05.02.2012
I appreciate everyone who put up with me teasing ItemBrowser for most of the month of April. Yesterday, it launched.
(Because WallaBee is an iPhone game, the site was optimized for use on that device. We’re planning to make the layout more responsive over the next coming weeks. It’ll work fine in modern browsers and on the iPad, but we can and will deliver a better experience for both soon.)
We love WallaBee. We want people to play the game. We want to help new players find the items they’re missing. We wanted tools that would help us find what we’re missing as well. I think ItemBrowser delivers.
We’re not done with the site. We know it can get better. We’re using it to learn and to push ourselves. It’s been amazingly fun to work on.
If you have a chance, I’d love it if you’d check it out.
Author
Chris Harrison
Tags
itembrowser, wallabee
Categories
Design
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It’s funny how what’s old is new again. I used to use lots of 37Signals’ products and – over time – gradually stopped. Now I’m coming back to them again.
Inspired by a recent talk that Steve Smith gave at ConvergeSE, the team I work with has incorporated Campfire more heavily into their daily development lives. How are we hoping to use it? General chat, code reviews, asset and resource sharing, cat pictures… I’m hoping it improves communication between our developers and helps to decrease some of the email overload we all suffer from.
Most of our team is Mac-based and I’ve encouraged them to use Propane for Campfire or the Campfire iPhone app but it works fine in-browser as well.
Author
Chris Harrison
Tags
37signals, campfire, collaboration, teambuilding
Categories
Web Development
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05.01.2012
My friend Anton Peck is chasing a dream that you can play a role in. His dream is to create and publish a graphic novel. And now, thanks to Kickstarter, you can help make his dream a reality.
Author
Chris Harrison
Tags
antonpeck, graphic_novels, kickstarter
Categories
Design
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04.30.2012
I’m so glad that Ze Frank is back with A Show. Listening to him is delightfully therapeutic.
Author
Chris Harrison
Categories
Other
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04.23.2012
This weekend I’ll be making the short trek up to Columbia, SC to attend my fourth Converge. (It’s easily one of my favorite conferences. I haven’t missed one yet.)
This year I’ll be helping out by live-tweeting on Saturday via the @convergese account. In the event you won’t be there, follow @cdharrison/convergese-2012 or the hashtag: #convergese
Author
Chris Harrison
Categories
Other
No Comments
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04.19.2012
The new ItemBrowser is launching soon. Without David, the site would be a crappy, manually updated mess. The stuff he’s done to automate the site is nothing short of phenomenal in my book. When I first set out to make the site, I wanted to push myself to learn PHP better. I did accomplish that early on, but I also realized that getting to where I want to be with PHP was going to take far longer than this little project required.
Some stuff you can expect in this release:
- Geo-Location. Explore nearby spots. Find items nearby. Find specific spot types nearby.
- Full-screen web app capable. (Aside from an annoying refresh-on-load issue, the site works swimmingly well full-screen.)
- Large, beautiful artwork. We wanted the site to look gorgeous on retina displays.
- Optimized for mobile first. The site will work well in modern desktop browser, but the experience is custom-tailored for iPhone use. Alternate (responsive) layouts will come after launch.
Want to be one of the first to be notified when ItemBrowser v3 launches? Join our email list.
(I don’t have exact launch date, but signs are pointing towards the end of next week…)
PS. If you sign up for notifications, some of you may get early access to the site. Just sayin’… ;)
Author
Chris Harrison
Categories
Design
No Comments
Retina graphics for your website.
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03.04.2012
WallaB.ee is a new location-based item game that I’ve become quite enamored with. Over the past couple of weeks, my friend Will McCain and a few others have been working on a Google Doc that documented all of the available items and mixes/recipes that are available in the game. This weekend I took the idea a step further and created a visual guide: ItemBrowser.com. (It started in a subdirectory on this site and then I decided to move it to its own domain.)
Right now it’s all updated manually. WallaBee has an API that I hope to leverage to automate the site in the near future.
Since it’s an iPhone game, the site is geared towards that device. Got any feedback or want to see something done differently with it? Let me know in the comments, or hit me up on Twitter: @itembrowser
Author
Chris Harrison
Categories
Personal, Web Development
2 Comments
02.13.2012
I’ve been using GetGlue and Into_Now for a while to track my tv viewing. Glue let’s you check into pretty much anything, and you get stickers for doing so. Into_Now works by listening to whatever’s on your tv – whether live or DVR’d. But now there’s a new app in town, and while it still has some growing up to do, it’s the app to beat. Why would you want to keep track of this kind of stuff?
Viggle works like Into_Now in that it listens to what’s currently on TV and then checks you in. (Unlike Into_Now, however, Viggle only works on live broadcasts.) Viggle works with live broadcasts and can identify DVR’d shows up to seven days old. If Viggle can’t find the show you’re watching, after two failed attempts you can manually check into the show.
The number of points you can earn varies from show to show. Some shows like American Idol can net you as many as 400 points. Special events like the Super Bowl or the Grammy’s have up to 10,000 points up for grabs. Once you’ve earned a few thousand points, you can redeem them for gift cards or donate the points to a charity. 14,000 points can be redeemed for a $10 iTunes gift card. (There are quite a few other rewards available as well.)
Stickers seem kind of lame in comparison now.
Author
Chris Harrison
Categories
Technology
No Comments
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