ImThere Blog

With the new API, the index methods can take an optional parameter q, which is a search query. I realized there was nothing documenting our search system, so… have some documentation!

I’m still working on the documentation, but figured I’d go ahead and post what I’ve written and start getting feedback. Let me know what you think!

Since Gorman is slacking on his blogging duties, I decided to blog about the recent updates myself. I’m not as great with words as gorman, so I’ll get to the point. Here’s what’s new:

• Fixed issue with meta tags not escaping content properly
• Hotness improvements
• Various changes to URLs to make them cleaner
• Improvements to contact importing on invitations
• Various changes/fixes with email verification
• Fixed links in invite email, welcome email, and mobile verification message
• Rewrote the carousel javascript – This fixes various issues with thumbnails/user icons not showing up and scrolling carousels
• Fixed issue with timelines w/ little content not initializing properly
• Fixed styling on pop-up calendars on event creator/editor and invites
• Fixed issue with comment caching which caused comments to not automatically update
• Added a notification for IE6 users about our current lack of support for their browser of choice (and recommend alternatives ;)
• Various html validation fixes
• Fixed issue with sorting by newest
• Fixed issue with username length on user carousels

I’ve mostly been working on the ImThere API, which is coming along quite nicely. Here’s some of the functionality that will be included:

• Browsing events, venues, artists, and users (obviously)
• Posting/updating events, venues, and artists
• Saying ImThere/BeenThere/SeenThem to events/venues/artists
• Favoriting venues and artists
• Setting your status message

Most of the api is already in place, if you want to start poking around. Just add .xml to a url. We’ll officially launch the API, with complete documentation, very soon. If you want more info on the API, stop by our API room on Campfire. I’ll try to idle in there and answer questions.

Also, Wes is working on some fun stuff which should be launching “any day now”.

If you’ve had problems verifying your email address the last couple of days, click the resend verification email link and try it again. There was an issue with the verification codes not getting saved. Sorry about that!

Update: Oops! Should really work now!

With the holidays behind us, the team has been hard at work finishing the first update to ImThere in 2008. That update is now here! It brings us into the world of Ruby on Rails 2, the major new version of the platform ImThere is built on. We can now take advantage of all of the great functionality and performance enhancements that Rails 2 offers, which we’ve already started to do. In the process of all of this, we took the opportunity to overhaul our code base and get it in shape for a brand new year of development.

Not only is ImThere now faster and easier to build on, it also features a number of great enhancements and fixes:

• Rewritten search system that provide much more accurate results
• Rewritten related content system that provide truly useful suggestions
• Reworked timeline and content stream to load faster
• Clarified time display on the Going On Now bar
• Fixed navigation issues on various pages
• Improved tagging functionality
• Tweaked invitation system
• Tweaked mobile system usability
• Numerous styling improvements

All in all, this is an important update that will have long-lasting effects on ImThere. One example of that is our forthcoming API and sharing functionality that is now possible with this update. Expect that and a whole lot more in the near future. 2008 is going to be a great year for ImThere!

Before getting entirely consumed by the rapidly approaching holidays, we’ve managed to push out a nice little update to ImThere. Most of the work involved polishing the Real-Time Event system a bit more, but there are some other goodies too:

• The Going On Now bar now rotates happening events
• Timestamps on the Going On Now bar are now more clear
• Longer Real-Time Event descriptions no longer get cut off
• Editing a Real-Time Event now works properly
• Mobile reminders are no longer sent to you for Real-Time Events you post
• Resetting a lost password now functions as expected
• Various user page timeline cleanups

That’s all for now, but we’ve got huge plans for 2008. In fact, we’ll be releasing a great update directly following the holidays. Stay tuned for that as well as some non-code related blog entries I’ll be posting very soon.

Happy holidays from the entire ImThere team!