Graphic.ly Blogging

When you log into the Graphic.ly Alpha Air version you’ll be prompted for another update.  This is on top of the mini release we just did the other day.  Our Alpha Air is growing so quickly.

Release [0.1.0] Friday February 5^th

Overall

• Wait glasses during slow operations
• Keyboard input on login

Reader

• Character and creative popups  - right-click on Mac and Windows

o   Hooked into the database

• YouTube/etc. Bonus feature linkage (see Spartacus #1)
• List view read in collection
• Buttons on the comics for info and to read

Social

• Twitter and Facebook integration fix w/immediate feedback
• Privacy settings – graphics and hooked in.

1.       Profile

2.       My Friends

3.       People I follow

4.       My Activities

Account Settings

• Lost password link on the login screen – currently goes to a holding page.

Graphics and bug fixes

• Highlight status on the top home/profiles/feedback buttons
• Link buttons of bottom-right of main screen match Windows
• Thumbnail/list view buttons match windows
• Top navigation rollovers
• User-to-user messaging fixes

Alpha Air had a little bit of a hiccup with version 0.0.9.  Here’s the details:

All user-based information between 1/31/10 and 2/3/10 for AIR users:

• New logins are lost
• Avatars altered in these days reverts to avatars of 1/31/10
• Friend relationships revert to that of 1/31/10
• User’s activities that were posted to the event stream

These issues have been corrected with the most recent version of the Alpha Air 0.0.9.5.  We want to apologize for the problem as these growing pains happen with Betas.

When you log into the Windows version of the Graphic.ly app, you will see that a new update has be posted. Here are the release notes:

Shout Box

• Styled to match Air Application
• Shout goes immediately to the top of user stream
• feed is now called ‘Activity Feed’

My Profile

• Account settings – menu option available from my profile, place holder and disabled buttons for now as we need paypal live and the store available to fill out this screen with card information.
• Privacy settings- menu option available user can choose privacy settings for profile, friend list, follower list and their events
• Purchase history – menu option available user will be able to see their purchase history in an acordion showing “Today’s Purchases”, “This Weeks Purchases”, “This Months Purchases” etc

Friends

• Search by field – improved search results presentation.
• Improved friend requests/acceptance (pending a fix on the service-side)
• Fixes from Get Satisfaction
• Links in bottom right hand side of the application go the correct place
• Fonts on buttons in My Profile now fixed and moved to the new toggle style
• Ability to update gender and other profile information
• During registration process if you choose not to go to the find friends but add the extra information, this data is saved correctly

And the Alpha AIR critical bug fixes:

In the next hour, we will start seeding the next update of the Alpha AIR app. When you login you will see a box asking you to upgrade. With this update, we focused on the social features (after focusing on the Reader for the previous release). It was important to make the app more interactive.

So whats included in this update:

• The standard minor bug fixes;
• The Remember Me checkbox works;
• We updated many of the graphics;
• Profiles now work. You should be able to update everything, but not link external accounts just yet;
• Avatar upload now works. If you have one, flaunt it.
• You can find friends via search (for some reason, only search by email and/or first name. Last name doesnt work yet  We fixed this 10 minutes ago and added location search too. Try it. Search “Boulder”) and accept friend requests;
• You can message your friends privately;
• If you leave a comment in a book, all your friends will see it;
• The Shoutbox works to facebook and twitter (most of the time);
• Sharing within the books works. Go to Share, and select art work. You can upload that to facebook, which is cool.
• There are a few other things around account creation and user feedback.

Overall, I feel like this is a positive step forward. The social features are at about 75% of where they need to be. We still need to roll out the store, add books, and continue to build out the reader features especially around sharing and commenting.

Hope you like version 0.0.9, and looking forward to the feedback!

Every so often we will be show casing an idea that has been submitted on Get Satisfaction.  The first one I wanted to point out was submitted by Eric D. Weis on January 12, 2010, which can be found on Get Satisfaction.

Eric’s idea was a bunch of sort options for the “My Collection” page to add more organization.  A couple being able to “stack” issues from similar titles and a drop down for publishers.  He also added the idea of having an indicator that shows active bookmarks on an issue.

Another user, Weeji, added to this suggestion of being able to completely customize the different sorting options.

Graham Morely from the Graphic.ly team had this response on the idea:

Thanks for the awesome suggestions, I’ll make sure to take them into account when designing the collection area.

This is a great example of giving the company to the community.  Community Members made suggestions and Graham is now looking to implement them when coding the “My Collection” page.  I know if I could do this with my physical collection on the fly, that would be awesome.  Although I’d hate to see how big of a contraption it would take.

Feel free to add more suggestions or add to this one on Get Satisfaction!

Well, it happened, we finally sent out all the Baby Beta invites (well through January 14, 2010). There are more coming to iFanboy members today, but that puts us in the solid five figures for testers.

Whew.

I never expected the response to our launch to be as it has been. Ive been absolutely blown away. The comic community is way more awesome than I ever expected, as is the iFanboy community. Just wow.

So whats next? Well, the Adobe AIR app should come out next week. We submitted the iPhone app. Both of those, like the Windows app, are babies, but should be fun to play with.

We are now focusing on bringing all the publishers and creators that you guys not only want to read, but also want to engage and interact with.

In terms of the product, we are working on a web version, Android, WinMo, and getting ready for tablets and eReaders and TV sets. Basically, wherever you want to read a comic, you should be able to read a comic and engage with the community.

For those that might be interested, here is the Beta Baby Email: (The links might even work, *hint, hint* …)

——–

Hello Beta Tester!

NOTE: Micah is an idiot. If you have received this more than once, please note its because Micah is an idiot, and has no clue how to use things like email. We apologize, and will promptly take his soup away.

You are one of the chosen few that is getting an invitation to Graphic.ly’s Beta. Yes, its a big deal. Yes, I am talking like I am important. Yes, you are right, I should stop doing that.

Ok, here is the deal. You have to promise me to read this entire email. Promise?

The Graphic.ly Baby Beta is unique in that we are truly giving you a product before it has matured. IT WILL SUCK BADLY. And when I said badly, I mean like one time, at band camp, when…well, lets just say it sucked. Badly.

We decided to give you the Baby Beta because we know that you care about building a really kick ass product, and we know that we must crawl before we can walk. If we dont get you involved now, the end product will just, well, suck badly.

You will be disappointed. A lot, and I mean A LOT, of features are not working yet. We have included only 2 books (all free), which I bet you have read. But the plan was not to wow you with catalog (we have hundreds and hundreds of books and merchandise to upload), but to let you understand what we will be when we are all grown up. We want, when you finally see the final product, to see your fingerprints on it. To be able to tell your friends, “I built that.”

So here is the download link: Download Graphic.ly Baby Beta >

UPDATE:

From Kevin Mann (@kevinmann): One of the changes we just added is allowing users to actually message each other and those messages get delivered.

What Will I Find?

1) As of right now it’s only a Windows (PC) application. The Adobe AIR application is following soon.(We actually built the AIR app first, so it’s very close to being done, as you might imagine.) AIR will work on all computers that have AIR installed, so that means it will work on PCs and MACs.

2) You will find that commenting in-panel is disabled, other than in a few places where Kevin, one of our founders, has commented to show you how it would work.

3) You will find that each book has one piece of bonus material. There will be more in the future as creators and publishers provide us more stuff.

4) There is no shout box. Yet. It will be there in the coming WEEK (notice there is no S, within 7 days, it will be there).

5) There is no chat function. Yet. It will be there soon (notice I said soon, which means I’m not sure)

What Will I Think?

Well, my mind reading ability is a bit rusty…hold on…yup, you will think it sucks. But thats ok.

What Will I Do?

Provide tons and tons and tons of feedback. There is a link in the app called feature request. Click that and type away. It doesnt have to be just feature requests. It should be bugs, thoughts, comments, questions and concerns.

Here are my IM names: graphiclyme (AIM) and micah AT graphicly DOT com (GTALK). Hit me up,yo. Would love to hear from you. And here is my phone number – 720-231-7120. I will be in New York this weekend resting after a crazy week, so if I dont pick up, don’t take it personally.

You dont know how much it means to the Graphic.ly team that you are willing to help us raise this baby. We are giving you the company, and are here to support you in every way we can. Don’t be gentle, we have safety helmets and googles, and can take it. (Well, be nice to Jon Stump, he did just move to Boulder from Troy, Michigan and he is a bit misty eyed for his old comic shop).

In eternal thanks,

Micah Baldwin
Chief Community Caretaker & CEO, Graphic.ly

One may start wondering why the title of this post has the date for tomorrow in it.  Simple, tomorrow is Wednesday and is also Comic Book Day.  It’s a day that’s is almost like a holiday for some people and ritualistic in nature, the biggest in the last decade or so is going to your local comic shop to pick up books.

Obviously here at Graphic.ly we’d like to give you another option, but there may be some book that comes out on Wednesday that we didn’t get in our store.  Since this unfortunately happens, we want to know what issue is coming out this Wednesday that you would love to see delivered to you via Graphic.ly.

You can find lists of what is coming out this week of on a couple sites.  Don’t worry I’m not going to leave you hanging, you can of course check out our friends at iFanboy for their list or there is a site called Comic List that has a list as well.

Feel free to reply to this blog post, tweet using the hash tag #graphicly, post a response on our Facebook fan page, or if you feel a title isn’t enough shoot poll@graphicly.com an email.  We want to hear from everyone on this, so Baby Beta or no shoot us a response!

What do I mean by a title isn’t enough?  Let me start off by suggesting Conan the Cimmerian The Weight of the Crown One Shot.  Not only would I like to see this book come out on Graphic.ly, but it would be awesome to see a video included of Darick Roberston drawing the page I just got done reading or giving commentary on how he came up with key plot points.  There are so many other things that could be included with this book then just the story itself.

So get creative and earn that extra credit!  I plan on posting the most requested books along with ideas for extras that people send me later this week.