L.A.B. Unleashed

I am obsessed with the potential that LBS solutions pose.  I can see clearly how applications such as Foursquare and Gowalla have an underlying power beyond gaming, and I am excited about the synergies with what we are creating at TaskRabbit as well.

Since Foursquare and Gowalla seem to be neck and neck, I realized that our cross country drive, will give me a unique opportunity to assess the scale of each product. I’ll be passing through over 3,000 miles of highway, stopping off at major metropolitan areas such as Nashville (for my sis’ wedding!), St. Louis, Denver, Salt Lake City, etc. Not to mention all the tinier places and rest stops along the way – maybe even a giant ball of string or two.

So here’s my plan. At each stop, when I have the unmanageable urge to check in and get a new badge, become a founder, or pick up a virtual taco, I will do so on 2 applications – 4sq & Gowalla. At each point, I’ll measure how many other people have checked in at that location and in the end, I should be able to tell who has the better reach across the country over all.

You can follow my experiment on twitter, as I push out my checkins and updated stats along the way.  There are obvious differences between the two products, so this will just measure the amount of scale and reach these applications have across the nation.  I personally have a favorite, and would love to hear your thoughts as well.

It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks.  It doesn’t even feel like weeks … its feeling more like months, but everything is moving so quickly.  Not sure that makes any sense at all, but I am sure that there is probably someone out there that can relate!  Please give me a shout-out!  

One of things I am most excited about for RUNmyERRAND is the UI overhaul we have got up our sleeves.  We are working with a brilliant graphic designer, a self proclaimed "user advocate", named Eric Sagalyn.  Super talented and works quickly, which is important for our situation.  We got our first peak at the new design late last week and it is just so thrilling!!  Finally, my true vision for the site is going to start shining through.  As a software engineer, my expertise is in back end coding, algorithms, and feature development.  I can do the UI, I’ve learned a lot of CSS, but I certainly am not a self-proclaimed "user advocate"!  I did what I could while I was bootstrapping to get the first cut of the website launched, to prove the model, and now I can finally work with an expert to convey the magnificent beast that is in my head.  So keep an eye out for an exciting new look and feel coming soon!

The other great feature that I believe is going to add a ton of value, is our new Blackberry Application.  The code was merged late last night, so this is the first day it has been live.  Take a peak … all feedback is welcome!  We did a ton of testing on different simulators, but would love to hear how everything is looking on the real devices.  We tried to just make everything really simple, not graphic heavy, so that it will load fast and be useful.  Just like the iPhone you can: Login, Post an Errand, Run and Errand, Purchase Credits, and Mark Errand Complete.  All the basic, most important functionality is there.

In the words of Finding Nemo … "just keep swimming" ….

I have been absolutely slammed lately with meetings, and in desperate need to find a solution keeping me organized on the go!  My IT guy turned me on to Google Sync for my iPhone.  I was looking for a solution that would allow me to access my calendar from anywhere and then also keep everything coordinated from my iPhone.  I have been super impressed with the technology … anything I punch into my iPhone syncs OVER THE AIR with Google Calendar and visa versa.  It really is a complete solution.  The only problem is it does wipe out all your contacts during the installation process, so just make sure you back up your data ahead of time.  I unfortunately did not, and lost a lot of data.  I actually did follow the directions online, so I’m not quite sure what went wrong.  Definitely a "gotcha" to look out for.  Take extra precautions if you can not live without your current contact information and calendar data.

Another fantastic tid bit Gmail just added, is the ability to access your mail while offline.  These two features together definitely give GMail the ability to compete with other more robust messaging solutions (ahem … Microsoft). 

With RUNmyERRAND cranking away, it feels like a great time to take a step back and enjoy the 10,000 foot view of where we are now.  From the moment this idea was born on a cold winter evening almost 1 year ago (YES – 1 year ago!), the idea has been to use technology to make life more convenient.  We are solving an age old problem, that I’m certain even the cavemen experienced … think about all those berries and fire wood that needed to be gathered!  Even 5 years ago, the technology was not robust enough, not nearly utilized enough, to drive what we have built today.  Its about building a trusted service network.  Service networking … a phrase that I coined from day 1 is what is driving this model.  Sure its about outsourcing mini jobs and tasks on the web, but what we are actually doing is harnessing the power of a community.  A community that exists both on and offline.  Social networking has obviously become quite popular in recent years, and capturing this essence and leveraging it to get real things done in people’s every day life is some pretty exciting stuff!  I feel a surge of energy in my blood just writing about it.  It is the next evolution of the web 2.0 / social networking space.  Service networking is where is it at, and RUNmyERRAND is pioneering this new standard.

We’ve really established a personality along the way.  Its funny how a website, a company, can do that as it lives and breathes on its own.  Mini coopers are fun to drive, right?  Built well.  Convenient.  Efficient.  Trusted.  You can park anywhere and navigate around quickly.  RUNmyERRAND is like driving that hip, slick, ultra cool, mini cooper.  You get all the fun, without the large list price that goes along with it!  Unless of course you are a Zipster and car share the mini cooper in your neighborhood.  In that case, you know exactly what I am talking about!!

As the last line in the RUNmyERRAND in 90 Seconds video states ….  "Welcome to the new phase of social networking, its service networking, its RUNmyERRAND.com".  And that’s the 10,000 foot view.

This is a really simple code example, but what I love about it, is it shows what a pleasure Ruby is to write in!  I wanted to add a "Tell a Friend" feature to the front page.  First and foremost, it should be functional, but it also shouldn’t be another boring form wrapped in a template.  This is where the Redbox plugin really spiced things up!  I’ve used the Redbox plugin before, and what it is, is a lightbox plugin for Rails.  A usual application of lightboxing is seen when looking through an image gallery, and the main image comes front and center, while the rest of the screen gets a dark grey overlay.  Lightboxes can be used for any content, paragraphs, images, and in my case a form to be filled out.

Step 1 was to get a snappy new button designed, and I can’t take the credit for that.  In fact, I can’t take the credit for any of the fantastic graphic art on the site.  That is where the super talented graphic artist, Brian, comes in.  He sent over a spiffy new "Tell a Friend" button to be used as the anchor of the feaure.

Step 2, install the Redbox plugin and get ready to use it!  We used the link_to_redbox call for this feature, and embedded the content for the Redbox in a hidden div.  To use the image graphic as the link, you can do something like this:
     <%= link_to_redbox((image_tag "/taf.jpg"), "taf") %>

Step 3, create the form in the "taf" hidden div.  No magic here, just a simple form, and don’t forget to use all the fantastic Rails Form Helpers.

Step 4, make sure the "to" field can parse multiple entries.  You want users to be able to type in a list of email addresses, not just one, so some additional code needs to be added to the controller that is handling the form action.  This is where the Ruby syntax, especially working with the String Class is so great.  All we have to do is split the String passed in from the "to" field.  Here we are looking for all the commas, and splitting the String into an Array of email addresses, called "Tos".

         Tos = @taf.to.split(',')

From there it is a simple for loop to actually deliver the send to a friend email message to all the addresses in the "Tos" array:

          for To in Tos
       UserNotifier.deliver_taf(To, @taf.from, @taf.msg)
     end

And that’s about it!  A couple of notes …  Even though the latest version of the Redbox plugin says that it is compatible with IE, I had trouble getting it to work properly.  I tried it on IE 7.0, and the grey shadow that is suppose to cover the screen would not cover all the divs I had in the template.  For IE, I had to resort to old "if / else" trick, where if it is an IE browser, don’t do the Redbox, just go to a boring form page.  All the other users, with the right browsers, will still get to use the fancy Redbox’d form.  But if you’ve ready my blog at all, you’ll know my battles and scars with IE run deep.

Although you should know, I am not a big fan.  I’m sure that is because I never celebrated Halloween as a child … something about it being "The Devil’s Holiday" … but that’s another story!   Anyway, although I personally do not enjoy dressing up in costume, I do like watching others have all the fun.  Every year in Charlestown there is an enormous Halloween Parade around Monument Square.  When I say enormous … think 1,000 kids dressed in everything from little fairies and witches, to more creative choices like the parking meter we saw last year … genius!!  Oh … and there are dogs too!  We always just tie a festive bandanna around Kobe’s neck, but other dogs go all out … superheroes, angels, devils, and oh yeah … hot dogs!!  Priceless!!  So even though I’m not a huge fan of Halloween, I am glad others are enjoying it to the full extent and I do take joy in watching them celebrate!!

So here is a little Halloween treat for you … geek style:

I found this last night, and guess what … it is so easy to email any cell phone and have it be delivered as a text message!!  This is going to be perfect for Remy … I’m going to spend some time implementing this today!!

Seriously … Internet Explorer just needs to go away or clean up its pathetic act.  The latest web programming issue I encountered nearly threw me over the edge.  I wanted to do some cool lightboxing on the new site, and of course Safari and Firefox handle all the javascript wonderfully!  And then there is IE … always a completely different story.  The grey background would not cover all of my divs on the screen, and was doing all kinds of funky things.  Why should I have to take out the cool lightboxing and make my Safari/Firefox users suffer?  Well, I won’t take it out, I’ll just case it out for different behavior in IE.  It just annoys me that two things on my site are now special cased for IE.  It is to be expected I suppose, as the code base and spiffy new features increase! 

By the way, I am using Craig Ambrose’s super cool inline Redbox Plugin.  Love it … but hate IE … have I mentioned that?!  Please … if you are reading this entry using Internet Explorer (especially < 7.0) right now, go directly to the Firefox website and down load a new browser here!  It will change your world … trust me!

Remy is sort of launched.  A very tiny closed beta is happening as I write.  Its been about a week now, and of course I have been obsessing over the traffic hitting the production.log.  I’ve got a constant tail -f going on my desktop machine, and I get so excited when I see someone new checking things out.  Just watching the production.log is giving me great insight into the usability of the product.  I can see where people are clicking, and if they are hesitating, if they are not sure about where they are at that moment, or where to go next.  I’ve made a few tweaks here and there just by watching the traffic in this log, so it has been a huge help and a lot of fun!  What happens when I am away from my desk though?  Perhaps I am hanging at my favorite coffee house, Zume’s, where I pretty much have established a secondary office.  Well, in that case, I’ve got my trusty macbook, and iTerm to handle my tail -f.  But what if I am on the go, gallivanting around town?  This could be a big problem.  I need to be able to see my traffic at all times or my head will explode.  Enter … a new iPhone App.  Searched and downloaded from the App Store, check out TouchTerm.  A nifty little SSH client where I can tail -f to my hearts desire … and boy do I!!  Its got a nice preference pane, to tweak colors and overall look and feel.  Its even got up arrows, so you can simply scroll through your past commands.  Best part is, I get to continue to see my sites traffic in real time, from anywhere I am at that particular moment.  Brilliant!  At a measly $2.99, its the best thing I’ve ever bought for that price … except for maybe Zume’s coffee.

I have been busy!!  Not just busy …. swamped busy!!  The kind of busy when you work from home, and your husband expects to come home to a clean house, and a nice meal, and instead he gets you still greasy, in your pajamas, locked away in the corner room, hyped up on caffeine, with piles of hot messes surrounding you.  Its not pretty, nor healthy.  I am happy to say I am moving out of the woods and reentering the masses!

Its been a couple of months now, and I have made a ton of progress on Remy.  Thinking about getting a beta launched soon.  A few days ago my IT guy convinced me I needed to deploy in a different server environment.  The one I have been using for development has become more and more troublesome as they are adding more and more users to it.  The server crashed twice this week, and the hosting company said they had to reboot the machine due to load.  Not my app’s load … just the sheer number of people they have hosted on this server.  Not going to work for me.  Instead my IT guy did some research and we are trying a new environment called Go Grid.  I’ll let him blog about the details, mostly because it is not my area of expertise (see my entry "not a computer girl").  Anyway, it has been quite the process to get everything moved over to the new server environment.  One major issue we hit was the installation of all the right gems.  In the old environment, it was a hosting company that only dealt with Rails apps, so they had hundreds of gems installed for everyone to use. Starting from a scratch environment, we had to go through and figure out which ones I needed … mostly via trial and error.  The problem that took the most time was a strange issue I was hitting with the file_column plugin.  After the deployment on the new server, I could only get gif files to upload.  If I put in a jpeg or a png, it would error out with "Invalid Image".  I searched and searched everywhere on the internet and found maybe 2 other people having this problem … with no way to fix it.  What a pain!!!  Finally we tracked it down, and I am logging it here for the next person that comes along and is frustrated by it.  It turns out, we needed to install some extra libraries used by ImageMagick, specifically libjpeg-devel and PNG.  Here is a great step by step write up about installing RMagick for use with the file_column plugin. 

Now that we are *finally* all moved over to the new server environment, my IT guy is putting the last few things in place for clustering and load balancing.  It should be a pretty solid, pretty fast, and generally pretty set up!!!  All of this in preparation for the first beta release.  Phew … this has been the fastest two months.  Ever.