Blog

You need a backup strategy and you need one now. Not tomorrow. Now. My Backup Strategy Many of us have had their hard drives failing, operating systems crashing or even people stealing their computers and hard drives. Murphy wasn't lying when he said "Anything than can go wrong, will go wrong". Unfortunately for me, Mister Murphy proved to be right more than once already. The importance of a good backup strategy can't be stressed enough . Because every month or so, somebody asks me how they should back up their data, I've written down what I personally do to try to avoid …

Mobistar simply doesn't get it I've been a Mobistar business client for many years and never had any real problems with them. That is of course, not taking into account the fact that I didn't have an affordable mobile data plan and there was nobody to speak to when I had questions about their services. Sure, you could give the Mobistar call center a call, but let's not get into that, unless you want me to play a piano and radio hit compilation for the next 35 minutes or so. I don't think I'm asking for much either. I make the occasional phone call, send a few text messages a day and …

Home offices and co-working spaces are growing in numbers. To me, it comes as no surprise that large corporations are losing workers to the freelancing and startup lifestyle. More and more people realize that there's only one life to live . Yes, that includes a professional life as well. You have one career ahead of you and you better make it into something you really enjoy doing. Otherwise, why do it? With freelancing comes the responsibility of marketing yourself. Traditionally that includes printing business card and setting up a cool portfolio website. Okay, we should also be on …

Today I was trying to set up my iPad so that I can connect remotely to my Linux servers in case of emergency. My servers only allow password-less connections via SSH keys , so I needed to set up those key pairs on my iPad and servers. When trying to connect from the iPad through iSSH or Prompt , I always got the message "Server refused our key", while I was sure I put the correct key into ~/username/.ssh/authorized_keys. But of course, when we thing we're right, Linux shows us we are not. Whenever you are having problems setting up SSH keys, make sure you tail or view the log file …

It's true. Life moves pretty fast and that applies especially to anyone working in the web design space where new interesting frameworks and techniques pop up every hour or so. I love creating applications and websites. But I also love teaching about what I've learned to aspiring web designers and developers in school. There's so much to do and so little time in a day. That's why it's important for me to slow down from time to time. Here are five things I do that help me balance my days. These activities purposely slow me down nd if you ask me, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. …

I've been playing around with Appcelerator Titanium lately and wrote a tutorial for the Dutch edition of Web Designer Magazine on how you can use the framework to build native apps for iOS and Android. The code I used throughout the tutorial is based on what I used to create the Pakfriet app , an app for iPhone that lets you locate places that sell typical Belgian fries. If you're interested in getting started with Titanium, check out the tutorial in Web Designer Magazine issue 49 . Happy reading!

Great things come from small countries and besides an overdose of tasty beers, waffles and Brussels sprouts, we're still quite proud of our fries here in Belgium. A frituur or frietkot as we call it here, is a place where you go to grab a freshly baked portion of fries. You don't find those friet-places like we have them here in Belgium in other countries, definitely not as often as you can find them here. For anyone fond of good Belgian fries (that's right, we don't call them French fries here), we've created a simple and free app for iPhone and iPad that will help you locate the …

Readers of this blog probably know about the free iPhone app that I've released just before summer called the I'm Fine App (thanks to @pascalculator for the birdie logo). The application lets your friends and family know (through email or Facebook) that you're doing fine or that you need help. This can be handy in several situations from going to a festival to going on a dangerous hike in the mountains. The idea for the app emerged after a heavy storm hit Pukkelpop - a large Belgian festival - and we were unable to contact any of our friends after panic broke out and the cell phone …

For web designers and developers, fresh inspiration is crucial to grow in what we do and to stay on top of our game. Here at GoodBytes, over the past few months I've been stacking up so much good stuff to read, listen and watch but I simply don't find the time to catch up on all that. Chances are that you are in exactly the same situation as I am. Let's do a little test to see if that's true: do you recognize any of this: you've been bookmarking articles that you'll probably never read, you have a text file sitting somewhere on your desktop with links to video's that you should watch one …

A few months ago, I was using Twitter under my own name @jorishens but decided that it would be better to Tweet under my brand name GoodBytes . Unfortunately that account or username was already taken on Twitter by a friendly guy who wasn't really using the account for anything. On top of that, GoodBytes was just his nickname, not his business name so I kind of wanted to get my hands on my Twitter name. If you are in the same position as me, I recommend you to follow the next few steps to reclaim your Twitter account. 1. Contact the owner of the account The first thing I did …