Blake Engel's dashboard

Blake Engel replied on April 10, 2009 18:55 to the question "How can we get Yellow Cab of Ventura on your app?" in Taxi:

Hi Shawn, thanks for your post! We'll get in touch with you directly so we can get your info and add you to our basic listings service.

Blake Engel replied on March 11, 2009 21:58 to the problem "Epic fail" in wundrbar:

Thanks for the quick reply. Seriously though, nobody reads "instructional text" on the web. And I just tried K---- (your competitor), and they somehow are doing popups on my browser. I'm sure I'll encounter Tripeedo again and will gladly give it another shot.

Blake Engel reported a problem in wundrbar on March 11, 2009 21:10:

Epic fail

I'm using Firefox 3.0.7 for Mac. I typed in a query and hit enter. Again and again. The site did nothing. I assumed it was broken. I finally found the 'go' button. I pressed it. Again and again. The site did nothing. I finally noticed it told me to check some of the airline / travel sites. I thought about it and did check all for the travel sites. I hit 'go' again. Again, the site did nothing. I then noticed that Firefox had blocked the pop-ups. Sorry guys, but this is an epic fail.

Blake Engel replied on January 05, 2009 04:19 to the idea "Tie into text messaging" in Taxi:

Hey Michael, I'll reply to you directly via email.

Blake Engel replied on October 16, 2008 18:52 to the discussion "Saved by the Taxi app!" in Taxi:

Sweet! Cab companies in San Francisco have told us that they fill the vast majority of phone orders in 10 minutes or less. Good to hear that they can deliver on the "or less" part when they need to!

Blake Engel replied on October 13, 2008 23:49 to the idea "Tieing in to taxi dispatch systems" in Taxi:

Thanks Dan! We'll get in touch with you to talk more.

Blake Engel replied on September 27, 2008 20:55 to the problem "Doesn't Work" in Taxi:

Michael,

I'm really sorry that Taxi didn't work for you. We're in an initial growth phase and experienced an outage yesterday that seems to have affected you. We quickly restored service, so it should work for you again. Please let me know if the problem persists.

We try our very best to show taxi companies everywhere in the US. I'm glad you brought this to our attention, especially since Miami is one of the top taxi cities in the US.

We hope you'll keep with us as we improve our service. Thanks again for your feedback.

Blake Engel

Blake Engel replied on September 07, 2008 00:04 to the discussion "Best taxi ride ever" in Taxi:

My car was in the shop, and I had to take a cab to the train station in the morning. I walked out to my street corner and hailed a cab (I think it was a Luxor) in just a few minutes.

The driver had decorated his car with plastic flowers and Christmas lights, and we talked about how San Francisco has changed. He gave me his card so I could get him any time. It is awesome to have a personal relationship with your driver.

A close second was my first ride with Green Cab in San Francisco. The Prius was brand new, the upholstery comfortable, the music soft and classy. And the driver took a great route -- across 20th Street with a great nighttime view of Dolores Park. It totally redefined taxi comfort for me.

Blake Engel started a conversation in Taxi on September 06, 2008 18:40:

Best taxi ride ever

Hello taxi riders!

We want to get to know you, our lovely users. So let's start off the discussion with a simple question:

What was the coolest or most memorable cab ride you've ever had?

By the way, we've launched our website! If you've not seen it, check it out at www.taxiapp.com

Thanks, and happy riding!
Blake

Blake Engel replied on August 21, 2008 17:34 to the idea "I forgot the Tripit email address, and almost didn't use the service!" in TripIt:

Yipee! Thanks for putting up with pushy users like me!

Blake Engel replied on August 21, 2008 17:17 to the idea "I forgot the Tripit email address, and almost didn't use the service!" in TripIt:

True, but I humbly submit that I did not know that, nor will other users. They may fail at using the service, just as I almost did.

You might consider changing the text on the home page from "Just forward your travel confirmation emails to: plans@tripit.com" to "Just forward your travel confirmation emails to: tripit@tripit.com." The old email address would continue to work in perpetuity.

This would not impact users who are already successfully using the service in any way. And "tripit@tripit.com" makes just as much sense for new users, if not more.

Blake Engel shared an idea in TripIt on August 21, 2008 00:08:

I forgot the Tripit email address, and almost didn't use the service!

A few weeks ago, I booked a flight, got a confirmation email, and remembered I wanted to try Tripit. I went to the website and easily found the email address to send it to. It worked great, and I was very excited to try it again.

Yesterday I booked another flight and got the email confirmation. I was excited to forward it to Tripit, but when I started to type in "tripit" into my Gmail's To: box, it came up with no results. I realized that I had forgotten the email address, and Gmail doesn't autocomplete on the domain part of an email address. I was stuck and frustrated.

My friend and I brainstormed possible email addresses, and right before we gave up, we tried plans@tripit.com and it worked.

It would be much easier to not have to remember "plans@" and instead be able to forward my itineraries to "tripit@tripit.com."

urbanhiker replied on August 16, 2008 19:33 to the problem "Meraki networks prevent me from using my iPhone's data connection" in Meraki:

That's awesome. I'll give it a shot next time I'm on the network. Thanks for your response!

urbanhiker reported a problem in Meraki on August 11, 2008 20:26:

Meraki networks prevent me from using my iPhone's data connection

Free The Net is a frustrating presence for me in my home and in my neighborhood -- the Mission District in San Francisco. I use an iPhone, which is set to automatically connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi. This causes it to sometimes not connect to my home network (my preferred network) and instead connect to Free The Net by Meraki, which does not work unless I have authorized my device by clicking on the "Take me to the Internet" link.

Unfortunately, when applications other than my iPhone's Safari browser (email, YouTube, etc.) try to connect, they are unable to click past this step like I can on Safari. This causes me to sit, wait, and wonder why no data is being transferred. Over time, I have come to realize that this means I'm on Free The Net again, and that I must quit the application I'm using, go into Settings, and either de-activate Wi-Fi or manually select another Wi-Fi network. Clearly this become a bit of a thorn in my side.

I am not certain what solution there is to this problem. I recognize the value and the vision that Meraki is trying to promote, but for me, "Meraki" has become associated only with negative experiences.

urbanhiker shared an idea in ClickTale on February 01, 2008 21:18:

I want to watch a visitor go between pages

ClickTale's offering is awesome; it's something I've wanted for years.

The one critical thing I really need from ClickTale is to watch a full user session from entry to exit, between pages. If they click away from a page, I want to watch as they wait for the page to load (scrolling, clicking on other things, etc.), and what they do on the resultant page.

I want to be able to do this live, as-it-happens, as well as retrospectively.

When I do it retrospectively, I want ClickTale to automatically create, on-the-fly, a set of movies -- call it a "movie collage" -- for me to watch.

For instance, I want ClickTale to show me a movie collage of the people who tried to register but dropped off on the registration page during a particular span of dates. I want to see a movie collage of all the people who bought in a certain product category, and then a collage of people who bought in another product category.

You guys are insanely smart. I'm sure you can do it. :-)

Hopefully,
Blake Engel

urbanhiker replied on December 31, 2007 06:04 to the idea "'share this slideshow'" in SlideShare:

Great idea, but I can't figure out how to share with non-members. I have to create a list, but to create a list, I have to first add existing SlideShare members to it.

My task is that I would like to send my slides out to investors, and prevent other people seeing the slides (to the extend that's possible!).

urbanhiker replied on December 19, 2007 01:44 to the discussion "SonicLiving wants your show photos!" in SonicLiving:

Totally awesome feature. I do believe I will be coming back to the site to check out the pictures occasionally. It's fun to see the pictures other people take. Voyeurism!

The shows it found photos for were pretty old -- Oakland Art & Soul festival and New Pornographers, in July and October, respectively. I'm pretty sure I've been to other shows more recently than that.

I couldn't tell how it knew those were photos from that event. It says how to tag photos in Flickr so they show up, but the ones that showed up weren't tagged that way. So is there another trick to getting them to show up in Sonicliving I don't know about?

Facebook has many, many more photos than Flickr. You might get more from them if you could figure out how to integrate with their Photos app.

It was also admittedly a bit slow to load.

urbanhiker started following the discussion "SonicLiving wants your show photos!" in SonicLiving.

urbanhiker started following the idea "'share this slideshow'" in SlideShare.

urbanhiker shared an idea in SonicLiving on August 10, 2007 22:17:

I need a faster way to add events!

OK. I found out about an event. My friend's band, My First Earthquake is playing the Knockout.

I searched for My First Earthquake, and sure enough, they're in SL and even have a few fans.

But no events! Great. My chance to be all cool and add an event.

So I click on the band name and go to their page. I was hoping I could say "hey, I know these guys are playing out, but the event isn't here yet!"

There's no button to do this. Instead I have to start over in my task, which means cogitating long and hard on where an "add events" button might be. And then I have to type in the band name and confirm which bands in the database it actually matches.

Make my life even easier, Sonicliving. I love you so.