GorBlog

I wanted to post a quick note about an article I wrote for Vitamin, which is a great resource for developers. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at what we’ve gone through with ImThere. I’ve included a bunch of screenshots to illustrate how ImThere has evolved, which should help with my long-windedness a bit. I’m really proud to have an article up on Vitamin, as it’s a site I’ve respected for a very long time.

So, go check it out!

Ah Labor Day, how I love thee. You fulfill thy purpose by bestowing a long weekend upon us. Thanks.

I’m spending my 3 day weekend relaxing and catching up on stuff I’ve been meaning to do since uh, whenever the last 3 day weekend was, I’m sure. Writing this here blog entry was on that very list. You see, each day, I make a list of what I’d like to accomplish before I sleep. The things at the top of the list usually must get done that day, and they usually do. However, the things towards the bottom of the list aren’t quite so high-priority, and inevitably linger on the list for quite a while. Given that blogging has remained on my list for about a month now, you can imagine that a number of other tasks have suffered the same fate. However, on the rare occasions when I have more time off work than normal, such as this weekend, I make a special list. That special list consists solely of the things I’ve been meaning to do for weeks or months, which effectively moves the stuff that’s usually at the bottom of the list to the top. That means today I blog, and tomorrow I shred the piles of mail that have taken over this room. This is very exciting for me.

In early August, I went with Tess to New York for my friend (and boss at FileFront) Chris’ wedding. Technically the wedding was in Scranton, PA, but we made a bit of a vacation out of it. We flew into Newark, NJ, where our hotel was. It’s a ton cheaper to stay around there, and if you have a car, getting to NYC is fairly easy. Of course, we didn’t rent a car… we rented (so to speak) the lovely and charming Mike! As you may or may not know, depending on how much you’ve stalked him, Mike lives in Danbury, CT. Mike is friends with Chris too, loves going to NYC, and pretends to be friends with us, so he partook in the trip. There was a slight hitch, however. When we arrived at Newark, Tess’ luggage was no where to be found. The lady at the American Airlines baggage office told us that her bag had been held by TSA for some unknown reason, and that it would likely come in on the next flight. All of her clothes, including what she had planned to wear to the wedding, was in this bag, so getting it was pretty crucial. I won’t go into the whole story, but let’s just say that it took almost 2 full days and tons of phone calls to get it, and when it finally arrived at our hotel at 4AM, the bag had been ripped to shreds. It did show up in time for the wedding, but having no faith in American Airlines after getting the run-around for over a day, she had already bought replacement clothes.

The rest of the trip was quite an adventure too. We spent a lot of time in NYC, which included walking in the crazy heat for 14 straight hours, catching the (attempted) filming of a scene from an upcoming Adam Sandler movie, and trying our best to figure out how to get around. On the third day, Mike had to head back home in the afternoon, as he had to get ready for work the next day. Without a car, getting back to our hotel from NYC was a bit of a challenge. It required a subway, a train, a monorail, and a shuttle. That was after walking for 14 hours in the heat, mind you. In addition to NYC, we went with Mike to his hometown of Danbury, CT to meet his mom, and for him to prove that Danbury isn’t a small village with less than stellar cuisine. He failed. There was of course the wedding in Scranton too. On the way there, we realized that we hadn’t bought wrapping paper for the gift, so we stopped at a Wal-Mart on the way to get some. Mike picked out this hideous blue wrapping paper (FileFront colors, he claimed), and we made Tess attempt to wrap this huge George Foreman grill in the back of Mike’s car as we drove. Of course, we couldn’t drive too fast, as we got stuck in horrendous traffic. By the time we finally got to Scranton and found the wedding (we were able to easily find a number of buildings and areas referenced in The Office), the wedding had concluded. Just our luck.

It wasn’t the end of the world though, as Chris had mentioned most people were just going to the reception anyway. However, the reception was 4 hours away at that point. What does one do in lovely Scranton when they have 4 hour to kill? Drive an hour south to visit Jordan (aka stilist), of course! I had mentioned the day before that we may pay him a visit, which I think he agreed to. I figured this was probably the only time I’d actually be in his area, so, how could I resist? When we showed up at his house, I introduced us as the “strange people from the internet” to his parents. I’m pretty sure they didn’t find any humor in it. I don’t totally blame them. Last time Jordan was in my care, he got stuck in Chicago, after being awake for 30 hours, for 12 hours waiting for his connecting flight. Despite all of that, they were very nice to us. It was pretty surreal being there, as I never expected to find myself in his neck of the woods. Anyhow, after about an hour and 3 barely avoided drops of his laptop, we headed back north for the wedding reception. Aside from being forcefully directed through a graveyard by Mike’s GPS, we managed to get to the reception just on time. The reception was a lot of fun (how could 2 open bars not be fun?), and it was nice to see Chris again and meet his wife, Nichelle. All in all, quite a trip. Although, next time I decide I want a vacation, it’s going to consist of a week of me lounging on a beach or something.

Now, it’s time to kill a couple of birds with a blog, so to speak. If you recall the first part of The Great Gummy Bear Ordeal, allow me to conclude it for you. When I called up John B. Sanfilippo & Son, a very friendly sounding man answered the phone. It seemed as if he didn’t get too many calls, and was actually excited that a customer was calling. I told him that I had a package of his company’s gummy bears, but because I couldn’t decipher the expiration date, I wasn’t sure if they were safe to eat. I read him the number, and his reaction was about the same as mine… “oh my!” He asked what the name of the product was, as they produced several varieties of gummy bears. Given that I hadn’t actually bought the gummy bears, I could only tell him what was in the pictures that I posted. I told him that the label on the front had been ripped off, but that I could read the back label to him. He said that it didn’t sound like a product they had produced recently, but that he had a huge book full of facts from their older products. Sure enough, he found the product in the book, and was able to decode the expiration date. August 2nd, 2003. Earlier I had told him that I thought I’d purchased the gummy bears about a year ago (which is honestly when I thought the pictures were from, but I realized I was wrong), and he was shocked to hear that a store would be selling them years after their expiration date. He said the company had a driver in the area, and was going to send the driver to the store I bought the gummy bears from to ensure they weren’t still selling them. At this point, I started to feel bad. I felt worse when he asked for my address so that he could send me coupons for free John B. Sanfilippo & Son products.

Less than 2 weeks later, I got a letter in the mail from the company. Enclosed was an apology letter (even though it wasn’t their fault, or anyone’s) and a bunch of coupons. I was very impressed, but still felt a little bad. To make up for it, I didn’t use the coupons, I’m hoping to promote them a little through these blog entries, and I fully plan to buy their products when I see them. Given how little most companies seem to care about their customers these days, I was very impressed by the actions John B. Sanfilippo & Son took. So, there you have it, a lovely conclusion to an ordeal that, as it turns out, started literally 5 years ago. I’m amazed something like this stuck in my mind for so long, and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t say terribly positive things about me.

On a closing note, I wanted to point out the ImThere blog to those that aren’t aware of it. It’s become more active as of late, and I’m going to keep most of my ImThere related blogging there. I’ll of course mention it here from time to time, but more focused on my personal involvement with it, and less update-y stuff. So, if you want to keep up with the latest ImThere happenings, now you know where to check! Definitely check it out this coming week, as some interesting stuff will be happening. On that note, I think I’ve written more than enough for one entry. Until the next 3 day weekend, uh, drink more tea?

P.S. Surprised I didn’t rant about the NBC/iTunes thing? I forgot. Don’t worry, I sent in an angry letter to NBC.

It’s been almost a month since my last entry, but oh, what a month! Two things I had been waiting almost 6 months for happened: ImThere launched and the iPhone was released. Don’t ask me which I was most excited for! I will, however, tell you about both of them. Of course. Don’t worry though, no 8 page iPhone review from me… yet. This blog is all about what we’ve been up to with ImThere, and where we’re headed with it. My iPhone review (and the other 100 blog entries I’ve been promising) are on their way, I swear! While you’re placing your bets, allow me tell you how the first month of the new ImThere has unfolded.

ImThere’s launch was about as smooth as one could hope. We spent a few extra days polishing, and it proved worth the time. Once we launched the site, we didn’t have to take it down or rush to fix a bunch of bugs causing crashes. If you remember what we went through the first time, you can imagine how much of a relief this was to all of us. This time we sat in Ethan’s living room drinking champagne and thoroughly enjoying the launch. Of course we knew that elated feeling would quickly vanish. After all, the real work begins after launch. For the time it lasted, however, it was quite nice.

We took it easy for the next few days, as everyone had worked pretty much non-stop for the weeks leading up to the launch. There was certainly a bit more celebration that took place around this time! After that though, we slipped back into reality, and assessed where our time needed to be spent initially. Since then, we’ve rolled out over 100 fixes and improvements. This represented our post-launch polishing phase, and now we’ve moved on to bigger things. What we’re working on will add a ton of usefulness to the site, and should give more reasons to keep coming back.

First on the list is a tightly integrated invitation system that will instantly make ImThere more useful for you. How so? Take our currently most popular event, The Simpsons Movie, for example. It’s one of our “locationless” events, which means it’s not tied to any specific city or venue. Also, it has a date, which is set to the opening date of the film, but nothing more specific than that. As you invite your ImThere or non-ImThere friends to see it with you, you can easily define where and at what time you’re going to see it. That information is included in the invitation of course, but also has other interesting impacts on the site that you’ll soon discover. In the near future, there will be some even larger-scale integration with ImThere.

Muy mysterioso!

Second on the list is… wait for it… blogging! Now, we didn’t decide ImThere needed blogging functionality just ‘cause it’s the thing to do. That decision was made when an idea for a blogging system that is so unique and so applicable came to us that it became a total necessity. We’ve been working on it since well before launch, but we wanted to get it right before releasing it. Having said that, we completely realize that everyone already has a blog, and that’s been taken into account. I’m not going to give anything else away, but I think you’ll like it a lot. The invitation system is going to roll out within a week, and the blogging system won’t be too far behind it.

You’re going to see improvement after improvement made to ImThere for, well, hopefully a very long time. In fact, we just brought on a new full-time developer to help with that. What you see of ImThere today is just the beginning of a very large vision. I’m really glad to see a lot of familiar names beginning to use it, and I hope that you all stick around. I completely believe that you’ll end up finding just as much reason to love it as you did DeskMod and ModBlog, but I need your help with that. For starters, I’m always open to any suggestions you may have. Let me know what you need to become hooked! If you could tell your friends and contribute some stuff, that’d be cool too. After all, we want ImThere to center around the things you care about, whether that be a new product, concert, online event, or anything else that matters to you. What I really love seeing is creative uses for it that I never imagined. Have at it!

P.S. Mike (of iMike fame) is working on a swanky new project of his own called District 0. If you’re in any way interested in politics or just doing something to make your area of the world a better place, head over there to see what he’s up to. Oh, and enter your email address to receive the quirky brand of spam only he can provide! That’s a joke… I think.

We started on the new ImThere in late December of last year, and today, we have launched. I couldn’t be more proud of the site and the incredible people behind it. I’m sitting here at Ethan’s with him, Ben, and Chad. We’ve been up for about 24 hours working to get the site launched, and we’re pretty ecstatic that it’s happened. Huge thanks to the whole Ramped team. Chad, Ethan, Jeff, Tess, and Jordan have worked harder than I can describe to launch a truly awesome version of ImThere. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for the champagne.

Oh, before I go, check out the site! http://www.ImThere.com. Also, give the screencast a view for a quick guide to the site. Have fun!

June is shaping up to be quite the month for me. For starters, I finally replaced my stolen MacBook with a new Santa Rosa MacBook Pro 15” 2.4Ghz. I’m totally smitten with this thing; it’s insanely fast, has a beautiful display, gets great battery life, and doesn’t get too hot. The MacBook Pro will actually serve as a replacement for my sluggish iMac G5 as my primary computer too. To make things even better, I look forward to installing the Leopard beta as soon as Apple posts it to ADC. Speaking of Leopard, I’ve got a bunch to say about it, but I’ll save that for another blog. Finally, once I sell my iMac G5, I’m going to pick up a 23 or 24” LCD. Any suggestions?

Where will I be on June 29th? Standing in line at the Apple store to pick up an iPhone, of course! I have seriously never been so excited about a product release. It’s not too common that a product comes along that is truly revolutionary, and the iPhone is just that. Sure, the first version has some drawbacks, but that’s always how it goes. The things I find appealing about it vastly outweigh its flaws. Needless to say, I’ll give it a full review after I play with it a bit. In fact, I’ll write and post the review from the iPhone. I… I hope the keyboard is as good as promised, especially given my longwindedness.

Apple stuff aside, there’s plenty else keeping me busy too. We’re launching ImThere by the end of the month. For real! We’ll be announcing the exact launch date at Web Ascent in Chicago on Wednesday. Most of the Ramped team will be in Chicago for that, and then will come back to St. Louis for a while. If you’d like to meet up in Chicago or St. Louis, drop me a line at gorman [at] ramped [dot] com!

But wait… there’s more!

Right now, right this very second, you can try out the new (beta) ImThere. All you have to do is guess the address, and you’ll get right in. It’s a seriously easy to guess address too, so I hope to see some of you there! If you do stumble upon it, keep in mind that it is still beta, and we’re rolling out 20 to 30 fixes/improvements a day. We do ask that if you use the beta, you help us by reporting bugs to our public bug tracker.

Keep an eye on the ImThere blog for our official launch announcement, and a full report from Web Ascent.

P.S. The amazing conclusion to the gummy bear story is coming, and will totally be worth the wait! I think. Maybe. Eh.