Sphred.com – off internet

Sphred.com is off internet as I am not able to devote much time due to my other commitments.

But I still have all the data and code, so if someone wants to rerun it then email me or I just may put it on github when I have sometime.

SPhred Relaunched

SPhred was relaunched last week (1st week of April, 2008) with RESTful interface, new codebase and a new design. Here is a summary of the changes:

1. Now we have OpenID authentication on SPhred, i.e., new users do not need to Sign Up to use SPhred if they have an Open ID account.
2. In the past, some users have suggested that they do not want their full name to be shown on their profile page, so now we do not show any user’s full name anywhere because we have added nicknames or user names.
3. I thought its a bit tedious to type your whole email address to login, hence added an option of using the Sign In name, ie. you can either use your Sign In name or the email address. If you do not know your Sign In name yet then Sign In using your email address and you will see it once you are signed in.
4. If you have done some activity on SPhred like adding tags to your profile, SPhredding, connected with other people then SPhred can also recommend a network of people with similar interests on SPhred. Simply go to your profile and click on the ‘More Like you’ link to check this out.
5. You can also send short messages to other users by using the ‘Buzz’ link on a user profile.
6. I think it is important to bring the old posts back to users’ attention once in a while even if it has gone past 10th page and hence have implemented a ‘Random Picks’ widget which is shown on almost every page. Go to the widgets page http://www.sphred.com/widgets and check out the other widgets.
7. I received lots of spam in the past, hence now we have captcha implemented on almost every page where users contribute to SPhred.
8. Previously, every post on SPhred had a URL like http://www.sphred.com/sphred_details/site_name, this url scheme is still kept for backward compatibility but now we have better and more meaningful (& RESTful) urls like http://www.sphred.com/categories/1-New-Launches/websites/site_name.NOTE: The old url scheme will be phased out eventually hence can I request you change the old urls on your blogs/websites to the new ones.
9. There are many more behind the scenes changes and some you will notice in time.
10. And yes, this is how SPhred looked in the past http://www.sphred.com/images/sphred.png

If you have any feedback and suggestion then do send it to me, have fun!

New features on SPhred.com

First, A big thanks to all the guys out there for registering and sending invitation to their friends/relatives to try out sphred.com

SPhred is currently in very early stages, like what other sites say ‘in beta’.

A few things are added on SPhred in the last couple of days:

1) Earlier you first had to create a post and then could add tags to it but now you can add tags while creating a post.

2) Now you can put a face to your name i.e. add a picture. This functionality is available by going to your profile page. The option is given just below “Profile for your name”. You can access your profile page after signing in by clicking on your email address part of ‘Signed in as your email address‘.

3) Page to view users who sphredded an item has been redone and looks much better now (atleast I think so). Have a look by clicking on the number of users who sphreaded an item. Or you can directly go here http://sphred.com/users_sphredding/9-tutsbuzzcom

4) Search is functional now though currently it only looks for the search term in a Sphred Item’s title or description.

6) Comments look much better now as you can see the picture of people who posted comments.

I would love to hear your feedback or suggestions i.e. what you would like to have on sphred and what you think isn’t working or won’t work.

Once again thank you all for using sphred.

SP|hred.com launch

SP|hred.com is launched partially on 06/10/2007.

As I said in my earlier post that I will work on the idea but launching it within two days, yes … that’s quick.

I intend to not promote it for quite some time because I need to implement a few important things which forms the core of SP|hred. So if you stumble upon SP|hred.com in coming weeks then you are probably one of the first users of SP|hred.

Spread It or Shred It

SPhred.com is born while I was attending fowa and I am not sure yet whether its a good or bad idea but I am gonna work on it and try to keep it simple.

I created a rough architecture of the site during one of the presentation at future of web apps conference on fowa brochure (Sorry Ryan Carson…I just didnt carry enough paper with me).

I thought about the idea and then booked the domain last night itself, even started working on it.

Will talk later about what the site is actually about…