Tag: Tools

Last week I released a complete rewrite of WittyProfiles.com.  The goal of the rewrite was to reduce the database load and cache as many queries as possible.  After about a week of monitoring, database load is way down and an average of 92% of MySQL queries are in memcached.  The best part is that the users are happy with the increased performance.  I guess it was worth taking the 6 months to transform 7 years of clunky PHP functions into modern object oriented code.

Back in August 2009 I created Giftputer.com. Giftputer uses crowdsourcing to find the perfect gifts given age, sex and personality. This project uses Amazon.com RSS Feeds, the python Universal Feed Parser, PHP and MySQL. Giftputer was designed to be a useful tool during the holiday shopping season and to bring in a few bucks in Amazon referrals.

Here's hoping for another 10 years of stuff from DeGraeve.com.

A Geek Chart is a web badge that shows where you share stuff online. Each slice of the Geek Chart is a link to your profile on sites like Flickr, Twitter, Youtube and more. What does your Geek Chart look like?This is a project I did to learn Python, brush up on ActionScript 3, experiment with ATOM and RSS feeds and play with memcached. The user and chart data is stored in MySQL tables. PHP is used for the front end. Surprisingly, there is no JavaScript in this project (yet). The idea was to use as many skills as possible to build something semi-useful that would impress future employers.

YumGifts.com is a site that I built while experimenting with the Python Universal Feed Parser and Amazon.com feeds. It displays the top selling gourmet food items. The site updates hourly.

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CubeStatus.com is meaningless project that spits out recent Twitter Tweets (cringe) mentioning cubicles. What is special about CubeStatus.com is that the entire idea and development process lasted only 4 hours. I thought of the domain name, discovered (to my surprise) that it was available, purchased it, updated the name servers, set up hosting, learned the Twitter API and threw together a little page with jQuery. I'm bored.

Earlier this year, I rewrote the inner workings of WittyProfiles.com, a website I created way back in 2003. I optimized a lot of the backend code and added a number of new social network features. The new features led to more usage, and more confusion. After listening to a lot of user feedback and questions, I redesigned the site to make it easier to use. In the end, Witty Profile's bounce rate went from 45.0% to 24.9%, pages per visit went from 6.7 to 10.6, average time on site went from 7m:42s to 12m:25s and daily page views went from 30,000 to 100,000.

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