I am a little late to the mobile scene. But I have finally realized, that it was time to make a mobile version of my site. Especially due to all the mobile surfers in the world these days.

So after a lot of brainstorming and searching on how to design a mobile site. And the more difficult part, how to make sure that every mobile user gets transferred to the mobile version. I was able to start.

I started the design, and then the integration to my surprise it went very quick and without any big problems. And I am pretty happy that I decided to make the mobile site and have caught myself surfing to it a couple of times already. Hope that my visitors like it as well.

Again after a lot of brainstorming on how to improve the site. We finally were able to draw up a design that worked for Engel & Völkers Sint-Martens-Latem second site.

The keys the new design were to keep it simple but it had to be almost identical to the subdomain page (www.engelvoelkers.com/latem).

To make sure of this we wanted to incorporate some of the subdomain pages. Which we were able to do very easily.

But the main reason for the second site was because there were a couple of functions that were not able to be incorporated  into the current subdomain. Such as to ability to click on properties and receive the properties of the shop immediately. Without having to search first. (this has been fixed on the second site).

Also there was no specific page yet for viewing the opening hours and a map of the shop’s location.

www.evlatem.be

After a lot of brainstorming on how to improve the site. We finally drawed up a design that worked.

The keys the new design were to keep it simple:

1. More white-space between images and text to keep a good overview
2. A larger footer to give a good overview of the site’s structure
3. And definitely not to forget using the logo colors as much as  possible.

Provide is a consultancy and real estate service company. So the possibility of multiple use of the design was important. Provide.be is currently only available in Flemish but will be having an English as well as a French version (potentially even a German one) in the near future.

www.provide.be

After a trip of 12 days to the Big Apple, I am back home. It was fun, I got some great pictures, saw some amazing things, but I am glad to be back home.

After been to NY in ’97 and again in ’04. I was now finally able to go sightseeing. Although everyone told me that 12 days was way more than needed, I was still not able to see everything that I wanted to see. I definitely saw more then most.

The positive thing about this is that I will have to go back.

Now that the trip is over, I would have to say that there are a couple of things that will

stay with me for a very long time:

• First my birthday meal at Hard Rock Cafe, which was as every birthday that I had at HRC: fun to get embarrassed.
• Second the view of NY from Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building.
• Third just the general sightseeing walks (each more then 10 km) with the great company of a friend.

As a conclusion I would have to say it was a great trip and I saw a lot. But I will definitely have to go back in the near future to see the rest.

Planned on going to the Apple Store, on 5th Avenue, very early. Thinking of being before all of the sightseers, but as I could have expected the line as well as the

waiting time was long. (Even Fox and CNBC where present.) So after seeing the line and calculating the wait, I decided to come back later in the day.

After walking around for about 6 hours, I went back and was in luck. I was able to enter the line just in between 2 groups Making the waiting time extremely short. So after waiting 10 minutes I could go down into the store, where I waited some more to get one-on-one with the new iPad started.

The iPad definitely exceeded my expectations (which where low) It was quicker, lighter. But I am still not really sure what would be the best function for it. It is too big to be used like an iPod Touch, and too small/too slow to be considered as a on the road notebook.

I would say that the best function would be the use of the large and extremely picture perfect touchscreen. So it is perfect to show photos, videos and presentations. And therefor would have been perfect for (hobby-)photographers, if it had an usb or sd-slot. But it remains in my opinion useful to do business with.

As a conclusion, I would say that it is definitely an awesome gadget. But is it a must have? I would say that this is for yourself to decide if you have a good and frequent use for it.