While I can't exactly call myself an avid photographer - as I have zero skill in this art form - I do have a lot of photo albums. I call it the "quantity over quality approach." Unfortunately, when I want to look up, say, pictures from my Microsoft internship in 2003, it's a mess. Picasa throws all your albums in one ginormous list, making it difficult to track down the right pictures. That's why I created PictureMash.
Group albums logically - and automatically - by time into "Smart Folders" For example, I created a "Smart Folder" called Microsoft Internship 2003 which contains all albums between May 2003 and August 2003. I don't have to put the albums in there manually - I just give PictureMash the date range I want, and it does its thing. And, I can even group my smart folders, allowing me to tuck away all my college pictures into one master folder.
Merge Picasa and Flickr albums If you're like, well, many people, you may have used both Picasa and Flickr albums. PictureMash puts them all into one seamless list.
Add tags and related links When I go to a party or event, I'm usually not the only one taking pictures. With PictureMash, I can add links to my friend's pictures too, right next to my album. This way, when I'm looking up pictures from Seattle Anti-Freeze's Roller Disco party, I remember to look at Ming Li's pictures too.
Create one feed for all your friends Another fun use case for PictureMash: I can create a "group" account and add my friends' pictures to this account. When I move across the country next month, I'll be able to reference this account to see what's going on with my Seattle friends.
And remember: you don't have to re-upload anything. All your pictures are still stored on Picasa or Flickr!
I recently sent in a support ticket to evite about a pretty huge issue with their site. I can't say what it is - yet - but it's not a little bug. It's a huge, massive, gaping issue.
Anyway, I get the usual "thank you for your email" auto-response. Then, two hours later, I get this:
Thank you for your patience. The issues you have experienced have been corrected, and you may now create, edit, and manage your invitation as desired. If you experience any further difficulties, you may alleviate this by deleting the cookies and clearing your browser’s cache, as they may still contain the error page information. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused you. If we can further assist you, please contact us.
Uhh, no, it hasn't been fixed. In fact, judging from the non-sensicalness of the response, they didn't even read my email. What this means is:
They have an auto-response, on a time delay, saying that they've fixed the issue when they haven't done squat.
Some minion clicks a button to say that they're fixed issues when they haven't done squat.
Either way, they're just blindly telling their users that they're fixed issues that they haven't even looked into. Sweet.
Funnily enough, this response probably actually works a good percentage of the time out of the pure flakiness of their site.
By contrast, I've had pretty good experience with customer support at other companies:
Facebook: Once Seattle Anti-Freeze exceeded about 1500 members, we could no longer send messages to the group or invite the group to an event. Facebook employees Luke Shepard and Paul McDonald got those limits raised. Thanks guys!!
Pingg: I've written in feature / bug requests. Their support team has promptly responded with well thought out responses.
MyPunchBowl: After I posted about MyPunchBowl, the founder emailed me - within hours.
Zoji.com: I have exchanged numerous emails with the founders.
The lesson is: Don't automatically respond to users saying that their issue has been fixed.
I've been using Talkinator, an embeddable chat program for websites, for a few months now.
I realize I might be the only post-1995 site to want a chatroom, but it's actually rather useful. For example, when people are discussing, say, Microsoft Interview Questions, they'll jump in the chatroom to discuss problems. This use was expected.
The more interesting use-case was simply feedback. People hesitate feedback via email, or even through anonymous forms. They will, however, jump in a chatroom and complain. I've discovered a number of bugs this way.
It's been a good run. We've have laughed, we've cried, we've... ok, mostly just cried. What's up with evite? I swear, the only thing that the evite does is make the service worse.
The last Seattle Anti-Freeze event was the last straw. A few days before the event, messages we tried to send would silently fail. When your best selling days are within a few days, this is a big deal. The tipping point, however, was after the event: we could no longer export our guest list. We depending on exporting in order to drop people as they wish and to add new guests. So, that was it for evite.
After playing around with far too many services, I decided to use pingg.com. The designs are clean and simple - a big step up up from evite's cluttered interface. RSVPing is simple, and at no point does pingg try to force guests to register to do basic tasks like inviting their friends. It's missing a few features, like the ability for guests to remove themselves from the invitation (they do, however, support the ability to block someone which is sort of the same thing). I have a few little complaints, here and there, but all around pingg is a much better service than evite.
There's just one issue: people don't get it. RSVPs on all sides (yes, no, and maybe) have dropped significantly since leaving evite. I'm not sure if people are mistaking pingg invitations for, say, an invitation to join another annoying web 2.0's service, or if it's just getting lost in their email box. Either way, RSVPing is way down.
I heard so many people state that evite has no switching costs. Not true. The switching costs are huge and possess a scary unknown factor: Will people RSVP or not?
Several months ago, I evaluated a number of evite alternatives out there. It's a crowded space, and lots of new sites have popped up since. Here's a new one that contacted me via a blog comment: BRADvite. Without looking at the comment again, I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say his name was Brad.
First Glance BRADvite.com pops up with a loading screening. Literally - the background says "loading" all over it. It's sort of distracting. And then in the center, there's a picture of a guy talking on his cell phone. Brad, is that you? Why are you hanging out in the middle of the screen?
Invitation Themes The various background images load relatively quickly in the background. Options include waterfalls, oceans, leafs, classical music sheet, etc. But my party is a toga party. On a boat. With a DJ. And drinking. As beautiful as a waterfall is, it has absolutely nothing to do with my party, nor does it express the "fun party" vibe. A picture of a keg would be more appropriate.
Tucked away in a corner is a little button to change the main image: a rose, secret service cartoon drawing, asian-style flowers, a man fighting off an elephant, aliens, etc. And, of course, a picture of our new friend Brad on a cell phone. Again, none of these match "toga party". Or even, say, a birthday / Christmas / Halloween party.
Registration
At least registration is fairly painless. It just asks me name and email address. The registration email didn't actually work, but they fixed that for me pretty quickly.
Event Details & Sending Invitation
I can't specify the time for the party. 'Nuff said.
Email Invitation
At least the email invitation is clean, elegant and provides useful information: host name, email address, date, location, and invitation details. To open the invitation, I see three links: View Comments | Click here to RSVP | Click for Map.
Yikes. I just want to open it. Shouldn't I be able to view comments and RSVP at the same time? And why not put "Click for map" next to the address, where it's most relevant and out of the way?
After the Invitation Is Sent
Host options are limited. I can edit the text of the invitation after I've sent the invitation, but not the background or main image. I can't export the guest list. I can't see when people RSVPd. There's no integration with Google Calendar or Outlook. I can't message guests.
Summary
The limitations of BRADvite are fairly significant, so I won't reiterate them. There is a more interesting point to be made.
Brad of BRADvite is clearly focusing on high quality images. Good. Far too many websites underestimate the importance of their user interface. The issue is that while the images are high quality, they don't very well match what the user wants to do. Brad needs to create user scenarios, such as the following:
Mary: 50 year old mother who is creating an invitation for her husband's 50th birthday party. It's a dinner party for 20 guests at their house.
AEPi: Fraternity which is inviting a sorority to their winter formal
Jake: 20 year old boy, soon to be 21. He's throwing a party for his 21st birthday in Las Vegas.
Gayle: throws large monthly parties with thousands of invited guests. (Hey, I had to throw myself in there.)
If Brad walked through these scenarios, he might see that as pretty as the background images are, none of them match what Jake or Gayle is doing. He might notice that AEPi, which is hosting a party as a group, might want to let multiple people edit the invite. He might notice that Mary needs the ability to message all the guests to tell them that they don't need to bring gifts. He might notice that if I'm throwing parties regularly, I need the ability to grab my guest list after each event.
Issues like this aren't limited to BRADvite, of course. Websites of all kinds need to stop thinking in the abstract "I am a website which provides [invitations, job listing, etc]" and start thinking concretely about exactly what problems they're trying to solve.
A long time believer in the self-interested nature of mankind, I appreciate a person, company or organization which is able to align motivations in productive ways. Want to raise money for your team? Give people something for it. Throw a fund raising party so they can meet new people. Put the donating company's logo on your website so that they can increase visibility. Party A needs to assign its goals with Party B.
By this logic, self-improvement goals should be easy because there is no other party to cooperate with. There's only your goal to lose weight, your goal to exercise more, your goal to spend more time with your children, etc. The benefits to you in all cases are clear. So why do so many people struggle with keeping such commitments?
In many ways, your short-term self (ST) and your long-term self (LT) are different parties. LT would love to look better in a swimsuit for summer by shedding 20 pounds, but ST would really like that slice of cheesecake. The long duration of the goal, the more LT and ST clash.
StickK helps to align ST and LT's goals by imposing simple penalties when ST starts to stray. Here's how it works (for, say, weight loss)
You enter in your current weight, height and target weight
You give a time frame in weeks, with a maximum weight loss of two pounds per week.
You offer a monetary penalty of, say, $100 per week and either a charity or anti-charity recipient.
You choose to either have the goal "on your honor" or to have friends referee you.
Each week, you (or your referees) log in to track your progress. If you're on track, great! Otherwise, well, there goes your $100.
Economists reason that there is a cost to everything. StickK is provide a very real short-term cost.
Just one gripe: selecting an anti-charity as a recipient feels a little strange - even unethical - to me. Sure, donating to a group that I strongly oppose, such as a Pro-Life organization, might offer additional motivation, but helping a Pro-Life organization is directly hurting a Pro-Choice organization. It doesn't feel right to me to have my failures unnecessarily impact the pro-choice movement or another group that I support.
Rumor has it that Match.com is coming out with a facebook app called "Little Black Book". Details on it are a tad fuzzy, but it sounds like it will show other users who have installed Little Black Book in addition Match.com users.
Little Black Book lets Facebook users sign up to see the other Facebook users who hope to date someone. Once they're signed up, users of Little Black Book will receive potential matches among Facebook users and non-Facebook users who are signed up with Match.com.
This could be just what online dating needs. Match.com floods you with a wealth of details about a person and lets you search on minute details. "Hmm, why yes, I would only like to date people who are in Financial services. But no legal for me!" The problem is, of course, even if you do care a great deal about your date's profession, you probably don't regard paralegal vs partner in a law firm the same way. You can also see if your diet matches your date's diet. I can just see someone now: "Well, sure, Suzie wasn't as well educated as I wanted, but her diet matched mine, and that's why we fell in love!"
So while Match.com shows you a suitor's carefully crafted profile, Facebook can give you a glimpse into their actual life. A Facebook profile is maintained for the purposes of sharing one's life with their friends. It contains actual photos - not just the top two or three shots. A comment on a person's wall such as "Remember that He's always there. We'll pray for you!" or "Do you remember anything from last night?" can tell you if a person is immersed in religion or partying (or both). Because Facebook is a platform for interacting with friends, it can tell you more about who a person actually is. Match.com profile are written expressly for attracting strangers and therefore represent who a personwants to be. Little Black Book could breath a bit of real life into online dating.
Will Little Black Book break online dating's "don't ask, don't tell" policy?
A gay friend of mine uses online dating because it's hard to meet other gay men without going to gay bars - and that's not really his scene. A family member of mine uses it because, as a single parent, there aren't many options. Attractive, social, intelligent friends in their 20s - the people you would expect to never "need" it - use online dating because they are frustrated with the dating scene or just figure, "hey, why not?" Numerous friends and family members have found their spouse or long term partner from a dating service. In fact, according to one study, 12% of couples married in the last year met online. Wow.
Despite the fact that most people I know are using online dating services, and that it appears to be working, they will only admit to it very quietly - if at all. (Note how I carefully worded the above paragraph to ensure that I'm not pinpointing any specific person.) Online dating is like this dark little secret.
The problem is that Facebook apps typically thrive off word-of-mouth (eg, mini-feeds and invites). I added Fun Wall, SuperWall and Nicknames because I wanted read the message someone had left me. I added BillMonk because someone invited me to it. I added Percent because I saw it in someone's mini-feed.
It's a catch-22. If Little Black Book advertises you use it, then many people won't install it. If they don't advertise that you use it, people won't discover that it's out there.
Or, maybe, just maybe, Little Black Book will show that online dating doesn't have to be a dark little secret.
I woke up this morning, checked Facebook, and discovered that Facebook had removed 'is' from status messages.
Previously, because all status messages were preceded by "is", users have been forced to either reword their phrases to be grammatically correct (eg, "Gayle is looking for people to play soccer on Wednesday nights. Let her know!" instead of "Gayle: let me know if you want to play soccer on Wednesday nights."), or to deal with bad grammar. I personally was in the awkward rewording camp. No bad grammar for me!
It appears that I should have started my petition to keep 'is' in status messages while I had the chance. I think I'm one of the few people who don't support this change.
The Facebook 'is' was part of Facebook's personality - the awkwardly worded status messages, the "So-and-so is happy because she got admitted to Penn", and the people who would just say screw it and deal with their bad grammar. It's part of what made Facebook Facebook.
In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. The button is pretty silly:
You would only use if you know what the first result will be, in which case you probably would have bookmarked the page already.
It clutters up the interface with something that's rarely used.
It arguably costs Google money because it skips over search results, and therefore ads (or it would if people, you know, used it).
Any User Interface designer would tell you not to add such a button. But still, year after year, it remains. Why? Because it's what makes Google Google. It's "Googley".
Well, if you'll permit me to use Facebook as an adjective, 'is' is Facebooky. Of course, in a few months, it'll all seem silly. We'll forget that we ever awkwardly reworded our status, and high schoolers will relish with writing "Ana: omg Mrs. Crawford is so weird LOL!" instead of the more sophisticated "Ana is thinking that Mrs. Crawford is so weird." What's done is done - Facebook has given us more flexibility with status messages. What an application giveth it can't taketh away.
When it comes to planning large events (1000+ people invited, 200+ people attending), Evite just doesn't cut it. Heck, it's never great, but it really suffers on large, paid events. So, what are my options?
I've evaluated the following: Evite, Socializr, MyPunchBowl, Zoji, Renkoo,
Problem Description: I'm looking for an invite application for planning large events. These events have 1000+ people invited, and around 200 people can buy tickets. Guests need to be able to respond and invite more people with minimal hassle, and they need to be able to easily view who's actually coming (eg, paid). It also needs to be easy for me, as the organizer, to be able to copy the invite list over to the next one.
Evite: It's a bit buggy, but it works fine for smaller events. For large events, it's pretty weak. Guests can spam all other guests. There's a cap on the number of guest you can invite. You can't easily export and import guest lists. Slow and buggy.
Disclaimer: Evite is the standard in invite apps, which both helps and hurts its assessment. I know its negatives better than anything else, which hurts its grade. However, I'm also accustomed to Evite's features and expect every other service to have the same things.
Pros:
Templates: Large selection (although fairly mediocre design)
No forced registration: Guests can RSVP and invite others without registering
Guest List Management: Supports exporting as a .CSV, I can edit guest responses,
I can set a public url for people who aren't on the invite
I can add a field for payment (which is really just a link to paypal)
Cons
Lacks security on the guest list: guests can spam other guests. Unacceptable with 1000+ people.
Guest list cap of 750 - too small for me.
Description field: max character counts of 3000 - the count is buggy and include HTML characters.
Unable to importing guest list
Garbles links inserted into invite.
Invite email doesn't provide date or time.
Annoying banner ads
Painfully slow
Grades
Ease of Use for Guests: A. (It doesn't require registration for RSVPing or inviting people).
Guest List Management: B (You can export guest lists, but you can't import them).
Elegance: B- (Lots of mediocre templates, and a lot of ads).
Final Grade: B-
Socializr: It does almost everything evite does, and is actually better in a few ways. It's an invite service, plain and simple. However, it requires guests to register in order to invite more people. That's a deal breaker for me.
Pros:
Supports closing the guest list to future RSVPs. Awesome feature!
Templates: elegant, and you can save your own template or use other people's.
Description field: sufficiently long, and you can edit the HTML directly.
Good guest list management: guests can remove themselves from the invite, and you can export and import guest lists. Organizer can edit guest responses.
Can redirect users to another website to pay after RSVPing.
Invite email provides the date and time.
Registration is not require to RSVP.
Cons:
Not enough templates
Requires guests to register an account in order to invite more people. So close....
Grades
Ease of Use for Guests: C+. (Docked for requiring guests to register to invite people).
Guest List Management: A+
Elegance: B
Final Grade: C
MyPunchBowl: Slick design for invitations, but the invite email is pretty ugly. It does little more than evite does, and it doesn't have a way for guests to reply "maybe". Well, that's just crazy!
Pros:
Very slick designs!
You can load guests lists from previous parties
Invite email provides the date and time.
Organizer can change guest's display names after inviting them.
You can edit guest responses (sort of - you can move yes -> no or no -> yes), and you can do this quickly.
Registration is not required to RSVP or to invite more people.
People who respond "No" can't leave a public comment with their response (instead this gets emailed as a private response to the host). I'm not totally sure if this is actually a good or bad thing, but I'll put this as a pro.
Cons:
Invite email is pretty ugly (or I just don't like the gray background).
RSVPing is a multiple page / tab process. (1) Click yes, no or maybe. (2) Are you bringing anyone with you? (3) Comment. I prefer being able to do all of these at once - it's easier.
Guests can't view the comments unless they RSVP. (This might be a pro for a lot of people, but not for me.)
There's no "maybe" option. There's a "decide later" option, but that's just a way for someone to send themselves a reminder.
Grades:
Ease of Use for Guests: C (there's no maybe option)
Guest List Management: B (you can copy invites, but you can't move guests to "Decide Later")
Elegance: B+ (Slick invites, but ugly emails)
Final Grade: C-
Zoji.com: A worthy competitor to evite which doesn't try to force guests into registering. It's missing a few guest management features that I'd like, but the groups ideas shows a lot of potential. Pros:
Registration is not required to RSVP or to invite more people.
Payment info: provides field for this info.
No cap on invite lists. Yay!
People can comment on your response. Cool!
Contact groups: you can invite people as a group. These can be public groups which anyone can add themselves too. This is potentially very useful for me.
Guests can remove themselves from the invite.
Founders are very responsive to feedback. (Thanks Dan and Kevin, who will no doubt be reading this ;-)).
Cons:
Display names: tedious to set. You can copy and paste email address with display names (but I hear they're working on this).
It appears to not accept "+" signs in email addresses - even though that is a valid character.
Templates: limited options.
Messaging guests: I can't message the "no response"s without message the "no"s too.
Organizer can't edit guest responses.
Exporting guest lists is not supported.
Grades:
Ease of Use for Guests: A (It never forces people into RSVPing)
Guest List Management: B
Elegance: B+
Final Grade: B+ (with high expectations for the future)
Renkoo: Slick and elegant invitation system with one awesome feature: guests can reply directly from the invitation email. But... guests can't invite people. Importing guest lists is a pain. And guests have to RSVP to register.
Pros:
Guests can reply directly from the email invitation. That's awesome!
Slick, AJAXy at points.
Provides a message board for guests
Default theme is pretty, but a bit girly
Cons:
No bulk adds for guests - I can only import from address books.
Invite email: text is garbled, and it doesn't provide date or time.
Template: none.
Registration required to RSVP.
Guests can't invite more people.
Organizer can't edit guest responses.
Grades:
Ease of Use for Guests: D (you have to register to RSVP. You can't invite more people.)
Guest List Management: C (difficult to import guest lists, you can't edit guest responses.)
Elegance: B+ (some slickness and pretty default, but you can't customize the design.)
Final Grade: D+
And our winner is... Zoji. It doesn't quiet do everything I need it too, but it'll work well for my guests - and that's the most important thing.
I can't take the risk of using Zoji for my huge events of 1000+ people, much as I do like the service. I'll probably start by using Zoji for a smaller event - you know, test the waters and see how it goes. Then... just maybe :-)
Over the past few months, I've noticed more and more people using other services for invitations - not necessarily instead of, but rather in addition to. I, myself, use both evite and facebook for invitations - every party I throw has an invite on both services.
Evite gets more quick responses - that makes some sense. First, Facebook bugs you about lots of stuff (wall posts, etc), so you overlook those emails much more easily. Second, Facebook invites aren't going to get lost in your inbox like Evite - there's no pressure to respond. Third, Evite doesn't include any useful information in the invitation - guests have to open up the invitation in order to know when it is.
Example: I'm planning a very large event. The Evite has 1400 people on it, and the Facebook event has 650. Within two hours, I had 100 accepts on Evite and 5 on Facebook.
Facebook gets a higher response rate over all. Why? Well, an Evite comes in - you either open it... or it trickles down in your inbox. You might see one or two reminders about an event, but it's not continuously bugging you about it. On Facebook though, it's on the main page every time you log in, poking you to respond.
Example: I recently hosted a very large event. The Evite had about 800 people on it. After numerous messages, begging people to respond, I got almost 50% of people who responded. When I didn't do that, I got about 35%. The Facebook invite had about 550 people on it. 65% responded, without any bugging.
Both have their own network effect properties. On Facebook, people discover invites for (public) events through their friends - but without their friends inviting them, because of mini-feeds. Evite guest lists, however, tend to grow through direct invitations.
So what to do? I can't use Facebook instead of Evite - not everyone is on Facebook. I like the network effect of Facebook though. So what do you do? Continue using both.
Or, ditch Evite for something else (Zoji.com?) :-). Who's with me on the Evite strike? Anyone? Anyone?
Evite frustrates me. There are lots of bugs in the messages and hassles in using it, but the real issue is that I have to get an exception to organize an event with more than 750 people invited. I've gotten the exception so far, but it's on a case-by-case basis and at point they might cut me off - and they do. (Dear Evite, I know it's to limit spam, but isn't it obvious that I'm not a spammer? Why are you pushing away your best customers?) So, anyway, I'm looking for other options...
Your syncing between Google Calendar and Outlook was great. Almost. But in the process, you've just spammed a whole bunch of my friends by sending out event cancellations for events that were 2+ months ago (well, let's hope it was only prior events and not future events). You also deleted the full guest list for an upcoming event and - for those who have Gmail - told them that it was canceled. Why, Plaxo, why? You came so close...
Maybe I'll try it again when you're out of beta.
Anyone got any good solutions for syncing between Google Calendar and Outlook (or Google Calendar and Blackberry)?
I've been using Google Calendar since it launched (well, actually, a bit before it launched :-)) and loved it. Yeah, I've used Outlook's Calendar and it's nice and all, but without an exchange server, I can't access my calendar from home and work. Plus, Google Calendar has Quick Add which is pretty much the best feature ever.
The only issue with Google Calendar was that since there was no way to sync Outlook & Google Calendar, there was no way to sync my blackberry with Google Calendar. Boo :-(
Plaxo just released a new version though which solves this. It can now sync between Google Calendar & Outlook (and a bunch of other services which I care less about). Ahh... meetings on my blackberry now :-).
Gayle Laakmann is a Wharton MBA student and owns two businesses, CareerCup and Seattle Anti-Freeze. She has previously worked for Microsoft, Apple, Google and, most recently, EmptySpaceAds.
- as I have zero skill in this art form - I do have a lot of photo albums. I call it the "quantity over quality approach." Unfortunately, when I want to look up, say, pictures from my Microsoft internship in 2003, it's a mess. Picasa throws all your albums in one ginormous list, making it difficult to track down the right pictures. That's why I created PictureMash.
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