Joind.in

Following on the heels of the iPhone application being release, two developers have written up posts about it and about using the Joind.in API to connect their own applications: Lorna Mitchell has her post talking about the application including a ... [More] bit of information about the site (she's also a developer on the project) and how the iPhone app integrates with it. Derick Rethans went for a slightly different approach and wrote his own interface to our API to pull the latest information about his talks including the talk details and ratings. Hooking into our API is easy - check out the API's documentation for more information. And, as always, if you have questions on it, you can send us a message and we'll be glad to help out. [Less]

I hinted at it in my previous post and now it's official - Joind.in has it's own iPhone application! Thanks to the hard work from Lorna and Kevin you can now take Joind.in with you wherever you and you iPhone (or iPod Touch) go. The application lets ... [More] you view the events and their descriptions as well as the related sessions and their comments. You can also submit comments of your own without ever having to fire up your computer! You can get the application right now (hot off the line from approval by Apple) and start using it right away. If you have any comments on the app or see any issues, email them over to [email protected] and we'll take a look! Thank you all for your support of the site - it's because of it that we've come so far and now have a new way for the world to share their opinions with those putting on the events! Click here to download the Joind.in iPhone application [Less]

I hinted at it in my previous post and now it's official - Joind.in has it's own iPhone application! Thanks to the hard work from Lorna and Kevin you can now take Joind.in with you wherever you and you iPhone (or iPod Touch) go. The application lets ... [More] you view the events and their descriptions as well as the related sessions and their comments. You can also submit comments of your own without ever having to fire up your computer! You can get the application right now (hot off the line from approval by Apple) and start using it right away. If you have any comments on the app or see any issues, email them over to [email protected] and we'll take a look! Thank you all for your support of the site - it's because of it that we've come so far and now have a new way for the world to share their opinions with those putting on the events! Click here to download the Joind.in iPhone application [Less]

Keep an eye on this space, there's big things headed your way! We've been working hard to make this site all it can be and thanks to the wonderful contributions of Lorna Mitchell and Kevin Bowman, Joind.in might be heading to new frontiers and be ... [More] even more accessible. Some of you sneaky people out there have had a preview of what we're up to and we thank for you the invaluable response you've given us. The rest of you will just need to be patient - all will be revealed soon! [Less]

Keep an eye on this space, there's big things headed your way! We've been working hard to make this site all it can be and thanks to the wonderful contributions of Lorna Mitchell and Kevin Bowman, Joind.in might be heading to new frontiers and be ... [More] even more accessible. Some of you sneaky people out there have had a preview of what we're up to and we thank for you the invaluable response you've given us. The rest of you will just need to be patient - all will be revealed soon! [Less]

In case you haven't been following along with each and every commit on our github account, let me bring yuo up to speed on some changes that've been released lately - mostly dealing with our public API. I've been taking advantage of the bit of time ... [More] off I've had during the holidays to go through the API and do some work that I've meant to do for a long time. The API was usable in the state is was, but it was a little tricky in places. My goal was to take what was there and recharge it and make it much more usable. The basics were there, but it needed fleshing out. So, back on December 8th, I started with the rework by tackling the first major hurdle - the authentication. I made the move away from a single stop to a more modular, per-action format. This gives it even more flexibility on what's required and any validation that each request might require. There's also been some new additions to the API with more request types to round things out. You can get a lot more information on a lot more things now and call a generic action (a site status call) to help with testing your connection. Take all of this and add in the fact that the API now accepts JSON as an input format and you have something that's leaps and bounds over what it was. Check into our API docs for more details on working with the site. [Less]

In case you haven't been following along with each and every commit on our github account, let me bring yuo up to speed on some changes that've been released lately - mostly dealing with our public API. I've been taking advantage of the bit of time ... [More] off I've had during the holidays to go through the API and do some work that I've meant to do for a long time. The API was usable in the state is was, but it was a little tricky in places. My goal was to take what was there and recharge it and make it much more usable. The basics were there, but it needed fleshing out. So, back on December 8th, I started with the rework by tackling the first major hurdle - the authentication. I made the move away from a single stop to a more modular, per-action format. This gives it even more flexibility on what's required and any validation that each request might require. There's also been some new additions to the API with more request types to round things out. You can get a lot more information on a lot more things now and call a generic action (a site status call) to help with testing your connection. Take all of this and add in the fact that the API now accepts JSON as an input format and you have something that's leaps and bounds over what it was. Check into our API docs for more details on working with the site. [Less]

Have an event that you only wanted a certain group to be able to see and use but thought you could only list public ones here on Joind.in? Well, not anymore! As of just a few minutes ago, I've added the support to make an event private and have an ... [More] invite-only list to add those allowed. Setting it up is simple: Edit the event - When you edit the event, you'll see there's a new option to make it private or not. When you make an event private, only the event admins and those who are invited can see it and its details. Invite other users - Once you make the event private, you'll see a new item in the admin sidebar: "Invite List". By going here you can see the current invite list and send an invite out to another user. Right now you'll need to know their username to add them, but it'll support the full name soon too. When the user gets the "you're invited" email, they'll have a link to click on to respond to the invite and will be forwarded to the event. Hopefully this will help those groups that don't want to leave their events open to the world while still giving them all of the power and flexibility the site has to offer! [Less]

Have an event that you only wanted a certain group to be able to see and use but thought you could only list public ones here on Joind.in? Well, not anymore! As of just a few minutes ago, I've added the support to make an event private and have an ... [More] invite-only list to add those allowed. Setting it up is simple: Edit the event - When you edit the event, you'll see there's a new option to make it private or not. When you make an event private, only the event admins and those who are invited can see it and its details. Invite other users - Once you make the event private, you'll see a new item in the admin sidebar: "Invite List". By going here you can see the current invite list and send an invite out to another user. Right now you'll need to know their username to add them, but it'll support the full name soon too. When the user gets the "you're invited" email, they'll have a link to click on to respond to the invite and will be forwarded to the event. Hopefully this will help those groups that don't want to leave their events open to the world while still giving them all of the power and flexibility the site has to offer! [Less]

One of the best parts about running a site that's so involved in a community (PHP) is that ideas come from all different points of view about what the site should do. Well, if you're one of those people that want to contribute back to the site ... [More] , remember that we've gone open source and welcome suggestions and code that way. Now, on to some of the improvements that have been made - most of these are for the people organizing the events, but there's a few user ones thrown in: Pre-Event Voting - this is the biggie! Previously, conferences were limited to only accepting comments once the event had started. There were some people out there (like a certain unconference chair I know) that wanted the ability to post talk suggestions and allow people to vote on them ahead of time. So, I've introduced a system to do just that - once you've marked yourself as attending (yes, you'll need to register) you can cast your vote on a session, for or against. The event organizers can turn on the feature by editing the event and clicking on the "pre-event voting" checkbox. This will turn it on for the entire event all at the same time. The attendees will see two buttons a "+1 vote" and a "-1 vote" to cast their vote on the session (one vote per session per user). These votes will show up just above the comments. Next up is the XML import for event information. This new feature allows event administrators to import their session information (talks, social events, etc) in as a structured XML file. The custom format is simple to use and makes things *so* much easier than adding in your talks one-by-one. The XML structure is validated before it's fully imported, so you're sure you've got the right format. Time zone corrections - One of the things the site has fought with since it started was trying to figure out the whole timezone fiasco. So what's the problem? Well, when events are scheduled for November 15th, that's not necessarily going to be based on the site's system time. So, I had to figure out a good way to calculate the differences. I decided on a (less flawed than before) method using the UTC offset to calculate the time difference. As a result, when you set up an event, you need to select the timezone offset for the area it'll be held in. And finally, another handy one for event admins - event-based claim management. Previously, when a user submitted a claim on a talk, they had to wait for me to get in there and approve the claim. Now the admins of the event can do it themselves, making the response time faster and making it easier to manage the talk claims across the whole site. Event administrators will receive an email with a link to the page every time a claim is submitted. That's it for now - there's tons of other great stuff coming up (check it out) so keep checking back for more great features to come! [Less]