We decided to do a short travel survey for TripTouch - find out what it is that people want during their trip. I think it turned out pretty cool, check it out here.
We used a web-based survey tool named SurveyMonkey. It costs a bit of money, but it makes nice surveys quite easily, and it’s very flexible in its analyzing and filtering tools. Recommended!
We finally got our own server for TripTouch. It was a difficult decision, but finally we chose LiquidWeb as the host. It’s not easy because there are so many of those hosts, and many sites who have reviews and user testimonials, and monitoring - it’s just too much information.
The new server is actually a lot faster than the shared hosting we had before, and hopefully will be able to manage many more users. When we have them, that is 
Facebook (A social-network site) has opened up their site, and introduced the ‘facebook platform’. Basically it’s an API that let’s you write application for facebook. The idea is pretty cool, and there was a lot of press about it.
We at TripTouch decided to see what’s what, and wrote a small application called TripRecord. Basically it lets you choose the countries you visited, and it displays the list in your profile. Simple, but rather nice, we think.
The application is written using PHP. It’s actually hosted on our own servers. The facebook API is very easy to learn, and quite robust. The documentation is somewhat lacking. Luckily there’s an example in PHP and you can just test and try all sorts of things till you get it right.
If you have a facebook account, click here to get your country list. If you don’t have an account yet, try it - I really like Facebook, it’s an excellent site - those guys are brilliant.
We got a new design for CafeTouch. I think it looks better than before.
We also added some more internet cafes, and there’s more content like links or news.
We’re working on a small side project - an internet cafe directory. The site is called CafeTouch. We’ll start adding content (i.e. actual cafes) slowly. There are several internet cafe directories on the web, but the information is usually not updated (most places are closed. We also hope that CafeTouch will be used as a community site by internet cafe owners - with a blog, links, and later a forum and other features for these guys.
This time I used the Joomla CMS (usually I use Drupal). It was just better for this kind of site, and I must say it is quite nice. I still find Drupal easier (well, I have been using it for more than a year…).
Since I’m working almost only on TripTouch these days, I don’t have time for Metalgrass and my web sites. So I made a few decisions -
It’s been quite a while since I last wrote here. The last few weeks I’ve been busy with two things - finding an apartment, and TripTouch (The Travel 2.0 startup).
We finally found an apartment - it’s in Herzelia (where we lived about 2 years ago, we like that place) and hopefully we’ll be moving in the end of 2007. It’s pretty exciting!
We’re trying to raise money for TripTouch. It’s not easy, but hopefully we’ll have good news towards the end of May… But you never know. So most of my time is spent with meeting investors, lawyers and such. In the rest of the time I try to do a little programming, and the site is advancing nicely.
That’s it for now… Hopefully I’ll have more updates soon.
Well, my Bulgarian travelogue is finally online. Not a long one (It was just the weekend), but still some nice photos and experiences.
We just returned from Bulgaria. It was actually a great weekend. Sofia is a good, bleak, east-europe type of city. It got the churches and statues, all right. I would have liked a few more soviet monuments, but you can’t have it all. There was a day of ski (good snow), and we also rented a car and travelled around for a bit - monasteries, old towns, small villages. These were the good parts.
The bad parts? The bulgarian food is not the best… especially if you are a semi-vegan. I had to eat cheese a bit, but I survived. After a couple of tries, we decided to stop going to ‘Bulgarian’ places, settled on a nice Irish pub, and we also found a nice Italian restaurant. Bulgaria is not a tourist country, with very little infrastructure. Kiev was a lot prettier, and Budapest also. The countryside is very shabby and poor looking, but the landscape is quite nice (although it was really foggy most of the time).
But even so we had an interesting time, and a lot of fun.
Anyway, expect a lot of cool photos, and a long travelogue, but in the meantime, here are a few photos I’ve already uploaded -
Well, I’m off for a short trip in Sofia, Bulgaria. With my dad.
Why Bulgaria, you might ask? Well, god works in mysterious ways. I’m not entirely sure why, and I don’t think my father knows, either. But it should be fun - it’s an interesting town, there is a small ski resort nearby.
More when I return…