Mobile World Congress. Em. Double u. Cee. I finally find myself using the official abbreviation, after holding out for a long time still calling it 3GSM, like an old timer. Back when it started in Barcelona five years ago, it was a different beast. Back then, all the buzz was about highly technical network stuff I didn’t really understand. But there was a promise that it would make mobile internet fast, really fast. Well, I’m not so sure that we have a fast – really, really fast – mobile internet connection anywhere near Barcelona, or that I could afford it if it did.

So fast forward to 2011, and one more MWC – this time around it’s tablets, tablets, tablets… I am writing this on my ipad, finally cutting edge technology even I can understand. Used to be a time when 3GSM MWC week was the only time of the year I didn’t feel completely awkward about carrying two blackberrys, speaking into one, while writing messages on the other… at the same time!

A chance encounter with cool blogger Rob Kerr on Sunday night – his light light up while he tells me and a friend about the new Xperia Play game phone he just saw at the SonyEricsson presentation, and I’m hooked. There might be something in it for me, after all.

As anyone who’s ever innocently tried to book a Valentine’s day getaway to Barcelona on the expectation that it is the middle of February, so low season, and couldn’t find an apartment in Barcelona or anywhere nearby knows, this is the highest week of the year in the city. It is an incredibly busy week, everyone is in a rush to set up their booths, go to meetings, tweetups, more meetings… and did I mention the parties?

We often get requests from clients ranging from recommending a catering supplier, delivering a package to our office or getting a hair dryer. All in a day’s work. But what in the world do you tell someone who asks you for a submarine??

Monday 17:00 I walk through the gates of mobile nirvana, only a couple of hours to get my fix. Good. Don’t wanna overdo it, there’s still three more action-filled days to go.

Free as in free beer, courtesy of Miyowa

Special thanks to Markus Lonka and his great crew at Mixem Solutions for generously providing a pass to MWC.

Barcelona is world famous as a city that emanates culture, creativity, art, trends and design, elements that combine and interact to trace the particular style of an international brand.

Pic from last edition of BCN Design Week

In the last 25 years, the city has become one of the favourite bases of operation for architects, designers, photographers, illustrators and creative professionals from all over the world.  These artistic professionals have turned design into one of Barcelona’s signs of identity, adding to the talent already in place, an building on the legacy of universal artists such as Gaudí, Miró, Tàpies or Brossa to name but a few.

After putting on one of the most impressive Olympic Games ever, Barcelona confirmed itself as the ideal context for major international events and launched itself as a benchmark city in the world of new trends and design.  The power behind all these activities lies in the creativity and enthusiasm of its inhabitants and the thousands of new residents, who arrive every year and choose it as the ideal city to live.

The famous Barcelona Chair and Footstool by Mies Van Der Rohe

In line with Barcelona’s design fever from October 18th to 22nd, the city celebrates the BCN Design Week, organized by BCD (Barcelona Design Centre), an international business-focused congress in the field of design that annually attracts companies like Google, HP, Vodafone, Microsoft and internationally renowned speakers like Ezio Manzini from Politecnico di Milano or Víctor Grau chief of D-Lab of MIT (Masachussets Institute of Technology) who offer attendees the opportunity to learn, share and dive deeper in topics like mobile design or design for the Networked Cities.

With the slogan “Facing new challenges through design”, this new edition is committed to giving new impetus to the creative minds and entrepreneurs to successfully tackle the difficult current situation.

Pic from one of the DHUB's exposition

As part of the BCN Design Week initiative, the DHUB (Disseny Hub Barcelona) offers its permanent exhibition manufacturing laboratory, and Full Print3d, to the congress’ agenda. Located in Marqués de Llió palace (Moncada street, 12) DHUB is a center dedicated to promoting awareness, understanding and good use of the design world but can not be considered as a museum or a design institution, as its name suggests.  The new space is set as a hub for all the design proposals to be carried out in Barcelona.

What do you think about de future of design? please, comment us

One of my favorite games as a child was to discover buried treasure. Of course, you needed a gang of like-minded ‘mates a couple of spades… and a treasure map! Before you knew knew it, we’d dug up half the garden and half the lovely old lady nextdoor’s garden too. The time we got really lucky, we dug up a couple of worms, and kept them to go “fishing” the next day.
Flash back to reality… now that we are all grown up, the romance of the treasure hunt remains entrenched in our hearts. So what better way to pay tribute to our childhood memories than by creating a treasure map of our own?

So we at bizFlats did just that, we created a map with all our properties on it so you can quickly find an apartment in your favorite area of Barcelona. It’s still in beta, so if you see anything strange happenning, be assured we’ll work to sort it out. Have a look at the map below

The new bizFlats Map View

Pinpoint your exact requirements

You can add and remove the apartments in any area of Barcelona. Likewise, you can add and remove the types of apartments most suitable to your requirements. Then click on a property’s icon on the map itself to get the vital statistics and a picture in the nifty little bubble.

Atop the map you can see a list of apartments too, which is especially useful when you seek out multiple apartments for a big group, all in one location.

Toggle to your heart’s content

Now you can see your chosen apartments either on a list – the traditional way – or on the map. When you include the dates of arrival and departure you’ll get the prices too. So just click the tabs at the top and toggle back and forth as much as you like. Soon, we’ll add a synchronization so if you make a change to the list, you’ll update the map and vice versa.

The treasure of a lovely stay in Barcelona is right here waiting for you to find it.

Do you have suggestions on how to make the map tool even better? Is there a particularly useful tool you have found on another website that you’d like to share? Tell us in the comments below

Finally, I mustered up the courage and took the time to write my first post. Do read, enjoy, comment, curse to your heart’s desire. If I like the experience, maybe I’ll write even more … you have been warned!

Ever wanted your website to be more profitable?

Nowadays, websites for hobbyists, are well, just for fun; everything else is serious business, so undoubtedly turning a profit is first and foremost. How can you know if you’re not leaving money on the table? One sure way is to tweak your website to get more revenue from each visitor. Making simple changes can lead to large increase in conversion rates and profits.

Google’s Website Optimizer (GWO) probably needs no introduction by now, but let’s say that it’s a tool which allows you to test changes to your website scientifically in a controlled environment, before fully committing them, thus saving you from the painful mistakes of just following a gut feeling. I know from firsthand experience that can hurt, bad.

I won’t go into the gory details of how GWO works or how to set up experiments since google’s documentation covers that pretty well. However, I will say that if you can use just one tool to make better profits from your website, GWO is definitely the one. Heck, even optimization guru Bryan Eisenberg says he’d take it to a desert island!

Joomla + GWO = $$?

No doubt you answered yes, so please continue reading.

Joomla is a brilliant CMS, but it’s never been easy to set up GWO experiments with it (I won’t even mention an infamous extension that would bring your site down when it misbehaved). Nonetheless, ever since Barrie North’s seminal article on using Google Website Optimizer in Joomla, legions of us began to use GWO, and our websites just keep getting better.

Ah, but we have a problem!

You’re all fired up and ready to test, test, test your website all the way to stardom and riches. You copy & paste all the codes, create your page variations, check it all out and launch the experiment. All confident, you go about your routine and come back a few hours later…. and nothing, zip, nada. GWO is not recording any visits to your site. What went wrong?

You check your page’s source code where the tracking code appears

 Joomla version 
if(typeof(_gat)!='object')document.write('<sc'+'ript src="/http'+

but that ain’t what it’s supposed to be – this is

 GWO original 
if(typeof(_gat)!='object')document.write('<sc'+'ript src="http'+

notice the extra “/” inserted by joomla.

You go into a frenzy and start looking up the answers

• You could turn off SEF, but you worked too hard for your search engine rankings to do that.
• You could alternatively patch the SEF plugin file, which is quite techie and might lead to other problems

The Solution is Here

Frustrated from having GWO experiments fail on me, I decided to take action. The solution was so surprisingly simple, that I couldn’t believe no one had published it before. I sure spent quite a while searching online just to make sure, but as I suspected, I couldn’t find it anywhere.

Here goes (drum roll)…

Take the GWO tracking code and look for this snippet

if(typeof(_gat)!='object')document.write('<sc'+'ript src="http'+

then modify it on both the experiment and conversion joomla pages to

if(typeof(_gat)!='object')document.write('<sc'+'ript src="'+'http'+

That is a single quote, plus sign, single quote. This avoids joomla’s SEF inserting the “/” character in front of the “http”, thus rendering the tracking script invalid and foiling your experiment. It works equally well for A/B and multivariate experiments. We’ve tried it in several browsers and the javascript works just fine. Maybe Google will change their script code to everyone’s benefit, but in the meantime…

Three characters. Short, sweet. Anyone can do it. So indulge, optimize to your heart’s content!

What’s your experience with GWO and joomla ? Do you have great tips? Do share them in the comments.

Epilogue

You might be thinking to yourself  “What is an article about Google Website Optimizer and Joomla doing on a blog about the coolest places in Barcelona?” Honestly, I thought the same thing myself. It’s the way we at bizFlats are giving something back to the community we have learned so much from.