Diesel Stations - myGasFeed

We been working on improving and updated myGasFeed(www.mygasfeed.com) by fixing bugs and adding one important feature which are diesel prices. This feature will be helpful to many current consumers who have diesel vehicles or users planning to purchase one in the future. Especially with the lack of diesel pumps and diesel vehicles catching consumer's attention we are sure this will be a helpful feature.

Updating a price is simple by selecting regular or diesel and automatically it will update the price. If a new station needs to be added you can check the option that 'contains diesel pump'. Users can only view stations that contain diesel pumps with one click of a button.

Our next step is the iPhone app for users to update gas prices on the fly. Other mobile apps like Android and Blackberry is in the to do list.

So again we hope you find myGasFeed useful and please submit as many gas stations that you know or any prices you come across. Even if it's just one station which good enough to help others finding gas prices and stations near by. Feedback or suggestions would be appreciated to improve the application.

myGasFeed.com - 1st Phase

Some of you may not know but we just launched web application called myGasFeed(www.mygasfeed.com) where consumers can post current gas prices in their local neighborhood.

As we all know gas prices has increased over the years and every penny less can help our wallets in the long run. Of course driving all day around in your local neighborhood trying to find the cheapest gas price is not the best way. Instead we just drive up the first station we see and fill up. MyGasFeed.com is a great tool that can help us find which gas station nearest to you currently has the cheapest gas price.

The application has two easy ways to search for gas stations. First way by clicking anywhere on the map. Exactly at that location all gas stations will appear at 3km radius. The second method is by selecting by cities and districts and the results will appear on the map. Either way you choose, once the results appear just click on the red pin icon and the information will appear. Check for example below.



Adding a gas station is easier than you think. We are amazed what Google Map API functionalities are available for us web developers to develop these tools. Again a map will appear according to the city and district that you selected. By clicking on the location on the map an actual street view will appear making sure this is the right location. If yes then just click on add. Check out a screen shot below.



Right now the web application is in the beta stage. Of course more features will be developed in the near future. Here are a few features in mind:

1. Able to follow certain stations & receive email updates.
2. Accumulate points receiving free gas money.
3. Posting prices automatically to your facebook or twitter status.
4. An iPhone & Android app.
5. Gas Prices for diesel.

We hope myGasFeed will be useful to many users and our goal is to built a strong community. Hoping this will force gas stations to lower gas prices. So let's begin adding and updating your local gas stations and helping each other save gas money!

Any feedback and suggestions please email us at: info@jgsolutions.ca

Enjoy!

Forte Import Canada Launch

We are proud to announce the launch for our client's new website Forte Import Canada (www.fortecanada.com). They are the leading manufacturer and supplier of a whole range of different, decorative and high-quality PVC products(made in italy), offering solutions to any residential or commercial improvement and specific customer needs. The three main products they provide are PVC wall panels, folding doors & shower doors. Eventually the website will contain a section of photos of their show room which right now they are in the process of setting up.

The website development began in Dec 2009 and was completed in May 2010. Developing the website was not complex but we needed to organize the data with the help of our client to display their products. The experience of building this project was interesting as we ourselves discovered quality products that this business supplies.

On the technical side we first used Adobe Photoshop to come up with some layout design samples that gave our client a choice and an idea. Once the designs were approved we began creating the HTML & CSS and imported them all in cakePHP framework that managed the server side. Next step was creating mySQL database to hold all the products information. As we entered the data we worked on the display of their products which was the most important concept of the site. We used Yahoo YUI library to have the tab component integrated which helped us separate the different types of sub products which made it easy for the user to navigate through the products (ex: http://www.fortecanada.com/en/products/ecopan/PVC-wall-panels. We also used the carousel component to display a photo gallery of their products which each image loads dynamically (ex:http://www.fortecanada.com/en/products/trompe_oeil/images-et-trompe-l'oeil click on images tab).

The last step was SEO (Search Engine Optimization). An important aspect for for web marketing to help Google, Bing, or Yahoo rank the website and increase traffic. There were different techniques we implemented for example adding keywords in the urls and the page titles that search engine's crawler can pick up. We also implement these keywords within the meta tags (keywords & description). For the website to increase in search ranking which will take time but of course we will keep monitoring and making key changes.

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog and look out for future projects coming from JGSolutions.

P.S Good luck to Forte Import Canada.

New Homepage Design

Well as you can see we revamped the homepage. Maybe some of you haven't see the previous design but either way we hope you fine our home page attracting. It's probably not much detail but enough to let you know who we are and what we do. This is the key to our site.

The interesting feature we added was the carousel which works like a slide show. With this feature implemented we can post up new clients web projects, specials or events. Every so often the slide changes or you can force the change yourself. This carousel is a component from the yahoo ui javascript library which we use many in our other projects.

We removed the orange and gray boxes and made the boxes with a white background as it is much cleaner and easier to read. We found the two previous boxes stood out too much and it felt too busy. We also added a blog section which pulls the most recent blogs and helps our users get to our blog section much easier and quicker.

This is only the beginning. We will be modifying aspects of our site and also planning a new design. But in the mean time we have current projects and clients to finish up. Enjoy your stay!

Happy Easter!

We want to to wish everyone a Happy Easter. Hope the Easter Bunny is nice to you and all the little ones enjoying their chocolates :)

Have a good one...Enjoy!

Montreal In Need of a Website?

Most of you might not know our Montreal website Montrealis.com(www.montrealis.com). For those who don't know what Montrealis.com, it's basically a business directory/portal website for the island of Montreal. The project was launched in late 2007 and it was also redesigned in 2008. Until today the site hasn't been updated or maintained but it has been always in our minds for a redesign. Local businesses until today are still submitting their free business listings and we get about an average of 100 visitors per day.

Montrealis.com needs to be redesigned not only graphically but with new features. There aren't too many favorable websites for Montreal. You might come across a few websites to get information you need but then easily forget about it. Of course Montreal news is always important information to have which the internet is flooded with sites.

At JGSolutions we want to create a Montreal website in a different direction other than just news updates or a business directory. We have a few ideas in our minds but not sure which ones are acceptable to develop or what you Montrealers need. One of the features we want to create is an aggregated type feed where users can follow certain businesses they are interested in while local businesses post up events, news or specials. I am sure people will think that this will be another typical twitter but there are a lot more details we are not mentioning.

Some people may disagree that Montreal does not need a website which is acceptable. Negative opinions are fine to be heard.

So please take the time and let us know by emailing us at info@jgsolutions.com or comment below. Tell us what you think might be some cool features to have for a Montreal website.

HTML 5 Our Next Challenge...

The web is changing very quickly and here at JGSolutions our next exciting challenge is learning HTML5 & CSS3. Right now most of our projects use HTML4 & CSS2 which most of the web designing firms are using anyways. The question is how quickly will we begin implementing this version of HTML in our projects. The new version of web browsers are beginning to support html 5 (IE8, Chrome, Firefox 3.5) but still many web users are still using older browsers like IE6, IE7, Firefox 3.0. According to the co-editor of HTML 5, Ian Hickson, we might have to wait till 2022 for the final proposed draft of HTML5.

Google is actually beginning to implement HTML 5 in their projects like google wave. Also youtube actually has a html5 beta verison for users to test which is http://www.youtube.com/html5

So what features does HTML 5 have? Well we won't get into technical details as we are learning it our selves. Also we don't want to bore you. So here are 2 features...

The first feature is the video tag. Video tag allows you to play videos without adobe flash player. The advantage is that you don't need to install any plugins and uses less cpu power. Youtube's html 5 beta as we posted above is perfect example.

Second great feature is having a container with rounded corners without having to crop images and using css to place them. For developers that was a huge headache and usually roll our eyes when we hear the 2 words 'rounded corners'. Thank god for HTML5 making this feature easy to use.

There are other technologies that we developers can use to develop web applications which is Flex. Flex is based on flash player which you can create slick web apps but then again it's heavy on the browser. Also another good reason why developers would shy away from Flex is that it's not free. Especially apple not wanting to support flash on iPhones and iPads gives a good reason for a developer not to develop flash apps which makes HTML5 the best option. HTML 5 is free and runs on any platform.

But until then we are excited to start learning and maybe soon we can implement it our future projects. Of course we will blog about this topic again once we dig our hands into HTML 5.

Until then stay tuned!