Dear all,
Due to doing some testing with the new location engine in places.ae, we used “Bur Juman Mall” (link) as a test bed, and with some malfunctioning less-optimized SQL queries, we made the mall disappear.

We are notified when a huge amount of 404’s are thrown, and all URL’s that were looking for places nearby this mall, (like banks nearby Bur Juman Mall) were throwing a 404.

So, this was quickly rectified, we apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Thank you,
Michael

This upcoming Eid holidays, Dhana, a good friend with an awesome wealth of SQL knowledge (she helps out with the SQL queries in places.ae) will be going to Cambodia, to build a school for the local population. She doesn’t do this on every trip, it’s for a good cause.

Organized by Pepy tours, places.ae will be sponsoring her charity trip to make the world a better place, brick by brick.

If you wish to sponsor her, any donation is welcome, feel free to contact her on dhana [at] places.ae.

Good luck Dhana!

Dear all,

From all the people who helped with places.ae, we wish you a blessed Ramadan. To visit new mosques you haven’t been to in dubai, please find them here: http://www.places.ae/find/mosque/in/dubai.

Thank you,
Michael

We noticed that some URL’s had different formats, for example:

• www.places.ae/show/123-mike’s-pizza-joint
• www.places.ae/show/123-mike’s_pizza_joint
• www.places.ae/show/123_mike’s_pizza_joint
• www.places.ae/show/123_mikes-pizza-joint

That’s all stream lined now to all hyphens (first example), SEO better and uniform. It also allows us more insight in our backend analytics how many hits a certain page got.

Thanks,
Michael

Dear all,

It took a while, but we upgraded places.ae’s features again. Several users asked for some of these, and we thank you all for your feedback. If we’d add “versioning” to places.ae, then this would be version 3.1, seeing the 3 big layout and code rewrites we had before, then this. (The layout will be improved soon, the graphic’s guy is on holiday )

Features wise, here we go:

1. Addthis toolbar:
Share your favorite places on twitter, facebook, digg or a number of other social bookmarking services.

2. Avatars for registered users:
If you have an account on places.ae (which doesn’t have the activation email anymore), you can add an avatar of your choice, as long as it’s a JPG and 60 x 60 pixels, to make the site a bit more personal and human. The “mh” user is me, and that’s my signature intriguing look.

3. Edit your profile, properly:
In addition of the profile picture that can be changed (#2), you can add your own website as well as your twitter account. We;re trying some cool features with Twitter, so you can only benefit from it. We’re working on facebook connect, but it gave some errors so it wasn’t included in this release. Also, you can change your login to your real name, which will be displayed on comment posts.

4. Email comments:
If you want, you will be sent an email when a new comment is posted. Some users ask questions, and will have to check again if somebody answered. We made it easier for you, you’ll be notified when this happens.

5. Thumbs in place listings:
When looking through a list of results, it will include already if other liked it or now with our “thumbs up/thumbs down” system. You won’t risk calling a place that others don’t really like.

6. No more activation email when signing up:
When you sign up to places.ae, there’s no more “activation” email for you to click on. Yes, it verifies your email address, but we decided to leave it out. This makes it easier to sign up.

Aside from these visible things, we did a few things in the backend:

• We upgraded passenger (yes, we are still on Ruby on Rails)
• Upgraded to rails 2.3.3
• Included some manual caching procedures, which will decrease our MySQL server load significantly

As said on twitter, we’re ironing out some issues, and then we’ll be good to go.

Keep those suggestions for improvement. We’re just trying to be better, or at least we’re trying to suck less.

Thank you,
Michael

Web bots (crawlers) seems to click all they see… Another point in the todo list. This list now exist of:

- Making places Rails 2.3.3 compatible
- Optimizing frontend (and keep new design ready)
- Adding more features for notifications
- Optimizing search engine
- Finally adding avatars for users, and include Facebook connect
- Writing (more) test in rails..

Good night,
MIchael

Hi all,
I was out for a little holiday back home, and hence there were no code changes for the past 2 weeks, as I’m the main code contributor for places.ae. Though, while being offline, I made some significant changes (that still require some testing) and now I am back, expect to see them pushed in a few days.

Thank you,
Michael

ArabCrunch, the blog that reviews and discusses startups in the Middle East region has tested the ask@places.ae functionality (which we blogged about earlier) and seem to like it.

Their full review is here.

Thank you guys, keep up the awesome work.

Take care,
Michael

Hi all,

In terms of recession, you might have to rely on technology, rather than a personal assistants to find you the information you need. Places.ae has a new service that allows you to get requested information in your email box.

How does it works?

Simple, you send an email to ask@places.ae and in the subject you set your search query, for example hotel in fujeirah. You don’t have to put something in the body of the email, since it will be ignored anyway.

You will receive an answer a few moments after you send the email, giving you the 10 closest places to the requested location. It also sends you little Google maps in the email, so please enable images so you will see the location maps of these places in your email.

This is a beta version, and we’re improving it. So please bear with us, and let us know how we could increase the service.

Thank you,
Michael

Note: this function only return places with phone numbers, so please let us know if you want this changed.

Dear all,

I’m sorry for the delays in this blog. We had some hiccups on our previous blog, right the day before I went on holiday. So, the blog was a bit offline for a while.

After arriving back in Dubai, I fixed the blog. I’ll be restoring all -useful- content of the previous one, but clean up it’s contents a bit (new screenshots for the mobile sites, S60 widget, etc).

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Thank you,
Michael