Speshy News

A little update last week fixed the slowness people (and us!) were seeing. Hopefully things are back to their normal speedy ways.

We are currently working on better SpeshyPedia  list management. It is is our hope that we can  maintain the registration-free environment for the SpeshyPedia - which just means that we have to quickly track down and delete the nasty 1% out there who ruin things for the rest of us.

Let’s have a big Whoo Hoo! for the 99%!

Enjoy!
-Mike.

The Beta Release is getting shoved out the door, crying and screaming, it seems.

“But it is time to grow up and go out into the world” we tell it. It’ll be fine. Just still a little wobbly.

This release has added Speshypedia - an interactive community-driven list making festival.

Not too many lists at this festival yet - but the ones we do have are key. For example, the lists of blogs for each topic drive what is displayed on the news pages We’ll also get some industry professionals in to make some lists so we all will know what’s what.

That’s the good thing about Speshy - it’s fun AND can save us money and time AND it is educational for some of us who are clueless - raise your hands - about some of these things *my hand is waving wildly in the air*.

Enjoy!
Mike

This release of Speshy has been out for a few weeks now….

This release did bring us the build / search functionality that lets us all build new live, bookmarkable news pages in response to a search And the archives, such as they are.

Yes, we know there are some problems. The archives are a little funky, and the suggestion box is not working. Ugh.

Instead of fixing these… issues …. we are almost ready for the next release, which we are going to call the first beta release. Not because it is perfect, but because the majority of the functionality will be in place. Finally. Not that there won’t be many features added over the next few months, but the general shape of Speshy will be much more fleshed out - it will be much more obvious just what Speshy will be when it grows up.

Enjoy!
Mike

It means, uh, we ain’t done yet putting together everything in Speshy. I mean REALLY ain’t done.

So expect to see new features come, and new features go. And some of those new features come back again.

Yep, just like ‘Rocky’ movies.

And, …we do NOT like to admit it - but… There… Will… Be… Bugs. You don’t like them - WE don’t like them. We work hard to make sure they will be few and relatively harmless. But…

And, finally, there will be things that work but are difficult to use. Sometimes so difficult you never know if they actually worked or not. THESE we need to know about [you’d think we’d be able to figure this out for ourselves, but noooOOOOoooo, apparently not].

Well, that’s about it.

We’ll hopefully get through these Alpha / Pre-Beta releases and stabilize real soon now.

Oh, and an Alpha and Pre-Beta release is the same thing. We just are so looking forward to getting done enough to be a Beta release that we had to start calling it Pre-Beta, kind of like a 5 year old tell someone that they are 5… AND A HALF.

Enjoy!
-Mike

This release, Speshy’s 5th, solidifies the move to the new look and feel we started July 17th. People seem to like it, and orange IS the ‘in’ color these days.

Clicking on a story now displays the story’s ‘feed’ right inside Speshy. This allows the story to be read quickly and without having to leave the Speshy website or popup another window - having to leave the website was always a little bit annoying, and there are already enough things in this worl to annoy is, ain’t there?

Voting on the reputation of something is now possible again, which kind of got dissappeared in release 3 and 4. Now stories, feeds, websites, and widgets are assigned descriptive tags which are voted for (or against) using the common 5-star system. This needs more work - but at least it is in the release, right? Right? Links that take the browser away from the Speshy website are now underlined when the mouse is on top of the link.

A toolbar was added, accessible through the Toolbar button in the black ribbon at the top of the window. This lets people expand the width of Speshy to fill the window, change the number of columns, and there are other options, which change, depending on what is being displayed in the Speshy window.

There’s more but is all little pidley stuff.

The next release? Well, I know things like being able to EASILY add and disable feeds would be nice, and hopefully we will get search back in (we have plans for search that is going to make it really useful, we hope, and NOT duplicate what Google et. al. already do so well).

Oh, and plugins (mostly themes) which were dropped this release, need to be in the next release. Hey, at least is keeps us off the (100 degree!) streets…

And, as always, we welcome suggestions.

Enjoy!

OK.

Here we are.

This blog is where we talk about what is happening at Speshy. Stuff like upcoming updates, proposed features, tips and how-tos and things like that.

It is also where you can make suggestions, ask questons, vote on new features, post your general impressions and, that most dreadful of topics, problems and bugs.

Oh. Maybe we should talk a little about what Speshy is.

Speshy.com is a website.

It is a website that acts like a transmogrifier, taking in everything from the internet and our everyday lives, and converting it into nicely sorted and arranged nuggets of entertainment and information.

I know, I know. No more Calvin and Hobbs for ME.

How about… it is a website that you and your fellow surfers use to find and enjoy the special things in this world and on the internet - separating them from the infinite chaos of stuff out there.

Sometimes we, Americans especially, seem to live on Too-Many-Choices planet.

Together we make it easy to find the best of everything: from dishwashers to pet blogs to martial arts movies to wines.

How do we do this?

By you, and people like you, posting on Speshy what you think is great. What you think is special.

And, by you voting on anything and everything, voting on what you think something’s ‘reputation’ is.

Then, to find something in particular, you just have to search for ‘dishwashers’ and find the most quiet dishwashers, or most reliable, or…

And to just enjoy yourself, you just have to browse around Speshy’s topics, topics like movies and wines and crafts and art, … or dishwashers… to experience the best on the net.

OK.

Enough for a 1st post.

Enjoy!
-Mike