Try This Blog

Ron Paul FTW. Ipod/Question contest almost over!

shoaib — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 23:47:32 +0000

We posted a contest saying we’d contribute $1000 to the winner of our “Who should be the President of the USA” poll. Ok so, technically, corps can’t give money to candidates, but individuals can — and so I did. Screenshots w/ confirmation number below for anyone interested. So now that you know we’re the real deal, you might want to participate in the “Ask a Question” contest. You could win an iPod Shuffle (and other prizes later). Thanks to everyone who voted in our poll. I hope you all continue to use TryThis.com. You can see the results here.

Ron Paul Donation ScreenShot 1
Ron Paul Donation ScreenShot 2

I feel like watching V for Vendetta.

-Shoaib

Added a Home page and some new buttons – Gained 3000 experience points +7 mana

shoaib — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:57:13 +0000

The funny thing about coding is that when you get “in the zone,” its hard to pry yourself away, and you end up staying up until 9am the next morning flippin bits. Anyway, that’s what I ended up doing the other day when we added some new features. Although we make minor updates daily, a bunch of major changes went in that you should know about.

First of all we have a sweet new logo and some shmancy buttons. People had a hard time telling that the old buttons were actually buttons. Hopefully this corrects that issue. You’ll see a search bar up top that lets you search questions and answers on the site. We also updated the search to run from light speed to ludicrous speed…because light speed was too slow.

You’ll also notice that when you’re viewing questions and answers you can “Save the Question” for later in case you want to check up on new responses. Where can you view these saved questions? When you have an account and you’re logged in, you’ll see a “Home” page on the navigation bar at the top of the screen. On this page there’s a tab for your precious saved questions. This page will also show you your friends’ recent activity (Stuff they voted on, stuff they’re discussing and stuff they’re asking about) .

Another feature we added is the ability to add a Youtube video to your recommendations. This way if your friend is looking to learn how to cook oysters, you can point them to a how-to-video and say “Try this!” (that’s right, I went there)

We shifted around the front page so the recent suggestions moved to the top. I think its easier to see it this way.

Stay tuned for more updates and the upcoming contest where you can have a chance to win stuff by doing very little.

Ron Paul Pwning the Competition + new features.

shoaib — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 08:46:34 +0000

Wow, the Paulites are going wild on TryThis. At the time of this post, Ron Paul has 401 votes while Barack Obama is in a distant second with 19. Unfortunately for Barack, there’s no second place here…actually there’s no second place in the actual election either so…good luck everyone. With six weeks left I think the real question is whether or not Ron can break four figures.

Anyway, we added a couple of cool new things today. If you’ve asked a question you now have the ability to close it by selecting the best recommendation. The best question will be marked as such. Once a question is closed, nobody can recommend stuff anymore.

We also added bubble tooltips in some places. Everybody likes bubbles. Bubbles ftw.

I Just Tried…

Wally — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 18:55:14 +0000

Try out our new “I Just Tried…” feature and tell everyone what you just tried and what you thought of it! Head over to Try This and look at at the right side and click on the Click here to tell people about something you just tried. Check it out!

Spam reporting and other vendors

Wally — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:15:49 +0000

A bunch of changes went in today including the (spam) link at the bottom right corner of every discussion note. Clicking on this makes an entry into the spam reporting system where the admins can then decide what action to take.

We’ve also added a few new stores to add products from and will continue to add more. We’re still tweaking the interface so some changes are coming. You can now recommend products from Sony, Buy.com, CompUSA, SHOP.com, and many more!

There is also now a way to view the product via a popup link, by clicking on the [view] link, from the site before you recommend it.

There are a lot more new features coming. Stay tuned!

-Wally

Election 2008 and TryThis.com

shoaib — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 04:33:18 +0000

So. Yeah. We decided that since our site is all about voting up stuff that you think is worth recommending, we’d hold a mock election to see who should be President of the United States next term. I tried to add in all the major candidates. Now it’s up to you guys. The page works like any other voting page in that you can vote for multiple things (although why would you in this case), and you can’t vote for the same candidate more than once.

On Halloween after we’re done ~~stealing candy from children~~ trick-or-treating, we’ll contribute $1000 to the candidate with the most votes. Spread the word. May the Force be with them.

Questions no longer have a type

Wally — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 05:04:43 +0000

A fairly major change went in this morning allowing the questions and suggestions to be more open. You no longer have to specify a type for the question and can now suggest a product, map, person, or custom image to any question. This should allow for more flexibility and eliminate the problem where people were asking for place suggestions but did not bother changing the question type to place.

Also with this change, the leaderboard is no longer real-time. It will now be recomputed nightly.

Leaderboard

Wally — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 20:18:06 +0000

The new Leaderboard is now available! Stats are gathered in real-time and the board is updated in real-time. More detailed stats are available and will be made available on the profile page once we are done making the modifications.

We will soon be hosting a contest where the top ranking users will receive some awesome prizes!

-Wally

Try This Facebook App

Wally — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:29:12 +0000

If you have a Facebook account and haven’t seen our app yet, give it a try!

-Wally

Booya ..some new privacy settings

shoaib — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 04:43:41 +0000

Ok.. this is a quick post letting everyone know about some new privacy features we added. If you Edit your account settings you’ll see two new checkboxes.

One says: Allow my friends to suggest me as a recommendation for for other people’s requests
This basically makes your profile available as a suggestion. For example, Someone’s looking for a new babysitter and your friend thinks you’d be a good fit. He can recommend your profile to the person asking the question.

the other checkbox says: Make my profile visible to my friends only
This is self explanatory. If you don’t want people who aren’t your friends looking at your profile, then click this box. Although, I personally think you guys should be social and make friends.

Another feature we added is when you go to ask a question. You can make the match request visible to “friends only” if you want…sometimes you want to ask people who know you best.

More updates coming soon.

cheers.

-Shoaib