on the developer’s box. As she finishes her code changes, the developer can see if she made things better or worse. What was the impact of that JavaScript rewrite? What happens if I add another stylesheet, or split my images across two domains?

I’ve done a quick test of ZoomIn from our crimped broadband at home. And I can already see that we have some work to sort out page load time.

I’ve been after a tool that will measure page loadtime and exports out to a data file. A big thanks to Steve for the tool.

Smush it - Image optimisation tool

john — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:37:25 +0000

Stoyan Stefanov and Nicole Sullivan of the Yahoo exceptional performance team have built a image optimisation tool. Its amazingly easy to run.

1 Install the firefox plugin and press on the little face on the bottom of the browser.

2 Smushit will open a new tab and run the optimisation process on the fly.

3 Download the optimised images in a zip file!

Here’s the result summary

And here’s the image optimisation report

A quick review of some of the tops NZ sites.

Trade Me could save 8K
TV3 could save 9k
Stuff could save 49K

Now there’s no excuse for having bloated images. Every web developer should have this plugin installed !

ProjectX now a Google Maps Enterprise Reseller

john — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 02:00:44 +0000

We’re delighted to announce that ProjectX is now officially a Google Maps Enterprise reseller. We working with a number of high profile companies to integrate Google Maps into their websites.

If you want to know anything about the different licensing models ie. Free, Premiere or Enterprise for Google Maps. Please contact us and we’d be happy to help you with your requirements.

We’re also, partners with Zawadski Ltd who are Google Apps Enterprise specialists.

Virtual earth release Reverse Geocoding and Landmark based routing

john — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:04:32 +0000

Microsoft have release a new version of Virtual Earth Web Service and Map control. There’s a swag of new features including:

New Mobile Support - Blackberry, Windows Mobile and iPhone
Internationalised versions - English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish for users in Western Europe.
New international reverse geocoding - Users can now find international addresses with reverse geocoding, which is now available anywhere Virtual Earth has routing.
Extended parsing capabilities - Users can expect better match rates for addresses in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
Pushpin clustering - The new map control includes the ability to zoom in on a map to better visualize a cluster of points.
New landmark hints in routing - Customers in the U.S. and Canada can now use maps that feature familiar landmarks, such as gas stations and fast-food restaurants, called out by name.
New imagery metadata - Users can now find out the relative age of a given image, which will help them assess if the imagery is still relevant to their needs.
New one-click directions - Through the Web Services, customers can now get directions in one click, choosing from route options by shortest time, shortest distance, or traffic flow.

What’s of interest to ProjectX is the reverse geocoding and landmark directions.

The landmark routing is a step in the right direction. Navigation by landmark is a very common way that we explain directions to people. Its nice to see that Micorsoft is lifting the bar.

We use a lot a reverse geocoding and it’ll be interesting to see how comprehensive it is and how fast the webservice is.

Free Seminar on Using Google Maps

john — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:57:37 +0000

We’re working with Zawadzki Limited to bring a high level seminar on “Using Google Maps”. The seminar is in Wellington on Friday 26th September 8:30am to 10:30am. The event is free, but you will need to register for the event.

Here is the overview for the seminar:

Using Google Maps

Google Maps is a great tool for making the data you already hold more accessible to your staff, your customers, or the public. Using Google Maps as your platform, you can:

	make it easy for all your staff to benefit from the geospatial information you already maintain
	link information stores to Maps and help users find and interpret information faster
	engage your public with interactive Maps-based applications

In this two hour session we will cover:

What types of information can be presented using Google Maps

How to use Google Maps to visualise your existing information sets

How to augment your systems with Google Maps as a front-end

Examples of effective use of Google Maps

What is involved in piloting your first Google Maps application and common pitfalls

Licensing for Google Maps and differences between the Free, Premiere and Enterprise versions

Xapian search - acts_as_xapian tip (II)

Thong Kuah — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 03:07:55 +0000

Further to my first post on using acts_as_xapian, I have been trying to make xapian work with pagination and association proxies properly

class Lesson < ActiveRecord::Base
# Index user_id as a term in xapian

    belongs_to :user
    def self.find_with_xapian(search_term, options={})
      ActsAsXapian::Search.new([self], search_term, options).results.collect{|x| x[:model]}
    end
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many :lessons do  #Extend this association
      # Override the method in lessons
      def self.find_with_xapian(search_term, options={})
        ActsAsXapian::Search.new([proxy_reflection.klass],
          "{proxy_reflection.primary_key_name}:#{proxy_owner.id}  #{search_term}", options)
        .results.collect{|x| x[:model]}
      end
    end
end

This will ensure that current_user.locations.find_with_xapian will find the correct number of locations, enabling us to work with pagination, etc. What’s left to do is to get the Search object out so that we can get matches_estimated out. I’ll leave out for next time.

This post was brought to you from Software Freedom Day, New Zealand.

Xlinks Digest - 20 / 09 / 2008

john — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 23:51:29 +0000

Here is a collection of interesting links as discovered by the ProjectX Team

7 accounting tips for beginning businesses

Added on 09/20/2008 at 11:47AM

Jason Frieds 10 things we learned at 37 signals

Added on 09/20/2008 at 11:47AM

How to never forget anything ever again
Added on 09/20/2008 at 11:46AM

Why small web design companies should think big
Added on 09/20/2008 at 11:45AM

Those who have succeeded at anything and dont mention luck are kidding themselves. - Larry King
Added on 09/19/2008 at 11:56PM

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm - Winston Churchill
Added on 09/19/2008 at 11:55PM

How to make a million dollars
Added on 09/19/2008 at 11:54PM

Stanford offering free Computer Science and Robotics courses
Added on 09/19/2008 at 11:51PM

AWS content delivery service: Amazons lifting the bar again
Added on 09/19/2008 at 11:48PM

Freakanomics look at the current banking crisis
Added on 09/19/2008 at 11:46PM

Tim O’Reilly - Stop throwing sheep do something worthy
Added on 09/19/2008 at 11:45PM

What it costs to sack a person
Added on 09/19/2008 at 11:40PM

Sergey Brin’s personal blog
Added on 09/19/2008 at 11:39PM

Squirrelfish Extreme
Added on 09/19/2008 at 11:31PM

iPhone v Android: platform vs product
Added on 09/18/2008 at 02:40PM

SVG effects for HTML content
Added on 09/18/2008 at 12:19PM

Polypage - wireframes via ajax
Added on 09/18/2008 at 12:15PM

CSS transformations now in Gecko
Added on 09/18/2008 at 12:14PM

Search as Locator Entry

john — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:33:40 +0000

Jakob Nielsen has just written an article on location finders. The article outlines some behaviour changes of users in finding locations over the years.

The lastest research has found…

It’s still striking that 73% of users went to a search engine (mainly Google) when we asked them to find a nearby location for a specific company. Only 13% went straight to that company’s own website, while the remaining 13% went to a dedicated mapping service.

Given this changing behavior, we now have guidelines for search engine optimization (SEO) for the locator.

We’ve focused on making ZoomIn SEO friendly from day one so that businesses can be easily found. We constantly tune our system to ensure that we’re at the top the list for a result.

This re-inforces the need for businesses to make sure that their locations are being “found”, using ZoomIn is a good way to make sure that happens!