iBegin Blog

iBegin 1.5 is live. I will be sending out a massmail soon, but for those curious what is new/better, major updates include:

• Events database. First we helped you find places, now we help you find stuff to do. The frontpage is a bit sparse now, but as people start using it, it will become like the new category pages (mentioned below). Each listing page now has a calendar which shows any events in our system. And just like normal listings, you can also add events (and cmmment on them too).
• New front page. A lot cleaner now, some people were put off by the current frontpage. Also gives quick and easy access to searching events, using The Explorer, and what not.
• The Neighbourhood Explorer. Definitely one of my favorites. A big irritation I had was going to a hotel and not having a clue what was around it. This way, you can easily explore whats around. For the tech people - completely AJAX driven, from the show me selectors to entering in a new address.
• The new category pages. The current ones were (very) boring, and the new ones help spotlight what people find most useful. The featured review of the day is also user driven - by marking reviews as useful vs not useful, you help select which review gets spotlighted every day.
• Notification system. To really build community, you want to know what your friends are upto. With this feature, you can now subscribe to various updates. Get email notifications on what your friends are adding as favorites, what events they are going to be attending, and a lot more.
• Highway Traffic information. While announced a few days ago, it now also has live traffic cameras.
• Our philosophy page. While not necessarily a 1.5 update, it is something we want to make sure people know about it. As a user driven website, we thought it was very important to outline what we drives us.
• Miscellaneous updates here and there, all focusing on making the user experience better and more fun
• More badges. Everyone loves them, so why not?
• Custom icons for our maps. No need to wonder what red is versus what blue is.

I head over to Mississauga (a suburb of Toronto) about once a week. And I have always wondered why I couldn’t look up highway congestion online.

After some digging, I did run into some information via the Ministry of Transporation and the Municipal Government of Toronto. But both solutions were sorta ugly, and didn’t give me the bird’s eye view I really wanted.

And so while originally I had wanted to couple this with the ‘1.5 release’, since we are a bit behind schedule, I thought we would just put it available now: Toronto Highway Traffic Flow.

It updates every 2 minutes, and uses AJAX, so that the page itself never has to refresh!

If there is one place that RSS needs to get a foothold in … its the government. We had to do image analysis to get info on the Gardiner and DVP (and unfortunately, the DVP info is only at major roads too). Or at least some sort of open way of getting the information.

UPDATE MARCH 28: We now have the cameras also on the map.

Nothing public to show, but a lot of stuff has been completed and is being worked on. I’m actually excited - of the four major updates that are on the list, three are 99% done, and the other one should take a few days.

A little late? Yes we are. Offering more than we originally intended? Definitely. Worth the wait? [b]Most definitely[/b].

Always good to have the ideals you wish to follow written, and public.

So, introducing the philosophy of iBegin.

Before I go into hibernation for a week or so starting tomorrow, was looking up some stats, and iBegin is doing very well. The biggest vindication of all is the stat not published - # of edits performed. Since inception we have had over 1000 additions/corrections/updates (eg dead listings or moved addresses) reported to us. Right there is the [b]proof[/b] that a system like iBegin is needed - the local community is dynamic and ever-changing, and we need the community itself to help keep everyone informed.

The next update is also looking good - been showing some people, and they really like what it will bring to iBegin. Next week - its just around the corner

Cindy just became the first person to hit 10 badges. 15 more to go, and of course we will be adding more as we expand

The next week or two should be relatively quiet as we work on some other pressing stuff, but we have some exciting features to introduce as March comes to a close.

Target date is March 20, may be slightly earlier or later. The frontpage is going to be updated to better reflect our approach, and also some additions.

Other stuff too, but consider me tight-lipped I do want to get a spell-checker going, but I don’t think will be able to meet that target.

As always, bug fixing and little feature-additions continue.

UPDATE: Sorry, pushed back to March 25 or so.

Every social system needs a way of ‘recognizing’ individuals who go beyond the call of duty. We have the ‘Illustrious’ badge (and more en-route). The first five were given today:

• Rajio
• Sepand
• colin
• TdotKate
• Breezy

People worth watching and adding as Friends.

We have always had this (hidden), but for the first time you can publicly see the [b]UserRank[/b] for an individual. Inspired by Google’s PageRank, UserRank attempts to give a value to a user. We take about 26 different measurements when calculating UserRank, both straightup and expontential. I can say that UserRank [b]does flow[/b] - people you add as a friend get some of your UserRank, and people who find you as a friend send you some of their UserRank.

Quick Example: ROM Favorites.

The search system has been improved to be even faster (direct queries to the system are about 33% faster), and other misc performance updates are also being worked on and improved.

UPDATE: The search as been further improved, with sorting orders also now (and improved relevancy). Even better, the search used to take 0.14 seconds, and I am getting < 0.01 times now!

UPDATE March 8: The speed is now 2x faster. On the largest query set (’restaurants’), what used to take 0.36 seconds was whittled down to 0.13 seconds and now is down to 0.069 seconds.