Lots of thanks go to Steve for taking some decent photos. I just had the phone on my HTC which while convenient takes pretty rubbish photos in this sort of dim light. This also explains why Steve isn’t in any of the shots.

Marisa showed her american colours here with a game that was all about shooting cute animals in the head. Slightly worrying.

Bogdan enjoying staring into space. And the beer. Probably.

The men discussing important things. Or possibly just talking rubbish.

Leonard and Marisa dancing the night away

Marisa and Begona competing on the dance game

Too early!

We generally try and avoid having to take the site offline when we add new features or fix problems but sometimes it’s unavoidable.

Today we’re making some major upgrades to our database and need to take the site and associated tools down for about an hour.

Given that we’re now an international site this has to be done super-early rather than super-late (something I would personally prefer).

Hopefully we’ll be done and dusted while most of you are still tucked up in bed.

It reminded me of how good is to read about the how and what of our role as technology professionals, so I thought I would post some of my favourite technology books. If you haven’t read any of the following then I recommend that you do.

Dreaming in Code

Chandler was one of those projects that everyone dreams of working on. Total blue sky development, plenty of funding, no fixed deadlines and a great team. As an outsider to the project Scott Rosenberg’s telling of the story is a great read with lots of reflections on the industry as a whole interspersed to really make you think.

If you don’t find yourself shouting “Don’t do that!” at the protagonists a few times then you’ve not worked on enough projects (or have been lucky enough to only work on good ones!).

The Soul of a New Machine

Tracy Kidders Pulitzer winning book follows the project at Data General to build a 32-bit Mini Computer called the MV/8000. It show the incredible dynamic of building a team who cast themselves as against the world. Another team in the same company is working on a project which rings like the Chandler team (too much time/money/over-ambition) and a group of mostly young graduates are fighting to prove they can build something better. Really gripping.

Microserfs

Ok, this book isn’t a pure technology type book but it is the one that made me want to be a programmer. It follows the adventures of some ex-Microsoft programmers who start a games company. It really gives you a feel of what working at a startup can be like (my career has been startups pretty much all the way). Douglas Coupland spent a good amount of time hanging out with programmers before writing this and it shows.

Founders at Work

This is a collection of interviews with technology founders from a very wide span of time, from proper old skool (Steve Wozniak) to some of the Web 2.0 darlings. A few years old so there’s no Zuckerberg or Biz Stone but so filled with truisms about being in early stage companies it is a must-read.

There is a companion book Coders at Work which I’m not so fond of. I think it shows that I’m not a true programmer at heart. Don’t tell anyone (although my team knows already I think).

Joel on Software

I’ve been a big fan of Joel since the early days of his blog JoelOnSoftware. His musings on both the building of software and the work culture that comes with it is invaluable in understanding our discipline. You can read all his articles online but the book is still recommended.

Hackers and Painters

As with Joel this is another collection of online posts, this time from Paul Graham, one of the founders of ViaWeb (which later became Yahoo! Stores). I don’t agree with everything he says (especially when it comes to Lisp vs every other language ever invented) but he really does know what he’s talking about. I’m a big believer in development as craft and through experience have become pretty anti-corporate. This is a point of view very much espoused by Paul and his book will definitely make you think.

Don’t make me think

I haven’t actually read this but our primary web developer Chris says it’s really good. Chris also likes scandinavian metal though so…

The Mythical Man Month

Ok, I’ll be honest. I haven’t read this. But it is quoted so often I fell like I’ve assimilated the main premise of the book anyway. Adding programmers to a late project makes it later. And you can’t make a baby in a month if you use 9 women. Something like that. Please feel free to throw mud in my direction if I’ve missed the point and I promise I’ll get a copy and read it.

Last month we sponsored the June DevTank meetup at the wonderful office of moo.com. As is normal on such occasions I massively overestimated how much people would drink. The result being that we have approximately 120 bottles of lager left over.

So this month we’re sponsoring again with the aforementioned leftovers. And some proper beer. And some pizza. And some fruit type alcoholic drink thingies. And some more pizza. Did I mention the pizza?

The lovely Huddlers have arranged some great speakers again. The PR one is definitely of interest as Huddle seemed to have nailed that one pretty well. Looking forward to it.

The agenda will be as follows:

6.30 – 7.00 Arrive and grab a beer
7.00 – 7.45 Ovid, “Why Ruby, BETA, Java, C#, Eiffel, Dylan, CLOS, and Python FAIL at inheritance”
7.45 – 8.30 Beer, pizza and chat
8.30 – 9.15 Lucy Wimmer, “Making your startup newsworthy”
9.30 onwards adjourn to the pub

You can see full details and sign up on the meetup page. There are still a few spots left.

The blog has been rather quiet of late. All my fault due to being on vacation for the majority of July!

There will be some more interesting blog posts coming in the next week or so but I though it important to post in recognition of the hard working admins who keep Wahanda running for today is Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day!

Actually that includes the whole tech team including myself so please feel free to buy us beer and biscuits.

*The picture above is a bunch of plugs created as fallout from another great tradition – the conversion of vendor supplied euro plugs into uk plugs.

If you have a profile with Wahanda we will link your bookings to your account as you make them.

You can now see a history of all your orders and promotion codes we’ve sent you in your profile!

Orders

You can access all of the bookings that you’ve made with us. If they’re eVoucher or MobDeal bookings then you can also access your eVouchers.

This is pretty useful if like me you suffer from occasional random email deletion episodes. They’re there, you can’t lose them.

Promotion Codes

We issue unique codes for you to use against bookings when you invite friends or as part of special marketing deals.

At Wahanda we want to spread the word about beauty & wellness, which is why we want to reward all our members for inviting friends, and give your friends a welcome discount off their first purchase.

With the latest release of the site we’ve added a new mechanism that makes this incredibly easy to do. You should see the sidebar shown just to the left which links to your invite page.

On the invite page all members now have a URL which is completely unique to them. This can be easily shared with friends to introduce them to the fantastic deals and offers available on the site.

When someone using an invite url signs up to the site we make a note indicating the profile who refered them. At the point a booking is made with the same email address we will issue a voucher code to both profiles! This is currently £5 in the UK or $10 in the US.

To make sharing easy we’ve included links to Email, Facebook and Twitter.

To get started jump straight to the invite page!

We’re pleased to announce that we will be co-sponsoring this months DevTank meeting with the lovely people at Huddle and Moo.

Wahanda will be providing Beer and Pizza.

The agenda will be as follows:

6.30 – 7.00 Arrive and grab a beer
7.00 – 7.45 Alastair Mitchell, CEO Huddle.net, “Raising money – what the VCs don’t tell you”
7.45 – 8.30 Beer, pizza and catch
8.30 – 9.15 Bill Ray, “Google App Engine with Python and Java”
9.30 onwards adjourn to the pub

You can see full details and sign up on the meetup page.

Up until now we only supported the use of the promotion codes when buying deals or the wahanda voucher. Now when you get a code for writing a review you can apply it directly to MobDeals too.

Once you’ve clicked this link the form will appear into which you can type your code or copy and paste from an email.

Currently if your promotion code is more than the value of the MobDeal then it won’t work. This will be fixed very soon.

When we first implemented profile management we tried to follow the model whereby the page would look the same regardless of whether you were viewing the private or public version of the page. On the private view you would simply have additional links next to all of the editable content which would take you to the relevant form to change that content.

After 12 months of trying to make this work we’ve changed tack. This mainly came from the positive feedback we’ve had from suppliers using the Venue and Product Management tools but also from some of the reported confusion with the integrated interface.

The new interface is in many ways a more traditional application. The menu on the left gives you access to all of your information, which is editable on the right.

The various sections are as follows:

Dashboard
Currently this only shows the core points information and your completion status. We’re working on adding a lot more rich information here to help you see how your profile is being accessed by customers what more you can do to increase your visibility.

Your Profile
These are the core forms for managing your profile details. Therapists, professionals and consumers share these attributes so this is a common view.

Professional Details
If you’re signed up as a therapist or other professional then you can access the more detailed information about your practice here.

Your Content
Any questions, answers, reviews you’ve posted to the site are shown here. For those of you who are posting blog content to the site we’ll soon be adding the ability to manage this here too.

This is only the first iteration of this so expect a lot of new features to appear over the next few months.

eVouchers

If you’re currently selling your own vouchers via the site you may be interested in our latest option for simplifying the customer experience. If you don’t have the option of sending our physical vouchers but still want to sell deals directly to the public this could also be the option for you.

We’ve taken the eVoucher model that’s been so successful with the MobDeal products and allowed it for all 3rd Party Vouchers. This means that on checkout a customer has the option (if available) of selecting to have their voucher provided electronically. This is especially useful if they’re not looking to buy a gift but simply to access a great deal and use it immediately.

If you’ve already run a MobDeal you should be familiar with our eVoucher:

To take advantage of eVouchers let your account manager know and we’ll get you set up.