Posts Tagged ‘Features’ Blog Index

Yesterday, I launched App of the Day, a website that features a community-nominated iPhone and iPod touch app everyday. I decided to use Rypple to help me get anonymous feedback from visitors to the site.

With over 85,000 iPhone and iPod touch applications in the App Store today, it can be somewhat taxing to separate the well-built and useful apps from other lesser ones clogging up the storefront. App of the Day solves this problem by promoting community-nominated, high-quality iPhone and iPod touch applications.

Members of the site may nominate one app per day, and are able to discuss those that have already been showcased.

In the footer, I added a Rypple Feedback link, as I wanted to see what visitors thought about App of the Day.

So far, I’ve gotten a lot of insightful, and useful feedback using Rypple. Here are some of the things users have said:

Can I either follow this in Twitter or have an RSS feed?

This comment made me consider how people will use App of the Day. I built an RSS feed, but other than the RSS link in the Firefox and Safari address bars, it is not mentioned anywhere on the site. I plan to correct this in the next few days with an update.

Format the site for viewing on the iPhone.

Considering App of the Day is an iPhone site, it makes sense to have an iPhone formatted page, but I completely overlooked it.

Overall I’m really excited to read, and take action on the Feedback that I receive in the coming days using Rypple. I’d really appreciate if you could give me Feedback on App of the Day at rypple.com/appoftheday/improve.

Tags: app of the day, app store, community, Features, Feedback, feedback is fundamental, iphone, jordan satok, learning, Rypple, website

Marketing

28661 commenthttp://rypple.com/blog/using-rypple-for-feedback-on-my-new-website/Using+Rypple+for+Feedback+on+my+New+Website2009-10-19+20%3A53%3A19Jordan+Satok

Yesterday, our co-CEOs Daniel and David demoed the new version of Rypple at HR Tech. It was a great success! Thank you to everyone who was at the demo or gave great shout outs over Twitter. Stay tuned for the full details about our trip to HR Tech in upcoming posts.

Over the past week we made some big changes to get the new version of  Rypple ready for the big demo. All the features that make Rypple great can now be found on three simple pages: Feedback, Plans and Questions, and My Advisers.

Rypple’s New Look

We’ve changed the design of Rypple, and we think it looks great. It’s crisp, clean, and much easier to navigate!

Feedback

Rypple is all about getting actionable feedback from groups of people who you know. So, we re-thought Rypple to make these groups central to your experience. Your Feedback page is where you create new groups, manage existing ones, see the plans you’re doing with each group, and review the feedback you’ve received.

Plans and Questions

A Feedback Plan provides helpful structure and guidance as you strive to improve. A plan is a series of Rypple questions, curated by your fellow users and designed to get you on the right track with the click of a button. Think of plans as feedback workouts assembled by the world’s best personal trainers. We’re building communities around these plans, and we’re looking for community leaders who’d like to share their insights and help create more plans. If you’d like to get involved, leave a comment below.

My Advisers

Your My Advisers page is, well, a list of your advisers (we told you that we were making Rypple simple!). The new design of this page makes it’s much easier to sort through your contacts and find who you’re looking for. You can import all your contacts at once from Gmail, Yahoo, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, and Vcard or you can pick specific people by adding there email address manually.

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BIG changes this week, and BIG plans for the future. We are constantly trying to improve by learning from what we’ve already done. So, what do you think of the new look and functionality of Rypple? Stay tuned for next weeks notes! Same bat channel, same bat time.

Tags: agile, bottom-up, Development, Features, lessons, process, product, Release Notes, usability

Community Marketing

24780 commentshttp://rypple.com/blog/whats-new-this-week-at-rypple-oct-1st/What%27s+New+This+Week+at+Rypple%3A+Oct+1st2009-10-02+21%3A46%3A48Nathaniel+Rottenberg

What’s new at Rypple? So sweet of you to ask! Here’s the brief: A “nothing to add” button for when you don’t know have a response to a feedback request, and enterprise and team users can now create corporate groups.

Nothing to Add

Sometimes you receive a request for feedback and you simply aren’t able to respond due to lack of context, or maybe you want to take some time to think about your response. No problem: click ‘nothing to add’. Once you do, the asker will be able to see (without personally identifying you of course) that some of their advisers have decided to hold off responding for the time being and you can still come back and respond later if you like!

Corporate Groups

Ever wanted to easily send a Rypple feedback request to your marketing or development team? Wouldn’t it be great if your company could setup distributions lists in Rypple that you could easily use when requesting that type of feedback? Welcome to Corporate Groups! Corporate Groups allows your Rypple Administrator to set up groups of users based on your existing workplace structure. Accessible on the Team or Enterprise account, this feature will make it easier for you and your team members to ask the right group of people for feedback!

Stay tuned for next week’s notes, same bat time, same bat channel!

Tags: agile, Development, Features, learning, lessons, process, product, Release Notes, startup, User Experience, Workplace

Community Marketing

22460 commentshttp://rypple.com/blog/whats-new-this-week-at-rypple-sept-16th/What%27s+New+this+Week+at+Rypple%3A+Sept+16th2009-09-17+21%3A02%3A14Nathaniel+Rottenberg

What’s new at Rypple? Well I’m glad you asked! Here’s the brief: Your advisers can comment on the actions you’re taking, we’ll let your advisers know when you’ve completed an action, and we’ve changed your My Network page to My Groups where you can manage all of your groups.

Action Comments

As we saw two weeks ago when we launched Commit to Action, taking action based on your advisers’ feedback is a great way to improve. But what happens if you take the wrong action, or you decide to take an action that is less effective than what your advisers would recommend? You trust your advisers to provide expert feedback and now they can use the same expertise to comment on the action you’re going to take. All they have to do is reply to the email that lets them know what action you’ll be taking and provide their thoughts. Feedback on feedback. Sweet!

Closing the Loop

Let your advisers know when you’ve completed an action to close the loop and show them that you appreciate their feedback.  Full circle feedback at last!

Groups Reborn

The My Network page has a new name: My Groups. Check out last week’s notes to learn a little more about groups and their benefits. Last week’s changes to Groups were a big step forward, but we’re agile and like to make things better quickly! We’ve improved the contact organizer so it’s easier to sort through your contacts. And, by popular demand, the contacts page now includes a search field!

When you send out a feedback request, the feedback you receive is organized on your My Feedback page. Groups works a little differently. Each group has it’s own My Feedback-style page. Every question you’ve asked that group, the feedback they’ve sent you, comments, and the actions you’re going to take are organized on a page dedicated to that particular group.

Big changes this week! As always, I’ll be back next week to keep you in the loop. Same bat time, same bat channel.

Tags: agile, business development, constructive feedback, Development, Features, Feedback, kaizen, learning, lessons, Release Notes, usability, User Experience

Community Marketing

20940 commentshttp://rypple.com/blog/whats-new-this-week-at-rypple-sept/What%27s+New+This+Week+at+Rypple%3A+Sept+4th2009-09-08+18%3A15%3A46Nathaniel+Rottenberg

Matt from 37signals posted a great summary about the power of small 12 person Special Forces teams. Check out his post A-teams = 12 people on the 37signals blog.  Matt states that small team size has numerous advantages: “They’re self-contained, can work swiftly and quietly, don’t have the presence of conventional military troops, and are able to operate without a big infrastructure.”

Here at Rypple we’re making our own Special Forces teams by dividing our nine developers into teams of three. Much like the way a Special Forces unit functions, each member of our dev teams is specialized in one area but every team member can do each job if necessary.

We’re loosely basing our new team format on pair programming (though without the actual sitting together in front of a screen). We’ll be doing a lot of code reviews and close collaboration, which allows a small group of people to review the same task, collaborate on code, and do UI design and testing. Heaps of usability bugs are found this way and, more importantly, a lot of security issues are caught at an early stage. This is also great for new members of the team as they can quickly get up to speed on our coding practices.

We’re (jokingly) coining a new term: ‘triplets programming’. We’ll run with our small Special Forces development teams for at least a month. Every week we’ll be posting an update to let you know how our small teams are working, so stayed tuned!

Tags: agile, decision support, Development, Features, Feedback, habits, kaizen, learning, lessons, Special Forces, usability, User Experience, Workplace

Community Marketing

21240 commentshttp://rypple.com/blog/rypple-special-forces/Rypple+Special+Forces2009-09-04+19%3A48%3A34Nathaniel+Rottenberg

vCard Contacts can now be imported

One of our goals is to make it easier for you to communicate with others. We’ve added vCard support so you can easily import your Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail contacts.  vCard is the popular business card file format used by several popular applications when exporting your contacts.

Rypple Team Plan

Signup for the free Rypple Team plan, and help your team improve today (for free)! The Rypple Team plan now includes TouchBase, which lets  your team discuss, collaborate and capture key tips continuously so that learning is focused and continuous.

An informative New User Tour

Curious about all that you can do with Rypple? Learn all the essential Rypple features through our New User Tour, which you can run through when you first signup for Rypple. You can also learn more at our über-informative What Is Rypple? page.

Tags: agile, business development, constructive feedback, Development, Features, feedback is fundamental, learning, personal review, professional development, Questions, startup, team review, Workplace

Community Marketing

16710 commentshttp://rypple.com/blog/whats-new-this-week-at-rypple-com/What%27s+New+This+Week+at+Rypple2009-08-20+16%3A49%3A17Nathaniel+Rottenberg

New and improved this week:

• Take Action! The take action feature allows you to share with your advisers the action you will take  based on their feedback. This is a great way to demonstrate to your advisers that their feedback has been helpful and you are taking steps to improve.

• The overall site performance has been improved making Rypple faster than ever!
• Facebook Connect has been taken to a new level giving you two new helpful features. The first time you login with Facebook Connect it pulls all your Facebook friends into your Rypple network contacts and then keeps them in sync over time. You can also now send your Facebook friends Rypples and we’ll let them know right in Facebook through notifications. Another way to get great feedback!

• On the ‘My Feedback’ page the ‘Trend my progress on…’ chart starts trending after you’ve used and an attribute three times instead of five. This is a great way to observe your progress over a longer time!

Look out for next week’s notes!

Tags: agile, bottom-up, business development, constructive feedback, Development, facebook, facebook connect, Features, Feedback, feedback is fundamental, gen y, habits, honest feedback, kaizen, learning, lessons, office environment, Performance Reviews, professional development, reflection, Release Notes, Rypple, startup, usability, User Experience

Community Marketing

16120 commentshttp://rypple.com/blog/weekly-release-notes-august-12-2009/Weekly+Release+Notes%3A+August+12%2C+20092009-08-13+15%3A06%3A52Nathaniel+Rottenberg

At Rypple we pride ourselves on being able to deliver piping hot features to your door in 30 minutes or less!  In fact, it’s not uncommon for me to be chatting about a feature with one of our users one day, and have that feature live in Rypple less than a week later (did I mention that new features are released at least EVERY WEEK?).  Hey, if we hear of a feature that we feel most of our users will find valuable…we think there is no time like the present to make it happen!

Still, every now and then a feature comes along that significantly expands the way people can use Rypple to get valuable feedback…and as luck would have it, I have THREE such features to share with you today, so read on!

1. Feedback URL

What it is: Feedback URL provides the ability to request feedback from a group of advisers by simply directing them to a specific URL which contains your question (i.e. no need to know their email addresses).

Why the heck would I use it?: Its easy to ask for feedback by sending a Rypple via email…but, sometimes you just don’t know the addresses of the people you want feedback from! For example, when you give a a large presentation at a conference or webinar to a large audience and want to get their feedback.   Or, you’d like some feedback from anyone with access to your website, blog, or even Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter page.

Awesome! Tell me how to use it!: Easy! When composing your feedback request, simply select the “You post or send a URL” option from the How do you want to ask section. Once you click the “Create Feedback Request” button, your unique URL button will be displayed (you can always retrieve your URL by navigating to the question you asked under the Review my Feedback page).

But we’re not done yet! Soon you’ll be able to make the URLs Rypple provides even more personal and easier to use! e.g. www.rypple.com/dpriemer/my_feedback.

P.S. – want to suggest a hip, catchy name for this feature? We want to hear it! Click HERE to have your say.

2. Suggested Questions

What it is: a forum of top rated questions submitted by Rypple users just like you, categorized by key attributes

Why the heck would I use it?: Does this sound familiar:

“I want to get feedback on [INSERT TOPIC HERE] but I’m not quite sure what to ask?”

We at Rypple completely appreciate the importance of asking a good, focused question and this is your cure for question-block! Get access to dozens of questions suggested by other users and feedback gurus! Want to know what types of questions people are asking around leadership, teamwork, or communication skills? Look no further!

Awesome! Tell me how to use it!: Just click on the Suggested Questions link in the header (or the Help me find a good question link on the Get Feedback page).

Like a question? Vote it up by clicking the voting buttons next to the question.

Want to ask that question yourself? Just click the text of the question to populate it in the Get Feedback form.

Want to know more about the person who suggested it? Just click on the user’s picture to see.

Want to add your own question to the list? Coming VERY soon, so stay tuned!

3. Facebook Connect

Austin Tam, one of our star developers, already wrote a great blog post on this feature so check it out HERE.

What it is: a super-easy way to setup and login to your Rypple account using your Facebook credentials!

Why the heck would I use it?: First off, it’s an easy way to get started using Rypple. Just click, and go! Very soon you’ll be able to request Rypple feedback directly from your Facebook friends and even post your Rypple’s to your Facebook feed if you choose!

Awesome! Tell me how to use it!: Just click the Facebook Connect button on the sign-up or login pages. If you’re a new user, a Rypple account will be created for you using your Facebook credentials. If you’re an existing user and the email address you use in Rypple is one of the email addresses you’ve specified in Facebook, your existing Rypple account will be linked.

So are we done yet? Absolutely NOT! We’re going to continue to listen to you and refine these features quickly, but to do that, we REALLY NEED YOUR FEEDBACK!

Click HERE to give it to us (done using Feedback URL…pretty cool eh?!?)

Tags: Features, Feedback

Product & Community

6651 commenthttp://rypple.com/blog/rypple-feature-sale-3-for-the-price-of-1/Rypple+Feature+Sale+-+3+for+the+Price+of+1%212009-03-16+22%3A58%3A34David+Priemer

A little while ago, Jay introduced you to the Rypple NOW! Facebook Pages.   Now the Rypple Team is excited to announce that we’ve just added Facebook Connect to Rypple.

Facebook Connect will allow you to login to Rypple using your Facebook password, and to bring your social context to Rypple.

Now, you’ll have one less credential to remember. Don’t you wish that it was this easy for all the sites you visit?

So how does this work?  And, what about privacy?

It’s simple:  when you click the Facebook Connect button, Facebook asks you to grant Rypple permission to link your Facebook account to Rypple. If the email address you use in Rypple is one of the email addresses you’ve specified in Facebook, your existing Rypple account will be linked. Otherwise, a new Rypple account will be created that’s linked to your Facebook account.

Now about privacy: Both Facebook and Rypple are very serious about your privacy. For example, Facebook doesn’t provide Rypple with your actual email address.  Instead Facebook provides Rypple with an obfuscated email address to identify who you are. Facebook also ensures that your information is always up to date and protected by your privacy settings. You can change what applications you use on Facebook here. Additionally, if you haven’t already, you can check out Rypple’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Another important point:  your questions and answers will never be shared on Facebook (e.g. show up on your friends feeds) unless you explicitly provide permission for this to happen.

A single, trusted sign-on is great, but why else would you want to use Facebook Connect?

Facebook Connect is about “giving users the ability to take their identity and friends with them around the Web, while being able to trust that their information is always up to date and always protected by their privacy settings.” It allows you to “connect” your Facebook friends and feeds to Rypple, providing a personalized social context to your Rypple experience.

For example, when asking a question, you will be able to select which of your Facebook friends to ask – without having to import or setup contacts all over again in Rypple. You will be able to share insightful feedback with all your friends on Facebook, even those who aren’t on Rypple, but would love to be updated all the same. Best of all, when you ask a question, your friends know that it’s actually you who asked the question, so they’re more likely to respond!

Stayed tuned for more Facebook Connect features in the next couple of weeks. Welcome to the world of complete and total integration!

Tags: facebook, facebook connect, Features, friends, passport, single sign on, User Experience

Development

6552 commentshttp://rypple.com/blog/rypple-meets-facebook-part-2/Rypple+Meets+Facebook%2C+Part+22009-03-12+21%3A02%3A43Austin+Tam

Ok…first off on the personal front, a big congratulations to Austin Tam, one of our star developers, on getting engaged on his cruise vacation last week! Perhaps now that he’s officially taken, the onslaught of fan mail from his female admirers will slow down

Now on to this long overdue post about some of the great features we’ve added to Rypple over the past few weeks, starting with one thing that our users have been asking about for a while. Something we call “personal visibility“!

“What topics are other people asking most about vs what I’m asking about?”

“How does the response rate I’m getting compare to others?

“What do people think of the feedback I give THEM? Is it helpful?”

Well, I’m happy to say that our old friends, “Karma” and “Zen” have officially been shelved in favor of much more “personal” user stats which you can see right from your Home page when you’re logged in. Check ‘em out!

In the coming weeks we’ll be providing even MORE statistics and visibility into how other people just like you are using Rypple to get the feedback they really want!

Until then though, here’s a list of some additional features we recently added based on your feedback:

You Said…	Rypple Responded:
100 characters sometimes isn’t enough when requesting feedback. I want more!	We’ve increased our character limit from 100 to 140 characters for feedback requests. (this is in addition to the personal message you can add to your request to give all the background context you like!)
Oops! I just sent a request for feedback but forgot to add someone to my list of advisers! Can I add them now?	Now you can add additional advisers to a previously submitted request! (click the “Add advisers” action in the Results view)
I want to be able to download my feedback.	Download your results in CSV format right from the Results view.
I’d like to be able to control which notifications and alerts I receive from Rypple	Choose which emails you want to receive from Rypple on your user profile page (click your name in the header)
I’ve had a request for feedback open for a while now, can I close it so I don’t receive any more feedback on it?	Now you can shut off the flow of feedback for a specific request (click the “Close request” action in the Results view)
I’d like to remind the advisers I haven’t heard from to respond to my request	In addition to the reminders that Rypple automatically sends out on your behalf, now you can manually remind your advisers to give you feedback if they haven’t done so (click the “Send reminder” action in the Results view)
I’d like to be able to remove old requests I don’t want to see anymore from my Results view	Now you can archive both requests you’ve made and those you’ve received from others
Do you have any tips for me on how to Get and Give good feedback?	Check out the new Rypple Etiquette guide (accessible from the quick links sections and in the footer)

That’s it for now.  Some awesome new features set to launch in the coming weeks…stay tuned!

P.S. – If you arrived at this post because the title led you to believe you’d be able to:

a) see photos from James Tam’s recent trip to Vegas
b) get access to Daniel Debow’s late night webcam exploits
c) read some excepts from Ryan Dewsbury’s latest works of haiku poetry

…then I’m sorry to have disappointed you

Tags: Features, Rypple

Product & Community

5320 commentshttp://rypple.com/blog/rypple-gets-personal/Rypple+Gets+Personal2009-02-26+22%3A28%3A52David+Priemer