Saturday, May 24, 2008

Small Girl Big Appetite released on Podfire!

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Podfire's new food show, "Small Girl Big Appetite", is fresh out of the editing room at podfire.sg and sgba.tv. A lovely first episode shot at the French Stall on Serangoon Road. You can watch it (and future episodes) at the above links. I've embedded the first episode here too:



A rather well-shot and presented show, being only the third series Podfire has produced. I'm keeping an eye on these guys to see what else they have in store in the video podcasting space. I'm also rather keen on the smoked salmon and sea bream!

Friday, May 23, 2008

We were at Barcamp Singapore!

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Barcamp Singapore II on Wednesday night was great. Some really interesting speakers from Google, Singeo, Lilihood (loved their control interface) and Homespace, and I loved Preetam's idea pitch about object-tagging. I didn't get to catch the Mobile breakout, because we were presenting a demo on Shoplette for the Maps session, but I'm sure it was great too. Will have to check out the video once it's out.

I think what really made Barcamp II for me was the feeling of learning from each other and sharing our approaches. It was great that the participants weren't just talking about what their site/service did, but also their approach to different problems and how they solved it. That was really helpful. Kudos to Singeo for the tip on Fire Eagle and Skyhook, and also to the Homespace team for their tips on Clusterer and custom info windows for Google Maps. We hope, when we have more stuff on Shoplette, we can share tips that might be useful and valuable to other startups as well.

Barcamp II was the first time we spoke about Shoplette to a public audience and it was a good experience. I think what we gained most was from the questions people asked about Shoplette and the feedback they shared with us about the service. And we actually met a few of our users at the event, which was a real blast!

It's great when you actually get to meet the people who use your service because you get a much better sense of who your market is. Putting an actual face and personality behind your users beats any kind of demographic description in trying to understand what they're expecting and might like from the service. Plus the fact that you get to thank them profusely for their support! (We're incredibly grateful!)

So thanks to the organisers of Barcamp II for a great event, and I'm definitely looking forward to the next one!

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Remember to have fun!

Great words of wisdom from Chef Giovanni on "Jamie's Great Italian Escape":

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Remember to have fun!
Not just work, work, work.
Let your hair down and play once in a while.

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Strangely, my idea of fun is learning Objective C and Cocoa. Erm... Not quite right. But, damn! Objective C really makes object-oriented programming so natural it hurts not to.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

We're (finally) in Beta!

Well, actually since a couple of days ago. But I finally have time to blog about it!...

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We've been a total of six months in development, three months for the current version, and after a harrowing few months in closed Alpha testing, Shoplette is finally in Public Beta! Do check it out at http://www.shoplette.com

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Launching a Beta is scary. There's no doubt about the importance of getting a beta out in the wild quickly in order to test, test, test - you'll never really know the market response otherwise, and you might be working yourself into a corner or dead end without any live feedback on whether the whole idea makes sense. But when you really have to bite the bullet and release your service for market testing, it's pretty scary.

What will they think of it? Will anyone like it? Should we keep working on it, and cleaning it up more, before we let anyone else see it? Do we have only one chance with users, and if it's not good enough now, will they ever come back? These were the questions circling overhead before we launched the Beta.

But in the end, it's something we've been looking forward to for a long time now. A chance to put Shoplette out there in the wild, and to see if it's something people will like to do. You never really know until you test it, and I'm glad we bit the bullet and got it released.

So now it's in your hands. Please check it out, sign up, give it a spin and let us know what you think. We're really happy to receive any feedback from you, good or bad, at team[at]shoplette[dot]com.

Hope you enjoy the site!

http://www.shoplette.com