The "Crap, I Missed It!" Blog
Thursday, 14 May 2009
iTunes uploader for new albums and concerts
Today we're pleased to announce the launch of a feature we've had under development for quite some time — our iTunes library uploader, which takes all the artists in your iTunes library it finds matches for, and automatically subscribes you to all their new albums and upcoming concerts near you.
What this means is that, instead of entering each artist name individually like before, you can stay on top of hundreds or thousands of your favorite artists with just a few clicks. In fact, the entire concept of "Crap, I missed it!" came about when the founder wanted a way to stay on top of new albums for every artist in his iPod.
But what we're especially proud of is that we've created a new web technology we haven't seen anywhere else. Your iTunes library index can grow to be a rather large file, which can take several minutes or more to upload. However, we've written some really fancy software which analyzes your library at the very same time it's being uploaded, and sends the results immediately back to your browser, so you can watch your list of artists grow in real time. We don't know of any other site that does anything like this.
And it has another particularly cool side feature — it ranks your artists according to their number of tracks, plus the number of times they've been listened to. So the list provides you with a unique view of who the most important artists in your library truly are.
So give it a spin, if you use iTunes. We've been testing it a lot, but we're still going to call it "beta" since it is a particularly new bit of technology. If you run into any kinks with it, please let us know. Otherwise, happy music updates!
Friday, 8 May 2009
Better artist & author matching
Yesterday we implemented a couple of improvements to our notifications based on Amazon services — putting product rankings in our Amazon bestseller alerts, and cutting down on false matches for new albums per artist and new books per author.
First, product rankings — now, when you subscribe to Amazon bestsellers in any category, every alert will tell you at what rank the product entered the list. After all, it's nice to know if a new book in non-fiction is at #49 or at #1. Of course, you're still only alerted once (when the product enters the list, and not as or if it climbs).
More importantly, we've been getting feedback from people that when they subscribed to new albums from an artist like Ben Harper, somehow an album like the soundtrack to King Kong would show up in their e-mail one day. In a case like that, it would be because Amazon was matching the terms "Ben" and "Harper" to the performers "Ben Inman" and "Karen Harper" on the CD.
So from now on, new subscriptions will default to a new "exact" mode, where "Ben Harper" will only match "Ben Harper" and nothing else. (Although we do some extra work to match variations, ignoring punctuation, exact spacing, an initial "the", matching "&" with "and", and so on — so that "beatles" will match "The Beatles", for example. We also take performers into account, so "Ben Harper" will match "Ben Harper and Relentless7", because "Ben Harper" is listed as a performer.)
But to continue with the old functionality, we've made available a checkbox called "include extended matches" when you sign up to new album or book notifications. This is most useful for artists or authors whose name sometimes changes. For example, author Iain Banks uses the name "Iain M. Banks" exclusively for his science-fiction works, which a normal exact search for "Iain Banks" would miss. Checking "include extended matches" will catch new books by "Iain M. Banks" as well (although it would also catch any book written by a pair of people named "Iain Doe and John Banks").
All existing subscriptions will continue with the old "extended matches" behavior, and to change them to exact matches you'll need to remove them from your subscriptions and sign up again. If you have lots of singers or bands, however, and use iTunes, we recommend you wait until next week when we announce another new feature...
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
TV show recommendations & more
We're pleased to announce a number of improvements and new features to our TV show notifications, from new program recommendations to timelier program listings and better search functionality:
Recommended shows. The page for each program now contains a list of other TV programs which people for this program also tend to subscribe to more often, with stars indicating how much — a great tool for discovering other shows you might like.
Top ten shows. The main page for TV programs now shows the top ten shows being subscribed to on the site, along with the total number of programs available (currently over 2,000).
Shows immediately available. Previously, TV shows were only included in our list after they had aired at least three new episodes. TV programs are now included in our list approximately a week before they first air.
Search improvements. We've improved our search functionality site-wide to include numbers and short words, so you can now search for TV shows with titles like 24 and ER. Because of this, we've gotten rid of our long list of alphabetized programs and replaced the interface completely with search.
And we've got a particularly cool non-TV feature coming up next week, so stay tuned...
Monday, 6 April 2009
More flexibility in concert notifications
We've gotten a lot of requests for more flexibility with our concert notifications — specifically, a wider date range of notifications (instead of only two weeks before any concert), and a wider geographic area (some people are willing to travel more than 50 miles). So, today we're happy to announce improvements to both.
First, starting today, you'll receive up to three notifications for each concert — the first, when it's announced (i.e. within 24 hours of appearing on JamBase), the second two weeks before, and then finally the morning of. This should give you more flexibility in buying tickets early, and in reminding you again in case you forget!
Secondly, you now have the option of choosing a range of 50 miles or 250 miles around where you live. For reference, 250 miles is just a bit more than the distance between New York City and Boston, or between New York City and Washington, D.C. So, this option is perfect for people who are willing to travel to an adjacent metropolitan area.
All concert notifications you've already subscribed to will now alert you up to three times, but continue with the 50 miles choice. To change them to 250 miles, you'll need to cancel your existing concert notifications and sign up again with the new distance.
Rock on!
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Better timing for TV shows
We know that those of you who subscribe to TV show notifications have all sorts of different ways you like to organize your TV watching. So, in response to your requests, we've made two changes.
First, you can now choose to receive new episode notifications the day of (same as before), the day before (for old-schoolers setting their VCR's), or the day after (for new-schoolers watching on Hulu or similar sites).
Second, we've changed season-premiere notifications from same-day to 3 days before. This gives you more time to organize your first-episode-of-the-season parties!
To change your existing notifications from same-day to the day before or after, you'll need to delete them, and then re-add them with the new setting. Sorry about the inconvenince — but we've made it much easier by putting a search box directly in the list of TV programs, so you no longer have to search through the alphabetical list (another feature added in response to your requests).
Live long and prosper.
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Welcome to our blog
It's now been just over a month since our site's public launch (Feb. 16th, 2009), and we're taking the opportunity to launch our official site blog.
We've been very pleased with the success "Crap, I missed it!" has had so far. We've had some very nice reviews, like the one in Lifehacker, and enjoyed following the interest on Twitter.
Our first month was especially useful in getting the real first public feedback from users. From your suggestions, we've already added three big new features:
Not to mention a site-wide search box which makes it easier to find exactly what you're looking for.It makes us happy that every day we're helping thousands of people not miss the things that are important to them, and look forward to making our site even more useful for you.
