News on Adegga

Lots of news coming from Adegga. I decided to put them all on the same post to make it easier to read what has been happening.

Private Messages
I always felt that for a social site like Adegga not having an internal messaging system was a big fault. We’ve now launched this feature and discovered a bunch of new things our users can do on top of it (like sending us feature requests directly - which we like - of course).

Multiple Rating Scales and half points
For people that feel more comfortable using a shorter scale (1 to 5 or 1 to 20) than the more famous 100 point scale, we launched an improved version of our unique multiple rating scale system. We’ve now added half points.

New Tasting note Page
Rating a wine or writing a note can be a daunting task. We’ve simplified the interface of this important screen and it’s now very easy to simply add a rating or a note. Check what we did.

European Wine Bloggers Conference 2008
We’re very honored to be invited by Ryan and Gabriella of Catavino to participate in the organization of the first European Wine Bloggers Conference. The conference will take place in La Rioja, Spain on the 29th August 2008 and the team will be there to meet a bunch of amazing people that have been changing the world of wine. We can’t wait.

Upcoming
There’s a bunch of stuff coming out in the next couple of weeks. Here’s a small tasting of what we’re working on: (much) more prices and wine shops, a simple yet useful mobile version, a special account for wine producers and much more. Stay tunned.

March 30, 2008 | Tags: adegga, ewbc2008, features | Leave a Comment

Inovar nos agregadores de notícias

Os agregadores de notícias como o SAPO Notícias e o Destakes permitem aos utilizadores acederem a um só sitio como ponto de partida para ler notícias. Para além dos comentários existem outras funcionalidades que poderiam ser implementadas e que são úteis para os utilizadores e contribuem ainda para melhorar os próprios sites.

Notícias mais comentadas: a grande quantidade de informação existente nos agregadores precisa de filtros para ser consultada. A participação dos utilizadores permite implementar facilmente alguns desses filtros. Alguns exemplos: notícias mais comentadas, notícias mais vistas, notícias mais enviadas.
Personalização: a criação de contas de utilizador permite personalizar os conteúdos que são vistos e filtrar à partida as áreas que o utilizador não está interessado. A utilização de feeds RSS nas pesquisas é uma boa funcionalidade mas a maioria dos utilizadores conhece melhor o email.
Rede Social: seja através de uma rede social, por email ou através do messenger a verdade é que os utilizadores já partilham notícias com outras pessoas. Tornar essa partilha mais fácil no próprio serviço só vai tornar o serviço melhor.
Votação: sendo que não estou muito convencido da validade de projectos como o Digg para notícias (nunca encontro nada de jeito na homepage que me interesse ver) gostava de ver algumas experiências com votação nas notícias? O Yahoo! lançou agora o Buzz e com o número de utilizadores que tanto o SAPO Notícias como o Destakes têm, seriam interessante validar o interesse desta forma de filtro.

Um nota especial para o sistema de alertas por messenger do Destakes que é muito útil. Apenas as instruções de como funciona poderiam ser mais simples (tipo 1-2-3). Com um design (forma e estilo) mais cuidado (por exemplo, aqui só começamos a ver conteúdo depois de metade do ecrã) poderia ser uma proposta ainda mais interessante.

Qualquer um dos agregadores mencionados (SAPO Notícias e Destakes) tem a matéria-prima necessária (as notícias) e poderiam adicionar estas funcionalidade para se tornarem projectos ainda mais interessantes e darem aos seus utilizadores aquilo que eles procuram: mais opções e mais controlo.

March 17, 2008 | Tags: destakes, sapo, social media | 2 Comments

Social Media à Portuguesa

Ante de mais um parêntesis. “à Portuguesa” é suposto ser um coisa boa, como em “Cozido à Portuguesa” e é assim, nesse contexto, que o estou a utilizar.

O SAPO Notícias lançou recentemente um funcionalidade que permite a qualquer pessoa comentar os artigos publicados. São boas notícias para Web Portuguesa que finalmente tem um dos seus maiores sites a apostar na ligação entre os media tradicionais e os media sociais.

Numa altura em que a participação dos utilizadores na criação e distribuição de conteúdos continua a crescer, a aposta do SAPO numa ferramenta de fácil utilização (os comentários) num meio de utilização em massa (as notícias) vai certamente aumentar o nível de participação do utilizadores.

Esta nova funcionalidade vai também despertar a disponibilidade de outros sites de notícias em Portugal para adicionarem a funcionalidade de comentários nas notícias (em Portugal é mais comum seguir do que ser seguido, mas isso fica para outro post).

A renovação do canal de notícias trouxe ainda uma apresentação menos Netvibes (aleluia) e mais atenta às prioridades de cada uma das zonas de conteúdo. O Local levou o mesmo tratamento e o resultado é igualmente bom. A Banca de jornais também é um serviço útil e bem integrado.

Uma última coisa. Celso, será muito pedir aos senhores do Tek para usarem links nos artigos?

March 17, 2008 | Tags: agregadores, destakes, noticias, sapo, social media | 2 Comments

John Bell, Social Media and Adegga

I met with Hugo and John Bell yesterday afternoon in Lisbon in a nice cafe near the river to talk about social media. He did a nice post on what happened. Here’s my point of view.

What is social media?
John and Hugo agreed that defining social media is not easy because it’s something that is based on a lot of different things. John added a group of things that help define social media: user generated content and easy participation tools (like blogs).

Trying to get more information I’ve decided to search around the web and found a couple of answers (Wikipedia, Stowe Boyd, Jeremiah Owyang, Robert Scoble and many others.) but this one from Chris Heuer is the one I think explains it better: Social Media is redefining how we relate to each other as humans and how we as humans relate to the organizations that serve us. While it is commonly represented by blogs, podcasts, vlogs, wikis, user generated content and social networks, it is not about those specific things as much as it is about what happens around and because of those things. This includes most notably the ability and desire to easily share with each other, to build upon that which is shared and to discover people, places and things that are of interest to you, because the sharing of these things with these new tools, is making visible that which was previously unknown.

Who is John Bell
John’s is a social media evangelist working for OgilvyPR but he’s not your average agency guy. He’s doing a very interesting work in exploring and understanding what social media is and how it is changing (creating?) the relationships between companies and their customers. He’s also the head of 360º Digital Influence where he is helping clients have a clear understanding of what’s important and relevant in the web.

How to measure social media
John asked us questions to know what we think about the Portuguese social media scene. It was really interesting the way he was organizing our answers into structured ideas.

We had an interesting discussion on how to measure social media success and John has some very good thoughts on the subject. He includes such metrics as number blog mentions, number of blog posts, number of recommendations and search visibility as ways to measure a social media campaign. His work is proving that for a company or brand looking to use social media, measurement should be about the level conversation and not about pageviews or ad impressions.

Adegga and social media
John wanted to know more about Adegga. I explained how we’re trying get wine producers and wine lovers to engage in a conversation with each other. We believe that the wine industry has been hiding behind wine ratings, wine critics and expensive advertising and that has been creating doubts and damaging the relationship that people have with wine. A more open and honest approach is needed and Adegga has the ability to provide the tools that to both producers and wine lovers can use to engage in that conversation.

I finished by doing a demo of the upcoming features we’re preparing to launch soon and John gave me his valuable and experienced insight. It’s great to get such feedback from someone with his kind of experience and knowledge. He really liked Adegga and did a very nice write up about it on his blog.

One last thing. John seems to be getting a thing for Lisbon (who wouldn’t?). Next time you come (SHiFT?) take a look at my Small Guide to Lisbon and see what great places this amazing city has to offer.

March 15, 2008 | Tags: adegga, john bell, social media | 1 Comment

SHiFT2008 is coming in October

SHiFT, the Social and Human Ideas for Technology conference organized in Lisbon, is happening again next October between the 15th and the 17th. Pedro is heading up the organization of the event for the second time.

A list of speakers is still to be announced but in case there’s someone you’d like to see speaking, send an email to speakers@shift.pt with your suggestion.

Don’t forget to keep an eye on the blog (here’s the RSS feed) to know more about the event.

March 15, 2008 | Tags: conferences, lisbon, portugal, shift2008 | Leave a Comment

Adegga as a startup

Lots of great tips came out of this weekend’s online discussion on tips for startups, money and productivity. Jason Calcanis wrote a list of 17 tips for startups. Adegga does not have $20 million of funding but I decided to pick some of Jason’s points and tell how we do things there.

Doing a startup means that sometimes you don’t see the whole path
but you need to keep walking.

1. Buy Macintosh computers, save money on an IT department

We’re are 3 in the team, one full time and 2 part-times. Only one of us uses a Mac (me with a 15″ MacBook Pro). The other 2 in the team use PCs with Windows. We’re all using our own computers.

We have had some initial problems in setting a multi-platform development setup but now that all that is done we’ve been running just fine. Out staging server is the same Mac and things move into production once they’ve been tested there.

Working with LAMP on a Mac is several times easier than on a Windows, however most of our users use Windows, so having access to 2 PCs helps us do a lot of Windows testing. (I know we can use Windows on a Mac, but we haven’t needed that).

2. Don’t buy a phone system.

We use Skype for most of our calls. Once in a while we use our mobiles phones. Email is our favorite way of communicating with clients. As we contact people in different time zones and different languages and the team only gets together 3 times a week, this is the best (and cheapest) method to stay organized.

3. Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs.

When we meet to work we use a big wood table from IKEA where we can all work together and collaborate. We also have an IKEA whiteboard where we write what we’re up to and the occasional brainstorming session. We then take pictures and send them via email to archive the meeting.

No fancy chairs for now although I have a nice borrowed one.

4. Use Google hosted email.

We use Google Apps to power our email system and company calendar. No spam and it works everywhere.

5. Fire people who don’t love their work.

We’re all passionate about our project and we’re only 3 so we have to do everything between ourselves. For me it means accounting, marketing, developing, sales, etc. For my two team mates it means sometimes working 4 hours after a full day at their day job and Sunday. It’s not easy but we forget everything when someone says they love Adegga and totally get what we’re trying to do.

6. Get an expensive, automatic espresso machine at the office

We have a Nespresso. It keeps costs down, coffee quality up and saves times every time we meet.

7. Don’t need to rent an office

Adegga was built without an office. We use my living room to meet and each of us works from home when developing. It’s confortable, has Wi-Fi and it’s cheap. Until we get to a level where we can rent a small office this is the way we do it.

The best advice
Sticking to these tips is definitely not a sure path to success. As Tony Wright says, every startup is unique and in the end it’s all about Building something people want, being persistent and never giving up.

March 10, 2008 | Tags: adegga, startups | 3 Comments

information overload

Our work as entrepreneurs, designers, engineers, craftsmen is to keep evolving a set of tools to relieve our brains from this huge mess. Lifestreaming, friend-feeding, micro-blogging, content-chunking, micro-formating is here to stay, but our brains can’t handle it alone.
(Fred Oliveira on information overload)

I stopped checking my feed reader regularly, don’t update Twitter that much, have been slow on blogging and feel like I need a month just to read the interesting stuff (how do I know what is interesting before reading it?). And when I finish I’ll need a new update. What is the problem? Do I have too many interests? Is everything new topic just to easy to start following? Is this why I love the calm, not hyperlinked, world of magazines?

The Long Tail says we need more and better filters (ways to sort through the vast amounts of information available) to improve the our signal-to-noise ratio. But how do we filter information using systems that keep asking us to add more and more information?

Without questions we find no answers. Questions help us keep in mind the problems that led us to create, design and develop new things.

March 7, 2008 | Tags: information overload, the-long-tail | Leave a Comment

Prova de Vinhos Cortes de Cima (DeliDelux)

Vou estar esta quinta-feira (6 de Março das 18h às 22h) no DeliDelux (perto de Santa Apolónia) para uma prova de vinhos do produtor Cortes de Cima. A (simpática) enóloga Helena Sardinha estará presente.

Os vinhos em prova são:

Cortes de Cima Incognito Tinto 2005
Cortes de Cima Tinto 2005
Cortes de Cima Aragonez Tinto 2004
Cortes de Cima Trincadeira Tinto 2004
Cortes de Cima Syrah Tinto 2004
e ainda o azeite Cortes de Cima da colheita 2006/2007

Infelizmente o extraordinário Cortes de Cima Reserva) não vai estar em prova. O produtor Cortes de Cima é um meus preferidos (Alentejano, claro) e um dos mais apreciados pelo membros do Adegga.

Uma última nota: este post inclui como tags os AVIN de vinhos mencionados de forma a poder testar a nova integração do Adegga com os blogs que falam de vinhos.

March 5, 2008 | Tags: AVIN1894536902599, AVIN2099458145485, AVIN3921722947343, AVIN4925421785311, AVIN6452997073019, AVIN7137387963215, cortesdecima, wine | 3 Comments

You are the brand

Gary Vaynerchuk explains why people should think of themselves as brands. When I met him in London a year ago he was already as energetic as he is now. He’s no different talking to you, presenting on stage or in front of the camera while doing his great wine videos at Wine Library TV (60,000 viewers a day). He is also the owner of Corkd (an Adegga competitor).

The other day, while on conversation with a friend we came to that conclusion. In this new world where you no longer have one job for life, but a set of ideas, projects and works, it’s important to promote and protect your most import asset: you.

March 4, 2008 | Tags: marketing, wine | 3 Comments

1 year of Monocle Magazine

Monocle has just turned one year, congratulations to the team. I discovered Monocle through Bruno Giussani’s blog a year ago and it’s now one of my favorite magazines.

Monocle is “a global briefing covering international affairs, business, culture and design”. Every month there’s a mix interesting subjects that could only come from a magazine that is headquartered in London and has offices in Tokyo, Sydney, Zürich and New York.

The magazine was created by Tyler Brûlé who wants it to challenge competition from new media:

“I’m so tired of hearing from all corners of the media that print is dead. Well, it’s not. It’s a time when magazines should be pulling up their socks and turning out more fabulous, more confident, more robust products.”

There’s also and a very well designed and thought website and a very interesting podcast. I’m definitely considering subscribing.

March 3, 2008 | Tags: magazines. monocle | 1 Comment

about

My name is André Ribeirinho, I'm an entrepreneur who lives in Portugal
More about me. Contact me.
my startup

Adegga is a social wine discovery service. The idea is to take the complexity out of wine and allow people to discover wines based other people's choices.

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