A New Year, renewed vigour

The last few months of 2008 saw the dub5 team holed up in our Secret Labs® trying to get a site refresh done. Since we had a chance to rest over the Christmas break, we’re all over the challenges of building with renewed vigour. We’re aiming for a site refresh in the next few weeks, though it might not be super-noticeable to casual users — a lot of the work we’ve been doing in cleaning up the back-end code to make sure the system runs more smoothly. However, we’ll be rolling out new features soon, and we’ll keep you posted on those as well.

As we get rolling this year, we’ll be providing you, our users and stakeholders, with weekly updates. So check back regularly, and follow our progress.

We’ll talk to you soon,

adam

Actually not dead

Just too busy to blog.  In my estimation there’s nothing sadder than a dead blog; I’ve been avoiding this whole phenomenon for precisely this reason.  Anyway, we’re hard at work.  Useful features ahoy…!

What the dilly?

The public dub5 application right now is pretty sparse, and there’s no help to be found anywhere.  So I thought I’d give a quick description of what’s up (that is, what the dilly .

When you first log in, you’re presented with what we call the Future Feed – basically, an inverse newsfeed.  A newsfeed is all well and good for things that have happened in the past, but dub5 is all about what’s coming up — so you can quickly get an at-a-glance view of your upcoming events, in context of whatever the current date is.

On the left-hand side is the Histogram (it’s not really a histogram per se, but it was the best name we could come up with.  Feel free to suggest a better one! .  The Histogram gives a visual view of what’s going on, and gives you a nice summary view of how busy any given day is.  Cells in green are calendar entries you created yourself, cells coloured red are ones that others have created and invited you to, and the blue ones are events associated with a group that you’re a part of.

Navigating the Histogram is a matter of clicking the up/down buttons located above the Histogram column.  It’s a real buttache to scroll to far-off dates in the future right now, we know.

Clicking on a Histogram cell brings up the Daily Calendar, with more details about what’s going on for that particular day.  Clicking an event will bring up details like its location, description, and a list of attendees and their status, if any.

To create an event, pop open the Daily Calendar for the date you want your event to occur.  You can click-and-drag to create an event of whatever duration you’d like, or just single click on the calendar.  Enter a description in the box that pops up, give the event a title, and you’re done!  You’ll automatically be reminded via email and, if you entered and activated your mobile, SMS.

Clicking on the “Invite People” link opens up the full edit dialog, which right now is still a popup and on lower-res screens, tends to hide the “Save” button. Which is horribly user-hateful, which is why it’s going to be its own panel right away.  But I digress – the point is, you can use this screen to invite people to your event via their email address or mobile number.  If you use their mobile, they’ll receive the invite directly to their phone and can reply instantly… and if they accept, they’ll receive a reminder for the event 30 minutes prior to its start.

That should be enough to get you going for now.  We’re going to be rolling out more features soon (obviously) so stay tuned!

DemoCampEdmonton3 Links

Just thought I’d share a few DemoCamp links with you all. I’ll update this post every now and then as I find new ones:

• A brief recap of EdmontonDemoCamp3 at TechVibes
• Mack Male’s Flickr set from EdmontonDemoCamp3

How we did at DemoCamp

Kevin Swan, the MC for the evening and an employee at Nexopia, said that we did “one of the smoothest demos [he's] ever seen at a DemoCamp in Edmonton.” I probably shouldn’t have used quotation marks there, because there’s no way that’s exactly what he said. But you get the idea.

Edmonton DemoCamp3 took place in the ETLC building on the University of Alberta campus tonight. You can find info on the demos and attendees here.

At the outset of our demo, we told everyone a little bit about ourselves and then it was off to the races. Cam Linke, also from Nexopia, and Dave Leriger (representing What Customers Say) were kind enough to lend us their mobile numbers for the demo. We created an event for later on in the evening, invited Dave and Cam to the event using their phone numbers, and then had Cam sign-up for dub5 for the first time. Lo and behold, without having done anything except respond to a text message, Cam’s calendar was already populated with the event we’d invited him to.

We went on to explain that before the event happens, both Dave and Cam would receive SMS reminders telling them to get themselves to the event. People seemed interested! It’ll be hilarious when those boys receive their reminders when we’re all on our way to the Windsor Pub to mingle afterwards.

We had some great questions about our business model, the tech we use to send text messages, and how we’re planning to integrate with existing scheduling systems. A really terrific and sharp crowd!

I’ll post some links tomorrow, when some of the other bloggers have stories from DemoCamp to share. If you guys have any questions, as always, make use of the comments section!

Democamp tonight

Hello, adoring fans. Ahem. Right.

Just wanted to let you know that we’re going to be demoing dub5 at tonight’s Democamp on the U of A campus. To find out more about Democamp, click here.

Hope to see you there!

Alpha: deployed!

After many weeks of keyboard-hammering, the first public offering of dub5 is out the door. We’ve made this version open to all students at the three local post-secondary institutions: NAIT, MacEwan College, and the University of Alberta.

This isn’t a wide launch, as we’re waiting to see what user uptake and feedback will be like. Still, we encourage you to sign up and try out the system.

If you notice anything buggy, send an email to bugs@dub5.net. Otherwise, post some comments here and let us know what features you do or do not like, and what new features you’d like to see in forthcoming releases.

Thanks!

By way of introduction…

I’m very pleased to announce that dub’5 corporate website went live yesterday.

Thanks to the efforts of our friends at Ignition Media, we have a new visual identity and a small site that explains the basics of the application we’ve developed. We’ll be updating the site as new features are added to the application and other developments occur at dub5 HQ.

Please visit the site and let us know your thoughts!

We’re also going to be skinning the application itself with a new GUI soon. I will post when it’s ready. Thanks to all of our stakeholders who gave us input into the new identity and the site look and feel. Your constructive criticisms and encouragement are always appreciated.

A bit about the founders

I don’t remember the exact moment I met Andy, one of the dub5 founders. I know it was in grade ten, back in 1995, and I know I didn’t know what to make of him. He was an interesting character with a sharp mind. Very little has changed.

Clark I’ve known a lot longer, since elementary school, where together we would relentless tease substitute teachers and speak English to our frustrated, French-speaking teachers. We were the bane of the establishment’s existence.  Ah, 1990. Where did you go?

Clark, Andy and I all went to high school together, and variously stayed in contact until we graduated. After that, I lost touch with Clark, but still saw a lot of Andy.

It wasn’t until the fall of 2006 that my path crossed Clark’s again. This time at our day jobs. Turns out we were both working for the same company. He told me about his idea for scheduling software. He wanted me to review their business plan. Since then I’ve been known as founder #3 (well, that’s what I refer to myself as, anyhow).

Jeffu — or founder #4 – was brought on-board about a year ago, when it was decided that to really have a go at this, we would either have to clone Andy or find talented developers to get the work done. Our cloning technology is less complete than the dub5 app. So Jeffu was made a founding partner.

Since then, it’s been sunshine, lollypops and rainbows. That’s what we call hard work, sleepless nights, and early-morning unicorn rides. Yes. We have a unicorn.

Honestly, though, I can’t think of a better founding team for a company. Every day I’m impressed with the dedication, hard work and incredible ideas these guys bring to the table. There’s nowhere to go but up for us. So let’s all mount our unicorns and ride towards the rainbow (which, really, is just another way of toasting great success).

Excelsior!

Monday means new features!

Andy and Jeff have been working their fingers down to the nubs on the coding side of things. But all are in good spirits as we move closer to our September launch date.

The founding four of dub5 convened yesterday for our weekly brunch to discuss the implementation of site features, among other things. To that end, you can see a new rollout of site feature live right now. Login, or sign-up if you haven’t already. This new site rollout means:

• Users can edit some of their profile info, like their passwords.
• There’s a new Events Request section where people can see who invited them to future events.
• Some bugs around SMS reminders and responses have been tidied up.

We’ve also partnered with the fine folks at Ignition Media for the visual elements of the site. They’re working on developing a skin for the application. We’re hoping to see those concepts soon!