Collective Detective Blog Archives

Collectivus: What a Month!

We started flipping over to version 2 of Collectivus a little over a month ago with a goal of field testing some of the current functionality. The only way you would have known we’d updated was if you followed this blog, the Collectivus Twitter account, the Collectivus page on Facebook, or knew someone who did.

We thought we’d get a dozen or so people to help us out — at most. Friends, family, Alan Shaw. I mean, when you put right on the site that it’ll break a lot, you figure a lot of people would go: "pass."

We got many, many more than a dozen.

So the past month-plus has been what we expected, but in front of a much larger audience than we expected. Server crashes, busted functionality, interesting uses of features, and a lot of data to sift through.

So let me pause here to thank everyone for giving Collectivus a whirl. We’re working hard to build you something to enjoy long-term and appreciate the short-term patience you’ve had. As I mentioned in one email, someday you’ll tell people: "I’ve been using Collectivus since before it worked."

So what next:

• Making it easier to find and make (and hold onto) friends
• Making it easier to go back through older encounters.” Pagination” for you techie types.
• Figuring out WTF is the deal with keeping Gowalla connected.
• More stats about your activity and your Thingies
• More Thingies
• Lots of other refinements and improvements

We’re hard at work on all of the above. There’s also a number of other features planned. Many of those will help answer some of the questions on how to "play" Collectivus.

As always, keep an eye on our Collectivus Twitter and Collectivus Facebook pages for updates and info. Please keep the feedback coming as well on our Community page.

Strange Happenings on Collectivus

Just a heads up that Collectivus may experience intermittent downtime over the next week or so. We’re making updates and upgrades as we prepare the new version of the web application.

For the latest information, be sure to follow Collectivus on Twitter and like our Collectivus Facebook page.

Collectivus: Quick Update

Quiet is a good and a bad thing. It’s good because we’re doing less blogging and more writing of code. It’s bad because we’re not keeping you as up-to-date as we’d like on what’s new with Collectivus.

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s been happening since our last update:

Rubber Duckie Thingies

The bulk of our test Thingies are now in circulation. We’re using the data as part of improvements for the next version of Collectivus. If you have a Thingie hiding out on a desk, in a backpack or elsewhere, send it on an adventure with someone. Why…?

The New Collectivus

Think of passing along a Thingie as a way to get people on the early-access list for the next Collectivus. People registered with Collectivus will be the first to get invites to the next version. If you’ve had a few encounters with Thingies already when we launch, there might be an extra bonus for you.

We’re rebuilding a lot of the applications and features, so even if you’ve never discovered a Thingie, make sure you’re signed up and that your contact information is up-to-date. Tell a friend too!

The next Collectivus release will be highly focused on mobile devices. While we do currently have a mobile version of the application, it really doesn’t have the mobile bells-and-whistles that we’d like. We hope to address much of that with the new version.

Our Newest Team Member

Lastly, progress has slowed a bit recently as we welcomed our newest team member to the Collectivus project. He’s not much of a coder yet, but he had strong opinions on some of the new Thingie designs. That or he just had gas at the time.

Future Updates

We’ll keep you posted as we get ready to release the all-new Collectivus. In the meantime, don’t forget to keep up on Collectivus news and media here:

• Like Collectivus on Facebook
• Join the Collectivus Photo Pool on Flickr
• Follow Collectivus on Twitter

Thanks!