Yet Another CellarTracker Integration Query.

WINE TALK
1

So, I order quite a bit of wine directly from mailing lists (trying to cut back of course) and it appears that most of the wineries use the same front end ordering software +/-. When I take my allocation, could it be possible to have that directly feed my CT account and place the wines as pending delivery?

2

Bill,

My hope in the future is to indeed open up some API’s to integrate with wineries and retailers to, among other things, allow them to auto-add a purchase to a user’s account. There are indeed a few technology providers who I will pursue to embrace this once I create it, and certainly I will go out of my way to get the biggest online retailers to try and use it. The scenario is made a little more tricky by security concerns. Specifically, the user has to be in control and needs an ability to approve any new purchases before they are actually added to their cellar etc.

In the name of transparency, here is my current priority list for this year:

  1. Get the redesign beta out (ETA before the end of the month, thank God, at last!!!)
  2. Gather feedback on the beta, finish the redesign, get people to switchover and/or figure out what might prevent them from switch over, eliminate barriers etc. (ETA, probably that will carry me through midyear) When done the old CT will go away. During this period people will be able to use CT and the new site interchangeably, all data stored int he same database.
  3. Design and ship a mobile optimized version of the new site. Make sure it is super slick on iPhones, Droid and Blackberry devices. ETA TBD but I may not take down the old CT site until this is done, so this may be a 2b really.
  4. A beginning wave of internationally focused improvements: multi-currency support, language tagging and filtering for tasting notes, maybe switch the database over to Unicode (a sudden influx of Asian interest), look into the best approach to language pluggability to enable translated language user interfaces in the future.
  5. Various winery and retailer integration work.

Obviously at this point I am really immersed in #1 and #2. I think #3 will be very important to get something done ASAP. I can then iterate on #3 and probably work on elements of #4 and #5 in parallel. And meanwhile there are all manner of other ongoing things (more new content channels and other data to integrate), seeing what happens with Vinfolio/Marketplace, lots of other planned upgrades to CT once I decommission the old site and can just optimize everything exclusively for the new user interface etc.) Maybe this is the year to finally hire some employees.

3

Sounds like a great, and ambitious, priority list. You definitely know where you’re going.

4

Richard, it’s like sandcastles at the beach with the tide lapping away at them. I just try to keep methodically chipping away, chipping away, chipping away…

5

Eric, thanks for the plan update.

6

With all those goals, I’d say he’s going insane!!! [wink.gif] [berserker.gif] [shock.gif]

7

Bud, it’s just an ordered list of what I am hacking away at. Things change all the time (in large part based upon feedback from all of you), although this list has been pretty crystal clear to me for the past 18 months. I share it in the name of being transparent, as I don’t like secrets when they can be avoided. Plus, could you ever imagine the eRP people sharing a roadmap???

8

Awesome - will foreign language notes get automatically babelfish’ed?

9

It would be a map with roads that go off the edge of the paper into nowhere… [whistle.gif]

10

Probably on user-click. The idea at first is to tame the growing flow of foreign notes. Longer term I will look for magic.

11

That has the potential to be hilarious.

12

Actually I find the English translations of French notes to often turn out rather poetic…

13

The idea is that I will start simply. A tasting note author will have a dropdown and the option to pick the primary language of the note. They will be able to set a default in their profile. The viewer will be able to pick a set of languages in which they are interested in seeing notes. I will look at having a GoogleTranslate button next to a note if there is a mismatch between the reader’s language and the language of the note.