Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Thanks For a Great Launch
Yesterday was a fantastic day. I want to send out some thank yous and address a couple blog posts we've received.
First, I want to say thanks to Steven Cohen. We began a conversation at the PubSub table and he immediate fired up Gritwire and started beating on it. In two minutes he'd found enough small to medium sized bugs that I was sure we were soon to receive a good thrashing on his blog. Didn't happen. We fixed up a couple of the more significant issues within the next couple hours, so when we spoke later in the afternoon I was happily able to show him an already slightly better product. The Gritwire review he posted today is much appreciated. And happily again I can report that we're on top of the problems he's finding--the OPML importing feature should accept files exported from Bloglines now, and we've got some plans to make it a faster/better process soon. Steven, thanks for the post, thanks for the patience, thanks for the bug reports, keep them coming.
Another posting Steve helped prompt can be found over at TechCrunch. Again, reviews are much appreciated, so thanks Michael. Couple notes on the review: images do show up for many/most feeds, sometimes they take a second to display, and we are working on this and other formatting and display issues in the display pane of the reader; alerts should only pop up if someone requests friendship within the network, recommends a feed or article, or if a shared wiki is updated by another user--sounds like we just need to do a better job of explaining what the alert function is there for. The lambasting of the party was great :-) I've got a few simple responses. 1) I'll argue in favor of the economics of the party all day, you'd be amazed how accomodating and inexpensive a bar is when they're offered guaranteed business on a Tuesday night--thank you to The Cellar for their cooperation. 2) We ran demos all night, all of them requested, and the interest and response was excellent. 3) Hmmm...for this one I wanted to say "stop by the party next time before knocking it," but as you pointed out you were testing Gritwire out and writing the review. I appreciate that too much to criticize, so ignore 3. Sincerely, thanks for taking a look at us, and I hope we can address the problems you noted in the near future.
A bit more on the party. Thank you to all who attended. I hope you had as much fun as I did. I hope you learned some more about Gritwire. I hope some of you will be users, and others partners. Please stay in touch.
To those who have posted reviews, thank you again. To those considering posting, please do, and please let us know as specifically as possible what isn't working and what else you'd like to see in Gritwire in the future.
First, I want to say thanks to Steven Cohen. We began a conversation at the PubSub table and he immediate fired up Gritwire and started beating on it. In two minutes he'd found enough small to medium sized bugs that I was sure we were soon to receive a good thrashing on his blog. Didn't happen. We fixed up a couple of the more significant issues within the next couple hours, so when we spoke later in the afternoon I was happily able to show him an already slightly better product. The Gritwire review he posted today is much appreciated. And happily again I can report that we're on top of the problems he's finding--the OPML importing feature should accept files exported from Bloglines now, and we've got some plans to make it a faster/better process soon. Steven, thanks for the post, thanks for the patience, thanks for the bug reports, keep them coming.
Another posting Steve helped prompt can be found over at TechCrunch. Again, reviews are much appreciated, so thanks Michael. Couple notes on the review: images do show up for many/most feeds, sometimes they take a second to display, and we are working on this and other formatting and display issues in the display pane of the reader; alerts should only pop up if someone requests friendship within the network, recommends a feed or article, or if a shared wiki is updated by another user--sounds like we just need to do a better job of explaining what the alert function is there for. The lambasting of the party was great :-) I've got a few simple responses. 1) I'll argue in favor of the economics of the party all day, you'd be amazed how accomodating and inexpensive a bar is when they're offered guaranteed business on a Tuesday night--thank you to The Cellar for their cooperation. 2) We ran demos all night, all of them requested, and the interest and response was excellent. 3) Hmmm...for this one I wanted to say "stop by the party next time before knocking it," but as you pointed out you were testing Gritwire out and writing the review. I appreciate that too much to criticize, so ignore 3. Sincerely, thanks for taking a look at us, and I hope we can address the problems you noted in the near future.
A bit more on the party. Thank you to all who attended. I hope you had as much fun as I did. I hope you learned some more about Gritwire. I hope some of you will be users, and others partners. Please stay in touch.
To those who have posted reviews, thank you again. To those considering posting, please do, and please let us know as specifically as possible what isn't working and what else you'd like to see in Gritwire in the future.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Gritwire Launch Party - Syndicate Conference Attendees
Hello to all Syndicate Conference Attendees! Two quick notes:
1) the first step of the directions on the Gritwire Launch Party invite is wrong. Make a LEFT out of the main entrance of the hotel. See the updated invite here: Gritwire Launch Party Invite
2) If you didn't get an invite, you are all invited. See the invite here: Gritwire Launch Party Invite
Open bar. Please come. We're looking for a fun time.
1) the first step of the directions on the Gritwire Launch Party invite is wrong. Make a LEFT out of the main entrance of the hotel. See the updated invite here: Gritwire Launch Party Invite
2) If you didn't get an invite, you are all invited. See the invite here: Gritwire Launch Party Invite
Open bar. Please come. We're looking for a fun time.
Gritwire Version 1.0 Launched
With this launch I'd like to take the opportunity to describe some of the thinking behind Gritwire in general.
A question that keeps being asked is "who is our user?" Are we building this for people familiar with terms like RSS, podcasting, and OPML--the technophiles--or is there some other group we're catering to. A lot of the design decisions that went into this version were based on appealing to the existing RSS user base. We went with a 3-pane layout similar to RSS Owl, added OPML import capability, and there's not a whole lot of tutorial/explanation on the site of how to use it. You have to be fairly familiar with RSS to work comfortably with the site.
There are a couple notable exceptions to presenting this for the RSS afficienado. For example, "what are speedfeeds?" is a question I'm sure we'll be asked. I've been convinced for quite some time that for popular adoption of RSS a more palatable name will be needed than it's current TLA. Several months ago I stumbled upon CmdrTaco's recommendation to call RSS feeds Speedfeeds. Since that time Microsoft has started chattering about "web feeds." I'm fine with either or neither of those, but something needs to stick.
Another potential confusion to a hardcore Internet user is our wiki offering. Some might not even call it a wiki, and yeah I understand that argument. They aren't fully featured, but I think they qualify in the most basic definition.
I suppose there will always be more features you wish you could cram in before a product launch. I'm sure many out there will have feature suggestions, bug reports, and hopefully some positive feedback will make it into the mix. Going forward I'd like Gritwire to be driven more by user input, so please, any and all comments are appreciated.
A question that keeps being asked is "who is our user?" Are we building this for people familiar with terms like RSS, podcasting, and OPML--the technophiles--or is there some other group we're catering to. A lot of the design decisions that went into this version were based on appealing to the existing RSS user base. We went with a 3-pane layout similar to RSS Owl, added OPML import capability, and there's not a whole lot of tutorial/explanation on the site of how to use it. You have to be fairly familiar with RSS to work comfortably with the site.
There are a couple notable exceptions to presenting this for the RSS afficienado. For example, "what are speedfeeds?" is a question I'm sure we'll be asked. I've been convinced for quite some time that for popular adoption of RSS a more palatable name will be needed than it's current TLA. Several months ago I stumbled upon CmdrTaco's recommendation to call RSS feeds Speedfeeds. Since that time Microsoft has started chattering about "web feeds." I'm fine with either or neither of those, but something needs to stick.
Another potential confusion to a hardcore Internet user is our wiki offering. Some might not even call it a wiki, and yeah I understand that argument. They aren't fully featured, but I think they qualify in the most basic definition.
I suppose there will always be more features you wish you could cram in before a product launch. I'm sure many out there will have feature suggestions, bug reports, and hopefully some positive feedback will make it into the mix. Going forward I'd like Gritwire to be driven more by user input, so please, any and all comments are appreciated.
