As a result, and just for a fun little Saturday project, I created a HTML5 Mobile App for Apple and Android tablets. Is a simple little calculator for my wife to use to determine the pricing of her Etsy crafts. You can see the tool here:

The techniques learned here will help continue to evolve Palnook as well, create a better experience for Palnook on Tablets.

However, work had continued and I am happy to announce that we launched RC2 over the weekend. As some of you may recall from my last update (multiple groups), RC2 included the finalized design of the site. I am quite happy with the design we came up with. If you are in the beta group, check it out.

I was also able to squeeze in some of RC3′s changes too, namely including the ability to subscribe to a discussion or category. There are still some changes left for RC3, but this leave plenty of room for more, so feel free to email me if you have feature requests or ideas.

The final bit of exiting news, is that I opened the registration up to the public. You no longer need to request to be in the beta group to get access to register. I did this for a few reasons. Partially because the last round of changes took a bit longer then expected and I don’t want Palnook to sit in beta testing forever. But to be honest the primary reason is I was not seeing enough beta users, and I really want to see some more feedback. I want to adhere to Palnook’s vision and keep the tool as focused and simple to use as possible. To do that I need to get more real world feedback.

That’s it for now. Feel free to register and try the tool out.

The book is made up of essays from Allyson Beatrice, a professional event planner and consultant specializing in fan events. She got her start planning events for Buffy the Vampire Slayer events.

But the book is really about the bonds and friendships she formed as a member of an internet fan group. There are some quite touching, and sometimes funny, stories which illustrate just how strong and valuable internet friendships can become.

If you want to know what Palnook’s goal is, then read this book and think what it would be like to be a part of such a close group of friends. Then come back here and sign up! (or for know you can sign up to be a part of the beta testing group by sending me an email directly or liking our facebook page).

Palnook RC1 Release Notes

Fixed Defects (bugs)
#53 Promote to admin not working

New Features
#54 Allow users to join multiple groups
#27 Move discussions from one category to another
#28 Delete/Archive a discussion
#31 Display discussion icon based on the discussion type
#33 If no discussions are found for “Most Recent” or a category, present the create discussion form
#41 Add ability for group leader to toggle “recruiting” option on/off

Other Changes
#51 Changes /clique to /group in the URL
#38 Switch JS files to minified versions for better performance
#39 Setup SMTP for mail actions

We will now begin work on RC2, which will focus mainly on the site design. What you see today, aside form the logo is only a temporary design. I am excited about this step, because it will really make the site look more complete, and it will begin to look like the finished product.

After that, the last release candidate, RC3, will contain some last features which are needed (Like adding RSS feeds and ability to subscribe to a discussion) as well as bug fixes. However, some of that might get mixed into RC2 if we have time.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading.

Only RC1′s tasks have been defined fully. The features I am aiming to include in RC1 are:

Palnook RC1 Release Notes

Fixed Defects (bugs)
#53 Promote to admin not working

New Features
#54 Allow users to join multiple groups
#27 Move discussions from one category to another
#28 Delete/Archive a discussion
#31 Display discussion icon based on the discussion type
#33 If no discussions are found for “Most Recent” or a category, present the create discussion form
#41 Add ability for group leader to toggle “recruiting” option on/off

Other Changes
#51 Changes /clique to /group in the URL
#38 Switch JS files to minified versions for better performance
#39 Setup SMTP for mail actions

Most of this is actually done already, so I hope to release this to the production server later this week or next week.

RC2 will focus mainly on the site design. What you see today, aside form the logo is only a temporary design. I am excited about this step, because it will really make the site look more complete, and it will begin to look like the finished product.

RC3 will contain some last features which are needed (Like adding RSS feeds and ability to subscribe to a discussion) as well as bug fixes.

This will bring us to the final release, which will be opened to the public.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading.

“In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to them, says a study in today’s American Sociological Review. In 2004, that number dropped to two, and one in four had no close confidants at all.”

I wanted to share it because it relates directly to Palnook’s mission. This study was conducted 5 years ago, before social media turned into the craze it is today (though it was already on the rise). My vision is that Palnook will be a tool that can provide this sort of close relationships; friends our users can confide in and feel like are true friends, not just passing acquaintances.

This version does not contain all the feature we will see in the final version, but having the beta open to testers allows us to begin and collect feedback and weed out bugs. As such testers can expect to see more features released as they help refine the system and the more advanced features mature.

If you would like to join the beta testing team, “like” our facebook page, we will use this to contact you and communicate registration details.

First and foremost, we had a name change. We have officially changed from the “working name”, CyberClique, to the true and final name Palnook.

We also released a new logo for the site. I don’t consider this logo finalized at this point, but I believe the final logo will either be this or something a lot like it. As a result we also released a new color scheme. This was simply to avoid having the site look awful; we are still working on the site’s final graphic design charter.

Nonetheless, the new name and logo is a major milestone for Palnook, and quite exciting.

But all this focus on names and logos did not stop the progress of the beta release. To be honest it did slow it down a bit, it took far more energy then we had anticipated (but it was worth it). However, the beta is now at 93% complete in Trac. I had hoped to release the beta this week. But it looks like it’s going to be closer to the end of the week or even next week.

Still, one busy and productive week.

– Rob

This is an extremely interesting exercise for us. This is were we can let our geek flag fly and get into some hardcore math theory. The algorithm itself is now finalized, and we have a prototype to test it and validate its accuracy. It’s working great, I’m very happy with it.

We are now working to implement this within our code and database scripts in a way that will perform well. I would say this part is 50% complete, I believe we can have it finished this week.

As you can imagine this is a major final element for our beta release, and will put us very close to kicking off the beta testing phase.

Also I will probably post the algorithm itself here at some point for those who want some interesting bed-time reading. But I am sure it will go through some changes over the next few months as we get feedback from users and see how well it performs in the wild. So I will wait until it has evolved a bit first.