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wow! it was a busy week at NGL.

I did manage to have a great conversation with Kelly Muldoon of SilverKey in Chicago about the user interface. Specifically we talked about the home page and what needed to be done to improve the user experience.

I worked on it some last night and intend to post the new version today at some point.

I created a new module for "Newest Events" that shows the last 10 events that have been added to the database.

I also got rid of the statistics (too depressing) - haha and the login module. I'll change the Register Link to be Login/Register on the top menu bar so people can log in when they need to.

Kelly also brought up a good point about the geo-coding/location-awareness of the system. that is to say it needs to be. So i'll go back to the drawing board on it. :)

RSS Docs

In case you, dear reader, want to feed your calendar to your site. We don't have the UTC date working yet, so event times aren't picking up on the node. I'll post here when its all working.
_________________________________________
Events a User is attending:
q=attend
user=[user's unique id number]
example: http://www.wawgo.com/rss/wawgorss.asp?q=attend&user=2
_________________________________________
Events that a specific user has entered:
q=events
user=[user's unique id number]
example: http://www.wawgo.com/rss/wawgorss.asp?q=events&user=2
_________________________________________
Events a user has marked as favorites:
q=favs
user=[user's unique id number]
example: http://www.wawgo.com/rss/wawgorss.asp?q=favs&user=2
_________________________________________
Events at a specific venue:
q=searchvenue
user=[venue's unique id number]
example: http://www.wawgo.com/rss/wawgorss.asp?q=searchvenue&venue=14
_________________________________________
Upcoming Events (for a user or city/state):
q=upevents
user=[user's unique username] - Optional
city=[city name] - optional, must be used with state
state=[two digit state code] - optional, must be used with city
example 1: http://www.wawgo.com/rss/wawgorss.asp?q=upevents
example 2: http://www.wawgo.com/rss/wawgorss.asp?q=upevents&user=jpapman
example 3: http://www.wawgo.com/rss/wawgorss.asp?q=upevents&user=jpapman&city=greenville&state=sc
__________________________________________
Get search results:
q=search
eventssearch=[search keyword]
example: http://www.wawgo.com/rss/wawgorss.asp?q=searchevents&search=outdoor

NOTE: to find a user or venue's unique id number look in the address bar for id=x on a detail page for that user or venue.

Times, RSS, Google Calendar, 30Boxes, etc

Today we got quite a bit done on Wawgo.com.

We published all of this:

- Erica added a drop down on AddEvent page for times (every 15 minutes)
- Created an extensive RSS menu of options. (we will have to convert times to UTC). I added to this blog, my new 30Boxes account and some others. I'll publish them below.
- Erica added a hook to Google Calendar for EventDetails
- I added my first generation AdServer using our AdMatch algorithm (i mentioned below). When a registered/profiled user surfs EventDetail pages the system uses their profile and the event profile to find an appropriate ad...hence the ads i created yesterday. :)
- We did addtional tweaking on users attending, updating events, event details and more.

It was a good day.

Banner Ads

Ok. maybe i had too much coffee but i've created a few sample ads for Wawgo. These are all in tower banner add format. and i'm obviously a fan of iStockPhoto.com.

It's debatable whether we'll ever run any of them ;)

Updates

We continue to work with the Wawgo interface to make improvements based on comments from our Alpha testers. The Beta testing is being developed now and emails should go out to the group requesting their help sometime next week.

We don't think that hitting the college campuses is gonna happen in time for rush week this year. We might try to get that going next year.

The ad server system (that i'm working on) is coming together. I'm using the ProfileMatch idea to find ads that are tagged with matching words, similiar to the event matching.

I've been talking to some very smart people about coming on to give us a hand and we will see how that all works out. But for now, our core NGL team is still doing all the work.

Alpha Testing

This week we sent http://www.wawgo.com/ out to a short list of what we are calling "Alpha" testers. These pioneering folks are scattered across the country and tasked with giving the system a look-see.

We've had a few folks create user accounts and post an event or two. We've gotten good feedback so far and expect to continue to make both programming and presentation changes for the next week.

Early next week we expect to launch the "BETA" version of the software. We will e-blast out to about 200 or so people to begin using the site and providing us feedback.

Wish us luck!

Wawgo 1.0

Wawgo - we are what's going on.

Our goal at Wawgo is to provide a forum for you, our user community, to build a calendar of events that is relevant to you and your friends. The tools we have provided allow you to quickly be presented with events that match your stated interests and location, share events and find out what everyone else is up to.

Wawgo.com is a free service to site visitors and registered users. Registered organizations and businesses (profit and non-profit) may also post events for free.

We've got big plans and are constantly adding functionality and featues - please register, add your events and share with friends!

I've been asked "why do this?". To summarize it - I've always been frustrated with the internet's ability to offer so much information but then not being able to find timely, relevant-to-me information when I need it. Sites like Google are a great way but for questions like "what should we do tonight" it is pretty daunting to get so many websites to view all the events. The other issue was "how do I find out about events that match my interests in other places I might be?". What we have done with Wawgo is attempted to provide a forum for meeting these needs.

So, have fun and make Wawgo what you, the user community, wants it to be. Let us know what we can do to improve the site and make it more useful to you.

--> http://www.wawgo.com/