Designing & Building with Ajax

I'm in Amsterdam for the Designing & Building with Ajax seminar held by Adaptive Path (see previous posts). Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path is being accompanied by Bill Scott of Yahoo! Both very inspiring, interesting and somewhat carismatic people.

Especially Bill diggs into some really cool demos and examples. For example he used the featues of A9 Maps as an example of some of the cool Ajax-woodoo going on out there. It opens an all-new dimension to what a map-application on the web should be like. Awesome!

Bill is one of the main contributors to bringing the Y!Patterns to the masses. No doubt that this stuff rocks - I just need to make the right persons in our organisation aware of the quick-wins and benefits of using Ajax. It definately enhances the user experience of a website. In doubt? Go see the Amazon diamond search (yes, you can buy bling at Amazon...). Go on. Try it. Cool huh?

Another site Bill talked about was the Yahoo! Trip Planner. I wish I had known of its existence just a month ago since I've been planning a trip to Miami, FL the next three weeks. I needed just what the trip planner does; an easy way to maintain and share routes, points of interest, hotels, air-travel etc. I think I'm actually gonna use it even though it's a little late in the process.

513 paintings sold!

Just a quick update on the OneThousandPaintings-situation: 513 paintings sold and the cheapest painting now @ $148.80 - mine was $40, so I guess I can argue that I've made 100 bucks already? No? Maybe not, but still...? NO?

I am by the way going to Florida with my girlfriend and her family (her father, mother and sister) on next Sunday. I am really looking forward to relaxing just a little bit. We'll start out in Miami Beach and the drive the counter-clockwise tour: Palm Beach, Cape Canaveral, Orlando, St. Petersburg/Tampa, Naples, Key Largo, Key West and the back to Miami. I've been there before with my girlfriend on a 9 day vacation. This time it's gonna be 17 days, so there'll be time for having a good time.

Having a beer for lunch?

The above image was taken by my friend David and it shows the buttons of a vending machine found in a canteen at a company in Copenhagen. The text is in Danish, but a quick translation makes this a funny* picture: "Øl" means "beer"! I love shortcuts, but a vending machine with a shortcut button for 3 or 5 beers? I think it's funny!

* I cannot guarantee it will be funny to everyone...