JumpSocial Blog

What can be done to make this site better?

http://www.artschallenge.ca

Hello!
I just installed an RSS feed into the JumpSocial Calendar. (There was already one on the JumpSocial Blog of course).

Here’s an interesting question. The JumpSocial Calendar is usually rendered for a particular location. For example, if you are in Ottawa, we figure out that you’re in Ottawa (via IP address or Postal Code), then render a calendar for Ottawa.

For the feed, if a Web site is reading it to render content onto the same Web site, we may be able to grab the IP address of the Web site and use the local that we get from it. The difficulty is that many Web sites are hosted very far away from the locale that they are for.

If a user subscribes to the feed in some sort of feed reader, I’m betting we can read the IP address of the user’s internet access and we can probably use that to guess their locale.

Any thoughts?

Darcy

Some people think that JumpSocial is primarily a Salsa dance calender. Well, it is, but it is also equally for all other dance styles.

The idea is that each event is classified by the person who posted it. Then each user indicates in their interests (part of their profile), what kinds of dance they like.

The JumpSocial system then builds them a calendar based on their own interests.

Under Salsa there is Rueda, Cuban, Peurto Rican, Columbian (Cumbian), New York, LA and Miami. Of course there is Swing. East Coast, West Coast, Lindy etc. American and International Ballroom. Many forms of Folk dancing, Freestyle, Belly Dancing (AKA Oriental Dancing), Hustle, Tango and much more.

There is a place to list band activities, DJ. Events can also be categorized by their cover or no cover charge, age group, suitability to singles or couples and many other categories.

Darcy

Hello All!

So the JumpSocial technology is being rewritten into PHP and mySQL technology. This is a great opportunity to make changes and enhancements to the software. This new technology is inexpensive and will allow us to scale the Web site. The database design favors a computing grid so that means we can handle lots of traffic.

Don’t forget! We really want to hear your opinions on what needs to be changed.
Darcy

Hello Everyone!

We want you! (You’re input that is!)

The JumpSocial system has been such a success that we need to “scale” the system to handle more traffic. This is an opportunity to make changes to the system.

So we want your opinions on what needs to be changed in the system.

We’d like to know if there are any Calendars or other mechanisms that you use to promote your events. What you like and dislike about them. We’d also like to know what you like and dislike about JumpSocial. Tell us what features or changes you’d like to see.

Feel free to post a comment in this Blog or contact:

Darcy@Siteware.com

Darcy

Currently, the JumpSocial system uses Postal and Zip codes in order to figure out where you are. It compares that to the Postal/Zip codes found in the Venues that are linked with events and shows you events that are within a radius of where you live.

In the future, we may approximate your location with city or IP address for the event that users do not provide a Postal/Zip code. We are researching to find an IP-Latitude/Longitude table.

Darcy

Current:

• Any user can post an event. (Classes, party, band, DJ, practice etc…)
• Events can be one-time, weekly, monthly or irregular.
• Each event can be categorized.
• Any user can view the calendar and can use the WHEN, WHERE, and WHAT links to control what they see.
• Users can indicate that they wish to receive email updates in their profile (or not). Email will be dispatched to them at whatever frequency they choose. Emails will only contain events that match their interests.
• Any user can post a bulletin. Bulletins will go to the people in the user’s contacts that have the correct interests checked.
• Any user can add their friends as contacts so that their friends will see bulletins that they make.

Future:

• Any user can invite anyone to an event.

Your comments?

Feel free to comment!

Darcy

As a dance enthusiast, I subscribe to a number of listservs and also have a number of friends who forward information to me about dance activities.

There are over twenty sources that send me information.

What happens is that I receive between 25 and 40 emails per week.

I find out about some events from 4 different sources.

The idea behind the JumpSocial calendar is that information providers can put the information into the JumpSocail calendar and categorize it. Then I can indicate in my JumpSocial profile what my interests are and at what frequency I’d like to receive email (if at all). The system will then aggregate all the information together for me. It removes redunancy and consolodates all the information into a lower number of emails.

Further, because the users must fill forms to create the calendar events, they can’t miss information. I recieve information about activities that don’t have all the details. Occasionally the day of week or end date for a repeating event is missing so I can’t tell if it fits into my schedule.

The system is a work in progress and was deployed summer 2006. At the time I am writing this, we have around 2400 users of the system.

Darcy