News
03-08-2010 ... New Design
Although this website has been a source of Paris-based information for English speakers since almost ten years now, the Promenades section that was supposed to be its heart has been dead in the water for over four years. The reason for this was a combination of an increase of my professional activity and the difficulty of creating maps for this web application.
There have been many technological advances since this website's first years - namely mobile phone web access, the iPhone, the iPad, GPS, AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3 - so I will be rebuilding Paris Promenades to reflect the new ergonomics that emerged with the appearance of larger/smaller monitors and tactile screens. The modifications I hope will provide an experience that will be seamless between all hardware supports.
The most major change will be to the promenades themselves: they will be shown on the Google Earth API, and will no longer be pre-determined from the outset. The map itself will take a major percentage of your screen architecture, and the accompanying texts will appear only as an option. The visual and travel experience will take priority.
I will be working on this through the month of August (at least), and will be posting the beta version when it is ready. I hope you, dear viewers, will be here to help me develop this website into a clean, ergonomic machine that we can all enjoy.
Best,
J.M.S.
10-12-2008 ... Still alive?
Dear All,
I know, this site looks dead in the water. It's not - but it's one of many half-completed projects I've accumulated over the past years. Paris has always been a passion of mine, but unfortunately, due to my fashion/reportage/portrait work with Harper's and Vogue Japan, the development of the Matphot website and catalogue, my full-time employment by the same company, plus my development of a secure photo-archival/transfer service for the same, I frankly haven't had the time to complete any of them. This site has been sponsored by the Marie de Paris' APUR organisation since summer of last year - they are the kind providers of the coordinates for the on-the-fly generated maps you will see in the future version of this website.
I've decided to go "full-page-flash" for the next version - I'll be using the (now open-source) Adobe FLEX technology viewable through any flash player. I also intend to pay much more attention to the look and feel (ergonomics) of the website, all the more for your browsing pleasure and my ease of maintenance.
I hope to have much more spare time from the first months of next year, and am looking forward to resuming the photographic promenades that were perhaps the most zen moments of all my eighteen years here in Paris. On that note, perhaps as an 'aside', I'd like to announce that, upon my 38th birthday (coming the 26th of December this year), I will have lived more than half my life in Paris. Tempus Fugit!
09-09-2007 ... Total Pause - server move
Dear All,
I hope that those of you who still find the existing site useful as a "fact resource", because I have simply not had the time to add anything to it! I'm totally revamping it into a "database-only" version that is going full-screen (for better map perusal), and moving the entire works to another server of its own. This takes some time and work, and with my photography and other website projects (www.matphot.com is my latest) I just haven't had any time to myself at all. Please bear with me - the site "machinery" is almost done.
29-12-2006 ... New Font, New Look
22-11-2006 ... Okay!
Good news - I've just concluded a partnership with the "APUR" - atelier parisienne d'urbanisme. The plan you will see in these pages is theirs - and in exchange you may see some of my photography in their pages. I'm quite happy with this deal since we're both non-profit organisations.
The above is the concluding affair in the decision about this website's final format - we're going the "full stretch", meaning that you will be able to expand your browser window (and the plans within) to the full width of your monitor screen if you like, as that cramped "all-in-one" fixed-width rectangle will be no more. Gone also will be the different "versions" - there will be one version based on the plan, with the corresponding text underneath.
There will still be a photo gallery, but this is undergoing a transformation as well. Storing (already hundreds) of photos was problematic, and finding them even more so, so we're going "database" from here. This means that you, dear reader, will be able to search for images by keyword.
I've other developments in mind - namely my "street project" and a front-page blog - but more on this when it is finalised.
Cheers,
J.M. Schomburg,
Paris, France.