Mobile Website, GPS and more

I've not blogged for a pretty eventful fortnight where all kinds of things have been happening so where to start? Perhaps a chronological route through the last two weeks will do.

We manage the website of the Middlesbrough Midweek Cricket League which was created a few years ago and is a simple template site that has been "developed" (hacked together is more accurate) over the years with little planning as it has always had the "oh, could you just add ...." elements right from the start. A lot of the functionality, for example a fixture list, is generated via javascript from arrays which is not ideal but not a bad method considering the ad-hoc nature of the early site development. So having saved the results and tables from last year we had the task of updating the arrays plus generating the template for the bottom division which always has an unusual number of teams and this year did not match any previous year since the website started. There are also changes to make regarding each club's contact details, sometimes the club name and updating their history. We also update the results throughout the season. It would be nice to have the time to redo the whole site at some point via SQL and PHP.

As an ex-player who is now too old and blind to play it's good to put something back.

We've also created a new mobile version of our website at tadweb.mobi. We already generate a simplified version of our main site at tadwebsolutions.co.uk when visited by mobile devices with smaller screens but now have a link to our genuine mobile site. Anyone looking for a  mobile version of their site can contact us and we can provide either or both options for them.

Last week saw us pay our first visit to RSPB Saltholme to collect some GPS data and images for the prototype location based application we are building and it's great to have Saltholme as partners in this exciting project. As always it was absolutely freezing but initial data is now stored ready to use.

We also received an email and CV from a young man who wants to gain experience in sales and marketing and brought him in for a chat. We were very impressed with his attitude and intelligence and Ben will be coming in on Friday's for a few weeks and then we will review whether we are right for him and he is right for us. He is in full time education for the next year or so meaning the relationship will be part-time but hopefully all is successful and we can employ him until he heads of to uni in a year or so, or longer if he stays in the area.