Executive Decision !!

OK, I’ve made something of an executive decision if you like. I wont be posting any more on our recent trip to Paris on here. From now on I’m going to stick to IT related stuff, providing links to tools resources and the odd opinion.

At some point myself and Melloney will do a “Paris in 5 Days” type guide with all the pics, tips for getting around etc, but probably on a seperate blog or other site. For the last 2 days the Blogger image upload has been acting up (too damn busy all the time ) as has my account at Image-Upload.net so I think this is what has to be done. We’ve got over 100 digital pics from our recent trip so I think a Flickr account is needed too.

We’ll get organised and when it’s done I’ll post a link here. Meanwhile, you can see some of the pics Melloney put on Flickr here, including the round right tower of Saint Sulpice, the Arc De Triomphe and the spooky catacombs.
You could really cheer Mel up today if you surf on over and leave a nice comment on her blog or pics. Thanks 😉

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AJAX resources & What we did in Paris ..Day 1 & 2..

OK folks, I’ve promised it so below is the details of what we did over our 5 days in Paris with some of the better pics.

Before that just a brief mention of the hottest technology topic on the web over the past 6 months or so, AJAX!!. Find out what it is and start learning how to harness it’s power in your own sites and portal based apps at the new Sun Developer Network AJAX Developer Resource Center. For a quick start, watch the 15 mins introduction to AJAX and Java technology video (requires Realplayer).

On to our Paris trip :

Day 1 :

Visited Notre Dame, took the hour long boat trip originating from Pont Neuf, bought some prints and other gifts from les bouquinistes, visited La Samarataine area for some shopping and ended the evening at the Eiffel tower.

A view of the beautiful Musee D’Orsay from the boat we took our cruise down the Seine on. It mat not look it but man that sky was blue and it was hot!

Another view from our boat trip, this time as we passed the Eiffel Tower, marking the half way point of the trip. This was our second time taking this same boat tour, the first being a more gloomy day in July ’04. It’s worth doing every time you visit.

Day 2 :

We started out just round the corner from our hotel at the market at Boulevard de Grenelle. It’s there every Sunday and Wednesday and is a great place to pick up a gift and mingle with the locals.

We spent the remainder of Sunday morning strolling up and down the Champs Elysees taking in all the sights and shopping, including “Glups”, a memorable sweet shop we found on our July ’04 visit. We managed to locate it by spotting the “Bird Man” whistling outside the mall entrance. Watch out for him next time you’re there and pop into Glups for the best pick ‘n’ mix in Paris! We made it to the Arc De Triomphe before mid day.

We spent the very hot Sunday afternoon visiting Saint Sulpice, which Da Vinci Code fans will be familiar with as the place that Silas searched for the keystone and murdered Sister Sandrine. It was just as described, and a stark contrast to the almost extravagant beauty of Notre Dame.

We ended the day strolling around Trocadero, taking in the evening crowds still queueing to climb the Eiffel Tower.

More details of our trip to follow…hopefully tomorrow!

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Mashups, APIs, Developer cheat sheets and more…

Hey all,
Just a quick update for today but I’m staying on subject with IT and have some gems for you !

Check out ProgrammableWeb for all the latest cutting edge APIs and how best to use them on your website or blog. Mashups and more all in one place with how-to guides and searchable listings, an excellent resource.

Keeping with coding, have a peep here for lots of handy cheat sheets for all you developers out there, including a very handy Google sheet with tips and URLs to tools you never knew existed on Google …til now!

Finally, something that doesn’t work on IE! For those of you who cant visit the Windows Update site for whatever reason 😉 check out WindizUpdate. Download the plug-in for Opera, Firefox (or both) and let it scan and fetch your missing updates.
Ingenius and well worth your time!

Thats all folks.

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Back to work blues!

Hi all!
I’ve been on a bit of a downer since we got back from Paris last Thursday, and really busy catching up so just a quick post this evening to say hey and pics and trip details etc to follow through the week.

For now, check out what good use fellow Irish man Gavin Joyce has made of the Digg APIs at Kick.ie, it’s a bit short on content at the moment bu tgrowing all the time, so have a look and help out by posting all your news.

Bye for now!

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Counting down the longest day ….

As I said on Sunday, myself and Melloney have been counting down the days to our second trip to Paris. The bags are now packed and with just last minute checks to do tonight it’s all go. It’s been really quiet at work for me too so this week has dragged along 😦

I cant concentrate on anything today so here’s just a quick mention of some IT news.

Microsoft releasing Dynamics online by end of the year – Steve Balmer says this’ll be one of 20 Live services from Microsoft goign online over the next few months. Traditionally you installed Microsoft CRM on internal servers and client browsers connected to it, like so many other products. The product is now being forced to go online due to competition mainly from SalesForce.com The e-CRM arena could be about to get very interesting and I’ll be watching like others how this giant fares against the excellent open source alternatives out there.

Worth a read, if only to kill Friday afternoon, is Dion Hinchcliffe’s post on blogs and Web 2.0 as an apps platform. See it here.

Finally a mention for an excellent technical blog from a fellow Irish man – Tom Raftery’s I.T. Views

So Dark the Con of Man!

I’m off to see the sights of Paris, til next weekend it’s au revoir folks 😉

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