Squashing Bugs

For most people, squashing bugs doesn't happen very often. In fact, software bugs that I'm talking about are squashed even less often than insects.

When you're developing a complicated website that is not just traditional HTML you end up with bugs. Bugs are hiccups in the programming where something just doesn't work quite right. Most are solid and can be tracked down depending on the complexity of the software, but some are not. They may be intermittent or in a very complex section where it's very difficult to track down.

This is where we are right now in the development of Oistr.com. Due to the complexity of the flash interface these bugs keep cropping up, sometimes in the use of new features and sometimes the new features have an affect on the current features.

They're called bugs for a reason, like cockroaches they keep cropping up, sometimes totally unexpected and are very difficult to chase down. Sometimes you can even kill one and spawn two more.

Imagine how difficult it would be to deal with this situation. Our software developer Sean has done an unimaginably difficult job and it seems like it's only the beginning.

In Vancouver if you ever run over the Lions Gate bridge from downtown there are moments when it seems that the medium incline is never going to end, that it will only go on forever. Luckily with hills this isn't the case. With bug-squashing it usually is.

Someone Uses Oistr To Show the True DTES

For everyone not from Vancouver, BC the DownTown East Side (DTES) is the slum of Vancouver.

A recent UN report on urban density profiled five cities including Vancouver with urban areas "providing unique examples of urban development." The report has a major focus on city planning for the poor in order to maintain basic human rights - Vancouver was chosen for a reason.

The famous DTES shocks tourists every day. Not too long ago, we had 3 cruise ships show up at once to our port delivering 6000 unwary tourists into the area. With not nearly enough cabs in the entire city to transport all of these people, some hardy souls struck out on their own.

It wasn't long until they came to the real life version of Night of the Living Dead. (It actually looks like that, our office is in the middle of it and when we work late it sounds like it too.) This was embarrassing.

Well, our site is supposed to give people the truth about a city as posted by users. Think TripAdvisor with more pictures and a wider focus. Now someone is using it for just that.

No one wants to see pictures of people shooting up or the graphic video of someone protesting the 2010 olympics. This picture of a guy handing out needles is, for me, particularly a bad representation of the area.

Our position is that it doesn't violate our terms of use so it stays up. I'm sure that there are millions of pictures of people having a good time around Vancouver and that those will cover these few bad ones in an avalanche of "feel good".

Even then, this is why the map-based user contributed tourist site is the future. When you're browsing around Vancouver you'll know where not to go.

TripAdvisor Leaves People More Confused

I just read a fantastic article about TripAdvisor where the writer pointed out some things that should have been immediately obvious, and lets a couple of obvious things go unsaid.

He points out first of all that TripAdvisors motto "Get the truth, then go" is far more simplistic than it should be.

The number of posted reviews, over 20 million (unqualified) can't be regarded as the truth. First, they're just opinions. Second, people are more likely to post bad reviews so in a mathematical universe they should heavily outweigh positive reviews. Third, when a review is filled with marketing buzz phrases including such as "meal portions were not excessive, which is great in the tropics" then you're probably being duped. (If you haven't heard of the Belkin pay for good reviews scam, have a look.)

TripAdvisor was a good idea but it doesn't work in practice. Like communism. How can we make it more honest and useful?

That is a very hard question to answer. One of our ideas is giving the users the ability to post their own pictures and video as reviews and then encouraging them to do so. There may be issues with pictures of staff for example but that is a giant legal quagmire we shall be entering shortly.

A company called Tripr.tv had an idea where users submit videos of themselves reviewing the hotels they stay in and then uploading them, and if a user books that hotel they get a cut of the commission which has the inherent problem of users only submitting good reveiws, why would they bother with bad ones?

It will be interesting to see how our site develops in comparison to these others.

My Favorite Hotel Location Today

If I ever pass by Memphis and want to see what it's like to live like royalty, I'll stay at the Peabody hotel.

Anyone interested in beautiful heritage buildings has to look at this link.

And prices starting at $267 per night will keep out the riff raff...

My Favorite Hotel Location Today

This is where I'm going for vacation.

The Hyatt in Honolulu is reasonably priced, has 3386 rooms and a gorgeous view of Mamala Bay.

Ok, I sound just a little too much like an advertisement but you can be sure that they didn't pay me. (My friends can attest to that.) But the white sandy beaches right in the middle of one of the biggest cities in Hawaii with all of the touristy (wallet gouging) shops, restaurants and everything else you could ever want are within walking distance.

Especially at the end of the week, Friday afternoon, the idea of learning how to surf, swimming in the warm water while my shoulders and neck kind of ache from sitting in front of these monitors all day is mind blowing.

With the link above, if you zoom in and use the map hybrid function you'll get a better idea of what I mean.

I can't wait to go on vacation.

OpenTable for Restaurant Reservations

If you're not familiar with our new travel site oistr yet, the labour of my life for the last year or so (and our programmer Sean Hudson especially) it is a map-based travel community set to launch soon. It is designed to bring businesses and travellers together, and inspire travellers to keep travelling.

We've formed a partnership with a company called OpenTable that will proived restaurant listings online reservations.

They have over 10,000 restaurants world wide with most of them in North America. This is going to be really great content for oistr because the restaurants not only slot right into the site but you can actually book them online through OpenTable.

We're investigating partnerships with as many companies as possible like OpenTable and Travelocity to give us the business content that we need for our site. Mutually beneficial partnerships are the way to go for a small business like ours.

Martiniboys is another company we are partnering with for content. Although Martiniboys won't offer booking they'll have the up-to-date nightspots with pictures for us to slot into the system.

The users themselves are going to be the largest source of content. We're envisioning a massive collection of travel experience form people that travel including people who want to nominate places and businesses in their own backyards.

For now though, our modest partnerships are putting a lot of content on the map for our initial launch and we hope that people enjoy the site enough to add their own.