Winners of the iPhone app launch KeepCups!

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Tim M

Well it’s been an exciting week for me. With the iPhone app finally released, I was excited to see what would happen.

Some of you have clearly been very patient as the app has been downloaded 350 times in a few days and the reviews are coming through nice and steadily – I’m totally humbled to think there are a bunch of you who like using the app.

Anyway, down to business! I originally planned to give the first 10 people who downloaded the app, one of the new KeepCup XS cups. Stupidly, though, I didn’t think to check that I’d be able to see who downloaded the app – I can’t – so I’ve compromised by giving a Keep Cup to the first 10 people to submit new venues to the site, via the app.

You can check out review of the KeepCup here.

So, to the winners! The people below were the first 10 to download and get a new venue review from the new Wherespresso iPhone app onto the website. Well done! I’ll be contacting you via email or Twitter if I can get your details, otherwise email me or Tweet at me, @wherespresso. Snowman and SteveNorth123, I need you to email me.

1 Thomob – DiBella
2 ChrisR – DiMarcos
3 AquaBoogie – BikeGallery (AquaBoogie – coolest name on WSP so far!)
4 Angus – Merlo
5 NathanG – Nashi
6 StevenNorth123 – RedCup
7 DrMitchA – Liason
8 Davycam – Dandelion and Driftwood
9 Snowman – Cafe Vinyl
10 Tony – Cafe Deraileur

Well done to all the winners! If you don’t want an XS (good for espresso, short blacks, macchiatos), email me asap as I have a few S and M ones.

Stay tuned for some more info about an update to the app.

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The Great Big Wherespresso Update

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Tim M

Where have you guys been?!

The site had outgrown WordPress, and I have a bunch of cool stuff coming up that just isn’t compatible with WordPress. WordPress was never intended to help support a website acting as a web app!

Anyway, so here’s what has happened in the 8 months since the last update!

  • Wherespresso website upgraded and now running MUCH faster.
  • New submission form to help make the submission process simpler, as well as supporting the iPhone app better.
  • User accounts introduced, with other users able to see your account – mine is here!
  • Submissions blocked from anyone except logged in users – this helps improve transparency and prevent spam.

The biggest and best piece of news is that – drumroll – the iPhone app is finished and sitting with Apple awaiting approval!

I’ve included a couple of screenshots below. The iPhone app has been a sorry saga – it’s over a year late, the original developers were totally incompetent, but luckily, I found the excellent Ed D, who turned the app around in 2 months.

I’ll have a lengthy post about the app later.

Cafe View

Near Me

Suburb search (Richmond 3121, Australia)

Suburb search (Richmond 3121, Australia)

Favourites

Favourites

So, what next?

Well, I have some very cool stuff being developed which I can’t talk about just yet.

The app will see a version 2 released pretty quickly with some improvements already planned.

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Wherespresso Submissions Working

Posted on December 20, 2010 by Tim M

I’m really sorry for the muck around on this, but the Wherespresso cafe submission form is back up and running.

We had some bugs in the code stopping the image uploads working properly.

Once again, I am really sorry for the time it took to sort this. Our developer dropped off the radar and it took a while to find the right person.

Anyway, some exciting stuff in the works for Wherespresso.

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Wherespresso Bugs

Posted on December 9, 2010 by Tim M

The Wherespresso.com cafe submission form currently has a bug that means you are unable to upload images of the cafe you are reviewing.

I’m really very sorry for this – our developer has dropped off the radar (sidenote: anyone reading who is a php/mysql/Wordpress guru, email us if you’re interested in working with me on some pretty cool ideas).

Happily, you can still submit reviews, albeit minus the photos.

I don’t have an ETA for a fix for this, but as soon as I do, I’ll let you know.

Tim

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With the World Cycling Championships starting in Geelong tomorrow, I thought it a great idea to help all the Geelong visitors out with finding coffee.

Most of the cafes in Geelong are around the city centre, which is great for spectators as they don’t have to walk far.

Alternatively, there are a few around Queenscliff, so if you fancy a morning ride, you can coffee up in Queenscliff or Barwon Heads.

To find the complete list of all the cafes in Geelong, click here.

I’ve also quickly mocked up a Google Map overlay of the locations, plus the road course.

If you visit this link, you’ll be able to click on the pins and see the cafe name, and location.

I’m really sorry I didn’t have the Wherespresso iPhone app done in time, it’s currently being released as a beta right now, so I’m about 4 weeks too late. Bugger.

Anyway, I hope this helps. Thanks to Tango for doing most of these reviews!

My tip for great coffee?
Silk Cafe at 52 Moorabool St (right on the finishing straight), or Mo(s)ht in Pakington St.

Location of cafes in Geelong

The course proper, image courtesy of Wade at CyclingTips (I just nabbed the image, so let me know if it’s not ok Wade!), is shown below.

World Champs Route

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Tim M | Leave a comment

Dulce: The Healthy Sugar

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Tim M

An article in Melbourne’s The Age recently featured both sides of the sugar-in-coffee debate, particularly the raw versus white sugar argument.

Rather than get caught up in a subjective debate, in this post we look at a delicious and healthy alternative to both; Dulce, or “rapadura” sugar.

Ducle is a natural, unrefined sugar that retains all of the critical natural vitamins, minerals and trace nutrients of the cane, making it much better for you than other types of sugar.

From the Market Lane website:

‘Dulce’ (aka ‘Rapadura’ in Portugese & ‘Papelón’ in Venezuelan) is the result of a very careful and labour-intensive process. After being cut, the sugar cane travels to the local ‘ingenio’, where the juice is pulped from the cane fibre. The fibre is dried and used as fuel for the boilers, which work to reduce the juice to a thick, dark syrup called ‘sugar honey’. The honey is poured into a cooling vat and stirred manually with huge paddles to evaporate the last of the moisture––condensing it, finally, into the fine grains of what the locals call ‘Dulce’.

Traditional white sugar (and even raw sugar to some extent) are just not good for you (read more here).

The very good folks at Market Lane are currently selling this delicious treat and Jason was good enough to let me try a teaspoon-full recently.

The sugar does not present the same sickly-sweet taste of white or even raw sugar. Rather, it’s very complex and more caramel-flavoured, with some subtle undertones that I don’t have a refined enough palate to discern.

Needless to say, it is very delicious.

Soft and crumbly

The guys at Market Lane (the very lovely Fleur and Jason) are ex Monmouth; check out Monmouth’s info page about Dulce here.

You can read an interesting post about the effects of white sugar here.

And you can buy Dulce from the our friends at Market Lane here, or drop in and grab some (make sure you have a coffee at the same time and tell them we sent you).

Highly Recommended and needless to say, it’s an essential item at my house!

Click Image to Buy from Market Lane

Dulce postcard courtesy of Market Lane

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The Wherespresso iPhone app progress update

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Tim M

*Grrrrrroan* I can hear you saying. Trust me, I’m with you.

I promise it’s going to be worth it, though.

Below you can see a couple of screen shots from the app – good news is we’re getting there. The developer and I are just ironing out some minor field mapping issues, some aesthetics (yes, some fonts too big, some too small) and some Google Maps data.

I’m still tossing up whether to include ads, even though you guys via the survey clearly told me that they wouldn’t bother you.

I thought you’d appreciate a look at this work in progress. Any ideas, shoot them through!

The cafe review screen.

Review detail

Search and search results.

Search results - Wildcard search (search on everything)

Directions to Huski, Falls Creek.

Huski

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Australia’s Best Barista Competition: Vote Now and Win

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Tim M

My Coffee My Barista competition
Wherespresso is pleased to announce the My Coffee My Barista competition – your chance to vote for your favourite barista and send them to Italy as a reward!

We all know our baristas are hard-working, under-appreciated souls, toiling away keeping us alert and happy every day. Now you have a chance to send them to the home of coffee for a holiday in Rome for 2.

All you have to do is enter here (or click on the image below) and vote for your favourite cafe.

It takes about 1 minute if your cafe is already listed, and about 3 minutes to add and vote – EASY.

What’s in it for you?
Voters go in the draw to win one of 8 Nespresso Delonghi Lattissimas.

MyBarista Comp

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Technical Issues on Wherespresso.com

Posted on July 8, 2010 by Tim M

I just wanted to give Wherespresso.com readers a heads up that the site is currently experiencing some technical issues.

Over the last few days, I’ve noticed there are some bugs in the submission form scripts, which prevented people from making submissions.

Today, these have largely been rectified.

There are still some minor issues around some broken image links (these should be rectified in 24 hours after some scripts are run to fix these).

Thanks for your patience. I realise it’s very frustrating, so hopefully it’ll be rectified within 24 hours and I can get back to fixing UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience) shortcomings like an improved submission form and much-improved search. Search is not where I want it to be, yet, but it’s getting there.

Perfect is the enemy of good, so I find it necessary to keep rolling out these small incremental improvements as more and more people use the site and make excellent suggestions.

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More Submission Form Improvements

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Tim M

As I have said before, the site will keep having small incremental improvements made as I identify them, or, as people email me with bugs, or suggestions for improvement.

Last night we pushed out an improvement which I’d like to describe below. This was suggested by a reader as something to look at. We had a quick look, and it made absolute sense, so we rolled it out.

This may only be of interest to some, so the key point I want to make is that this shows that the readers are helping to drive the site.

The Old Way
On the cafe submission form, when you clicked a field, the rest of the fields used to fade out. I originally implemented this as a way of removing the other fields as distractions, in order to focus the person’s mind on one signal task; to complete that field.

You can see this shown in the images below.

The Old Way

The New Way
Matthew emailed me and told me that he thought that that was a bit of overkill. He thought that each section should be faded in and out, to focus the persons mind on completing each section. Originally Matt suggested it ought to apply to the address fields. I thought it would make sense to apply it section by section.

Section now highlighted


Section now highlighted

Expect to see a couple more minor changes in how the sections are broken up, but apart from that, we’re done.

I’d be interested in hearing what you guys think.

Stay tuned for some more site improvements (focussing on making the search form easier to use) very soon.

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