We’ve managed to do some serious optimization on the Fleck servers.

Building the new Fleck from scratch had a lot of benefits, but also a lot of new challenges. We wanted to come up with a service that is useful, easy and fast. The result is a much more scalable solution.

One of the problems we had was the conversion of the old database to the new one. This was done last week, but we noticed that the service was really slow and sometimes took up to 5 seconds before loading a page. Lennaert dove in the code, analyzed all queries with one sole intention, to optimize Fleck, to make it faster, a lot faster.

Yesterday he came up with a couple of solutions:
1. clean up the database (dah..)
2. pull some magic with the queries
3. delete unnecessary stuff

The result is that Fleck is up to 10 times faster than last week! with a load time under 100 milliseconds (Yes baby!)

Good work Lennaert!

P.S. Lennaert was inspired by a poster above his bed of our lovely Fleck Supergirl.

Servers are up again.

While our servers where indexing a table with 62 million URLs, we’ve had lunch and played some indoor hall way soccer . Sorry for the inconvenience.

Now back on track and working. We’ve managed to optimize the fleck servers to make it a lot faster, this should be noticeable when flecking websites.

Happy flecking

We have to take down the servers for the next two hours to do some necessary maintenance. Grab a coffee, call your wife, well enjoy your time when we’re off line.

Lennaert is coding as if his life is depending on it, so I expect to be up in 2 hours.

Update: it is taking longer then expected (as always). We’ll be back asap.

Last week we started to test the new version of Fleck with friends and family. This version is totally new, we went back to the drawing board with all feedback and experience from the first version of Fleck and I must say, apart from some nasty last bugs, I’m really proud of the All new Fleck and I can’t wait to let you in.

The idea and vision behind Fleck is that we use the web in a very inefficient way and that we can learn from our friends, colleagues or ‘experts’ you might not know. By collaborating and sharing interesting websites we can all benefit. Apart from sharing cool websites, the way you organize your information is also very important.

The first reactions were hopeful. Fleck will not only focus on reaching web2.0, web savvy people, but we want to build a service that is easy to use for ‘average’ internet users as well. This is not an easy task and we’re aware of that. The way we think of it is to build a great service and focus on improving the service and for instance educating our new users.

Over the next weeks, I’ll upload some screencasts on how to use fleck and its new features.

Some of the new features you can expect:
- work in groups
- friendcast your flecks
- search in multiple degrees of separation
- discover new interesting websites
- Comment on top of websites

Let me give you a sneak preview of the new design. Below you’ll find my profile page.

And here a flecked page

We’re looking forward to launch Fleck, to see and hear what you think of it.
Expect more next week.

Let keep in touch

Yesterday I showed the Fleck Beta iPhone presentation during my usual Sunday at de KoffieSalon to a couple of people. Afterwards I got the question if we have a tagline for the new Fleck…

A good question, a tough one….

let’s see, we came up with some ideas:

Web democracy
Fleck the web
Social bookmarking reinvented (again )
Turn favorites into fravorites
The interesting web
What is happening on the Web
Power to the people
The web is yours
The web the right way
Making knowledge sharing sexy (you need to have some sensual tint to it )
Fleck it baby
Share the knowledge
Find, discover, share
Collective knowledge
The best of the web
Web’s best
Everything is connected
The sum of all links is greater than the sum of its parts
Unleashing the power of links
Manage your knowledge
Reinventing the web (uhm, or was that FireFox…)
Managing your web knowledge
Your Internet PA
Commenting + Bookmarking = Comarking
The web through your eyes
Meet the Web

Well it is not easy… might be an idea to do a weekly swap of the tagline (or have no at all).

Its official. The Dutch version of Bowlr gets a big sister in the valley!

Bowlr.us

We decided to organize a Bowlr in the US as well, after the Dutch version was sold out within a couple of weeks. We rented a whole Bowling alley on the coast of the Pacific, a beautiful place for a crazy, fun and business wise interesting night.
We are really looking forward to through some balls there and we’ve heard that more Dutch startups will join us for the trip. It is a great opportunity to combine the good stuff with the necessary. We hope that the event will lead to a lot of new intercontinental connections for all of the participants. If you have an internet company or work at one and want to join, sign up and start practicing.

We already started training, so watch out… we’re fit! I wonder who can beat the white strikers…

Hope to meet you there