Archive for the ‘Launch’ Category
Summer has ended and that means back to school go the kids, back to the TV go the football games, and back to the playoffs (after 12 years) go the Colorado Rockies! Even if you’re not into baseball, surely you can appreciate a team who had to win 14 of their final 15 games to make the playoffs. The update I rolled out tonight includes more improvements to the back-end than on the visible side of things. The big added feature is the ability to subscribe to any search with RSS using a blog reader like Google Reader or Bloglines. Just copy the aptly named “Subscribe to this search” link and paste it into your blog reader. Voilà! I’ve also improved the map slightly in that it scrolls with the page; and, somewhat related, upon re-centering or zooming, the search results are updated much more quickly. Another slight improvement deals with search URLs, which now have a location embedded in them so they indicate clearly where they are searching — before there was a little bit of magic. Most other changes deal with testing or improving search engine friendliness, which will hopefully drive more traffic here. Finally, if you’re a techie, you might find it interesting that Dibs is now running on the Rails 2.0 Prerelease, just a couple of days after its announcement. It’s not as risky as it sounds — it’s been running on a July development version for some time already. There are some other exciting things in store, so stay tuned!
Thanks a million to everyone I met and talked with and who would listen to my spiel about dibs.net at the Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup tonight. As I was driving to DLA Piper this evening, I decided this was going to be my “P.T. Barnum” moment if I’m ever going to have one. (Not the “sucker was born every minute” P.T. Barnum, but the “extraordinary promoter” P.T. Barnum.) If you weren’t there, you missed a fun night: I gave $10 on the spot to everyone who would post something for sale within a couple weeks. And it’s not like I’m checking up on whether you follow though; no other strings attached. You win by getting a free lunch and dibs.net wins by spending ad money more wisely than Google ads. We all win by finding a better owner for the unused clutter that has collected in our lives. The giveaway was a great hit and I had a blast talking to everyone and meeting so many interesting people so full of ideas. Tonight really made me remember why I moved here. There is so much enthusiasm and creativity around “ideas” here that I’ve never experienced anywhere else. Sure, we all engage in a little wild-eyed hyperbole at these events, but I’d rather converse with a dreamer for a month than a closed-eyed cynic for a minute. By the way, I took a small break from dibs.net development over the past few days to get the marketing machine rolling. Now that it’s set in motion, it’s back to some much needed features that should let more users participate here. By the way, here’s a Truemor for ya: Guy Kawasaki didn’t ask me about the $10 I was giving away. Either he doesn’t need lunch money tomorrow or he’s got no stuff to sell Another Truemor: Guy spent $15k building Truemors? So much money! Dibs cost me $6k and that includes a $2400 iMac. Slap another star up the fridge baby, we’re going to celebrate at Red Lobster tonight!
(On this date in 1954, Ardito Desio’s expedition became the first to summit K2, the world’s second tallest mountain.) Today’s update (and the few smaller ones since the last update) brings a ton of new features, stability improvements and bug fixes. I’m not going to list them all, but one of the big ones addresses some problems I found with the photo viewer. That’s a pretty important area, so I spent a bit of energy on making sure it works really well. Now it’s a nice Flash component which will degrade to plain ol’ HTML should Flash not be available. So this ought to work well for nearly everyone. I’m really happy with how this first release of Dibs turned out. It’s got everything I had planned, plus a few other great features. So, since everything looks stable, I’m starting to sell my own stuff on my personal site, kevin.dibs.net. You’re welcome to sign up and start buying and selling, too! And don’t forget to subscribe to The Treasure Map’s RSS feed. I will be announcing some fun “scavenger hunt” style events soon. Leave a comment to tell me what kinds of prizes I should give away! Today’s update, which I hope is less controversial than the major leaguer whose birthday is today, brings some needed improvements to the posting process, with helpful steps along the draft -> upload photos -> publish path. It looks great and works great; I’m really happy with the improved usability. The other major change addresses message functionality. Mainly, viewing all messages related to an item is much, much nicer — but there were a pile of smaller improvements here, especially focusing on organization and navigation. Also, messages now get chunked off in an email: since messages can’t be sent until an offer is accepted, this is one area where dibs.net reduces email volume. All of these recent changes have made dibs.net a solid and feature-full app. After one or two more solid days of bug fixes and testing, I think I’ll be ready to slow down the release cycle and begin the maiden voyage with a local sale.
With the latest batch of updates and fixes pushed out to the servers and our first week in the bag, dibs.net sure is looking great. I spent a huge amount of time today on image uploading improvements. What was in place just didn’t work very well. The new image uploading process is vastly improved and really fun to use, if uploading images could be considered “fun.” Uploading now requires Flash 7 or higher, but that’s a trade-off I decided was worth it: uploading images is a notoriously painful task on the web, so efforts to make it easier have a great return on investment. As a small side-effect of this improvement, the workflow also changed slightly in that you can save a draft of your listing as you add your photos (so you aren’t forced to post an item without photos and then add them later). This also turns out to be a handy feature if you want to work on a draft listing over a few sessions. There are a just a few things left that I’d like to get in before I start really promoting the service and attracting users, which is looking like it will be some time next week. While the service is entirely usable right now, there are several places that need some paint and one or two that need some reorganization (Messages, I’m lookin’ at you).
Things are looking great so far. I really appreciate all of the feedback I’ve gotten already. There were far fewer critical bugs than expected, which I like to think reflects well on my development skill. Some small changes on dibs.net tonight include:
I’d also like to say thanks to my Mom for her feedback today I’ll be rolling out nightly bug fixes for the rest of the week. Send feedback and problems to support@dibs.net, motivating and congratulatory personal notes to kevin@centropy.com, beer and pizza to my home address.
After a burst of effort and very little sleep this weekend, dibs.net began its life as of about 3pm yesterday. Of course, it will be of marginal use until there are listings, so go forth and sell! What’s dibs.net? At its core dibs.net is an online, regional classifieds site for non-commercial buyers and sellers. But that’s a boring description, because “classifieds” doesn’t even begin to describe what we do. Visit about dibs.net to learn more about how it works. Here is a limited list of what is implemented at the moment.
I also have big plans for the future, including:
If you notice any problems, please open a ticket on support.dibs.net.
I uncovered a few critical bugs and deployment issues while attempting to get dibs.net online this past weekend. As a result, I begrudgingly decided to delay the launch until this coming weekend. It will be another frantic, work-filled weekend, but that’s how it goes. As I re-roll frequent fixes onto the site over Saturday and Sunday, service will be spotty. By Monday I plan to shift to daily releases to hit any big bugs that appear. I would recommend waiting a week or so before relying on the site for anything important. Wish me luck… launching is only the first step, of course. Attracting and building the community will be the next challenge after dibs.net exists.
Long, long ago (in the 90s), I had the opportunity to learn a great deal about expectations. Back then I was a summer camp counselor in charge of leading a dozen kids at a time on back country wilderness trips near Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Every week we would pack up the kids and set off on another adventure through some of the most remote and beautiful wilderness in the country. We sang songs around campfires, rode horses, forged rivers and slept under bright blue tarps. We cooked our food over small fire pits and drank water purified with iodine. For the most part, however, we hiked. We hiked up mountains, we hiked down mountains. We hiked around and between them. Some days we hiked much further than others. Those long days were the ones to be wary of as a camp counselor. It was important to set the right expectations — usually an outright lie — and overestimate the time, or distance or what-have-you. Of the utmost importance was never to utter the phrase “we’re almost there,” because everyone has a different understanding of what “almost” means. How much further? Haven’t we gone three miles yet? Where are we? You said it was right around the corner! Why can’t we camp right here? I want my mommy. Except for that last one, I find myself having similar conversations today — not about hiking, but about my pet project. I’ve set expectations to match the leanest, most idealized path I envisioned at the time. And despite the months this project has taken already I still am optimistic that launch is imminent. Things take longer than I think to get done, and they take even longer still to get right. But darn it, we are almost there. Rather, dibs.net is almost here. Friends and family have heard this for weeks, but it is true. So, stay tuned. I will be working tirelessly all next week to bring dibs.net online. Wish me luck! |
It was great to finally see him, after missing out on the talk he did for an SVASE event last September.