The Ewelike Blog

We’ve just released a brand new version of the holidays code base - holidays.ewelike.com - so you can more easily find the kind of holidays that you want.

we’ve…

1. improved the sliders so you can more easily find places with the kind of temperature you want.
2. made the table of information clearer so you can more easily see the places that may interest you
3. added links so you can easily find wikipedia information, hotel and / or flights that are relevant to you
4. made the icons clearer and cleaner so it’s easier to see at-a-glance if places are right for you
5. turned the list of places into an “autosuggestable” lookup - you start typing and we’ll try and find the countries or regions that you want.
6. made the “filtering” easier - so now when you see a country in the results table you’ll see a link underneath so you can expand or zoom in your search (see our examples later on or try finding places with sun for this month in Africa)
7. added an icon so you can easily find currency (and pick it up from the airport to avoid those last minute rushes to find dinar’s or rand or other currencies)

So, for example we’ve now simplified things so you look at a regional or country level.

This link shows Egyptian locations and their temperature this month

Looking for somewhere in Northern Europe with reasonable weather?

Want a fair bet on good weather, excellent service and cheap flights from Europe? - you’ll be wanting the caribbean (although watch out for the rain in October and November!)

We can’t wait to hear your feedback, so please be as vocal as usual!  and, if you find a good deal or the tool’s useful then please let us (and your friends of course) know.

We’ve added some new locations (hint: they’re in Greece!)

For those of you that have been observant you’ve noticed we’ve added a box on the far right hand side of the Ewelike pages so you can give us feedback and tell us which features you want adding next.

So, what are you waiting for?  Don’t be shy, tell us what you want and we’ll start working on those things.

It’s only been a day since we last posted and people have already requested things.

So, to answer those questions and fix those issues we’ve modified things;

1. We’ve re-enabled the “region” drop down that was on the original alpha code - you can now select (for example) “best temperatures in the caribbean in October”
2. The original example mockups showed the hosting countries currency code on it - that’s now back and we’ll take you direct our exchange rate partner (which incidentally we used the last time we left Heathrow on business - the money was there at the airport, we picked it up and flew off to Munich without a delay)
3. The “Regions” have been added to each entry so you can more easily filter information.  Against the country that’s found we’ve added the Regions it’s in (for example the “St Kitts and Nevis” is in “Americas” and “Caribbean”).  Clicking on those changes your search to utilise that Region instead (so you can zoom in and out of countries and regions)
4. We’ve changed the information-links to point to wikipedia until we can get better info ourselves.  This way you get great information and it’s free.
5. If you’re the kind of person who likes their holidays/trips cold then we’ve increased the minimum temperatures that you can search with (for example here’s a list of places to go in September if you like temperatures between -5C and 13C)

We’re approaching the end of the beta program for our holidays information site so we thought we’d extend it out to you all.

Holidays at Ewelike (aka http://holidays.ewelike.com) is our mini-app to help you decide where to go on holiday.  Here at Ewelike we’re all sick of the British and European weather, it’s constantly drab, wet and pretty depressing so we’re all aching for a holiday, the problem was that we couldn’t find anywhere we wanted to go.

So, we’ve built our site for our own requirements and we’ve been finding out it matches yours (well those of you that we’ve spoken to about the site) so it’s time for a limited launch and feedback exercise.

We’d appreciate if you could take a look and tell us;

• is it useful for finding places to go?  if not then why not?
• does it find the places you want to go?  (we’re adding more all the time but it takes quite a while to collate data!)
• would you like to see other search criteria?
• is it helpful to provide the wikipedia links directly?  or would you prefer more commercial links?

As ever we’ll look forward to your (forthright in some cases ) views.

Happy Holidays!

(and of course you can find your travel guides on ewelike.com to go along with it!)

Here’s some examples (and incidentally two of us are off and following this advice in a few weeks :¬D )

September weather / temperature / rainfall - over in Spain 

Difference in temperature / weather between London and Barcelona (no contest!)

Even Belgrade (Serbia) has better weather than London in September!

We already have a low-bandwidth interface for browsing ewelike on your mobile, but we thought iPhone users deserved something special, so we created an entirely new UI just for them.

iPhone users can checkout the new interface by going directly to ewelike.com.

(Yep, that’s the same URL everyone else uses. We couldn’t think of any reasons to use a different one..?)

Have a go and let us know what you think.

Here at Ewelike we like to make things easy for our users.  One of the trends (and requests) we’ve most often had is to support OpenID, well i’m glad to say we’re pretty near to making that happen.

For those of you that don’t know what OpenID is i’d suggest starting with their “what is OpenID” page.

We’ll announce once it’s in place (once we finish testing), but thanks to all of you that took the time to let us know your thoughts.  We like OpenID, geeks like OpenID and i’m pretty sure that soon it’ll be something that lots of people use.

We’ve added gadgets so you can quickly search ewelike.com and find all the things you want.

If you’re a Windows Vista user (who likes their sidebar) then download the Ewelike Search Sidebar gadget (for Windows Vista only) from Microsoft’s LIVE gallery, and let us know what you think.

If you have your own customised Google page then try the iGoogle gadget for Ewelike searching.

Links for all are also (of course) on the Ewelike Download Page.  Where you’ll also find the amazon page to Ewelike comparison tool / bookmarklet.

Thank you all for your input and ideas regarding the Folio Society Used Book Search.  We now know what else you’d like to see for this function!  We’ll be working hard to achieve the changes over the next few weeks so your searches for Folio Society books become even easier for you.

We’ve also amended the examples on the page to add a few more classic authors to the list (we noticed quite a few of you were looking for good Folio Society editions of The Prince by Machiavelli (the root of the word/term “machiavellian”) and they all seem to have been sold!).  If you haven’t read it then you should, it’s a really easy to read book and extremely interesting.
As ever, if there’s any ideas you want to share with us then get in touch!

Well, straight after releasing the new Folio Society Book Search Engine we decided to release our updated search tool.

As you’d guess it’s generally available on the Ewelike homepage and elsewhere.

We now take into account as much as possible of the search words that you give us and look for the actors, artists/bands, directors, authors etc. as part of the search which gives you a much better chance of finding what it is that you want.

Take a look and let us know!  We’re always happy to get feedback!