Posted by Luca on March 20th
This week has been rather busy, we have got quite a lot done, but not quite enough to show yet! Here is what we have been up to and what we hope to do over the next couple of weeks…
The chat section is near enough finished, we just need a few GUI changes here and there, we have started creating an API and an Adobe AIR application! (If you want some cool links on creating an API or Adobe AIR app check out my keepsy feed!)
While I have been busy coding, James got carried away while tinkering with the Knowledgebase UI…
So, yep we shall have a new UI at some point for Juvely, we have also got redesigns lined up for the Juvely marketing site, creation of the Deer&Spiller site (our company name) and integration with the blog. I think James has ideas for a Keepsy redesign floating around too!
Resources on the server are getting a bit tight so I am considering moving to Slicehost (which I keep typing as Slidehost). There is nothing wrong with (mt) by Slicehost are cheaper and they allow you to build your server from scratch as you need it, which will allow us to save on memory.
Oh, and inauguration of the company!
Posted by Luca on January 25th
With Keepsy being our new toy I wanted to implement something unique that is completely different to anything that is around at the moment. I was thinking about doing something different about registration, after-all nobody else wants yet another username and password to remember do they? I was thinking of completely abolishing the password but this seemed a bit far-fetched so in the end I decided OpenID was a better option.
OpenID originally looked like a very promissing technology but things haven’t turned out well for it, although adoption is growing by the big companies. Last week I spent about 6 hours trying to find an implementation of a consumer (the application) that works with Rails 2.0. Eventually I came across this and I thought, yay, I can get this implemented on Keepsy within a couple of hours. I then did some more reasearch on the best practices, and in the end decided to avoid OpenID.
My main reason was because so many sites have poor implementations of it and users are just going to get confused. Possibly the worse case is the Beast forum. In order to use an OpenID to login to a forum you need to register with a username and password, kind of defeats the point no? 37signals have done slightly better with the signup process for their Basecamp application, you can choose to use an OpenID instead of a username or password but still it isn’t brilliant. What if people don’t know what an OpenID is (most internet users)? Although they provide a link for information people really aren’t going to bother clicking. The main problem I believe is the name ‘OpenID’. It provides no indication as to what it is, something like ‘universal login’ would be a better choice. You can also argue that Microsoft’s Passport platform (does that still exist?) suffers from the same problem, but that has exposure through services such as Hotmail and Windows.
Anyway, back to my original argument about poor implementations. Brian Ellin has done an excellent job redesigning the OpenID login page for Pibb, but I think it could go further, especially on sites that support OpenID and traditional logins. My idea is to have a login page that has all this OpenID stuff at the top, and then at the bottom the tradional username / password and registration stuff. If the user enters an OpenID that doesn’t exist on the system, then they are shown a basic registration form (prepopulated using the simple registration extension) asking for whatever data you need (i.e. displayname and email if you must). Once confirmed they are logged in and are using you app within 30 seconds of visiting the homepage. Its simple, as OpenID should be!
Anyway, thats my two pence on OpenID! Hopefully one day the problem we be solved, but until then, no OpenID for Keepsy!
Posted by Luca on December 30th
Well we are now 20 hours down the line and thinks are looking good! Practically all of the features required for launch are now in place! Anyway, before I show you what has been done I shall explain what we are building.
Rather than making a poor attempt at explaining Ill give you a copy of Jim’s spec he sent out when getting quotes:
The scenario. You and your friend spend alot of time on the internet in general (reading blogs, watching videos etc). You constantly come across new and interesting content you would like to save for later. You also find that friends with similar interests may find the sites interesting/fun. Keepsy will provide a way to store website links you find interesting/fun and want to save, it will also allow your friends to see what you save, allowing them to come across new and interesting content as well.
Upon arriving the Keepsy.com the user will be present with a short descriptive paragraph, a login form and a register button (which i will design and provide).
Once logged in the user will be able to edit their account settings and view all their latest “keepsies” (bookmarks). Every user once signed up is designated a profile page, which will look like the following ( http://upload3.net//uploads/251home.jpg). These can accessed by visiting username_of_user.keepsy.com (example jim123.keepsy.com ). Profiles can be made to be public or private. Public means anyone can access them by going to the user.keepsy.com url, private means only friends and the person themselves (once logged in) can view the profile.
The user profile will have a calender feature which will simply allow them to select a certain date, to which the page should display the keepsies (bookmarks). It will also list their friends in the form of little images (the friends profile picture, as seen on the design preview). A simple keyword search, which will search the tags + the title of each bookmark, then display the most relevant keepsies(bookmarks).
User will add the keepsies (bookmarks) by using a javascript bookmarklet (more info on bookmarklets here: https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/webdevel.html ). When on the target website, the bookmarklet will just need to be pressed once, then a small unobtrusive box will appear asking whether they would like to add tags to their submission or not. Once save is pressed, the user will continue browsing. The user will obviously need to be logged into keepsy on the computer they are using to add keepsies (bookmarks) to their profile.
We also have a couple of other features planned but we shall leave those a suprise for now. 
Anyway, as I said we have got most of the features needed for launch done. Unfortunately we still have got quite a lot to do and it hasn’t helped that my boss scheduled me in to work for 8 hours over the weekend - arggg. Don’t fret though, we still plan to release by tomorrow night!
Ill leave you with a screenshot of what we have got so far (the design has changed slighty since the screenshot linked above):
