MeltingFood Releases — No comments
12
Jul 09
Whoosh. That was the sound of the deadlines for the minor 1-2 week MeltingFood releases going by*. However, enough moping as the Ash release of MeltingFood has arrived and it’s for everyone – that’s right, sign-up for all.
Highlights
- Tell everyone what you’re cooking / eating with Facebook and Twitter updates.
- Now follow anyone who has good taste (no need for both people to agree to a two-way friendship – ala Twitter).
- Descriptive (long) URLs so Rox’s Banana Butterscotch Pudding goes from http://meltingfood.com/recipes/397 to http://meltingfood.com/recipes/397-banana-butterscotch-pudding
- You can now sign yourself up – no need for someone to invite you.
There are also a couple of other tweaks like: not breaking your saved passwords; better input field alignment; no search engine scamming from dodgy links.
Progress
In May we had 16 unique visitors, June 110 – ah, the fun of Google Analytics. You can spend time slicing and dicing segments and achieving nought.
Add a comment here or contact us on meltingfood to join or provide any feedback.
* – Douglas Adams died so young :(
MeltingFood Releases — No comments
24
May 09
We’re up to the fourth minor release of MeltingFood (and the second in a week if you’re keeping count). It’s all part of the more rapid 1-2 week release schedule – or 4 days in this case.
We apologise that the last release was substantially broken in Internet Explorer (now fixed).
Highlights
- Recipes can now be seen by everyone (no sign-up required).
- The recipe layout has been re-jigged to fit things in a little more snugly (hopefully less scrolling needed when your hands are covered in dinner).
- For Internet Explorer, the broken javascript is fixed and buttons should look a little prettier too.
- Opt out of email has been added – so we don’t disturb anyone.
- The recipe list and noise pages are slightly faster (cleaned-up some inefficient code).
There are also a couple of other tweaks, like using your whole name on your recipes – just to make sure people know who to thank.
Progress
We’ve got about 10 current users (accessed in the last month)! Yes that includes us, so back to 8 really ;)
Add a comment here or contact us on meltingfood to join or provide any feedback.
MeltingFood Releases — No comments
20
May 09
Just finished off the third minor release of MeltingFood, the recipe / food sharing website for the new millennium (the new millennium line is still good ’til the half way point – 491 years to go, then we switch from ‘new’ to ‘next’).
Highlights
- When searching for your friends, auto-complete drops down to help you.
- See friends of your friends (if your friends have any friends you can now see a list of those friends – clear?).
- More ajax-y responses (for the non-geek, when you delete your recipes, add friends or reject friends, you won’t have to wait for the page to reload).
- Slightly smaller pages (for the geeks, javascript framework change from Prototype to jQuery – more conducive to removing in-line js and forms).
- Google Analytics – so we get some idea of how people are coming to / using the site.
- Rough business plan.
There’s also a bunch of other minor bug fixes and improvements.
Progress
We’ve got about 8 current users (accessed in the last month)! And about 45 total users referred. This is without even resorting to nagging everyone we know (we’re keeping half in reserve ;p). Based on the business plan, this means we’re at 0.008% of the target (100k unique people per month :)).
But keep your eyes open in the next month… we’re eating our words and going public!
General Ramblings / Software Development — No comments
05
Mar 09
One of the first things you’ll do when you get your great idea is a domain name search… and experience the disappointment when you find it’s gone. But never fear, this is not the idea-shattering catastrophe it first seems.
This is because your clever name doesn’t matter. There is a seemingly strong counter-argument, that goes “…but, brand is crucial – look at how much all those big companies spend to make you remember their all important name!”. This is true, however before the names existed (outside of their inventors heads), they weren’t special because they weren’t attached to something anyone cared about.
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General Ramblings / Software Development — No comments
19
Feb 09
The user interface is important. It is the ambassador for your system, your advertisement, your customer service rep. So you need to make sure it’s customer-friendly. Put simply, your system needs to do what people expect it to do. When I click on a link with a roll-over effect, it will take me to a different page. When I click on a button, it should trigger an action. So we stick to these standards, even if they’re not the best usability-wise, because we are creatures of habit and even little changes hurt.
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Business Analysis — No comments
06
Feb 09
A good friend of mine wanted to find out how a customer application process worked in his department. He didn’t grab his notebook and interview his colleagues. He didn’t draw up elaborate as-is process flows in Visio. He didn’t even write one word of documentation. Instead, he did something much more effective – he went through the application process himself.
14 letters and 5 weeks later, my friend had conclusive evidence of how the process worked, along with a set of recommendations on how to improve it.
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