Oct 21 2011
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Coding, PHP, Search

klickTel Open-API WordPress Plugin

klickTel is a brand of telegate Media. The company is offering free and paid directory assistance information to users of their software, which includes CD-Roms, web portals and mobile applications

Just recently they published an Open API to give people direct access to the data provided by the company. I have started to write a plugin for WordPress to use the data from this API. Using that plugin you can search for directory informations e.g. restaurants or other trades in a certain town or nearby.

The API offers several types of search which will be integrated in the plugin. The first type of search is a meta search, which enables you to look for a “what” in a not specified “where”. “What” can be anything name or trade based, e.g. ‘restaurants’ or just ‘meyer’. “where” is a location information, which can be a zipcode or town name and a street name (or a combination of these).

After searching for ‘restaurants’ in ‘berlin’ I get a list of results:

Those are just an example of what is possible with that kind of API. To get more information you can visit the telegate Blog or register for the API directly.

To get my plugin just visit the page in the WordPress Plugin repository. Feel free to ask any questions here or in the Open-API Google Group.

telegate is hosting an event called ‘Hackathon’ to encourage developers to come and try out the Open-API. You also have the chance to win up to 5.000 €!

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Sep 26 2011
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Mac OS X

Mac OS X: Apache Webserver Virtual host Permission denied error

There are a lot of tutorials out there how to setup local websites with virtual hosts on a Mac OS computer. Yesterday I tried very hard and it failed to work for me. I used a subdirectory of my Documents folder as virtual host document root, and that was my problem: the apache webserver process, running as _www, has no rights to access this folder. So either use some other path or make the Documents folder accessable via “chmod 755″.

Hope that helps someone out there :)

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Sep 18 2011
3 Comments
Coding, Javascript

“Collecting classes \’utf8′ codec can’t decode byte 0xa0 in position 12345″ when using qooxdoo

If you are working with the qooxdoo Javascript framework (and you have a non-english Windows operating syste you are working on) then you might get an error message like this when trying to “build” your application with the command:

generate.py source

Collecting classes \'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xa0 in position 12345

If you get this problem, then it probably is due to the fact that your standard temporary directory is somewhere in your user directory…and that might contain non-UTF8 characters. So you can modify your config.json file and insert the following in the top level ‘let’ block:

"TMPDIR" : "c:/temp"

That way you direct the builder to a temp dir which has a valid path.

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May 02 2011
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Apple

Paid and free iPad Apps I use and recommend

I have an Apple iPad for a couple of months now and here are some of the apps i can recommend:

Paid Apps

Good Reader
Best document viewer ever. Fast as hell and worth any money.

RDP
Sometimes I need to remotely login to a Windows maschine, and here comes RDP. There is a free version of the app available which lacks a couple of features. If you need those (like drag & drop) you need to get the paid version. Very useful!

My Movies
This app helps you keep an updated DVD / BluRay collection. You can use the camera of the pad as barcode reader and instantly add your volumes. There is also a functionality to take notes when you lend your DVD’s to someone, so you always know, where your stuff is! Sometimes it crashes, but hopefully that will be addressed by the devs.

Free Apps

Note Taker HD
Take some notes anytime you want.

Dropbox
Since the iPad has no SD slot, you can use Dropbox to transfer all kind of data to your iPad.

Flipboard
Flipboard is a news reader which arranges the news in a newspaper style. It can follow your Facebook and Twitter accounts and compile a sort of newspaper for you, including information behind links.
Very good and innovative program!

Windowshop from Amazon
Amazon shopping easy and comfortable.

Feeddler RSS
RSS Reader, especially useful in combination with a Google Reader account.

TeamViewer Free
I haven’t tried out the paid version, but the free version offers a lot of stuff already. If you have a computer with TeamViewer installed, you can remotely access it with this app.

klickTel
If you are new in town and need to find a certain locality (e.g. restaurant) this is your way to find it. This free app from one of the top directory and local search companies in Germany comes free of charge and is really useful in situations where you don’t know a phone number or address of the place you wanna go to. Germany only!

eBay
Watch and bid on auctions. Very easy to use.

Skype
Finally there is a Skype app for iPad which is really good and a real alternative to Facetime which can only be used with Apple devises.

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Sep 09 2010
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Agile & Scrum

The ‘Dark Side’ of Scrum

A collegue of mine made me aware of a nice post from Daniel Markham, who’s written on Agile ruined his life“. In most of the post he describes his opinion of agile consultants who try to teach agile and software development best practises without having any clue about the work of a software developer.

But if you’re going to train something, you should be able to do it. And I mean do it to a very high level of expertise. An agile coach should be able to code, perform analysis, manage the project, test — anything that needs doing on a project. If she can’t, then how can you talk to her about your particular situation?

Nice article to read, if you do Agile/Scrum or plan to introduce it to your company. Not that I agree with everything Daniel is writing but there is some (not so) hidden truth in some of his words and phrases.

-> Daniel Markham: Agile ruined my life

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