Fleck kind of got in the way of a few other projects we were involved with. Rasasa.com was one of them. Fortunately the project did get finished in time, even without our daily care and attention.
So I'm proud to be able to tell you that Maarten Wolzak yesterday launched Rasasa.com. Here is a description of what it does:
Rasasa will keep you in touch with your favorite news sources, you probably know by now that RSS feeds are really handy and keep you up to date on all kind of things. Rasasa helps you to keep track of all this news. It will deliver the news to your messenger if you're online and to your mobile phone if you're offline... Or to your email box if you're in a 'quiet time'.
It is still in Beta and I'm sure it will stay that way for at least a month or so. Go over there and sign-up for an account!
http://www.Rasasa.com|W|P|114113694861063002|W|P|Rasasa.com launched|W|P|bomega@gmail.com
You can admire my CSS efforts on Fleck.com right now. As detailed in an earlier post I had a hell of a time getting things working cross browser. As usual it's the simple things that are the hardest to get right. Hope you like it and; comments welcome!
New design in action:
http://www.fleck.com/
|W|P|114113252917749434|W|P|New Design in action|W|P|bomega@gmail.com
|W|P|Oooh very nice. Glad to see you've sorted the CSS issues you were having. Looking forward to the beta preview! |W|P|Good survey. I liked it. But in list "where are are you from" there was not Bangladesh. I dont know why have you forgot to put name of a country with 150 million people.
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten|W|P|Hello everybody and Tanaeem in particular! I didn't build JotForm and the country list is a standard list they offer. I presumed every country was listen but will try to add countries that are missing. Thanks for letting me know... |W|P|Tanaeem, sorry about it. I have no idea what happened to Bangladesh on the countries list, but I added it now.
Last week I visited my parents in Rotterdam. My father owns a huge inkjet printer which he uses to print his drawings. He is an architect.
I asked him to print the biggest Fleck logo possible on his printer to hang on our office window. It's a huge print measuring 1.2 by 1.2 meters.
You CAN see it from the Amsterdam central Station, if you look REALLY HARD! The funny thing is it looks huge in our office but more like a Favicon on the streat.
Click the photo for a larger view. I think we need a larger printer...|W|P|114112982697339191|W|P|Size does matter|W|P|bomega@gmail.com |W|P|Cool. Our office is on the fourth flour of the same building :) It's a small world after all...
Yeah, it was a slow week for most of us but a huge downhill slide for me personally. Don't worry about it; I have been skiing in Meribel, France. :-)
So now I'm back and I have a ton of work to catch up with! Patrick, Arjen. Ivo and Erik have been working very hard during my small vacation and the mail didn't stop pouring in either. I now have 160 unread messages in my inbox.
I did use my Blackberry to answer some of the more important messages while on vacation but you just can't keep up with the avalanche of mail coming in every day.
I wil spend today cleaning my inbox, getting up top date with Fleck development and talking to the guys. It's good to be back!|W|P|114102870389244339|W|P|Downhill from here...|W|P|bomega@gmail.com |W|P|A splendid idea that would help create a more realistic and healthy valuations, and ultimately lead, yes, to a more responsive and rational market for capital. I've linked to it just now...
When I was crawling the web, I came by this site. In the list of web2.0 companies I found Fleck, surprisingly on the first place! And the great thing is.... number two is Flickr, then gmail, del.icio.us, and Digg (I wonder how long we can handle this number one position :) With a little help of our Fleck friends.... Fleck for President! VOTE HERE )
There is somebody out there who likes us, thanks!|W|P|113983821037768588|W|P|We need you|W|P| |W|P|Time to spill the beans? BillyWarhol|W|P|nice site* i notice they use a Seal similar to Fleck* ;)) |W|P|it's pretty obvious that this is a hoax... what is the idea? BillyWarhol|W|P|i hope & pray it's NOT a hoax*i'm planning on riding Fleck's coattails to FAME & FORTUNE!!*
;))
U folks are being suspiciously quiet this week??
did U win the $365M POWERBALL!!
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten|W|P|I was away for a week of skiing in France. More news after the weekend... |W|P|Or set your pride aside and ask for help. We're here and I'd be happy to help you a hand. I've been there a long time ago as well and even though I never experienced as badly as you described, I try to save others from the same frustration. |W|P|So whatever the hell Fleck is, it's not relying on CSS? ;) |W|P|I'm with Jeroen here, lots of people are willing to help including myself. And CSS does not suck, it just takes some learning. Once you've got the hang of it you'll realise how beautifully powerful it is. Why not post some code for the site and see if we can help? Maybe it's time to let the cat out the bag.. |W|P|I feel your pain, but please, keep trying! Remember: the harder it is to accomplish something, the bigger the satisfaction when you succeed :-) Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten|W|P|Sometimes just complaining out loud simply helps! After this post I threw all my code away and started out fresh. Within an hour I had everything working as it should and we are making great progress now. Thanks for all the moral support! |W|P|You need to learn CSS if you want to use it... but do learn it! Layout tables will really kill the performance of your sites. Send all your CSS questions to http://www.css-discuss.org/ (that's the CSS-Discuss list) and you'll get answers, and more importantly, help!
If you are still stumped, hire an expert (like me)... but I'm sure you can learn.
|W|P|Ignore the previous comments - CSS is essential for cool formatting, but it sucks for multi-column layouts (unless you use horrid fixed-width columns like this blog).1) If your Web page looks like a multi-column table, especially if there are more than three columns, use tables for the layout and CSS for everything else.
2) Override the default browser caching on your CSS and Javascript files, so that they'll reload whenever a user logs on.
3) To make CSS less of a "write only language", you need to be very careful when chosing style names. For example, when a style applies to a specific XHTML tag, e.g. TD or TR, include this in the style name.
- giafly
|W|P|giafly: O rly?Fleck: ignore the previous comment.
|W|P|my god. i agree. css sucks when it's 100% the full meal deal.i've been using all this web marlarkey for quite some time now. I know css very well and have created many large sites with it - but have created even more with tables, css, divs, etc - basically whatever works. I'm now in a job that must be completely css/divs and it is so frustrating and constraining. What a waste. More time goes into hacks and accessibility than creating a site that people will use. So what if css saves you 2 seconds on download time - if it's shit, no one will come. In the fast moving world of the web, I say do first, ask second. Reasons for doing 100% pure css are, "google likes it better" - crap. "do it for accessiblity, for blind people!" - who gives a shit!, and "speed and semantic code" - big deal.
i say everyone get over yourself and your semantic code and start creating better, more usable, and beautiful sites.
as the web converges with traditional media (i work for a huge TV production company) we need richer user experiences. and why the concern over making your site quicker (using css over tables) when we live in a world of faster bandwidth? 2 seconds was a lot 4 years ago, but come on.
css allows you to repurpose content, use blocks and divs throughout different pages layouts and essentially manage everything smoothly through code. but let me ask you - how big is your css file you load onto every page? are you managing your css properly or is it just a big mess? how often to you utilize css in a way that you're changing display, content types, and layout throughout your site? or are you just coding in divs and aligning them just like tables & cells?
oh yes, and how does your site look? what kind of traffic do you have? do people actually use your site? and why do you think all the web 2.0 sites have the clean, text-based, gradient look that they have? hmm.
sorry for the rant. i code in css all day and design, but i'm telling you i think accessibility is a joke and the reliance on semantic css is completely worthless.
i say we all create beautiful - *highly used* sites that concentrate more on user experience than elegant code.
long live old school html and tables!
hmm.
|W|P|Myself, I think the use of these maps are a bit pointless to a certain degree. I mean it's nice to see a graphical representation of where users are etc but in terms of it becoming something ground breaking, I don't see anything that could cause that. Things like Google maps are exceptionally useful, especially for my A-level geography and route planning but I don't think that maps are going to give us much else to rave about. alan|W|P|I think you and all the other real Web 2.0 startups out there ought to be using the Web 2.0 maps to locate and go meet the other Web 2.0 startups nearby, hang out, and share ideas.After all, you're blogging about having trouble with CSS, right? You're not the only ones with web design issues out there. Sadly, we're in Australia and you're in Europe, or I'd be looking you up on the Web 2.0 map, calling you to arrange a time, and taking you out for several beers and a productive chat.
The other use for Web 2.0 maps is to help VCs find you ;-)
|W|P|This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
From Dreamweaver to BBEdit to CSSEdit to ImageReady to Photoshop and back to Illustrator then F5 in Explorer, Firefox and Safaria and don't forget to double check everything on the PC! Ooops! back to BBEdit and where is my back-up! Shouldn't that span be in front of that div and why is the logo suddenly on the right and should this div be relative or absolute?
In other words: I'm working on the design of the new Fleck.com website. And because we so desperately want to be Web2.0 we can only use CSS. No Tables allowed!
So, take a look at the (stripped) design here and let me know what I should change. I know, there isn't much to see but I had to strip the thing to remove everything that could ruin the surprise!
Anyway, bring on the flames (be gentle?), comments and please, maybe even a compliment...|W|P|113943469436296162|W|P|Design issues for a web2.0 website|W|P|bomega@gmail.com |W|P|I think it looks very web 2.0: bright colours, rounded corners etc. I'd prefer the layout to be centered in the browser window - that big white space to the right looks a bit awkward to me.And good for you for not using tables! Not because they're soooo 1.0, but because of all the disadvantages of table layouts, of course :-)
|W|P|I agree with maaike on that it needs to be centered, definately.Also, you can't really see the boxes you've created on my monitor. Everything is just too light to properly see the boxes. Consider darkening the borders and background colours where you have content to make it more obvious. If made a little darker it will look great in my eyes.
|W|P|Also I do have some experience with CSS/XHTML so if you want any help I will try and assist in anyway I can. BillyWarhol|W|P|i like it**********i luvv the nice bright Pink colour*
;))
that colour is soothing & pleasant & sunny & upbeat to look at!!
the blue seal is very reminiscent of a good housekeeping seal of approval* evoking the same Excitement when U got a Gold Star from the teacher back in grade school!!
;))
are the boxes going to hold Photos or other visual info?? cuz pretty pictures always capture people's attention!*
|W|P|For all i can see, you don't have to worry about some "web20ish" look..Throw away that blue label on the bottom..you can see it everywhere..it's starting to be boring, all those "web 2.0 startups" that look like they have the same designer, with soft colours, gradients and so on.
At the end do what you feel..remember that your layout must be, before all, readable, with all the important features on the spotlight.
Good work!
Naaah, not the tattoo yet. But that got your attention didn't it? But the Web2.0 Innovationmap is cool and the LogoPoster is also cool. Check it out:
LogoPoster
I'm realy busy on the webdesign for Fleck.com and should be able to show you a picture of that tommorow. If you like...|W|P|113925464525887586|W|P|InnovationMap, LogoPoster and FleckTattoo!|W|P|bomega@gmail.com |W|P|So what is the significance of the logo poster? And I look forward to the screenshot of the new site!
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten|W|P|Hi Edd! The 'significance'? Yes, well, good question. The map generates a shitload of traffic to Fleck! So, that is the main significance for me at this moment. I also spent about a minute or 2 (which is reaully long for Web2.0 standards) with my mouth open staring at all the logo's. But significance? Tough question man... |W|P|Would I be right in saying Fleck will intergrate with, at the least, some of these sites depicted in the poster? |W|P|Nice idea for friends who can connect into a communtiy with icons.
We are looking at a good hosting solution at the moment. That seems to be a harder decision than I thought it would be. The choice seems to be fairly limited to 3 kinds of hosting: really cheap, slightly cheap and not cheap at all!
I think what every entrepreneur looks for is a cheap but scalable solution. In other words: almost free until you get visitors, cheap when you get a bit more visitors and then still cheap when you turn into the next google (yeah, everything scalable expect the price!). So where do you go for that? It seems that when you start at a shared hosting company (really cheap) you are in trouble when your business is successful and you need your own server? Changing IP addresses etc while you growing isn't what you want. We could go for RackSpace but that starts at several hundred $ a month. Not the solution you are looking for as a start-up. Go for a cheap hosting company and crash and burn when you finally get good traffic? Hmm...
I still don't know where to host. Tips or suggestions are welcome...|W|P|113896853860469444|W|P|Chosing the right hosting partner for your start-up|W|P|bomega@gmail.com |W|P|I think the key is in a hosting provider with a presence on all of your mentioned area's. Somebody who has multiple tradenames with which they offer there service: from the small shared hosting to virtual private servers. A transfer would stay on the same network, wich is much easier.That, and having a solid direct line to your support guy. It's also really all about the personal touch with hosting IMO. I've had my share of hosting partners, and I sticked with the one I most clicked with on a personal level. Really important.
|W|P|Rackspace may be more expensive, but it's well worth it. If you business matters, don't risk it on budget hosting. |W|P|We chose the planet, http://www.theplanet.com. It was reasonably priced and had a clear upgrade path available. |W|P|If you expect to go beyond 10,000 visits a day in your first 3 months, I'd go right to a dedicated server. You can get one for $160 a month at Serverbeach or Servstra.Changing IP is not an issue other than a 24-72 hour period where the IP change propagates thru internet, but keep the old host live and users will go to one or the other during the interim
Ewout Wolff|W|P|Boris, you're most welcome with this and other questions at www.higherlevel.nl. We are a dutch forum for innovative (starting) entrepreneurs. Hosting questions are regulars at our place, so go ahead and try...;^D
|W|P|You could look at: http://www.servage.net/Pretty good value considering and you can always move to a dedicated server if you need the extra..
|W|P|Hi there Boris, Been watching this corner of the webspace even since our confersation in dec. last year!
But on hosting, try CIhost.com, is the one we're are going to use with souki.com
|W|P|Hey Boris,We've used a variety of hosts over the last few years, some mentioned above including theplanet, ev1servers and powervps.com for VPS's.
We only use VPS for cost effective warm-site disaster recovery, as primary servers VPS's are just way too inconsistent in their performance. PowerVPS crew are really responsive though.
While I guess its cool if all your visitors are in the US, Network performance serving customers outside the US on theplanet and ev1 was pretty average for us with evolutionone customers in China, UK, and Asia Pacific.
As much as I love low priced commodity hosting, dedicated is the only way to be sure of your performance, it just means you need to have someone who knows what to do when things go wrong, regular back-ups to a redundant VPS which you can add capacity to on demand provide good peace of mind for us, combined with low latency DNS for switch DR site over.
If you want to pool resources a little then let us know, as long as we're not sharing with random people, we'd rather get good 24x7 utilisation of high prformance hosting resource.
chers,
tim.
|W|P|Hi,As a reminder of our small talk yesterday www.cyso.nl ;)
|W|P|I understand what you mean when you talk about starting out. I find that when most vendors talk about serving small business they still anticpate you're taking in thousands or at least hundreds a month. That's why they think your willing to pay $50 here for credit card services, or $25 there for a business checking account or $100 for dedicated hosting. Perhaps there should be a new term, micro business. If that's what you are, I recommend you find another micro business to start with. They'll understand your needs. And if things go well, and they can't grow to meet your needs, they'll at least understand and make the transistion to another vendor easy. Having an upgrade path within the same company sounds good, but I wonder how often it gets utilized.I'm in the hosting business. I started as a reseller and was tired with the constant surprises of not controlling my own server. It sucks to tell your customer "I'm sorry your sites broken, the people I rent space from must have done something, let me check with them and get back to you". And the upgrade path within the hosting firm I used, which looked good at the outset, was not ideal when I dug deeper when I actually was wanted to use it. So I switched to another data center and have my own server there. This data center is small enough that I can call and talk to a real person (usually Steve), not just for tech support, but any special request. They're willing to do whatever they can to meet my needs. I'm not just one server on a rack in thousands of square feet of data center.
Just because your looking for a Web service, doesn't mean you can't deal person to person, get a great price and still get an excellent product. If you haven't found this yet, keep looking. There's tens of thousands of vendors out there in this business.
Mike, Owner
www.grandriverhosting.com
|W|P|We're happy withhttp://www.flexservers.nl/
A complete server + 1000GB traffic for less than 100 EUR per month.
But then you would have to have a little bit of admin knowledge on board of your team.
Oh and before you ask: no we are not building a new browser. Doesn't mean we don't like the way they market their stuff and want to do that too?!|W|P|113891624190164415|W|P|How about that?|W|P|bomega@gmail.com |W|P|I have used the second one on my site to promote Fleck.You can see it at:
http://www.blogfrog.co.uk/
|W|P|I really like the second one. |W|P|Well, to tell you the truth, the third one is the best. It has a superiority in design. The text in the second one is just plain garbage. Same thing with the second one's auora, its just not done correctly. Mabye before you try these things you should consult a real designer?
Shouldn't there be an entry for the word Fleck in WikiPedia? Not an empty entry linking here but a complete one with an explanation of the word and a few words on Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Margaret Fleck and her research on finding naked people (No, I didn't make that up) and yes, also a few sentences about the hypersecret web2.0 company on Fleck.com? I know, I could do it myself but that wouldn't be correct as I'm with Fleck.com and wouldn't want to be accused of just advertising my own company. Sooo, could someone else do this? Just let me know how much you want for it and remember to add my name in capitals, bold, underlined and linking here. Please...|W|P|113887395018002069|W|P|WikiPedia: Fleck?|W|P|bomega@gmail.com christianhauck|W|P|http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleck
Heidi Miller publishes an excelent podcast with great tips for professional (and amateur) presenters. In her latest podcats she talks about y post 'Top 10 tips for a perfect pitch'. Made me blush with pride when I heard her read my tips out loud...
:-)
http://talkitup.typepad.com/weblog/2006/01/dssp_38_show_no.html
|W|P|113878628870923195|W|P|Another Podcast|W|P|bomega@gmail.com |W|P|Boris--Well, thanks! An associate brought your blog to my attention, and your tips were not only spot-on but fun to read as well. :-)
|W|P|Boris,Have a look over here:
http://www.podzinger.com/results.jsp?q=fleck
Search within podcasts!
Lost of Fleck results but only some are about Fleck.com.
Have fun