HaikooBlog

Good evening!

Do you like reading these excellent haikoos? Do you have ideas of how you think these ought to be translated into the real world? I know I sure do!

To this end, you can now upload a video of your rendition of a haikoo to YouTube and then post it onto the specific haikoo’s page. All you need to do is click the “Add a reading of this haikoo” button on an individual haikoo’s page and paste in the link to your YouTube video. Then it will be available for everyone else to enjoy!

I’ll try to post some myself tomorrow. I hope you’re as excited about this as I am!

Hello, friends!

A new feature went live tonight — exploring unrated haikoos. If you are logged-in, you should be able to go to http://haikoo.org/explore and be presented with a random selection from the list of haikoos that you haven’t rated.

For those of you that have been rating a bunch, this will help you make sure you’ve seen them all. For everyone else, it provides a way to jump at random into the growing lake of haikoos.

Now to start working on SUPER SECRET FEATURE.

I didn’t notice until mid-day today that the work I did last night had some unexpected impact on the ability to Start and Contribute! That is fixed, and you have my sincere apologies.

On to the NEW THING! For those of you that use services like Google Reader, or Bloglines, or NetNewsWire, or even Facebook, you can now subscribe to the list of completed haikoos. There’s a link at the bottom of the Admire page that will get you hooked up. Then you can check your newsreader to keep up on the haikoos that get completed.

I know this isn’t a big deal to some, but rest assured that there are at least a few people that are bouncing up and down in their chairs with excitement as they read this. I can hear it!

There was a little bit of downtime this evening as I upgraded some of the back-end database access to a new and improved object model. What does this mean for you, dear user? This means that in the next few days I expect to be able to add two of the most frequently-requested features:

• RSS feeds
• Viewing Random Unrated Haikoos

That first one will be really nice for those of you that use RSS readers, as you’ll be able to subscribe to the list of completed haikoos.

The second new feature will make it easier to browse haikoos that you’ve never seen before. The first time you click on it, you’ll be presented with a haikoo you haven’t smiled or frowned at yet. When you choose a rating for it, you’ll be moved on to the next one. And the one after that, and so on until you’ve seen them all. The next time you use that mode, you’ll be shown only the new ones (and they’ll be “new” because you haven’t rater them yet).

What other things can I add to make the site even better?

Five more days and we get five more users. Welcome!

More stats:

• 53 registered users
• 432 haikoos started (22% growth in five days!)
• 1278 lines written
• 128 haikoos marked as favorites
• 288 “smile” or “frown” ratings

The site is still growing — new features will be launching soon. Likely after I’m finished with finals this week though.

Oh, and one more thing:

That is all.

Just over a week since the last update, and here are some stats:

• 48 registered users
• 347 haikoos started (more than double last week!)
• 1021 lines written (nearly triple last week!)

The most frequent contributors are:

Some recent changes include dividing up the long lists of completed haikoos into pages, showing some stats on a user pages, and moving to much cleaner URLs. You may have noticed that last one if you’ve tried to send someone a link to a haikoo recently — so clean!

As always, let me know what things you’d like to see in a site like this. Send me an e-mail, or post a comment for me right here. I’m listening!

Haikoo keeps on rolling! As of right now, there are:

• 31 users
• 132 haikoos started
• 392 lines of poetry written
• 55 haikoos marked as favorites
• 71 “smile” or “frown” ratings on individual haikoos

Here are some of my favorites:

streetside
little old lady
release your grocery cart
those shackles are loud

(Participants: vixy, chrispin, WEContact)

wine wine wine
merlot and syrah
crab-stuffed sole and tiger prawns
om nom nom nom nom

(Participants: tom, SpecialK, vixy)

My dog
Little tiny dog,
eating his own excrement
no vacuuming here

(Participants: spw, singingjana, marmay9)

I’m slowly building more and more on the site — ratings and favorites have just been added. Since there are a lot of haikoos, you can mark the ones that you want to find again as Favorites. You can see your Favorites list on your user page. This is great for when you want include some of your favorite haikoos in a blog post about the status of the project. Q.E.D., baby.

Thanks to everyone who has been a part of it so far — it’s getting better all the time!

Hello folks! Through word of mouth, blog, and a few forum posts, Haikoo.org is growing pretty nicely! Here are some metrics on where we stand:

• There are 16 users signed up
• Those 16 users have started 37 haikoos
• 93 lines of haikoo poetry have been written

This is great! And I have been getting some good feedback on where the site should go next.

One change that is live now is that contributor names are now clickable, which sends you to a page that lists the completed haikoos to which they have contributed. This makes it easy to cruise around and explore the creativity of your fellow users. More things will be added soon, like haikoo ratings and maybe profiles… if you have any ideas for things you’d like to see, let me know.

I’m having a great time with this, and I hope you are too.

Have you ever had an idea that you liked so much that simply working on it was fun?

You know — the sort of thing where even if you never finish, it feels like a good/fun use of your time? This is that idea. I’ve been working on this for more than a year. It has gone through no less than three redesigns, but the simple core idea has remained unchanged.

If you go look at Alexa’s top 10 sites, or even the top 20, a good 50% of them are about individual users contributing content to a greater whole. But what is the end goal? What value comes out of it? The game is, has been, and probably will continue to be: how much personal information can you share without going overboard?

But I can’t help feeling like there is something better. Ideas within reach that will channel that willingness to contribute, and turn it into something valuable. Something in which to be proud. Something… dare I say… beautiful.

Welcome to the manifestation of one of those ideas. Welcome to Haikoo.org!