Overzicht van enkele projecten - Portfolio Bart Vangeneugden

I missed a mobile TV-Guide for Belgium. There were some mobile apps, but I didn't have a phone to support those. So I created my own mobile website that did just that.

• I used basic CSS in this example. I've tested this website across multiple devices (all working).
• I managed to keep load speed low by using image maps and compression.
• Site is easily traversable for search engines.

Me and some friends started a collaborative Twitter account. The point of it was to share music amongst us. So if you find a good song, just post it to the Twitter account, and it pops up in everyone's feed.
It soon became apparent that it was a hassle to log in/out everytime. And I also didn't want to use yet another Twitter desktop application. So I created a Twitter Bot.
Basically, it's a small application that runs on the Google App Engine platform. It behaves as a chatclient in Google Talk.
So in your favorite Google Talk client (like GMail), just add the bot. After doing that, you can give it commands to make it do stuff. Here's a list of things it does allready:

• Post to Twitter
• Automatically shorten links with bit.ly
• Show latest updates made to current account (my latest updates)
• Show latest updates from account XYZ (XYZ being a user you enter)
• Start following user XYZ (Again...)
• User Access Controler: only certain Google users can access the bot

It was a nice project to learn about the app engine. If you want some sourcecode, just contact me.

I really liked Mixcloud. It's a nice website, and a lot of great artists use it to post their mixes. But I missed one feature: podcasting.
I always had to go to the mixcloud website to listen to music. So I couldn't listen to any when on the road. So I fixed that - 17/11/2010
Taken down: Mixcloud kindly asked me to take the service down. They seem to pay royalties for the music. Letting somebody download files to their desktop omits these royalties.

promoties.be is website that indexes all promotions from all stores in Belgium. By offering a fast, easy to navigate website, the user can easily find content he/she is looking for.
This project was entirely assigned to me. This means I started with a concept, created a design in Photoshop, wrote the backend code in Java and coded the frontend in xHTML and jQuery. Here's a summary of my contributions:

• Concept: browse promotions via brand, store, category or folder
• Design: coloring, layout and interaction design
• Java backend implementation: write and optimize backend code for the website in Java (Struts2, Spring, Hibernate). Speed was one of the biggest markers here
• valid xHTML code
• Small but subtle jQuery code for easier interaction. I made use of the fantastic Fancybox and Masonry plugins
• Correct, cross-browser CSS
• SEO optimization

In this project, I especially learnt a lot about SEO optimization. For this, I could rely on advice from some internal and external SEO experts. I'd be happy to give you names - 10/01/2010

Focus for this project was entirely on SEO and time-to-market.
Living in a web where websites grow faster then mushrooms, the company had to act fast to beat their opponents.

I abstracted the backend from the frontend for the project promoties.be so the code would be easily reuseable. This gave me a couple of advantages:

• Time put in optimizing queries only had to be done once
• Reusing of backend code (Controller, DAO, Model) gave me more time to complete the GUI
• New features to a website can be easily ported to another website using that engine

Besides abstracting the application logic and businessrules, I provided a work method and project structure that could be used in future projects.

Using this engine, I was able to build acties.be in less then 2 weeks. This is mostly because functionality for this website is limited to using a Google Custom Search engine, and providing an easy traversable structure for search engines.

I was also able to use new HTML 5-based Microformats, or Rich Snippets to annotate the data in HTML. This helps search engines identify content easily..

My contribution to this project was:

• Design, as basic as it is :-)
• Project Management
• Java Development of back- and frontend
• HTML/CSS
• jQuery (UI) for user interaction

Jambooty is a document-sharing website. Anyone can upload their own publications to have it shown on the website. Users can also embed document viewers and small widgets that show their dynamic content in their own website, in order to promote their documents.

I started working on this project second-hand. The first part was developed by an offshore team. It was my job to coördinate this team in their developments. After they finished working on the backend of the project, it was my job to develop the frontend.

I started by creating a quick layout in Photoshop. I went over this layout/design with the management team back and forth untill we were all happy. Once finished, I created the website in basic mission-critical functionality first, as it had to be demonstrated at a conference. After this, functionality was added and added (and still is).

My share in this project:

• Project Management
• Design/Layout
• Java (Struts2/Spring/Hibernate)
• HTML/CSS
• Javascript jQuery (UI)
• FSI Server

"I Fly For Charity" is an initiative of the Alfa-line crewchiefs and the pilots of the 10th Tactical Wing in Kleine Brogel, Belgium.

The friendly pilots of Kleine Brogel started an initiative to help children with cancer. They send puppets of cartoon figures in sky (and even space) with pilots and sell them to the highest bidder. Profit will go straight to charity

We created a CMS and website where all activities from the charity could be followed.

My share in this project was the PHP/Javascript that went in the CMS and Administration backend. The HTML and CSS were done by a friend of mine.

Paul Jansen is an interior architect based in Hasselt. He asked me to create a portfolio website where he could upload his latest projects and pictures.

Paul wanted a Flash website so his visitors could enjoy some nice animations and eye-candy. I explained to him this could not benefit his Google results as (back then atleast) content in Flash movies could not be read by Google.
Therefore, I created the website 'dually'. Every page in the website has a Flash/HTML variant.

In this project, I did:

• Design
• PHP Backend using CakePHP
• Flash Development using ASAP Framework

For EDC London, I provide SEO consulting.

I also work together with the EDC team to improve site-usability and e-commerce value