Launch of Jobping, an new specialized job-posting website

Two of my long-time friends, the –Teach Head Brothers— (one of the most renowned French Microsoft .NET portal) Laurent and Mathieu (both MIcrosoft Most Valuable Professionals), have launched (public beta) on April 22 Jobping, a new specialized and totally focused job-posting website dedicated to job seekers and employers in the Microsoft technology field. Two others MS specialists are also participating to this nice story: Mark Kemper and Ally Colqhoun. Jobping is for now concentrating on the Australian market.

I find the business idea and positioning quite interesting and I am excited to follow the development of Jobping in the coming time.

Jobping is also the result of a nice international and geographical-exploded (France, Australia, etc.) development-team, based on Agile approach and nice technology. So I hope that Laurent and Mathieu will also share with us some of their experience in this field ;-)

Good luck to Jobping, I cross the fingers!

Have a look at the official Press Release.

Sydney, Australia – April 22, 2010 – Last week, Jobping, a new job posting web site aimed specifically at job seekers and employers who work with Microsoft technologies, was released into public beta.

Jobping currently focuses on the Australian market and aims to bring a better quality of candidate to a posted vacancy via a niche, industry targeted approach.

The site is unique, user friendly and streamlined when compared to the larger job post boards. For instance, publishing is done in a couple of clicks and the job is instantly broadcast through Twitter, Facebook and job indexing sites such as Indeed and CareerJet. Recruiters are also able to add their company Twitter feed to a job post in order to cross sell other vacancies all in one place.

From a job seeker point of view Jobping searching works just like today’s search engines with specific job filtering options. Job seekers also benefit by being kept up to date in a variety of ways including through Rss, Internet Explorer Web Slice, Twitter or Facebook. Similarly, job seekers are able to apply for a position using their LinkedIn profile, saving time and eliminating the need to keep two separate resumes up to date and they may optionally attach a traditional pdf or word resume.

More features and functions based on user feedback and requirements will be implemented quickly as Jobping takes an organic and user oriented approach to product development.

Jobping will remain free during the beta period which will continue for 3-6 months. Advertisers utilising the site during the beta period will be rewarded through special discounts once the pricing structure is introduced.

Visit us on www.jobping.com !

Disclaimer: Jobping is a private project of Laurent, Mathieu and their two friends, not linked with Innoveo in any manner, excepted our friendship ;-)

Food & restaurants at Saint Barth

via sbhonline.com

(Actually, the picture above has nothing to do with this post, excepted that it was taken in Saint Barth!)

A quite cool article – The Beautiful People -  about Saint Barth in OceanHome magazine from October 2009. Some of the information published are not up-to-date but it describes quite good some of the “special atmosphere” dimensions of The Island ;-)

One example concerning the number of high-end restaurants at Saint Barth:

[…] Don’t visit St. Barts if you’re on a diet. In fact, I’m not sure you can even say the words “St. Barts” and “diet” in the same sentence; I think it’s against the law here. This island has the greatest collection of chefs and restaurants to be found anywhere in the Caribbean, hands down. It’s as if someone wrote to all the Michelin Guide-rated chefs in Europe and invited them to bring their pots and knives to work in a tropical paradise.

I really had to laugh when reading this part, as it exactly represents our “reality” when we are there!

Some changes in the sidebar…

So, I had to correct some stuff in my right sidebar:

  • get rid of my visitors log and map, as the service (gvisit.com) is down since some days now
  • insert a … search (!). Actually I have forgotten to integrate it with all the changes I have done
  • change the SmugMug badge which is shown within the sidebar, switch to “Saint Barth 2010” ;-) Looks like the one just below:

Bye bye Blogger, hello WordPress!

As you have read in my last posts, I had to migrate from Blogger to WordPress. I am using Blogger as a blog-engine since I have started to blog in March 2004. Since then, I have my own domain (didierbeck.com) and my blog and its content is hosted at OVH. It was and still is important for me to have a full control on the content and data I am publishing. That’s the reason why I am not interested in a full blog-engine+hosting solution.

The reason why I had to migrate

I have received an email from the Blogger team on February 2, 2010, saying that:

We recently announced a planned shut-down of FTP support on Blogger Buzz

Actually Blogger will not support FTP anymore from May 1, 2010.

Reasons:

FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that. On top of this, critical infrastructure that our FTP support relies on at Google will soon become unavailable, which would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing.

Wow, I’m in the “.5%” of the Blogger’s users… Something must be wrong, not by Blogger, by me ;-). I don’t want to be in the “.5%”… I am just wondering what was this % in 2004, when I have started to blog. Anyway, for me and as explained above, I need a separate blog-engine that I can host by myself.

Which tools to chose?

Mainly, I had two possibilities, as the blog-engine needs to be “AMP compatible” (Apache, MySql, PHP). I also don’t want to use a CMS (Content Management System) supporting blogging features, but a fully focused solution. And mainstream!

So, I had a look at dotclear and WordPress. I have tested both (quickly) and found WordPress more convenient. On top, OVH is offering an automated installation module for WordPress.

Some of the criteria that were important for me:

  • publishing with Windows Live Writer
  • widely used, open source, strong community
  • technology proven, based on standards
  • widgets, themes, plugins
  • static pages
  • wysiwyg editor
  • user and profile admin
  • trackback and pingback supported
  • comment moderation

WorPress is supporting these criteria and its prerequisites are very reasonable (v2.9.2):

  • PHP version 4.3 or greater
  • MySQL version 4.1.2 or greater
  • The mod_rewrite Apache module

Migration from Blogger to WordPress

… was simpler than I have thought! Still some steps to be done.

Export/import former posts

1’170 posts in my blog… As I have used a special comment-system in Blogger, it was clear from the beginning that I will not be able to transfer them.

I couldn’t use the import function of WordPress, as this function is only working if you have a Google account and an upgraded (New, was Beta) blog hosted on blogspot.com or a custom domain (not FTP). Which is not my case. I could solve this issue with the following procedure:

  1. Export the content from Blogger in XML: dashboard – chose your blog – settings – basic – blog tools – export blog.
  2. Then, convert the Blogger XML export-file to WordPress WXR which is suitable for importing into WordPress. Use the following online tool:  http://blogger2wordpress.appspot.com/
  3. In WordPress, use the importing function for native WordPress files (Tools – Import – WordPress – Upload your WXR file – Assign Authors (map old to new ones)

Done!

Preparation before activation

Again, different steps:

  • Define the users you need
  • Change the settings (SEO, base URLs, formats, comment moderation, permalinks, etc.)
  • Check if your posts were correctly migrated
  • Define the appearance, chose a theme. For me: Pyrmont V2 2.0.7 by motta. Be careful with the size of your visual elements on your posts, these could not match your new appearance.
  • Define the blogroll
  • Update the static pages:
    • Who I am
    • Recommendations
    • Publications
    • Disclaimer
  • Install and configure the plugins you want to use

Activation

So the last two steps for me were to:

  • backup and deactivate the former blog files and directories structure
  • change the .htaccess and index.php, according to the WordPress installation I have chosen (WordPress not installed in the root, which makes everything clearer but a bit more complicated). In the .htaccess, I have integrated some “redirect 301”, for example for the RSS feed.

Now, I am entering the fine-tuning and debugging phase. If you observe something strange or not working, thanks in advance for contacting me!

Migrating…

Dear readers
I am in the process of migrating from Blogger to WordPress.
The 1’170 posts are migrated, most of the new site is now online.
I still have some redirections issues, sorry for that!
Stay tuned!

UPDATE: redirection issues solved! All former posts again

RE-UPDATE: old atom and rss feeds are also now redirected to the new one (http://didierbeck.com/feed/).

Moby Releases ‘iTunes Live from Montreal’

via moby’s blog

I like Moby very much, and much more live & accoustic!

While in the midst of an extensive critically acclaimed US tour in Fall 2009, Moby recorded an intimate live performance at the Montreal iTunes store to a captivated audience. […]

For this special recording Moby performed tracks from his most recent album ‘Wait For Me,’ as well as some other classics from previous albums, with a rare ‘stripped back‘ set consisting of just guitar, piano, violin and vocals.  Joining him for this incredible and unique performance were the very talented lead vocalists from his tour – Kelli Scarr and Inyang Bassey.

Available exclusively via iTunes.

ST BARTH DAY16 – Bye bye St Barth…

So, I’m closing this St Barth 2010 holidays report with this post.

It was always not easy to come back from St Barth, but this time, gosh…, it was even more difficult. These 2 weeks were so great.

Two pictures from the flight between St Barth and Saint Martin.

Saline beach and Petite Anse

 

Colombier…