A representative of Bose contacted me in July 2009, explained it was unacceptable that one of their customers bought a faulty product. I was absolutely positively suprised by the way they handle complaints. It shows they really care and make efforts to improve. I had the privilege to experience the new version of their in-ear phones again.

ps. I’ve been meaning to write this updated review last year but due to circumstances I wasn’t able. This did allow me to test the headphones more throughly

Why did I buy their in-ear headphone?

The quality of sound is important to me. High sounds must not be shrill and the bass must be full. The BOSE in-ear headphones were the first headphones I heard to fit my requirements. Looking at the price and description of such headphone, I can only assume it will fit my requirements.

2nd impression

This time the box contained more than before. In bold are products that weren’t in the previous included in the previous model:

• in-ear headphone
• carrying case
• lanyard
• clothing clip
• 3 sizes of in-ear silicone tips
• audio cable
• neck cable

The sound is still wonderful. I really enjoy the full bass sound.

The clothing clip helps prevents the cable, where it splits, to break everytime you pull the audio cable. Where the silicon tips used to fall off easily, it now is attached to the headphone more tight. It is not easy to lose the tips anymore.

These were my main issues and I am very happy to see them solved.

Extra silicon tips can now be ordered from their website around 5 EUR.

Conclusion

It is very clear to me that Bose has tested this product and improved its usability. All issues I complained of, and I’m sure others as well, in my previous post were addressed.

A quick round of throwing numbers:
Sound: 8
Product quality: 8
Usability: 8

Major improvements to the product… Thumbs up for Bose!

It has been a while since I updated my blog with, what I find, share-able posts. My life as a student can be quite hectic but now I found the time to concentrate on writing about a very fruitful period of my life; my internship with Touchnote.com.

After I left my previous internship earlier I gave myself 3 weeks to find a paid internship in London, else I’d go back to Holland to find one.

I applied to several paid internship jobs in London as web developer. A web dev agency was interested and Touchnote, which I found on GiveMeaStudent (disappeared all of a sudden).  It took me a few days to decide with which company I’d like to work with. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. In the end I chose Touchnote for it was closer to home (still quite far though), I enjoyed my communications with them, having a smaller team I expected a more personal approach. Touchnote was interested in meeting me so I arranged an interview asap.

My first English job interview

Obviously I had a horrible Dutch accent but my interview with Touchnote was very pleasant. I spoke with the CEO and the lead developer.  The chat with the lead developer was interestingly perfect! The type of questions asked by him gave me an idea of their way of working, professionalism and their knowledge regarding web development. What they could offer me was exactly what I was looking for! Now I just hoped that I could offer them what they were looking for. I was quite insecure to be honest. I had no portfolio to show that I am well or reasonable capable of using PHP, MySQL, CSS and HTML. I could only explain what I knew and did, what my experiences with PHP were sand what I wanted to learn.

After a week I heard the good news! I could stay in London!! Yeh.. now I couldn’t wait to get started.

The dev team and me

Feeling a bit insecure I hoped to be able to live up to their expectations. They sure lived up to mine. I got all the support I needed; during work and for school. I made some errors and felt very ashamed and I also made successes. The dev team was always open to my questions as well as to my suggestions. They were very clear in their expectations and in explaining different things. I could ask the same technical question like 3 times and still they wouldn’t be fed up with me

Due to my previous internship experience I actually expected not to be taken seriously because I was just an intern. To my surprise; my suggestions, ideas and opinions were taken seriously and I was more than just an intern.

I worked with new tools to help with the development of the website. I learned new coding tricks and more about Cake, JQuery and 3rd party API’s. I had the chance to apply my own SEO skills and on top of that I learned new, never heard of before, SEO strategies.

I tasted a bit of how the lead developer plans projects in an Agile, SCRUM, way; how to realistically estimate the time of each project. From start to finish I experienced how a lead developer manages it’s team and how he can get desired results from its team when time is limited. How to look at problems and how to try to tackle them. This is definitely something I’ll always take with me if I ever get a leading or managing role of any kind in my life. His managing capacities to me are a very important lessons, so is everyone else’s role within the company.

I’ll remember the deployment evenings/nights. The days working towards them were hard work but the deployments were always good fun and usually came with pizza or snacks as well

The rest of the Touchnote team

I am surprised how everyone in the company communicates very well and clearly. I think I always knew what everyone was up to, everyone was always well informed, we knew how the paths forward looked like, what the next steps were, what expectations are and no surprises other than good surprises. It is very fascinating and again very important entrepreneurial lessons for me. Examples of good behaviour is very important for my learning progression

Never was I asked/demanded to get coffee for the team never did I felt being treated as “the intern” or “the student”. Such a delight!

I was offered to stay after my internship but decided to go back home and continue school. It wasn’t an easy decision but school is something that has priority now. I just want to get over with it first.

Conclusion

I honestly could not have hoped for a better internship. I learned a lot; gained real practical experience with a professional company. It was fun and gave me more confidence in my role as web developer. Every person in the whole Touchnote team is very devoted to the company, hard working, professional, reasonable, fun, well mannered, respectful and friendly. What more does one need?

I sincerely hope that any future web dev intern will have similar positive experiences.

Thank you Touchnote Team!!

Side note to all students looking for internship in London

Key is to search well and thoroughly, apply to different internship jobs… It is possible to find decent, good and even paid internships if you are determined and know what you are looking for..don’t compromise in that! If I am able to accomplish what I was looking for then you sure can too.

My personal points of improvement

After this experience I thought of new challenges that I’d like to pursue.

Obviously some more web development skills; website architecture, JavaScript (or JS libraries), advanced CSS. I quite like to learn more about ZendFramework and more more hard core Linux commands!! That is so awesome.

Believe it or not. I quite like to be a (junior) project manager at least once in my life. For that I seriously need to work on my English communication skills; explaining technical situations to web novices at any time. Be able to clearly explain situations: what do I expect and what is happening, what do I do and what are my expectations.

I’d like to become more British in how I communicate so more British accent is coming! Bye bye Dutch accent.. Tot ziens!

More photo’s can be found on my Flickr account

Motorcycle licence in London works a bit different than in the Netherlands. There are different types and the basic one is the CBT (Compulsory Basic Training

With just a CBT you are allowed to ride a bike/scooter with restrictions. The CBT is a training day where you learn to control, make manoeuvres and ride the bike. The restrictions are max 125cc, you have to ride with L-plates, no Motorways.

As soon as I have the money, I’ll go for my full licence to get rid of the L-plates and maybe, just maybe buy a bigger bike. But for now I can not imagine selling this beauty for the next few years…

What can Touchnote do for us

Who doesn’t like to receive a personal card? Everyone likes to receive a greeting, anniversary, birthday, thank you, I love you or a “just to say hi” card from friends and family. Stores have racks full with cards you can choose from for plenty occasions. But it is now time for an other type of card, the delightful little Touchnote card!

Touchnote is all about personalising your card

Use any photo you have stored on your computer for your card. In the card creator you can also drag speechbubbles onto the photo to make it more personal. A few example cards using my own photos:

On the inside you can write your love message, greeting, thank you note, invitation or life story. Also unlimited smilies, hearts and mugshots with your webcam can be inserted into the inside of your card to compliment your message!

Don’t have photos on your computer anymore? An other key thing on Touchnote is that you can login into securely login into Facebook or Picasa. Choose a photo from one of your albums and personalise your card.

Touchnote is Web 2.0

Though people already start talking about Web 3.0, being a semantic and more personal way of experiencing the Internet, the Web 2.0 bubble is still present.

One of the key things of Web 2.0 is bridging the gap between the offline world and the online world, or standing inbetween these 2 worlds. So what place does Touchnote occupy in this Web 2.0 definition?

Well, lets see..

1. Online: You can use your own photo’s to create a personalised greeting, birthday, you name it card.
2. Offline: Create a personalised greeting, birthday, you name it card with one of the photo’s you take with you mobile phone.
3. Inbetween online and offline: This really is unique! Once you created and sent the card using your mobile phone (or online), it will be posted for you to anywhere in the world! How neat is that?

Go on and try it too! Check their website to see which mobile phone’s they currently support. There is also an online demo available. More support coming for other mobiles soon!

Note that the Touchnote for Mobile is the only Ovi Store app that ships a physical product.

Now you know what Touchnote is.. don’t be afraid to send a card yourself… click!

“2 free cards on www.touchnote.com coz it’s summer! Valid until Sunday. Promo code: 2-CARD-WEEKEND Please retweet!”

Yes, this means you can send 2 free real postcards to your friends, family, lover(s) … secret lover perhaps even?

You got to be quick.. this promo code lasts till Sunday.

I will send one to a friend who recently visited me in London.. still thinking to who I will send the other free postcard…

Now..finally it is time for some fun stuff in the real world!

The world outside studios92′s littlestone hotel is so different! I feel free and I have air to breath.. So, what have I been up to so far?… well…

My life here so far is so unlike my life in Holland. I live in a quiet part in London but I live so close to the busy city!

Extended travelling time to work…

In Leeuwarden, where it took me max 15 minutes cycling to get from home to either work or school. It only takes 8 minutes cycling to the city. In London a trip to the city takes me at least 40 minutes. A trip to my future work in Camden takes me at least 1 hour. That is a drastic change. But if I wish to live in London, sacrifices have to be made. Sacrifices which I enjoy to make.

Get close to the women or man of your dreams…

I thought the trains in Holland could get crowded from time to time but that is nothing compared to the rush-hours in the London Tubes. Wowohwow!

If you never been close to a women (or a guy) before then this is your chance to get very close to one! Get into the tubes at rush-hour. It starts around 18:00 and can last a few hours.

Tube rush-hours are fascinating in a way. Everyone stays so positive, no complaining or whatsoever. Hm, I wonder if anyone found their current partner during a tube rush-hour.

If you are claustrophobic, DON’T GET IN during rush-hours!

What have I seen / done so far?

I did some other things besides visiting the obvious like Museums, Picadilly circus, Trafalgar square, Oxford street, Millennium bridge, Harrods too. I slept a lot (is one of my best hobbies) and… I bought a desk to do my coding. I feel so at home now with my talented and dear friend retrofantasy

Searching for a paid internship as web developer

It took me 2 weeks to find several matching companies. Those were 2 relaxing but very exciting weeks. I could finally take it more slow and catch up with all the things I had to miss the last 4 weeks. It was exciting because I had set myself a deadline. I would return to Holland if I couldn’t find a company before April 8th.

I found a few paying companies for an interview. The first job interview was directly a hit: Touchnote.com! I found Touchnote through GiveMeAStudent.com: A company dedicated to bring together highly motivated students with companies. I was slightly nervous during the interview with the CEO and Elwood (Lead web developer). My conversation with Elwood was very enjoyable. Finally someone talking web dev lang to me!  I was very pleased by the type of questions he asked me as I believe they reflect the web dev activities I want to be involved with.

After the GO I cancelled other planned job interviews and that is it. Search is over.. I CAN STAY IN LONDON!!

An update about Touchnote soon.

Movies – Cinema’s .. YaYaY

According to my well respected ex-colleague: “You have to go to the cinema in London. They are HUGEEE!”

Which one..which one? I have not yet seen the bigger halls. Perhaps a visit to the cinema’s in Leicester Square one day.

Movies seen so far:

1. Slumdog millionaire – 8/10
2. Bolt (3D) – 6/10
3. New in Town – 5/10
4. Surveillance – 3/10
5. Watchmen – 8/10
6. The boat that rocked – 8/10

My first time to a ballet show: Swan lake

…was to Swan Lake!  with a very elegant and talented lady I met during my internship with studios92.. (pssst, it was her first time as well)

I like classical music. Ballet (and movies) seems to get along with it quite well.

The play was quite enjoyable with costumes of the middle ages. Looking at the stage made me think of a middle age live painting mixed with one of Claude Monet’s paintings of Water Lilies. The focus was on the main characters. The minor characters were moving around, but not too much. Just enough to not distract and plenty to make the painting feel more alive. The colours used were very bright and flourishing, very pleasing for the eye.

And the music was great too. Unfortunately I could not see them play (sat too high) but a live orchestra is much more enjoyable than listening to a CD version. As Marina said: “It  lifts up your soul” .. it sure does.

Next thing I’d like to see is an Opera play, Phantom of the Opera perhaps?

Chessington – Zoo and amusement park

Aah..we finally met again! The Dutchies from studios92 and me. It felt good to see them again.

All of them are one by one good people! ..and Nicole (on the very left), she is amazing! I envy her! She speaks and writes CHINESE! I feel embarrassed being around her :p

Check check for more photo’s of this day.

Well, family and friends (and enemies).

You are up to date now.. thanks for reading..

Wish you a very lovely, fruitful and enjoyable day!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Please do not forget to visit Touchnote.

The main subjects covered:

1. User experience on the web (Dutch spoken)
2. Flex and AIR for PHP programmers (English spoken with a Romanian accent)
3. Javascript: 8 Reasons every PHP developer should love it (Dutch spoken)
4. The frontend is your best friend (Dutch spoken)

The slides showed during this event are included in that post (soon).

This is my report of that day!

Read the article here:  phpGG Frontend event 2009 report

7 facts about me

1. When I am down nowadays, sad or just not happy I don’t eat lots of chocolate, get myself drunk or use drugs. I buy stuff, electronics mostly. Anything really, as long as it has a nerdeh or geekeh factor! So, this means I have collected quite some electronics the past few years.
2. When it comes to love, I don’t care for gender neither for age.
3. I am not a fan of touch screen mobile phones. My favourite mobile phone is a Blackberry and my 2nd most favourite is the Nokia 3310. Sigh, those were the days.
4. I was horrible as a kid! At age 4 till 11 I bullied every kid where and whenever I could. I wanted to fight with them and be the strongest little girl in the street. Now that I am older I now understand why I bullied others. No worries, I don´t bully any more (I’m quite the opposite of a bully now)… unless I lub ya!
5. I don’t often use perfume. But when I do, I either use Lacoste Booster or Aqua di Roma Uomo. Yes you are right, both are GUYS fragrances. I also like Roma Uomo but this one is too guyish for me to use. I have yet to find myself a girly perfume that goes well with my own odour :p
6. I LOVE to sleep late (sleep out??), especially with a lovely person besides me. Nothing more wonderful than slowly wake up together. And oh.. I hate getting out of bed in winter…
7. My 3 favourite cars to have are: Volkswagen Bora, BMW 320d and the Alfa Romeo 156. I think I will start with a black or silver Volkswagen Bora.

..and I tag…

1. Bravebunny -  My ever so respectful, motivating and inspiring collegue. He is my PHP guy as he is one of the few people that makes me want PHP more and more..
2. Mike van Riel – for having the guts to say hi to me at the eduvision php conference (while we have never met). For being warm and open to me while I had only a slight idea who he was. And for helping me to setup Zend Framework.
3. Dreis – for being the first female PHP’er I have ever met in real life.
4. Retrofantasy – for being the sunshine in my thoughts and dreams. And for being Wo Ai De Ren for more than a year now.
5. …

Zhe Seven Things Rules:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some wierd.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Dutch version:

“Het nieuwe jaar is van start en om dit goed te beginnen start phpGG met een frontend evenement. Dit evenement is bedoeld voor developers die zich met client-side technologie bezig houden. Het is niet alleen voor PHP Developers, maar ook voor frontend developers, en voor iedereen die te maken heeft met frontend, in welke vorm dan ook.”

Read the entire entry on phpGG.nl

~

English Version:

“Today the Dutch PHP Usergroup announced their first event of the year. Instead of a regular meeting, we’re going to take a bit more effort and we’re introducing the phpGG Frontend Special on january 24th!”

Read the entire entry written by Skoop

Title: php|architect’s Guide to Enterprise PHP Development

Author: Ivo Jansch

First edition: June 2008

ISBN: 978-0-9738621-8-8

Publisher: php|architect nanobooks

I consider myself to be a newbie when it comes to profesional PHP web development. Sure I know how to CRUD, procedural-, object oriented development on a limited level, frameworks, functional designs, database designs, technical designs (all on a limited level). So yes, I know something but is my knowledge enough to be able to stand in the world of the real professionals? Therefore I might think and mention some stuff that is not related to enterprise. Please correct me whenever you come across such err.

What the title suggests to me

I think this book will guide me on how to become a PHP developer on an enterprise level.

For some reason I think everything discussed in this book is what every Ibuildings developers knows, but that is just an assumption. This, perhaps romanticized, idea does make me want to become a developer of Ibuildings or any other company that creates applications based on the knowledge shared in this book. I’ll make that a requirement of a company before I apply as a web developer anywhere.

I expect to be introduced to sources, like books or websites, and coding techniques of how to actually code for an enterprise web application. I expect to be able to measure my level of skills compared to professionals by this book.

This book is seen through the eyes of a newbie…!

Oke, enough wandering, lets get on with it…

My life and Ivo’s book

This book took me by the hand and lead me through the different important facets in a software development life cycle. It is interesting to read that only a few things mentioned in this book is taught at my school, like functional and technical designs. This book was a major source of inspiration for me during my current schoolproject. As I could test my knowledge in the group. I realised I was slightly annoying when it came to functional or technical designs as I wish them to be a little more perfect than the others. Ivo’s book confirmed that my desire for a certain perfectionism is nessesary in real life situations for a successful application on large scale. What better situation is there to test this in a dummy environment like school?

After reading this book I partially regret that I have not chosen the subject of software engineering. But the freedom of my current subject is fun as well, I might say that what I learn is business knowledge that might come handy in web based software projects. As we CMD’ers need to look beyond the software. Most of the time we deal with the audience of the application.

Ivo’s book

Chapters that were most interesting to me, simply because most is new to me or Ivo addressed bits that I wish to learn more off:

4. Requirements gathering

5. Planning

6. Architecture

10. Development

11. Quality assurance

12. Optimization (eg. Micro optimizations)

To me, one of the strong things in this book is the part about PHP succes factors and challenges. I have read different articles of people writing about why PHP is a failing language. When you read an article like that, it becomes obvious that these folks are PHP haters. Reading the challenges from a PHP evangelist is nice though. He is honest and doesn’t mask the challenges PHP will be facing.

I so love his part about “Being an Attractive Employer”. Even non technical employers should read this! The outcomes is not only better for the worker, but for the employer as well: win-win.

I like how Ivo addresses the ‘start from scratch’ or reuse components. As a noob I figured all companies wrote major parts of their software themselves. So a new world opened for me. Now I know that it is perfectly ok to reuse other apps that allow me too.

The planning the project proces part in chapter 5 is an eye opener as well. Most of the projects tend to last longer than planned and Ivo points out what the cause is and how you can prevent it.

Just like my current education thought me, Ivo confirms it: the preparation of documenting, determine the architecture, is always important in large scale projects.

And there is so much more that interests me! Just read the book and you’ll be as well.

Concluding thoughts

I wish school would teach me about the things Ivo mentions, like subversion, the architecture of large scale web applications, testcases, unittesting, debugging and source control. Unfortunately this is not yet going to happen, so I have to teach it myself (with the help of the #php_bnl guys at freenode.net).

Guide to Enterprise PHP Development is truly is a guide and nothing more than that, and certainly not less. Codingwise it doesn’t get into much details and I have not been able to measure any of my PHP skills yet. To do so I will have to read books that focus on these things.

This book hightlights the aspect that comes with web development on an enterprise level. Ivo will show you some tools he knows and lets you choose which one to use. I order to really work with the software, you will need to consult the manual of that software as this guide only point at it with a brief note about it.

Dutch Summary

Specially for all Dutch PHPers out there, I wrote this for a phpGG newsletter a few months ago:

“It is not about the code, it is about taking PHP beyond the horizon”

“PHP is ready for the next level”. Wat houdt dat in, en hoe merken wij dat? PHP wordt op steeds grotere schaal toegepast en voor steeds grotere projecten gebruikt. Ivo’s boek gaat niet over het bouwen van huizen met legostenen, of het bouwen en onderhouden van een stenen huisje. Het gaat over het bouwen van skyscrapers, en daar komen verschillende aspecten, die een zeer belangrijke rol spelen, bij kijken. Ivo leert je hoe, en naar welke aspecten je mo et kijken om er voor te zorgen dat deze skyscrapers de test der tijd kunnen doorstaan. Kortom, wat komt er allemaal kijken bij een PHP enterprise? Ivo’s boek kun je zien als een samenvatting van die aspecten. Ivo betrekt je bij alle aspecten die komen kijken bij het opzetten van een enterprise, en verwijst je naar informatie die dieper op de stof ingaan. [Kana Yeh]

~

Sofar my first book review..  I hope you like it and if now then I definately need more practice 

This exact review is posted on my PHP website as well