L-experiences

Feedback!!

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:10:00 GMT

A new important version release is coming in the next months. We want to make sure that we get all the opinion, feedbacks, ideas, critics, suggestions, etc.. during the development.

To do that we opened a group on Google to let you express all this ideas.

You can find it in Feedback!

Thanks for your help.

my favorite lists Feeds

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:23:00 GMT

Just to help the users to find the information they need and to viewed it quickly. Now you have an option on the sidebar( if you are registered) called my feeds. With this option you can view the feeds of your favorite lists you have choosen.

I implemented the same feature in the mobile version to make a quick view of what's going on on your favorite lists

More internal advances and corrected a bug with the feeds. Sorry by the delay but I was traveling.

New Ranking system

Mon, 19 May 2008 15:15:00 GMT

I have implemented a new ranking system to follow what is really important in all the elements of L-exp ( Lists, Resources and Feeds). There is an automatic system that evaluates any element and makes a rank calc. The result is that the concept rank appears on all the elements given an idea of what the importance is.

The rank will progress as the elements are being used and added.

There is a formula tu evaluate the karma(value) of an element. This formula is based on views, uses and other secret components. I need to work on it to make it more fair with all the possible variables. At the moment I have implemented only internal variables, but maybe will be an idea to add some external variables in this rank to make it more rich.

You can view the ranking of lists and resources and also you will find what changes are happening.

As I explain in the previous post my idea is to make easier to find the most important data to help de visitors to save time finding the best information

Hope you like it

Improving the user experience

Thu, 15 May 2008 15:49:00 GMT

My idea always has been to not compete with a feed reader. I want to help finding the best information in the less time. To do that I have implemented a new philosophy in L-exp.

Now when you view the feeds you will find the ones that have been viewed many times with a different color ( yellow scale). This will help you to find what are the most viewed feeds and have the option to filter it.

Also now when you view the feeds from the main page (Top feeds) you don't see all the feeds and you will only see the feeds that have been viewed by other users. This will give you a good filter to do a quick review of what is getting hot.

Another objective that I have is to be a place of reference and always keep the source of information easily accesible. To do that I have implemented a better sanitize method that converts the feeds in plain text ( without links). If you want to find the links, videos or more detail you will have to go and view the source.

Other changes

Improvements in icons and UI
A lot of bug fixes
Improved feeds sanitize method
Mobile UI improvements
Added Facebook sharing
Performance optimization
Other small fixes

I am having a lot of visits every day and this Rails application is becoming very stable and fast. I'm very happy with Ruby on Rails

More than 1,600 resources and a New resource Cloud

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 16:08:00 GMT

Now we have more than 1,600 resources on L-exp. I found that it will be interesting to have a cloud and see what are the most used of them. Also you can browse directly all of them helping you to locate easily one. Browse the new cloud on List Cloud

Lists can be exported using OPML

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Now you can export any list to an OPML XML format and then import it on your favorite feed agregator. You will find Export OPML in the list reader and will open a new windows with the XML file. You have to be registered to use this feature.

This is my step to open L-exp information to any source and person.

Sharing items

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:38:00 GMT

I just push a new feature in L-exp, the option to share items with the rest of the users. The idea is that you want to save or simply share with others an interesting feed you have found. Just clicking on share it will keep saved for ever (almost). This feed won't be deleted after 15 days and you have two options to view it. View in my shared items or in Shared items on the main page ( see the new tab). In the last option you will see all the users shared items viewing the items they liked.

Hope you like this new feature.

January and Feb '08

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:04:00 GMT

This has been a bussy month but we have developed some improvements:

Mobile version: Now works greate with a lot of improvements. The option to view the resources and better page navigation
Lists navigation : added an option to browse forward and backwards the lists ( order of update)
Sharing: Added an option to share a feed. When you shared you keep it undelete and browse it later. In the future this option will let some social functions
Enhacements in server processing
Post to L-exp button for browser. Del.icio.us like button to post resources to lists from a web browser ( only for editors)
Rails 2.0 migration: Works great
Bug corrections

Try the mobile version from a mobile phone and you will have a nice alternative to keep update of what is happening in the lists

December '07 changes

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 03:11:00 GMT

The changes are:

Development and improvement of the mobile version. Great to use on a phone
Detection and redirect to mobile or desktop browsers
Feeds reading enhacements: Reading, formating, saving in del.icio.us and added pagination
SEO enhacements
Rails 2.0 changes
Bug corrections and other minor changes

Nov-Dec '07 Changes

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:39:00 GMT

The following changes and enhacements:

New basic mobile version of l-exp http://wwww.l-exp.com/m/
Finished a complete feeds coverage: Feeds by lists (showing sublists feeds also), Feeds by tag and other improvements.
Corrected some SEO things
UI improvements ( not finished)
Bugs solved

Looking forward to finish the enhacements to start BETA 1

Early Nov '07 changes

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 17:42:00 GMT

Changes and enhancements:

Permalink history. The system now stores the permalinks when are changed and then when and old visit comes finds the corresponding list.
Improvements in feeds reading.Now it shows automatically the content with the mouse over.
Latest Feeds: You can view the latest feeds on the main page.
Improvements in the forms to make them more user friendly
Added the option to search from the reader
UI improvements
Bug correction
Rails 2.0: Started conversion, not to hard at the moment.

October '07 Changes

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 15:05:00 GMT

This month changes:

View list Feeds:New feed viewing option on the reader. Now you can view the content of all the feeds of a list as you were in a Feed Reader
Now a user can edit his profile.
New label system for the resources. This will let the resources be more general and not software specific
Now the system stores the views of each resource and the views of each resource in a list. Important internal change that will let future enhancements
Bug correction
Minor UI enhacements

You will find little changes, but there has been a lot of internal work that will let do great changes soon.

Feeds filtering enhacements

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 15:02:00 GMT

One of the features of L-exp is to add a feed to a Resource. Then the system automatically downloads the feeds during the day and you can view them updated next to the resource. This is a great way to keep you updated on the evolution of the lists.

I found that some blogs or webs use their posts to inform about different subjects. And you get feeds that not correspond to the resource. It's like getting spam.

To solve this problem I added two filtering options:

Filter by category: If there is a matching between the category and the filter then the feed is added.
Filter by word in feed title: In some sites they don't use categories so I got the same problem than before. Then you can add some words to the filter and if one of them is found in the feed title then the feed is added.

I think the second filter will be more interesting to use.

Introduction Video

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:37:00 GMT

I made a webcast to introduce L-exp concept.

September '07 changes

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:25:00 GMT

This month I have been working on some important changes:

1.- There was a performance problem loading the lists. Finally solved using correct indexing in database and eliminating the use of includes. Great improvement.

2.- Option to add a filter of categories to the feeds. This will help to be more specific in getting the related post of a feed. ( this is under test)

3.-Added links and icons to specific feeds

4.- Now after loging returns to the page you were visiting

5.- Corrected a lot of bugs and small improvements

The application is stable and now I will add more new functionalities. I will talk about them soon.

New feeds system

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 13:33:00 GMT

I have been working on a new feed system more efficient.

I think that the feeds should be the way that you are inform that any change on a list has happend. Then you can view the changes in all the elements ( comments, resources, items, feeds, ...) and decide if you want to go and view the list in detail.

Also I made different feeds:

    * The main feed: Updated L-exp lists
    * The tag feeds: http://www.l-exp.com/xml/rss/tag/[tag name]
    * The user feeds: View the feeds that created a user http://www.l-exp.com/xml/rss/user/[user_name]
    * The list feed: Do you want to track only the changes of one list. http://www.l-exp.com/xml/rss/list/[list id]
    * The subcategory feed: Find the updates in a subcategory http://www.l-exp.com/xml/rss/sub/[subcategory name]
    * The category feed:Find the updates in a category (Technology) http://www.l-exp.com/xml/rss/cat/[Category name]

*This blog news: http://feeds.feedburner.com/l-exp/Blog

With this new feeds you will be able to be informed of the changes from any feed reader. Hope this helps. I will add some links in the site to get the feeds easily.

Summer 2007 changes

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 15:14:00 GMT

During holidays I had some free time to advance with L-exp. In this post I will try to resume what are the main improvements:

The first and obvious is this new blogging or news system. I had a blog done with wordpress but I found that is a good thing to have the news integrated in the main page. Then I made this simple announcement system.
The RSS feeds now are part of the lists. I thought that will be more dynamical if I add the feeds inside all the resources. Now all the feeds from the resources are scanned and when there are updates we can see what has been updated. I don't want to make a RSS feeds viewer like bloglines or Google Reader. The difference is that you can only read the title of the feed.
New category system for the lists. I must say this is not a new idea. I love the Digg and Meneame category system. I tried to make it like them.
Improved the visibility to the crawling engines. Use of permalinks and other stuff.
Changed of hosting to www.railsplayground.com . I was dying in Dreamhost....
Improved the reader ( where you see a list) and the main page with the different browsing options ( this point is not finish)
A lot of internal changes, code optimization and bug correction ( around 100)
And other.....

The application is pefectly functional and I will be working torwards the Beta version to make it more user friendly, beauty and sociable.... I'm open to your ideas.... send me an email to info@l-exp.com

Do you want to help?

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:52:00 GMT

Mainly I need people that have good ideas to create new lists. They will be editors and will have access to create their own lists. There is no special category just comment me what area you will like to write. If you are a blogger you can link to your blog the list and I have planned to do a view of the list that you can put on your blog. L-exp has not been thinked to be a blogging system. Is a place to join multiples sources under the experience of an editor.

Also If you have ideas about improving the system or making it beauty. Send me a line with them and we can talk about.

Contact me with the Join form or with the email info@l-exp.com

What is L-exp?

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:28:00 GMT

This weeks I had time to work on L-exp project and make some improvements to make it more productive.

First I will like to explain my idea of L-exp and then probably you will understand what I'm trying to do.

L-exp means Lists of experience and the basic Idea is to find a place between the massive information that you get in Google ( or other search engines) and the detailed information that you get in the blogs and websites. We need a place to save our experience in the net and then to find all the detailed information going to the origin of the information you need.

This place must have the following features:

All the elements of the experience should be well differenciated. Then the best vehicle is a list.
The browsing of the elements should be easy, then a frames view like bloglines I founded that is a good reading option
The information should be organized. I used tags, categories and also searching the lists.
The list have to grow with the experience of all the people. Then you can add comments and soon you will be able to suggest resources and vote
There should be a metric system to find what is really useful. The number of uses in lists and resources are the main parameter.

At this moment L-exp still in Alpha phase but we already have more than 100 lists and around 700 resources.

It's important that you don't confuse L-exp with a blogging system or something like that. L-exp is a place to join experience in the form of lists and resources. A resource could be a blog, a video, a website, a RSS feed or whatever you want.

You will find that at the moment the most important category of list is about technology. This is the area that I mainly know and in the future I will like to have more categories of all areas.

Then If you want to collaborate as an editor Join and send me some ideas you like.

Soon when all the project arrives to Beta ( or later) I will open the registration process to make your own lists and resources. But at the beginning I want to make a good development with a feed editors and users.