Matthew McVickar's dashboard

Matthew McVickar started following the problem "Multiple accounts deleted between runtimes" in atebits.

Matthew McVickar started following the problem "Avatar cache issue?" in atebits.

Matthew McVickar replied on March 11, 2009 20:52 to the idea "How about a QuickZap field at the top of the page?" in Zapatag:

The absence of a clear "home" link -- other than the logotype and the stop sign image -- made me wonder where the zap form was. (Yes, I did find it!) What I'm imagining is a way to start the zap with just a plate number (a big field and state dropdown at the top of the page) and then you are redirected to a page which lists history for that plate if it exists and then offers up a form to add all of the details. That way you wrap up two forms (search and zap) and two pages about plates (history and zap) into one page. I don't think it will too overwhelming if well-designed, and could actually simplify things considerably.

Matthew McVickar replied on March 11, 2009 07:24 to the problem "Zap types are not immediately obvious." in Zapatag:

Hmm, you're right. The subtlety is nice. I'm just concerned with being able to quickly determine what a zap is -- whether it's negative, positive, or just a flag. To be honest I don't know exactly why I think that's important, but my first thought it that it helps to distinguish between the "juicy" or "important" zaps (the negative ones) and the "nice" but "ignorable" (are they?) ones (the compliments). I guess the issue as far as I'm concerned is: I don't really care if someone else saw a nice car or license plate that they liked, but some part of my reptilian brain wants to know when a bad driver has been reported. Call it schadenfreude.

Matthew McVickar replied on March 11, 2009 07:18 to the idea ""Help me, I'm new!"" in Zapatag:

Yeah, I think adding a link on the zap form that says, "Did you know you can zap via Twitter?" would be a good idea.

Matthew McVickar replied on March 11, 2009 07:17 to the problem "Zap types are not immediately obvious." in Zapatag:

I think the accents are a good idea, but I also think you could simplify a zap down to either a) a warning or hazard report, b) a flag for something wrong, or c) a compliment or wink. That's even simpler than Platewire. :-D

Matthew McVickar shared an idea in Zapatag on March 11, 2009 06:54:

"Help me, I'm new!"

There should be more instructions about how to use the site when you come in. My first thought was how awesome it would be if I could tweet a zap, and I suspected you'd thought of the same thing, but I had to find the blog post where you explain it. (I know you're in alpha and you probably have all of that planned already -- I would definitely make it a priority! It's really important for getting people acclimated and returning to Zapatag.)

Matthew McVickar replied on March 11, 2009 06:51 to the question "Links inside the zap are a little ambiguous." in Zapatag:

Perhaps the problem is that three of the four links in that line ('Comments', 'Favorites', and 'Details') all have to do with the zap, but the 'Follow' has to do with the plate. So maybe that should be labeled '34 Follow this Plate' and then moved elsewhere? Maybe it should be underneath the plate?

Matthew McVickar replied on March 11, 2009 06:49 to the problem "Contact page link doesn't work." in Zapatag:

Word.

Matthew McVickar replied on March 11, 2009 06:49 to the idea "License plates should be all capitalized." in Zapatag:

You seem to have fixed this in between my note-taking and my GetSatisfaction-posting. My mistake!

Matthew McVickar shared an idea in Zapatag on March 11, 2009 06:47:

Mobile Zapatagging via voice-to-text?

So the issue with mobile Zapatagging is that it's potentially (and ironically) dangerous: people shouldn't be inputting text while driving.

But what if you hooked up with a text-to-speech engine like Jott? I don't know if they set up accounts this way, but it would be cool if you could offer a way to save voice recordings that would get automatically converted to text and sent to you.

(Of course, accuracy is always a problem with voice-to-text conversion, and license plates should be exact...)

Matthew McVickar replied on March 11, 2009 06:34 to the discussion "What is Zapatag?" in Zapatag:

I think you're right about the compliments, and I would emphasize the positive as much as you can.

Matthew McVickar replied on March 11, 2009 06:32 to the idea "The incident text in the zap layout is slightly confusing." in Zapatag:

Yeah, I think 'said' or 'reported' or something would go a long way.

Matthew McVickar asked a question in Zapatag on March 11, 2009 06:27:

What does the 'down arrow'-type zap indicate?

Matthew McVickar shared an idea in Zapatag on March 11, 2009 06:26:

License plates should be all capitalized.

The license plate numbers should be automatically capitalized, even if people put them in as lowercase. (This is a simple fix -- just add a "text-transform: uppercase;" attribute on the .bgimage class in the stylesheet, line 806 I think.)

Matthew McVickar asked a question in Zapatag on March 11, 2009 06:25:

Links inside the zap are a little ambiguous.

I'm a little confused what the '[number] Follower' and '[number] Favorite' links mean. Are those people who have 'favorited' that plate, or just that zap? Same question for 'Follower' -- are they following that plate, that zap, or the person who created the zap?

Maybe some more explicit labels are required here.

Matthew McVickar shared an idea in Zapatag on March 11, 2009 06:24:

The incident text in the zap layout is slightly confusing.

Maybe it would make more sense to put the author's name after the incident report and prefix the name with something like "Reported by". Right now I think it looks a little too much like a tweet does, and my first mental instinct is therefore to associate the name with the text, when actually the name is just reporting. I suppose this is a little confusing and subjective, but sometimes I look at a zap and think the person's name at the beginning is who made the mistake.

Matthew McVickar shared an idea in Zapatag on March 11, 2009 06:24:

Maybe 'People' should be renamed 'Members' to distinguish it from 'Plates'?

Perhaps the "People" link at the top and bottom should be re-labeled "Members" -- I wasn't sure if "People" was something physically off-website like the "Plates" are.

Maybe not... was anyone else confused a bit by this?

Matthew McVickar replied on March 11, 2009 06:22 to the discussion "What is Zapatag?" in Zapatag:

Actually, I might lose the phrase 'upgrade your commute' -- it sounds a little gimmicky.

Matthew McVickar shared an idea in Zapatag on March 11, 2009 06:21:

Improve the 'My Social Networks' form.

On the 'My Social Networks' page, I kept inserting the wrong value in the textbox by mistake. There should be an explicit label on the textbox for what is expected of each selection (e.g., "Your Delicious Username" when I've selected "Delicious").