September 19, 2008
Sunday morning 21/9/2008, the new bol.com store was temporarily online.
It is definitely an improvement to the old site. Previously when searching for the band daryllann, there were no results whatsoever. The new site now changes the incorrectly spelled band name to the correct spelling. This means that the site is more forgiving to spelling mistakes. This should help conversion rates. Although….. the album Renko found on Bol.com is not the correct album: Renko…..bol.com still have to sort out some data issues.
Revamped product sections
All product pages are revamped, but especially the games, DVD and music sections look hugely different. The site looks and behaves the same across the different product groups now.
I love the feature that you now can search for children games or hardcore games. Ordering a PEGI 3+ game for a four year old is not what PEGI is about. PEGI rating just sucks™
Shopping basket
The shopping basket and checkout has pretty pictures.
Nice eye candy.
Pretty urls
http://www.bol.com/nl/p/games/metal-gear-solid-4-guns-of-the-patriots/1004004006052238/index.html
Bol.com has got rid of all the ugly urls they used to have. SEO to the max.
Payments
Unfortunately the Postbank was experiencing problems which caused problems with my Postbank credit card or iDEAL payments. This killed some of the experience, but this is not something Bol.com can help. It was handled gracefully on the bol.com site. My Visa card had no problems whatsoever… Good… good..
Next steps?
ATG and Endeca transformation almost done. Time for the next phase….
No Comments » | 
ATG, Digital world, Endeca, bol.com | Tagged: ATG, bol.com, Endeca | 
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Posted by Ronald Pulleman
September 7, 2008
Update September 8th 2008 As can be read in the comments by Aldo: a better, although not free solution is Audiobook Builder
I am a member of emusic, the retailer that offers a selection of independent music and audiobooks.
One thing which always bothered me a bit was the audiobook format. They split an audiobook in dozens of mp3 files which are not the best solution if you use iTunes and an iPod.
iTunes and the iPod have the so called bookmarkable format, that is, the track will resume playing wherever you left off the last time you played it.
There is a lot of information on the net, but I could not find a step by step process for the Mac how to convert emusic audiobooks to iTunes audiobooks.
This is my procedure for Mac OS X.
- Download two Applescripts scripts from Doug’s AppleScripts: Track Splicer and Make Bookmarkable. Install them as described.
- Add the emusic audiobook files to iTunes. They will be stored somewhere under music.
- Select the audiobook mp3 files. Make sure they are ordered correctly and run the Track Splicer script. This will create one big mp3 file.
If you like to split it in a couple of 1 hour files, like an iTMS audiobook, then select a smaller number of files and repeat the procedure.
- Select the mp3 audiobook and convert it to an aac (m4a) file with iTunes. (Right mouse: Convert Selection to AAC). Use a bitrate
applicable for audiobooks, since 256kbps or so seems like a waste of disk space.
- Select the aac audiobook and run the Make Bookmarkable script. This will convert the m4a file to m4b file. When you look under
Audiobooks you will see your converted book.
- For nicety find a cover and add it as album artwork.
Enjoy!
5 Comments | 
Mac OS X, emusic, iPod, iTMS, iTunes | Tagged: audiobooks, emusic, iTunes, m4b, Mac OS X | 
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Posted by Ronald Pulleman
August 21, 2008
Getting the Dolby 5.1ch sound working from my PlayStation 3 to my Onkyo TX-SR805 receiver proved to be a bit more troublesome than I hoped for.
There is some configuration involved on the PS3 and on the Onkyo.
When I eventually got it working I examined the possibility of connecting my Mac with the PS3.
Boy was I in for some surprise. Medialink for Mac OS X, is an excellent piece of software.
Perhaps I was lucky, but after installing it, I could immediately browse (wireless btw) through my photos, movies and music.
I no longer see a reason to buy an Apple TV. The PS3 with Media Link does an excellent job. Perhaps not as pretty as the Apple TV, but it supports all major DRM free encodings.
Something which cannot be said for the Apple TV.
Renting movies through the Apple TV is not something I see happening any time soon here in The Netherlands. So I skip the Apple TV and embrace my PS3 for now.
When you compare the price of the PS3 (€ 399) to the Apple TV (€ 299) I am amazed how much power is packed into the PS3 (Console, Blu-ray player, MediaCentre) for a arguably better price.
1 Comment | 
Mac OS X, MediaLink, PlayStation3, iTunes | Tagged: iTunes, Mac OS X, MediaLink, PlayStation 3 | 
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Posted by Ronald Pulleman
June 16, 2008
Some time ago I wrote about selfdiagnose-the-world-according-to-my-atg-application.
Since then SelfDiagnose has added some nifty features. The latest release of SelfDiagnose now adds support for OGNL. This gives SelfDiagnose some extra punch. I can now use constructions like:
<checkvaluematches
value="${@java.lang.Integer@parseInt(configList.length)}"
comment="Number of configured Endeca instances"
pattern=".*" />
or constructions like
<checkendecaservice host="${configList[0].host}"
port="${configList[0].port}" query="N=0" comment="Endeca instance 1 connection test"/>
The ${configList[0].port} is a typical OGNL construction.
The CheckEndecaService can also return the Endeca com.endeca.navigation.ENEQueryResults response.
With OGNL you can easily dissect this Endeca response.
This can be extremely handy to query for the latest Forge or pipeline version of an Endeca build in the different ATG environments were you cannot directly access those services! For instance in production.
1 Comment | ATG, Endeca, OGNL, SelfDiagnose | Tagged: ATG, Endeca, OGNL, SelfDiagnose | Permalink
Posted by Ronald Pulleman
May 22, 2008
Mcast.fm as a GTD capture tool.
Recently Mcast.fm went beta. Mcast.fm is a service which enables podcasts over your phone. When you call a number, podcasts are streamed to you.
Perhaps great for some people, but not for me. I’m happy with my iTunes, iPod and ice>Link plus setup.
But a feature which you cannot easily find on the site is a dictation like feature. Call the number, press #0 , start talking, and close with #.
And auto-magically an MP3 is added to your personal feeds on Mcast.fm.
You can also see these memo’s on a RSS reader like iGoogle.
In my love for GTD, I have the Moleskine inbox when walking around, which I later transfer to a Omnifocus inbox. But I’m still missing the feature to put something in my inbox when driving my car. Or anyplace where I cannot easily write.
I wrote about Jott in GTD with your phone. This service is unavailable where I live.
Can Mcast.fm become this service? It will need speech recognition and some more.
If they will add this they will have a paying customer in me, when they charge for this. For now I will use Mcast.fm as a dictation service, which is a bit better than using your own voicemail….
I really hope they will explore this potential..
No Comments » | GTD, Jott, Mcast.fm | Tagged: GTD, Jott, Mcast.fm | Permalink
Posted by Ronald Pulleman
