Update on the Ariel Atom 2

So I registered and looked at what they offering. Considering they are available as a kit in EU, that is not an option here in the US. Basically you can buy the fully built car with a choice of the Honda or GM powerplants. The price is the surprise because it is totally ridiculous. I am rather gonna wait for the K-1 Attach folks to get themselves sorted. It looks much better and although I have not driven the Atom 2 it costs more than a Vette. That does not mean that I will buy a vette, I would rather add another 20K and get a Porsche. A roof in the Pacific Northwest helps make it a year round car.

Boy’s and their toy’s

This is not new but I saw it for the firs time today. For those of you car folks out there. Imagine this, a two seater car that can accelerate from 0 to 60 in 2.9 seconds!! That is assuming that you can change gears quick enough. It is manufactured by a small company in the UK. Just watch this video on the Ariel Atom 2 and decide for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdkEV-t9jg0

So they are available in the US. Need to register so that you can customize your selections.

http://www.arielatom.com/

Graceful degradation and AJAX

OK, time to fix this and support those folks that have been trying to access us from the plethora of mobile device out there that do not support JavaScript. This should not be too much of an issue because we were just too lazy when we coded up the AJAX pages. Gonna suck for the Google maps because they will not be supported but at least the Coffee House and photo’s will work. While we are making these changes we will also make the changes so that people can cache the pages on their mobile devices. So off we go and create some static pages that are generated when the data is updated. Pretty simple.

As we were testing these rather simple changes, we started to use some of the Google services other than search, such as Google Sitemaps and Google Analytics. For those of you who have not seen this yet, they give you some pretty good information about how they see your site and also various usage statistics. One look told the whole story. It turns out that all that all of our JavaScript enabled dynamic pages together with the dynamically generated url’s were breaking the search engine BOT’s.

Because we are still working feverishly on the site. We are not ready for people to start to use us but hopefully someone else will be able to learn from this experience.

Here is a great list of the things that need to be done to optimize your position in the search ratings.

http://www.schillmania.com/content/opinion/2005/10/on-seo-and-spamming/

So what is happening with www.buzzfizz.com?

I have decided to start a blog to keep everyone updated on how we are progressing with buzzfizz.com.

 

Firstly, for those of you who do not know who or what the buzzfizz website it about.

 

Long version:

All of us that work on the buzzfizz website are all dependant on kick starting our mornings with a good cup of coffee. In my particular case I am partial to espresso but I believe that life is too short for bad coffee! In my travels around the world, I have had some really bad coffee and some of the worst is freely available in Utah. You know it is going to suck bad when the coffee has the same color as the Colorado River and you really want to be awake before a white water rafting trip. Or at least I do.

 

Asking someone’s opinion about a good coffee house is always a loaded question because maybe they like their coffee looking and tasting like the Colorado River….. hence the birth of buzzfizz. We have decided to provide a place for coffee lover’s to unite and help each other by sharing their opinions on the many coffee houses. We are banking on the fact that only the best will float to the top of list and we will never have to suffer through another cup of bad coffee. If in the process we are able to help the smaller guy, all the better!

Short Version:

Life is too short for bad coffee, so create a popularity voting mechanism for coffee houses.

 

We are working on the system as quickly as we can but because all of us have day jobs, we are progressing a little slower than we would like but as you can see we are getting the system to a point where it is almost useful….. We are not happy with the UI and would welcome any suggestions, via the feedback link, but we have the basic search functionality in place together with a sampling of the various coffee houses in the Seattle and surrounding suburbs.

 

Many of our friends use coffee houses for blind dates and as such we are providing photo’s, both outside and inside. Naturally in the Pacific Northwest, knowing if the place is dog friendly or not is critical. For our fellow geeks, Internet connectivity is mandatory.

Until next time..