Continuing upgrades of Spintricity
In the pursuit of optimizing the experience for both you the magazine reader and us, the wacko audiophiles – uh – wacko gigantico magazine show reporters – uh – whoever – we try our best to make both reading and producing multi-thousand page show reports as easy and as fun as possible.
To that end…
We added a Quick! Post a Comment! feature right on each page [in the upper right: 
that allows you, and us, to quickly post a comment about whatever it is we want to say about a page. As you may have noticed, the avatar [a little picture that represents the inner you – that you can upload after you register, or you can use the default Groucho Marx lookalike.] appears on the right side of the page. Click on one of these guys and you will see their comments.
Of course, their comments are also in the Forum, where War and Peace-like comments can be read in their entirety.
For now, we changed things so that even you unregistered lurker types can post comments – without having to register first – just like in this blog. But, unlike this blog, posters won’t have to indicate that they are human [i.e. not a spam-spewing robot] because robots won’t be an issue until we are very, very successful.
I like these kind of popup comments, because, from my point of view, often times adding permanent text on a show report page kind of clutters up the view of the equipment. We intend on going back to a more traditional magazine look [but with modern weblike features] for the regular articles in regular issues in regular months.
And then maybe we can go back to not being so wacko.
Or not. 🙂
Mike, thanks or your efforts but I need to disappoint you. Your new “magazine” format (whatever drivers you) is just disgusting and very unfriendly. I think you need to rethink your whole venture into the “magazine” realm but it is none of my business. However, as a visitor I vote hands down just for the practicalities of browsing experience.
Romy the Cat
Hi Romy,
I know you do not like to celebrate the beauty and enthusiasm people have for the equipment – and that Sound and Science is All – but I do [just trying to give our readers a context for understanding where you are coming from].
So instead of a quick, ejaculatory, “How Many Pictures Can I See Per Second, oh that was nice, when is the next show?” experience, we are going for something that will be active and enjoyed over the course of years.
We are trying to move people, kicking and screaming, to start thinking of these shows as the Starting Point of a conversation between the industry and audiophiles, not just a quick fix, a short blast of fractured information bits and warped impressions.
To that end we start with massive numbers of large juice photos,
and add in findability [AudioXSell is the only site that did THAT right],
add in the ability to have conversations about each room, and almost each photo –
and, finally?, add in the ability for exhibitors and manufacturers to add pages to their rooms that include detailed information about what they were showing and why – the story behind the pictures.
For people who have been watching things evolve – I think they get it. That we are creating an infrastructure upon which we can add all sorts of browsing conveniences, maybe even a Yahoo-like, throw everything on the ‘front’ page style like some other sites we know and love 🙂
But we are trying to add features in a slow and steady march – to allow people time to kind of feel their way around. Established readers who are used to one format are understandably a little upset about having to get used to a new format – no matter how much more they will enjoy it, compared to the old style, in the future.
Thanks,
Mike
Mike, I really have to commend you on your new venture of Spintricity. Dont listen to these other pessimists. They’re not as open minded to this great hobby of ours. I honestly do miss the gobb of photos, easy access… I guess I fall into the catagory of “How Many Pictures Can I See Per Second, oh that was nice, when is the next show?” . Still though I love the layout. Keep up the great work and thanks for keeping me salivating!! Still ALL LINN.
Jose B.
Mike, I really have to commend you on your new venture of Spintricity. Dont listen to these other pessimists. They’re not as open minded to this great hobby of ours. I honestly do miss the gobb of photos, easy access… I guess I fall into the catagory of “How Many Pictures Can I See Per Second, oh that was nice, when is the next show?” . Still though I love the layout. Keep up the great work and thanks for keeping me salivating!! Still ALL LINN.
Jose B.
Thanks much, Jose.
Yes, it all about passion and keeping people lusting after gear that in no way could all fit into their house 🙂
As for the pictures per second competition – the old show report as champion and the new show report as up-and-coming challenger [:-)] – we are finishing work on enhancements that are bringing them in at a dead heat in our casual time trials [to mix many metaphors]. But this will possibly be limited to the Firefox 3 browser, and probably Safari, at the outset because, like Vista, Internet Explorer is so big and slow these days [however IE8 looks more promising]. But we’ll see.
This enhancement was actually talked about several weeks ago – as something we wanted to add after the show report – but who knew the show report was going to be so… big. It is already about 25% larger than any show report we have done before – at about 2200 photos.
Take care,
Mike.