Haven't done many Team Zoji blog updates for a while--Dan and I have been working on a lot of stuff that's either behind the scenes (Dan's recent server upgrades), or various bug fixes and usability improvements that are really too minor to blog about. I figured I'd post about some of the more notable minor things we've done in the last couple of weeks, just so you are aware of them (you'd be surprised how many little things people never notice).
In order of probable interest to you:
- One-click ignoring of notifications and events (notice the little X's in the What's New and Your Events boxes on your homepage)
- You can now view Back Talk comments past the 10th one!
- You can also view and post comments from the "all pictures" page--just click on the little voice bubble icon. Should make it nicer to keep up with comments on event pictures.
- Friendly URLs for event pictures (of the form http://www.zoji.com/kevin/events/12345/pictures). You can use these to send a link to a funny event picture to a friend, for instance.
- Restrictions on sending z-vites to groups--this was necessitated by a few recent z-vites that abused the ability to invite groups. We now restrict the size of, and how many groups you can invite to an event. While this might not exactly sound like a "feature" people who didn't appreciate getting z-vite spam will probably appreciate this. :)
- Fixed that nasty private comment bug where changing a comment from public to private didn't get rid of the notification.
What's next?
We've got some really cool stuff coming up.
For starters, up till now, the only skins available on Zoji have been, well, designed by programmers (us), and people with a discerning eye could probably tell. :P But pretty soon, we'll have some interesting and creative skins done by someone with actual design skills. :) We've hired a graphic designer, Jacob Haskins, to create some z-vite skins for us. I'm pretty stoked about his work so far. We should have several ready to roll out probably by the end of the week or maybe next week at the latest.
Picture tagging and favorites. I'm starting on a feature that'll let you link people to pictures--from a given picture you'll be able to see who is in that picture (with links to their profiles), and likewise, from a person's profile you'll be able to see all the pictures that they're in (we'll have privacy controls for people skittish about these kinds of things ;). Other cool possibilities would be for me to be able to find all pictures with Dan and me together, or other such combinations.
A related feature that I plan to incorporate into it is the notion of "favorites". You'll be able to tag, for instance, an event picture as a favorite. From then on, you'll be able to see all your favorite event pictures from your profile page, sorted by event. Using favorites you'll be able to create your own sort of virtual photo albums of your favorite pictures from an event. No more needing to save an event pic to your computer, then re-uploading it to your personal pictures. From an event page, you'll be able to see which are the most favorited (and therefore popular) pictures. Maybe we can tie this in with picture exporting, and let you download a zip file of your favorite pictures.
Dan's got all sorts of server upgrades in store, which I won't even pretend to know much about. I know hardware and Linux distros like I know the back of...uh, Dan's hand, which is to say, not very well. :P But I'm sure Dan will fill you in as stuff happens.
Visibility: Anyone
Some of you may know that we've been planning to migrate Zoji off the Shuttle rack-o-blue-lights to more industrial-strength rackmountable servers. The Shuttle mini-computers were cute, but not really meant for hardcore computing and 24/7 operations. Also they're getting a bit old and slow, so this upgrade/transition makes sense. Having real servers should boost Zoji's stability and performance. So this is what we'll be doing over the next couple weeks.
Tonight we rolled out the first step of this migration: the Zoji web server. The new web server is now running Ubuntu as the operating system, as opposed to our old RedHat. In case you didn't know, Ubuntu is a really popular Linux distribution that has a lot going for it. As a newbie to Ubuntu, I was thorougly impressed with how easy it was to install and upgrade packages. I'm pretty excited moving forward with Ubuntu as our new platform.
Shout goes out to Robin and JetPeach for their Ubuntu support!
So what's the net result for you? Hopefully, nothing. You shouldn't notice any bugs or differences, but please give us a shout if you do experience something wonky with this new setup.
Ubuntu!
Tonight we rolled out the first step of this migration: the Zoji web server. The new web server is now running Ubuntu as the operating system, as opposed to our old RedHat. In case you didn't know, Ubuntu is a really popular Linux distribution that has a lot going for it. As a newbie to Ubuntu, I was thorougly impressed with how easy it was to install and upgrade packages. I'm pretty excited moving forward with Ubuntu as our new platform.
Shout goes out to Robin and JetPeach for their Ubuntu support!
So what's the net result for you? Hopefully, nothing. You shouldn't notice any bugs or differences, but please give us a shout if you do experience something wonky with this new setup.
Ubuntu!
Visibility: Anyone
It's been a while since we've blogged, and I'm sure all of you have been dying to know what we've been up to in the last month. ;-) Well, we've been doing a lot of little things--bug fixes, minor features and usability issues, performance improvements, hardware maintenance and upgrades...nothing by itself that would justify its own blog entry, but all important stuff nonetheless.
Well to satisfy your curiosity, and so you know we're actually working for our ramen and bacon, here's a condensed list of things we've done in the last month (some of the more obscure stuff omitted for the sake of your attention span, and my fingers), from newest to oldest.
Stuff that might interest you
Stuff that might bore you
To save myself some typing I'm just going to lump bunches of these together and be annoyingly vague:
Finally
You might have noticed that a large portion of our improvements in the last month have been z-vite related. It's no accident. If you've seen the login page in the last couple of months, you're probably aware of our new focus on event invitations. We think, and others have told us, that z-vites are our best feature, and we think the way to put Zoji on the map is to focus our time and energy on the thing we do best.
You can continue to expect more z-vite improvements coming up. Likewise, we are keeping our focus in mind when prioritizing feature requests, bug reports, etc. from our users; in other words, it's more likely to get done sooner if it's a z-vite related request. This also applies to the Zoji Suggestions tips--we're going to have to balance the "bigness" of the tip with the needs of the site, so sorry if some of your more highly-requested non-zvite-related features go on the back burner for now. However, don't let that discourage you from suggesting it anyway! I just wanted to let you know the current state of things.
Well to satisfy your curiosity, and so you know we're actually working for our ramen and bacon, here's a condensed list of things we've done in the last month (some of the more obscure stuff omitted for the sake of your attention span, and my fingers), from newest to oldest.
Stuff that might interest you
- You can now see who has already declined an invite to a group when inviting friends to it.
- All events now have a "friendly" url (i.e. www.zoji.com/kevin/events/12345), and a visibility setting (anyone, or invitees only). Nuked the notion of events having a "public URL"
- There's now a handy dandy link to find books, movies, TV shows, and video games on Amazon.com for more information on an item or to buy it.
- We've shortened all of our encrypted (i.e. non-friendly) URLs--whereas before they were quite long, now they typically fit on one line in z-vite emails.
- A bunch of z-vite bug fixes and minor improvements:
- Added a more obvious way on a z-vite to change your timezone if it's incorrect
- Z-vites now distinguish between people with the same first name
- (bug) We were creating a new location in your list every time you cloned a z-vite
- (bug) When editing a cloned Z-vite, the invited list wasn't alphabetized
- (bug) When submitting a cloned z-vite with an error, it'd wipe out your invite list, picture, and background
- (bug) After previewing event, some invitees (non-friends) would be lost
- (bug) cloned event roster would include people who uninvited themselves
- (bug) After cloning an event you might auto-friend people on the invite list.
- Improved security: if you accidentally forward a z-vite email or other email with a link that auto-logged you in, we'll now prompt for your password if it's a computer you don't normally log in from. Prevents you from shooting yourself in the foot.
- Added an "add friend" link next to other z-vite invitees. If you met someone at an event, your connection to that person will now be that event--so if you view your friends list, your connection is now a link that will take you to the event where you met. Just another step in more tightly integrating z-vite functionality with the rest of the site.
- Private event search: you'll now find a little search box on your calendar and event list pages. Use it to find that event from a year ago without having to page through hundreds of events.
Stuff that might bore you
To save myself some typing I'm just going to lump bunches of these together and be annoyingly vague:
- Z-vite URL bug fixes
- performance improvements to our DB caching and front-page load times
- prettied up the non-logged in "organize event" page
- contact groups bug fixes
- prettied up the latest tips (added pictures)
- fixed duplicate people in now online box bug
- no longer hide the Notes field on the create tip popup
- fixed sporadic errors viewing event pictures
- removed Zoji Peeps and Groups from the home page
- made after-event comments easier to read on black background
Finally
You might have noticed that a large portion of our improvements in the last month have been z-vite related. It's no accident. If you've seen the login page in the last couple of months, you're probably aware of our new focus on event invitations. We think, and others have told us, that z-vites are our best feature, and we think the way to put Zoji on the map is to focus our time and energy on the thing we do best.
You can continue to expect more z-vite improvements coming up. Likewise, we are keeping our focus in mind when prioritizing feature requests, bug reports, etc. from our users; in other words, it's more likely to get done sooner if it's a z-vite related request. This also applies to the Zoji Suggestions tips--we're going to have to balance the "bigness" of the tip with the needs of the site, so sorry if some of your more highly-requested non-zvite-related features go on the back burner for now. However, don't let that discourage you from suggesting it anyway! I just wanted to let you know the current state of things.
Visibility: Anyone
Happy Tuesday everyone!
You probably noticed the new look-and-feel of the front page before logging in. Yep, this reflects the fact that at least for now, we're gonna shift the spotlight on event invitations as the main selling point of Zoji. So for the last couple weeks we've had some stuff cooking which you invite-makers will probably find handy.
Voting on Event Times
If you go to the organize event page, you'll see a new checkbox option to allow voting on different times. What's this all about? Say you're organizing a get-together, but you're not sure exactly when, let's say it could be 8PM Fri, Sat, or Sunday. Previously you'd have to send out e-mails, or post a bulletin to get a feel for what works best for people. And you'd have to mentally sort and keep track of everyone's schedules. Hmmm sounds like something a computer would be good for! :P
Kev thought so too. Thanks to him, with Voting on Event Times, you create the Zvite, then you suggest different dates/times which people can vote on. The Zvite technically doesn't have a date yet, it shows up on a separate section of your event list. As the votes come in, you can easily see what times work for people and which ones don't. When you feel enough votes have come in, you can finalize plans for the event, basically choosing one date to go with. At that point, e-mails get sent out telling invitees the event has been finalized, and it works like a standard Zvite from that point forward.
Hopefully this should eliminate some bulletin and e-mail chatter, and bring much-needed organization to these types of situations when they happen.
Google Image Picker
When you're creating a Zvite (or a group!), and you want something other than the default grey image, it's kind of a pain to look around the Internet, find an image, download it to your computer, then upload it to Zoji. Now a lot of these steps can be eliminated. On the group and Zvite page, you'll see a new option to Find a Pic on the Web. This pops open a Google Image Search, you put in the keywords you're looking for, hit Search, and Zoji talks to Google Images to give you choices. Simply click on an image you like, and it will get uploaded to Zoji. No need to download pics to your computer anymore.
Location Lookup
Say you're creating a happy hour Zvite. Currently one annoying thing is you have to look up the restaurant/bar information to get the address, phone number, etc. It's not too difficult since you can search for this info on Zoji, but you still hafta have another browser open and copy-and-paste the information.
This is now made easier. On the create Zvite form you'll now see "Lookup an address", you type in the keywords, and Zoji will try to find restaurants and bars that match what you typed. Once you find what you're looking for, click, and all the address information auto-populates the form.
A side benefit of this is that this allows us to better integrate Restaurant and Bar Tips with Zvites. On the Zvite you'll also notice a link to "see tips" if there have been reviews on the location you chose.
Also, on the Zvite page, we made some layout changes to consolidate information in attempt to make things better organized. Of course everything here is in a state flux so don't get too used to how things look :)
Zvites Zvites Zvites! :P Give these a shot and let us know whatcha think! -ShennyD
You probably noticed the new look-and-feel of the front page before logging in. Yep, this reflects the fact that at least for now, we're gonna shift the spotlight on event invitations as the main selling point of Zoji. So for the last couple weeks we've had some stuff cooking which you invite-makers will probably find handy.
Voting on Event Times
If you go to the organize event page, you'll see a new checkbox option to allow voting on different times. What's this all about? Say you're organizing a get-together, but you're not sure exactly when, let's say it could be 8PM Fri, Sat, or Sunday. Previously you'd have to send out e-mails, or post a bulletin to get a feel for what works best for people. And you'd have to mentally sort and keep track of everyone's schedules. Hmmm sounds like something a computer would be good for! :P
Kev thought so too. Thanks to him, with Voting on Event Times, you create the Zvite, then you suggest different dates/times which people can vote on. The Zvite technically doesn't have a date yet, it shows up on a separate section of your event list. As the votes come in, you can easily see what times work for people and which ones don't. When you feel enough votes have come in, you can finalize plans for the event, basically choosing one date to go with. At that point, e-mails get sent out telling invitees the event has been finalized, and it works like a standard Zvite from that point forward.
Hopefully this should eliminate some bulletin and e-mail chatter, and bring much-needed organization to these types of situations when they happen.
Google Image Picker
When you're creating a Zvite (or a group!), and you want something other than the default grey image, it's kind of a pain to look around the Internet, find an image, download it to your computer, then upload it to Zoji. Now a lot of these steps can be eliminated. On the group and Zvite page, you'll see a new option to Find a Pic on the Web. This pops open a Google Image Search, you put in the keywords you're looking for, hit Search, and Zoji talks to Google Images to give you choices. Simply click on an image you like, and it will get uploaded to Zoji. No need to download pics to your computer anymore.
Location Lookup
Say you're creating a happy hour Zvite. Currently one annoying thing is you have to look up the restaurant/bar information to get the address, phone number, etc. It's not too difficult since you can search for this info on Zoji, but you still hafta have another browser open and copy-and-paste the information.
This is now made easier. On the create Zvite form you'll now see "Lookup an address", you type in the keywords, and Zoji will try to find restaurants and bars that match what you typed. Once you find what you're looking for, click, and all the address information auto-populates the form.
A side benefit of this is that this allows us to better integrate Restaurant and Bar Tips with Zvites. On the Zvite you'll also notice a link to "see tips" if there have been reviews on the location you chose.
Also, on the Zvite page, we made some layout changes to consolidate information in attempt to make things better organized. Of course everything here is in a state flux so don't get too used to how things look :)
Zvites Zvites Zvites! :P Give these a shot and let us know whatcha think! -ShennyD
Visibility: Anyone
You may have noticed a lot of temporary service outages with Zoji in the last few days. Dan's been fighting valiantly to diagnose and solve the problems, which we now think is a hardware issue. Dan's removed the offending piece of hardware from the equation, and we hope (and pray to the hardware gods) that it'll be the end of our outages.
Our apologies to any users who have been inconvenienced by this.
Our apologies to any users who have been inconvenienced by this.
Visibility: Anyone
Very legato...
Hey guys! I really like the program but would like to recommend a couple of updates:
1) As the host of an event, I'd like to be able to add comments for people who tell me verbally whether they are coming or not, but haven't entered the info on the evite. I can only enter my own yes no or maybe for myself. So the tally isn't really accurate, and others can't see who is really coming or not.
2) If you create in invitation, and then change your mind about the design of a draft and want to cancel the design, it sends an email to everyone you intended to invite that the event is canceled before they even got the original inviation.
These were a few difficulties I had in using the program for a birthday party. Thanks for your help.
As for changing the design, you don't really need to cancel it. It's pretty easy to edit (you can "edit the event").