Am 31. August wird der Digital Lifestyle Award 2007in Berlin verliehen. Stimmt für Shoppero ab, das geht auch ohne Registrierung!
On August 31st Germany’s Digital Lifestyle Award 2007 will be given to a number of companies in their respective fields. Please vote for Shoppero, it works even without registration!
(english Version below)
In den letzten Tagen und Wochen haben wir nicht nur an der Facebook Application gewerkelt, sondern auch dafür gesorgt, die Shoppero-Webseite zu verbessern. Das Hinzukommen der Freundesseite wurde ja vor einiger Zeit hier bereits beschrieben. Inzwischen haben wir sie ausgebaut und alle (und hoffentlich wirklich alle) kleinen Startschwierigkeiten ausgemerzt. Zum besseren Verständnis hier nochmal einige detailliertere Erläuterungen zur Benutzung der neuen Funktionen:
Shopperos können andere Leute einladen, sich auch zu registrieren, indem sie eingeloggt unter “Los geht’s” auf “Freunde einladen” klicken. Es öffnet sich ein Fenster in das Adressen und ein persönlicher Text eingegeben werden können. Alternativ lassen sich die Emailadressen auch arbeits- und zeitsparend importieren. An dieser Stelle der Hinweis, dass die eingegebenen Daten natürlich nicht gespeichert werden! Nimmt der Eingeladene an, sind die beiden User automatisch befreundet.
Shopperos untereinander können sich natürlich auch gegenseitig hinzufügen: Im Profil des Users, der auf die Freundesliste gesetzt werden soll, kann ab jetzt “zu Freunden hinzufügen” angeklickt werden. Der zukünftige Freund bekommt dann eine Email, die ihn auffordert die Freundschaft zu bestätigen. Um das Verfolgen der Aktivitäten der befreundeten User auf der Seite zu erleichtern, findet sich unter “Meine Freunde” nicht nur eine Übersicht aller befreundeten Shopperos, sondern auch die Auflistung ihrer letzten drei Produktbewertungen.
Der aufmerksame Betrachter wird sie vielleicht schon im eigenen Account gesehen habe: Wir haben uns ein System für Promocodes ausgedacht und werden die in der nächsten Zeit natürlich ausgiebig nutzen. Und natürlich übersetzen sich Promocodes in Euro und Cent statt in irgendeine virtuelle Parallelwährung.
Außerdem gibt es eine Änderung, die die meisten vermutlich gar nicht bemerken: Beim Besuch der Webseite stellt sich die Sprache automatisch nach benutzter Browsersprache ein (d. h. zur Zeit Deutsch bei deutschen Browsern und englisch bei allen anderen). Man kann die Sprache allerdings weiterhin auch manuell einstellen und diese Einstellung wird per Cookie gespeichert.
Neben diesen sichtbaren Veränderungen haben wir viele kleine und größere Macken beseitigt. Insbesondere bei den Usern, die uns wichtige Hinweise geliefert haben möchten wir uns bedanken und wünschen allen viel Spaß beim Ausprobieren der inzwischen fehlerfrei funktionierenden neuen Möglichkeiten. Feedback gerne hier!
Englisch version
During the last few days we have not only launched the facebook application but also improved and extended shoppero.com and especially the area around making and inviting friends. After announcing this step a few weeks ago, we improved this function a lot, based on the userfeedback. Thanks for the feedback, again. Here is how it now works:
You can invite others to register at shoppero.com, by clicking “invite your friends” while scrolling down “get active”. The person you invited will as a consequence receive an email including an demand to approve your request. As an alternative to typewriting your whole directory manually you can also import it. As a matter of course shoppero won’t store any of the entered data. If the person affirms your request, you will be friends with her.
It is also possible to becoome a friend of another Shoppero. To do so just click “add to friends” on the upper right side of the user’s profile. The other Shoppero will afterwards receive a friend request. After approving your request the Shoppero will appear as your friend under the menue element “your friends”. In addition to showing you the Shopperos you like “Your friends” will as well inform you about their latest reviews.
The careful viewer will also note a field for a promocode. We thought of a system supporting promotions and will soon put this into good work. And of course we will py promocodes in Euro, Dollar and Cent instead of some virtal coinage.
We are also quite happy to inform you that the Browser is now able to identify the language version and will thus forward everyone to the suitable site to prevent any confusion of tongues.
I would like to take the chance to thank our users for their feedback. Your help is alway appreciated. Enjoy the new possibilities of our site.
Feel free to utter feedback or criticism here 
In the last couple of weeks we developed an application for Facebook - and we are happy to launch it today! Please check it out at http://apps.facebook.com/shoppero
What does it do? I’ll try to sum up most of the features:
1. Invite Friends to the Shoppero App on Facebook. This is an obvious first point since social shopping makes more sense (and fun) if you don’t do it alone.
2. Write new reviews. We developed a cute little tool that queries the Amazon.com product database as you type, hopefully suggesting the right products to you. After choosing a suggested product, the image and the URL automagically get inserted into the review. Of course, you can always write about anything you like regardless where to buy it online. Actually, you can even write about products only available offline.
3. Mark each and every product as “want it” or “got it” - thereby populating a wishlist and a list of stuff you already have.
4. See what your friends have or want. Convenient, especially with christmas coming up real soon now.
5. Create as many lists as you want or need.
6. Look at some of your Shoppero account details. For instance, how much money you have earned so far.
All reviews get pushed to Shoppero.com as soon as they are written, even from within Facebook. If you already have a Shoppero.com account and you would like to have it merged with your facebook shoppero account, drop us a line and we will be happy to do this manually until this feature is ready to publish. Also, as soon as you write a review, we update your personal newsfeed and thereby let other people know what you are writing about.
Please try it out and join our group on Facebook for further discussions regarding our facebook app.
It is weird to see that we are already in mid-August - time flies when you are having fun. After our start in May a lot of things have happened and we are quite happy with the outcome. Obviously, our to-do list is still way too long, but that is the beauty of running a startup - you always have things to do.
Shoppero is becoming a better a better product with every little release, it is kind of like watching a toddler learning new tricks like sitting up for the first time. This also means, that the internals are getting more complex and we need more people to work for us. We are currently looking for experienced PHP coders, a Template wizard who knows AJAX back and forth and also some Smarty, the PHP template engine that we use. We also need a Designer who has good experience with Flash. If you are interested, send me an email.
We are currently working on more language versions of Shoppero, simply because we believe an international approach makes sense for a social shopping platform. So expect to see more languages to be released soon. We also work on getting the usability of the product even better and do a better job of explaining why somebody should join Shoppero and start writing reviews. Speaking of reviews, one big issue currently on our to-do list is improving the way new reviews get into the system, basically making it easier for a user to find the product to write about. We still hope for some magic “watchamacallit” brain-to-shoppero transfer, but until that issue is solved, we need to improve our product search and do a better job in suggesting products the user would like to write about.
Our aim is to get Shoppero in shape by the end of summer, surely to be ready for the shorter days in fall and winter - but also of course for the big shopping season starting sometime in November. It is a lot of fun to shape the product, but also means lots of heard work, setbacks, wonderful coincedences and meeting great people along the way. That said, hopefully this explains why we don’t blog too much lately. We simply have too many things to do and it will stay that way.
Check out Shoppero.com and discover new products, review products and earn money by doing so!
Die Möglichkeit, Iframes zu nutzen, kann ich hier gleich mal nutzen: Wir haben ein neues Adget, das Karussel:
The new possibility to use Iframes comes in handy: The new caroussel-adget:
(english Version below)
Aufgrund einer netten Anfrage haben wir bei den Adgets die Möglichkeit hinzugefügt, sich den Code auch per iFrame anzeigen zu lassen. Das ist in Umgebungen, in denen bestimmte Tags wie z. B. <embed> gefiltert werden eine Möglichkeit, ein Adget doch anzuzeigen. Somit kann man z. B. in einem normal konfigurierten Wordpress nun auch ein Adget im Contentbereich anzeigen.
Man erreicht den Code über das “Deine Adgets”-Menü, klickt auf “Code anzeigen” und wählt dann unten iFrame aus.
and here in english:
Because of some nice requests we added the possibility to get the adget code as an iFrame. This is especially useful in environments that filter certain tags like <embed>. So now you can use a plain-install-wordpress to show an adget within the content-area. You can get this Code by clicking on “Your Adgets”, select the appropriate adget and click “Show Code” and select the iFrame Radiobutton.
