Using SnapABug with Zendesk, you can now receive the remote screenshot and detailed information captured by SnapABug in your Zendesk support requests directly and help your customers faster.

Here is how a support request generated by SnapABug looks like in Zendesk:

Configuring SnapABug for Zendesk:

1. Sign Up at http://snapabug.com

2. Define how you want the button to look like, grab the javascript code from the configurator and place it on your website

Like the Brightkite iPhone app? You can get an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at our design process and thinking in the recently released book iPhone User Interface Design Projects. Chapter 3, which is exclusively dedicated to the Brightkite iPhone app, covers such topics as:

• web vs native app
• the motivation behind using tab navigation
• why we redesigned the entire signup process just before release
• how we accomplished virtually infinite detail drill-down without running out of memory
• best practices for address book integration

The chapter covers the Brightkite 1.0 iPhone version, so some stuff has changed since then, but all of it is still relevant. Thanks to Dan Burcaw of Double Encore for writing this up…you rock!

You can purchase the book on Amazon.com.

Slow Food helps food producers maintain and grow their local foods, often protecting them from extinction. Having experienced a rare Spanish salt called Salinas de Añana, a Basque Slow Food Ark of Taste product, it is especially exciting to be working with Lora and Bob of Mendocino Sea Salt and Seasoning.

Why? Because Mendocino Sea Salt is not a local food being protected from extinction — but a marvelous example of a NEW local food tradition!

7 Questions with Mendocino Sea Salt and Seasoning…

1) Why did you choose to start making your sea salts?
It kind of chose us actually. We had to close our sport fishing business and were looking for other ways to share our love of the north coast with others. Quite by accident, we were visiting the Ferry Building in San Francisco and were shocked to see all the variations of artisan sea salts. We know how clean our Mendocino ocean water is, so we assumed our salt must be equally as wonderful. Now we just had to figure out how to craft it.

2) What’s your secret weapon for making the sea salts?
It took us about six months of experimenting before we decided on our particular method. We believe our “secret weapon” is to begin with the purest sea water. We happen to be blessed with that right outside our front door. Secondly, temperature is key to crafting a crisp salt flake. To much heat and the crystal develops too thin and light. Too little heat and the salt forms as small and dense grains. By closely monitoring how much heat to apply, I can literally shape the salt crystal as it forms.

3) Which product is your personal favorite and why?
My personal favorite has to be our nori salt. There is something about blending hand harvested nori with our salt that captures the unique flavor of the north coast. I like to say that the taste reminds me of the scent of the ocean has after a big winter storm.

4) What is a unique way to enjoy one of your products?
We encourage our customers to get creative with our products. One person told us they love to add a tiny pinch of our sea salt to their coffee. I tried it and much to my surprise it removed any bitterness and enhanced the flavor. Try it! It works!

5) Any new products or flavors in the works?
You bet! Since it is wild mushroom season up here, we are exploring blending dried wild chanterelles and king boletes with our salt. We are also housing our salt in hand blown glass fishing floats. The glass float adds wonderful accent to our salt and makes a great gift.

6) What advice would you give to someone who wants to get started in the food business?
Holy Mackerel. That’s a tough one. When we had to close our fishing business it was a tough time for me. My wife (always the optimist) encouraged me to never give up and that something better was right around the corner. Sure enough she was right. Foodzie has also been a wonderful and encouraging resource for us.

7) Which product on Foodzie makes you most hungry?
Lora and I have a penchant for fine jams and jellies. Winter Chestnut makes a chestnut jam that sounds (and I am sure) tastes heavenly.

Please give a warm round of applause to the first ever Brightkite hashtag competition. We will be awarding a mysterious number of mystery prizes to the best photos and posts using the hashtag #isawsanta between now and December 24th. We want to see you dressed up as Santa, we want to see the real Santa, we want to see four legged Santas, we want to see Santa in peculiar places and we want to see Santa getting up to all his old tricks. Basically, we want you to have fun and share it with everyone. Make sure your posts are posted to everyone not just your friends and they need to include “#isawsanta” or we might miss them.

We will make up some categories and award some prizes on December 24th. So beard up, make merry, and give us something to giggle at. Here are some of the Brightkite team starting the competition off with a limp. We know you can do better…

I interned at Universal Records in the Motown Sales division the summer of 2005. One day that sticks out in my memory was when we were trying to decide the optimal street date to release David Banner’s record. Even then the industry was hungry for data to make these sorts of decisions. At that point all we had readily available was SoundScan numbers and terrestrial radio plays.

The Ying Yang Twins had just released USA (United States of Atlanta) and seen sales take off on the strength of The Whisper Song on urban radio. David Banner had a similar song, Play, seeing good pick up across the country. Knowing the overlapping demographics of their fans we wanted to time the release of Banner’s Certified album to hit the same point in the radio trajectory as the Ying Yang Twins had done.

I was in charge of creating the pretty Excel chart that my supervisor wanted to present to the label heads. I can only imagine how much longer it would take to put a similar chart together by hand nowadays. There are more data sources out there than ever before. The trick is knowing the right comparisons to make, which metrics are important, and being able to present it in a way that tells a clear story.

We are releasing this feature to all of our PRO members as a BETA feature because we want your feedback on these reports as soon as possible and we plan to tweak the reporting over the next few weeks. You can help by telling us how you like the reports and what is good/bad/missing from a report that would be best for you.

You can find links to create your reports on the My Workout Log page or on the My Nutrition Log page.

If you have any suggestions, the place to let us know is here: DailyBurn Support Forum

We hope you like this new feature and please let us know what you think!

This Friday is the first night of Chanukah. There are many ways to celebrate with Foodzie as your gift guide. As Jews around the world remember the miracle of oil lasting for eight nights, be creative with the presents you give: select treats from eight different producers, one for each night!

It is tradition to eat food fried in oil – latkes (potato pancakes) and jelly donuts are two delicious foods associated with the holiday. This year, try baking your donuts from scratch and filling them with some of Foodzie’s amazing jams or jellies. Consider Terra Verde Farms’ selection, including seedless blackberry or Frog Hollow Farm’s organic apricot-cherry conserves. To garnish your latkes, improvise a twist on the old favorite of apple sauce by substituting chutney, Mango Apple Chutney from Sunchowder’s Emporia Jams is high on our list.

If you are looking for a simple and elegant theme for a party, consider an olive oil tasting. It’s the wine and cheese of Chanukah! Choose a few unique oil flavors, such as Stella Cadente’s Blood Orange or Persian Lime. Pair them with a savory bread for dipping– consider Roasted Red Pepper or Basil Cheese Bread from Rio’s Brazillian or buy flour to bake your own bread fromSprouted Grain Bread’s.

If you have kids, or are simply a kid at heart, why not turn Little Laura’s Sweets’ Cake Pops into an edible Hanukkiah (the menorah used for Chanukah) by standing 9 pops in a row to represent the candles (the additional candle is the shamash and is used to light the other eight candles). You’ll have plenty left over to enjoy. Laura is also selling decadent iced Hanukkah sugar cookies, 18 in a batch for good luck!

Don’t forget your gelt for playing dreidel! Indulge in Luca Chocolate’s Olive Oil Truffle which combines remembering the miracle of the oil with a sweet taste or Amella Caramels’ passion fruit or carrot cake caramels.

Foodzie also offers many kosher options. Check out the selection here. If you still can’t decide what to get for Chanukah, buy a gift card and let your friends pick out what they want!

Where did your Christmas tree come from? Well, if you are reading this from the Capitol building in DC, then your 85-foot spruce tree is from Arizona’s Apache Sitgreaves National Forest, and you can see exactly how it got there, and who it met along the way, by browsing through the stream and photos of CapitolTree. The annual tree lighting ceremony is tonight at 5:00 p.m. ET on the West Lawn. Are you attending? Be sure to tag your Brightkite posts and photos with #CapitolTree

The Tree’s trip has ended, but our good friends at Griffin Technology are just beginning theirs. They have spent the last few months buying an old VW van, stripping it down and building it up tricked out in all the latest Griffin gear. Become a fan of the team at Griffintech, and watch as they travel East to West over the Holidays to Las Vegas.

They will be throwing a number of Kiteups along the way, so head on down and buy them a drink and ask for a new Brightkite T-shirt.

December 30th
New Orleans, LA
RSVP HERE

December 31st
Austin, TX
RSVP HERE

January 1st
El Paso or Las Cruces

January 2nd
Phoenix, AZ
RSVP HERE

January 3rd
Grand Canyon, AZ
CONNECT by following us.

January 7th
Las Vegas, NV
CES!

SendGrid allows companies to tag each of their emails and assign them a category. After this, SendGrid will track emails sent, clicks, opens, unsubscribes, spam reports, and bounces per category. Companies using SendGrid will now be able to see what types of emails generate more complaints, higher click-though rates, or what emails generate more interest. For more information on how to accomplish this and for a video on how easy it is to get started and how the statistics look please go here.

Freshly baked cookies from Little Laura’s Sweets

Nonga, an Orangutang’s Facebook Fan Page. She has a raisin-dispenser that dubs as a camera that uploads her photos directly to her Fan Page.

Fiesta Movement agents and their Twitter friends gathered at the Palladium in West Hollywood Tuesday night and set a new Guinness World Record for the “most attendees at a tweetup” Coverage here.

Sean Kingston: “Follow Me (Twitter Song)”. Sing Kingston tries to gain Twitter followers through song…it’s actually pretty good. Audio here.

Ben Stiller attempts to raise funds for schools in Haiti with StillerStrong. Not sure if he’s serious, but our headbands are en route to the Filtrbox office!

Comcast’s purchase of NBC Universal could shake the up social media in a big way in terms of the way we watch “television” programs. Here’s the Hulu video clip of Conan O’brien’s humerous reaction to the purchase.

The theme of my conversation with the journalist was about building a social community in which women can feel safe when posting a location. We’ve adjusted functionality and the user interface and placed greater emphasis on privacy controls – which women told us were really important to overcome fears and issues with location-based services.

Clearly, I did not do a good job of articulating this or my feelings to the LA Times. For that, I deeply apologize and endeavor to be more conscious of the impact of my words – to our entire Brightkite user base, and especially to the women that have made it such an amazing community.

Jonathon Linner, CEO

In the SnapABug configuration page, simply check the box “Add a link to a discussion or feedback forum”

Here is a view of the support request form with the link activated:

We want SnapABug to fit you business needs, and have developed this change based on customer feedback. Please let us know how we can make SnapABug even more useful for you.

Image by Kansir via Flickr

As we continue to develop Baydin, I have been very surprised at how many people complain about “missing features” in Windows Search and the Outlook 2007 search bar, like the ability to search for messages from a specific person or to find only attachments. 

As it turns out, Windows Search and Outlook Search include those features (and a bunch more), but Microsoft borrowed a page from Google and hid them behind a plain-looking search bar.  Read through these tips, and in about five minutes, you’ll be an expert at finding even the most deeply-buried files. 

Just type these keywords into the Windows or Outlook search bar that you’re using now – it’s in the Start menu for Windows 7 and Vista, and it’s in the taskbar as a text box in Windows XP (if you don’t see it, right-click the taskbar and choose toolbars to turn it on.  If it’s not there, you can install it for free from Microsoft’s Windows search download page).  Just type them straight in, and you’ll be ready to go. 

1. The from: keyword

Want to find all the email addresses from your friend Jim?  Just pull out the from: keyword, and you’ll have them.  Just type from:jim (space or no space) into the search box, and you’ll only get communications from Jim. 

Of course, you might have six coworkers named Jim, so you can also use an email address.  Just type from:jim@gmail.com, and you’ll only get email messages from the right Jim. 

You can also use full names if you put them in quotes: from:”jim halpert” will make sure you only get messages from Jim Halpert. 

2. Find only attachments

If you’re running Outlook 2007, you can already search inside the text of any file sent to you as an attachment.  But sometimes you want to limit your search only to files you know someone sent you, or emails that included attachments.  In that case, you can use the has:attachment and is:attachment keywords. 

For example, to find all of the invoices you have received as attachments, just type invoice is:attachment into the search bar.  This is especially powerful when you combine it with #1.  For example from:”jim halpert” is:attachment wedding would find all the attachments, sent by Jim, that include the word wedding in their text.

Perfect for Pam! 

3. Easy-to-remember Date filtering

In general, I’m way too lazy to filter information by date, especially in one of those awful boxes where you need to enter a start date and an end date and time.  But Windows Search has a couple incredibly easy to remember commands for finding just the files you recently changed. 

If you type in date:thisweek into the search box, you will find all the files and emails you updated this week.  date:thismonth will find all the files and emails you updated this month. 

The only downside is that all the emails or attachments you received today will show up too.  So on to #4, where you can fix that!

4. Filter by Document Type

It’s easy to restrict your search to only specified documents or only local files.  The kind and store keywords are the way to do this.  Typing store:file into the search box will pull up only your local files, whereas store:outlook will only look through messages, meeting invitations, and other Outlook items. 

The kind keyword complements it very well.  Typing nepal kind:docs will limit your search to documents that talk about Nepal, whereas nepal kind:pics will limit it to pictures with Nepal in the filename or in the metadata.  

5. And, or, not

If you just chain a bunch of keywords into a string, the default behavior is to combine them with and.  So kind:pics from:john will only find you pictures sent from John.  On the other hand, if you type kind:pics OR from:john you can find all the pictures and all the emails and attachments from John. 

Not is equally helpful; if Pam wants to find all the emails talking about her wedding sent from people OTHER than Jim, that’s an easy command: wedding kind:email NOT from:”jim halpert” will pull them right up. 

Search even better.

There are a whole lot more commands and keywords described on Microsoft’s Advanced Query Syntax page.

Of course, the best way to search for documents and files is to not have to search at all.  That’s where Baydin comes in: it analyzes your email, and proactively discovers the files you need to know about. 

(btw, if you can’t wait to download the free version of Sensobi, you can also get it here: http://download.sensobi.com)

We can’t stress this enough: we would not be here today without your support. In the past few months, we’ve learned a lot about the BlackBerry community. We have discovered its vibrancy and diversity, its enthusiasm for the platform and its desire to see BlackBerry technology realized to its fullest potential.

Though we are extending our reach to a broader market, we want to let you know that we will always listen to our earliest users. The feedback you’ve given us has made the product what it is today, and we want to let you know that we are working to reduce the amount of time it takes to deliver on bug fixes and features that you have been asking for.

Now that we have finished building out our free app, we are excited to announce that we are now poised to deliver some things that our users have been asking for since our first beta appeared. Stay tuned in the coming weeks and months for some pretty exciting things from us.

Foodzie offers a huge array of cookies, brownies, chocolates, and other sweets perfect for parties.

All except Meats and Cheeses qualify for flat $5 ground shipping – and if you spend >$100 on products that ship by ground, we foot the ground shipping bill! That’s cause for a party, eh? You can email me (susie@foodzie.com) if you’d like any other suggestions!

What’s a party without the Bacon Peanut Brittles that wowed Esquire Magazine? Bacon Peanut Brittles come from a popular recipe served at The redhead in New York City.

The answer to the previous question is: It would be like a party without Bacon Jam, a huge seller on Foodzie that got raves from Real Simple magazine. Bacon Jam started as a popular street food – from a mobile food vendor – in Seattle and now is available for the rest of the world to enjoy.

Bolani are all the rage in Foodzie’s office and in the San Francisco Bay Area where this company sells at an increasingly larger number of farmer’s market. Super thin lightweight pancakes filled with natural home style spinach fillings, pumpkin fillings, lentils, and more along with amazing dips, all natural, low calorie, totally healthy.If you have vegetarians or vegans on your party list or simply want to have some amazing, ready to eat healthy food at your party, that also freezes very well, get thee to the Bolani store!

An assortment of farm-direct Fiddyment Farms pistachios – like the ever popular garlic onions will make your party crackle with happy people as they munch and mingle. Fiddyment’s chocolate and toffee covered pistachios are perfect for the sweet tooth.

Knight Salumi, from San Diego, adds the deliciousness of old fashioned artisan salumi (salami) to your appetizers…and lunches. The guys behind Knight source their meats locally and add plenty of good flavor.

The New York Deli Patrol’s Foodzie store makes me drool. And I don’t eat meat that much. Ready to slice turkeys and brisket pastrami are a far cry from what you’d find at your local supermarket.

Italian food fans will enjoy Dolce Nonna’s marinated vegetables. Slice up a baguette and add the vegetables.Bravo! Instant crowd pleasing appetizer.

Italian food fans will enjoy Belle Chevre fromage blanc. Affordable, multiple award winning chevre made in Alabama? Yes! Discover Belle Chevre, the perfect spread for your appetizers. Also a Real Simple Gift Guide pick.

Happy Girl Kitchen’s organic Spicy Tomato Juice is one of the top 50 foods you must try in your life, according to a Guardian UK writer.This California tomato juice, from local organic Heirloom tomatoes, makes a great Bloody Mary and of course is amazing on its own. (Recently heard the idea of mixing kimchi juice in a Bloody Mary!)

Qtonic is tonic water made with real quinine (the old fashioned way), with a delicate crisp refreshing flavor that makes it perfect with a simply lime squeeze and, optionally, your favorite liquor.

Twelve Beverage sparkles with inspiration of partners who realized the need for a sophisticated, alcohol free beverage other than the usual sparkling apple cider. Combining tea, fruit juices, and fizzy water in a beautiful bottle, this beverage is perfect at 12 noon or 12 midnight.

72 (or 144!) Freshly Made Cookies in Elsylee’s assortment, freshly made in interesting flavors. We love Elsylee’s presentation and flavors. Something for everyone!

Pair addictively buttery shortbread from Simply Nic, made in small batches in Princeton New Jersey by Nic, with jams and sweet chocolate, fruit, and caramel sauces. It’s like the best cookie bar you’ll ever taste, only your guests can add their own toppings.

A Real Simple Holiday Gift Guide pick! We’d happily pair the shortbread with Maple Honey Caramel Spread from Sweet Revolution. See that red stamp on the bottle? Anastasia created her own wax seal and hand bottles and stamps each one. Now that’s artisanal!

Please take a look at our party favor guide and our charity gift guide guides, and ask if you would like something specific.

Happy to help you have a Happy Holiday!

In the online echo chamber it is easy to forget that the main reason big media companies are slow to act is because they are still hypnotized by where their revenue is coming from.

The Wall Street Journal’s article Mixed Signals in Web Radio reported the percentage of total revenue the following formats generate from the internet:

• Newspapers – 7%
• TV – 3.4%
• Radio generates only 2.4% of its revenue from the internet

Each week 42 million individuals listen to radio streamed over the internet, more than double the rate five years ago. Clear Channel reported a 28% jump in digital sales last year. Pandora is due to report its first quarter of profitability. Even so, traditional radio listeners, totaling an estimated 234 million, still dwarf the online audience.

We live in transitory times and speed of this transition will only accelerate.

Alongside the speed improvements come a slew of tiny changes including an explanation for why we ask about who you are on sign-up (it’s just for survey purposes!), real-number values on network breakdowns, and a a few other tiny changes.

oneforty is looking for a few good developers to join our e-commerce pilot. Developers in the pilot group will have the opportunity to be the first to kick the tires on our new e-commerce engine and will have significant input into the initial phase of our e-commerce product launch.

Our goal is to select a handful of developers who represent a wide swath of the Twitter application universe. The pilot is open to developers with desktop and web-based applications in all Twitter application categories (clients, analytics, networking, games, or whatever it is you’re working on). We are looking for partners who have the ability to be actively involved in the pilot from now until the end of the year and have a product at or near completion that they wish to sell on a one-time license key or one-time download basis.

If you’re interested in working with oneforty to sell your Twitter app on our e-commerce platform, just drop us a note at developers@oneforty.com .

I’ll be putting up a couple additional posts over the next couple of weeks (then a couple more to follow on in a couple months) about my experience in TechStars, what to do while applying to the program and before it starts, and a few thoughts on how to make the most of it for the teams who are getting started in the program. 

For now, I want to shill a little bit about how valuable and helpful and exciting the program was.  There are three reasons a startup should seriously think about TechStars – all more valuable, in my mind, than the ramen-level-funding and the investor access. 

Mentorship

TechStars is mentorship-driven.  As soon as you arrive at the office, you’ll start connecting with 60+ mentors, most of whom have been in the trenches at least once, and understand how the sausage gets made.  They’re eager to help, excited to teach, and even more excited to learn. 

Both Boston and Boulder have amazing entrepreneurial ecosystems.  There’s a really strong culture of “giving back” to the entrepreneurial community after running a successful startup (or funding a few).  And the recent buildup of “valley envy” in Boston means that the community here has closed ranks and is serious about helping first-timers. 

That means you’ll get tons of help figuring out novel business strategies, tons of folks who will give you product feedback, and a lot of help avoiding common pitfalls, like not knowing who the CEO is or building your product until it’s finished inside a vacuum, with no feedback from customers. 

Eran Egozy, one of the founders of Harmonix (the folks who made Guitar Hero and Rock Band) told us our product was too slow and hooked us up with an ex-Microsofter at Harmonix who shared some tricks for optimizing it.  Warren Katz, founder of VT MAK, taught us about SBIR grants, a nondilutive grant program for commercial technology research run by NASA, the Department of Defense, and a few other agencies.  David Skok from Matrix Partners came in to teach us how to build a sales and marketing pipeline on the web – and what to measure to find out if it’s working.  And that’s just the beginning – Richard Dale met with us almost every week to keep us on the straight and narrow. When nobody else would even think about installing our 3-week old protoype crap software inside MS Outlook, Will Herman ran it every day.  He also helped talk me through some of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. 

When things are going smoothly and everything is working right, mentorship is a nice-to-have.  When the crap hits the fan (and it pretty much always hits the fan at least a few times for a tech startup) that mentorship is the difference between a company in the Deadpool and a company that is still fighting.  You want these folks on your side. 

Camaraderie

TechStars called the relationships that form between the companies during the summer “cooper-tition” in one of the handouts to the mentors.  For a kind of cute phrase, it’s amazing how accurately it describes the way we interacted during the summer. 

We all helped each other out and we were all there for each other pretty much anytime.  If you need some help figuring out where to find good interns, one of the companies will know.  If you are trying to figure out how to reach an elusive blogger, someone at one of the other companies will have been there.  If you need to know which version control system makes the most sense, someone from one of the companies will be able to get you started.  Because we were all in the same boat, we all understood, and we all had valuable information to share. 

And if things are going crappily (which they will), you just waxed an important blogger’s data, or you can’t get any customers, or one of your most promising potential investors just said no, there’s someone right there who’s been there too. 

At the same time, when you’re seeing the LangoLab folks still working until 4 in the morning and the TempMine guys in the office before the crack of dawn, and one of the TechStars community interns crashing in one of the “conference rooms” after an all-night marketing blitz session… it inspires you to work harder too.

Plus ping pong, a medium-well stocked beer fridge, lots of free food, and a handful of pretty awesome gatherings. 

Validation

Paul Graham said in one of his essays that in many cases, the most valuable thing companies get from Y Combinator is the kick in the ribs to abandon a stable job with a salary and take a chance on really making the startup idea work. 

TechStars validating our idea and our team was critical to starting Baydin.  Without that kick in the ribs, it probably would have remained a weekend project and never really gotten off the ground.  It’s totally different working on a startup full time.  And you’ll find out, a lot faster, whether or not it’s the right product and the right company if you go full time. 

If you get into TechStars, or even become a finalist, you’ll get feedback on where the strengths and holes in your business idea fall.  You’ll know whether this is the right startup to take a chance and commit with, or if you’re better off figuring something else out, or if you’re best off bootstrapping this idea on nights and weekends. 

Either way, you’ll get that feedback just for applying.  Plus, the application process will force you to crystallize your idea and make it stronger. 

So go get started!

The next time you visit your dashboard at VanillaForums.com, you’ll notice things have changed quite a bit. We’ve made massive sweeping upgrades to the user interface design both on the administrative side, and the user-facing side. We’ve also added the ability to add, rename, and delete your forums. Most importantly, we’ve added a placeholder page for premium upgrades.

Many of you have been emailing us asking when you will be able to purchase upgrades like domain hosting, ad-removal, white labeling, and single sign-on. We are working hard at making these (and more) upgrades available. This most recent update to the site is a big step in that direction. Expect more changes, upgrades, and payment options soon!

On Friday and over the weekend, you may have seen the first set of our promotions here. If you haven’t, check ‘em out, those deals last through today at 11:59pm PST. We also have another day of gift card giveaways and a giveaway of a 30g tin of sustainable Ossetra caviar from our newest producer, Black River Caviar, for a lucky Foodzie customer. You’ll be notified by email if you win!

Today is the grand finale, with 50% OFF a single item or a whole store every hour, like Happy Girl Kitchen at 3pm EST! Your discount is applied in the cart and only available during that specific window. Here’s the full list:

9:00am EST: Jimmie’s Chipotle Jam, Uncle Berch’s

10:00am EST: Mini Jam Jars Gift Set, Quince & Apple

11:00am EST: Gourmet Brownie Box, Exceptional Brownie

12:00pm EST: Pumpkin Spice Granola, Michele’s Granola

1:00pm EST: Lightly Salted Pistachios, Fiddyment Farms

2:00pm EST: Javaz – chocolate, coffee snacks, How Do You Take Your Coffee?

3:00pm EST: Pickles and Canned Vegetables, Happy Girl Kitchen

4:00pm EST: Mini Bundt Cake Gift Collection, Great Spirits Baking Co.

5:00pm EST: Almond Granola, Bola Granola

6:00pm EST: Fig Jams and Dressings, The Girl & The Fig

7:00pm EST: French Thimble Cheese, Shy Brothers Farm

8:00pm EST: Holiday Truffle Collection, Hedonist Chocolates

9:00pm EST: Iced Hanukkah Cookies, Little Laura’s Sweets

FogBugz is a great issue and customer request tracking system.
We’ve launched a couple of weeks ago our initial integration with FogBugz and we are happy to announce today the release of an even better integration between SnapABug and FogBugz, Making it easier to record customer support actions in FogBugz from your SnapABug help widget.

Here is an example of a FogBugz bug generated by SnapABug.
From one place, you get all the information you need to support your customer effectively.

The problem along with all the debug information such as location, url where the user was when he/she requested support, the operating environment and browser versions, language and additional plugins installed on the user machine) are in the FogBugz Support Request.
Both OS and Browser are automatically added as tags to the ticket, letting you easily find all problems experienced on Internet Explorer 6 for example.
But more importantly, the snapshot of the webpage as seen by the user is directly available in FogBugz.

Go ahead, give it a try.

Here is how to configure your SnapABug widget to report support requests to FogBugz.

- In the SnapABug configurator, select “create a FogBugz case” from the action list

- Enter your FogBugz url and a valid user credential, then click “Validate Connection”. Don’t worry, we do not keep the password, it is only used once to generate a token that will allow SnapABug t talk to your FogBugz system.

- Select a project and an area where new support requests will be directed

- Click “Save”

That’s it!
You are now all set to receive your SnapABug requests directly in FogBugz.

Behind the scenes, we were racing to get the technology ready for Black Friday, and in our rush, we made a mistake. In the US (and initially in the UK, too), we completely replaced Google Product Search with TheFind. We were overconfident in the volume of search results that would be immediately available from TheFind alone. Over the last 72 hours, based on your feedback, we and TheFind realized that this wasn’t the right decision for RedLaser users. In response, effective immediately, as of this posting, we have re-enabled Google Product Search results and are now providing them along with TheFind’s Product Search results. This means that in almost every case, we will have substantially better search results in version 2.5 than in the last version, 2.2.

The only case where RedLaser will now display fewer results is for some products on Amazon.com. The reason is that Amazon has a policy that prohibits querying their API from mobile applications unless they give explicit written permission. We asked for permission a few months ago, and were told “No.” We then tried a number of work-arounds and unfortunately, Amazon asked us to remove them as well. Despite the limitation, in some cases Google and TheFind may be able to provide Amazon results and will include them when possible.

Meanwhile, we knew it would be extremely frustrating to users if we removed Amazon with nothing in its place. So we began working on a partnership with TheFind. TheFind, we soon found out, has an incredible product search engine that is comparable to Google. They include products from over 500,000 stores and online sellers, a number that continues to grow. By featuring results from TheFind, we can now show local results for many products, a request of many RedLaser users. They also have coupons, reviews, local addresses, and comprehensive store information, which we can’t wait to start tapping into. Previously, with Google as our primary search provider, we were limited in how we could improve RedLaser. Occipital is first and foremost a mobile computer vision company. (That means we’re rocket scientists when it comes to image processing, but not when it comes to crawling the Internet for products.) Despite a lot of great ideas, we didn’t have the resources to focus on both computer vision and better results. With TheFind, we now have a partner committed to helping Occipital improve mobile product search relevance, the accuracy of barcode data, as well as providing information never before available in RedLaser, starting with local results (They’re rocket scientists when it comes to shopping.)

We’re confident that our partnership with TheFind is going to be a great one ― one that is focused on creating the best user experience possible and eventually paving the way for a new kind of shopping. Occipital will continue to build the best vision-based technology to power RedLaser’s barcode scanner (and barcode scanning is just the tip of the iceberg), while TheFind will innovate new ways to provide you great shopping search results. We stumbled a little with our rushed launch, but we’re back on track, and we hope that RedLaser will always be your trusted companion for mobile product search.

Keep the feedback coming. We’re listening and improving.

Thank you for using RedLaser.

Additional Release Notes:

• TheFind and Google Product search are now enabled for the US and UK. Google Product Search also supports searching for results in Euros, so RedLaser can be used today with Google Product Search in Europe. In other vicinities, we currently cannot surface listings. Let us know if you have data sources we should look into, and if you have one that can already be searched via barcode, check out RedLaser custom apps.
• Custom Apps improved: As in 2.2, you can create a RedLaser custom app that searches just about any website with barcode, and in 2.5, we’ve improved the launch screen to make it seamless, and added a built-in browser so you don’t have to redirect back to Mobile Safari after you’ve scanned in your custom app ( use “noexit=YES” ). We’ll keep improving Custom Apps so that RedLaser is even more useful in areas where our coverage is poor.