RSSYou may notice some strage data for a while...
Posted by: andy at 12/10/2009
We're just about to switch over to a new data feed*. During this time the data available on spectackler will change significantly. This means the following things:
- All current saved spectackles will be lost :-(. There is no sensible way to migrate this data, but use volumes are quite low at the moment, so the not many people should be affected
- The data quality relating to specifications will jump massively. Say goodbye to h...
Changes afoot
Posted by: andy at 10/10/2009
After a hiatus of a few months (ps. travelling round the world is a great way to spend your time :-) ) we are going to relaunch Spectackler in a few weeks. We are changing our data feed which should give us the following good things:
- More vendors
- Better data
Keep your eyes peeled!
In depth review on the 2.0 life
Posted by: andy at 20/01/2009
Another review, this time by David Pierce on the 2.0 Life . Thanks for the review David! He makes some good points about expanding our scope to feature other retailers, which we are currently looking at doing.
Another review
Posted by: andy at 09/01/2009
We've had another positive review posted on TechPluto . In addition we've been linked to by The Web 2.0 Review Blog.
Back after christmas - Road map update
Posted by: andy at 07/01/2009
I just thought I'd update the blog with a few of our ideas for 2009 features. We're playing around with the concepts currently but here are a few we are looking into:
- Getting data from other countries, like the UK or Germany
- Beefing up the back end so that we can edit the sometimes crummy data from Amazon
- Showing the user review data from Amazon.
If anyone has any feature requests, now is the time get in touch, so Read more on Back after christmas - Road map update
Featured on MakeUseOf
Posted by: andy at 20/12/2008
More publicity! We've been reviewed by MakeUseOf, which is a site that posts about cool web apps and tools. It's a pretty positive review which is great for our plans of world domination :-)
Performance Fixes
Posted by: andy at 15/12/2008
We've made a few performance updates that should reduce download times and increase performance. Most of the tips are from the yahoo web site performance optimisation guide and Jeremy Kemper's video on Rails performance. In summary:
- Running YSlow on the site
- Moving Javascript to the end of...
More small updates and bug fixes
Posted by: andy at 11/12/2008
We've had a lot more traffic recently and as a result some bugs and slightly ugly looking bits of functionality have been revealed. Luckily most of the fixes were simple :-)
Here's a list of the main updates:
- Fixed the registration process and send to a friend. We'd changed the SMTP login details for the application email account, but we accidentally left one of the configuration settings with the old value. Registration and send to a friend should now work. ...
Featured on programmableweb & appscout
Posted by: andy at 11/12/2008
Just a quick update to say that we've been featured on a couple of web sites, ProgrammableWeb and AppScout. Programmable web is a directory of web service APIs and mashups. See our page here: Spectackler @ programmable web.
We've also had a review posted on AppScout, a site on the PC Mag network. See the review here. Overall it's a ...
Site Review on Killer Startups
Posted by: andy at 02/12/2008
We've been posted on Killer Startups, which is nice. It's a medium visibility site for new startups to post their products and have them reviewed by the community. It would be great people could vote for us:
Small set of updates
Posted by: andy at 01/12/2008
We've made a few fixes over the weekend, mainly general usability tweaks plus some SEO goodness:
- - If you arrive straight at a product page from google, we will take you to the category page but open the product in a window.
- - We've changed some of the messages and labels when you do things like save a spectackle to make it more understandable.
- - Set up a proper link hierarchy and added alt text and link titles.
- - Made the front ...
Announcing our first screencast
Posted by: andy at 30/11/2008
We're pleased to announce that we have a put up a screencast showing spectackler in action. Click here to watch the screencast:
Coming soon....
Posted by: andy at 29/09/2008
We're hoping to launch the site soon. There are a few tweaks remaining, and the ever present Internet Explorer hacks to get in. Watch this space....
