Exciting news. ShopFiber got a runner up position in the Glue API Contest. http://blog.adaptiveblue.com/?p=2616

Glue released their API to the public and we saw a great opportunity for how use it to make shopping together better.

Here’s what they had to say:

Alex and I met Jake and Farhan, the founders of ShopFiber, in Florida while attending FOWA. ShopFiber users collaboration to “get the information you need to make a purchase decision easier, faster, with more confidence, at a lower price”

When a user submits a comment that includes a link to a suggested item, the Glue API is called and the suggested item is identified. Structured data is returned and inserted into the comment, adding complimentary information automatically to the comment (see it here).

Here’s a video overview of the new feature built with Glue API.

Yes, that’s me narrating the video. I know it’s very rough but I think you get the idea of how this creative use of Glue and ShopFiber Comparisons will make for a much better online shopping experience.

A big thanks to the folks at Glue for holding the contest and choosing us as a runner up. We’re honored.

Start shopping together and stop shopping alone online. Use your Facebook account to get started.

We’ve just added the ability to get input and recommendations on your product comparisons from your Facebook network. Watch the video below to see how you can use ShopFiber and Facebook when shopping for a shiny new _____ (anything).

If you already have a ShopFiber account, go here to link your Facebook account. Make sure you are logged in with your ShopFiber account before linking.

If you don’t have a ShopFiber account it’s actually easier because you can use your Facebook account to use ShopFiber and you don’t need to worry about any of the account linking.

Simply go to http://www.shopfiber.com/my/ to get started and let us know what you think http://www.shopfiber.com/feedback

Farhan and I are very excited to have two awesome interns for the summer, both from our alma mater’s of Michigan State University and University of Wisconsin Madsion. They will be in charge of helping to build the feedback loop with our users as well as making ShopFiber even more social. Stay tuned as you will soon begin to see their work rolling out to ShopFiber over the summer.

Evan Bowling is a Computer Science student pursuing his Bachelors degree at Michigan State University. He’s a great student with quite a bit of experience in web technologies such as PHP, CSS, Javascript and AJAX. Evan will be working on improving and strengthening ShopFiber’s feedback system, making it easier for us to connect with our users. There are a lot of really great features planned for this so stay tuned.

Jon Mumm is a Computer Science student pursuing his Bachelors degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He’s excited to be a part of the ShopFiber team and looks forward to learning more about consumers, technology, and software development.  Currently, he runs a gaming strategy site and hopes to continue expanding its reach and learning more about the operations of a business.

Jon will be working on the social side of ShopFiber, with a big focus on leveraging the Facebook Platform’s potential to enhance shopping online.

Big changes are going on at ShopFiber and we’re excited to have you involved in our growth. You’ve given us some great feedback about how we can make your online shopping experience much better and here’s some of things we’ve been working on to do just that:

• ShopFiber Connect - Formerly known as the bookmarklet, ShopFiber Connect let’s you send products to ShopFiber from anywhere in the web. Additionally, the process of saving products has been streamlined, saving you time.
• All-new Product Comparisons - Product comparisons automatically stack products up to each other, making deciding on the right one even easier. You’re no longer constrained to just one retailer when comparing products!
• New Design - Saucy new look and streamlined navigation make ShopFiber even easier to use.
• Feedback - It’s now easier than ever to let us know what you think of ShopFiber, problems you having or things you wish it did. Be sure to take advantage of this. We are listening to you.

Lot’s of great stuff going on at ShopFiber and we’re excited to have you as a part of it. Stay tuned for more exciting announcements in the near future about how we’ll be making it even easier for you to shop with others.

Stop shopping alone online and start shopping together with ShopFiber!

Not using ShopFiber? Give it a try.

Our presentation from TechNow09 is now online. Unfortunately, the quality of the recording isn’t very good, but you get the idea

Watch live video from technow09’s channel on Justin.tv

You can watch recording of the complete event, including the presentations from some of the great companies on justin.tv.

An interesting quotes: “Production values like MacWorld . . . Steve Jobs in a mustache”

We are excited to announce that we are going to be presenting in the upcoming TechNow09 conference in Royal Oak, MI.

TechNow09 is a one-night event celebrating the transition of Michigan into a “knowledge economy.”

Come meet the new technology companies leading the evolution of Michigan business.

Also listen to an interactive panel of current business visionaries and enjoy live music and cocktails.

If you are in the area make sure you check out the event. Tickets are on sale now and proceeds go towards charity. It will be a great time! We look forward to meeting everyone.

By default django’s authentication module (django.contrib.auth) does a case-sensitive username look up.  This means that a user with username ‘farhan’ will not be able to login as ‘Farhan’.  Obviously, this is not the standard behavior that users expect.  There was a ticket filed, but, unfortunately, the team doesn’t have time to fix (understandably, it is not just about making the change, they also have to worry about backwards compatibility).  So, let’s see how we can quickly create a new authentication backend that supports case-insensitive backend.

Read more…

After having a blast at BarCampMiami, attending a social media mixer and enjoying a bit of Miami beach, it was time for the main event. The Future of Web Apps was upon us. The event was held at the Arsht center, a beautiful facility. It kicked off with Ryan Carson who introduced Jason Fried from 37Signals. The event was headlined by others like Joel Spolsky (Fogcreek), Aza Raskin (Mozilla), and Dave Morin (Facebook). The best product demo/announcement was done by Francisco Tolmasky of 280North and their new product called Atlas. It was a well deserved shining moment for those guys that got a lot of attention and oooos and ahhhs from the crowd.

Jason’s talk was in my opinion one of the best because it provided tangible, instantly usable advice. One of the things he talked about was that most of us are producing byproducts as we work on our respective products and companies and that we should take time to think about how we might actually turn this “trash” into something valuable. The byproduct 37Signals recognized was a little thing called Ruby on Rails. They also recognized that a series of blogs posts they had done over the course of growing the business would actually make for a really good book. So they turned it into a book and it netted them over $1M+ in revenue I believe he said. Not bad eh?

The other major point he had was that the future of our industry (web applications and online services) is heading down the wrong path of everything being free. Free is not a sustainable business model so we need to re-think our approach. Now of course he is coming from a company that produces products that is valuable enough that it has users that will pay for it. Perhaps the problem we face as an industry is that we are releasing too many “features” and not actual products or services that provide value or solve a problem. This is a huge topic but it deserves some thought. I personally would like to see less one-off Twitter clients or aggregation and more value-focused products with a vision and purpose.

Overall FOWA and BarCamp were both amazing experiences that allowed us to meet a ton of people. There’s a great tech community in South Florida and it showed. We can’t wait to attend (or organize) the next BarCamp.

Last week we were in Miami attending the Future of Web Apps conference.  What an amazing experience!  In addition to learning about some of the upcoming technologies and practices, we got to meet a lot of great people.  We met with many awesome local Floridian companies, entrepreneurs, designers and developers, and mingled with the speakers (Jason Fried, Gary Vaynerchuk, Ryan Carson) at the after party.  There is a lot to cover we are breaking this up in two parts, 1) Miami barcamp (this post) and 2) FOWA. Read more…

PC World

Farhan and I have been very busy with ShopFiber lately and just recently got back from our trip down to Miami, FL for the Future of Web Apps conference (which we will be posting about shortly). As a part of being involved with the conference we were recently featured in a couple online publications IT World and PC World. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

At FOWA, Ahmad expects to not only network and catch up on business and technology trends, but also to give out invitations to the private beta of ShopFiber, a social shopping Web application that lets people research and share product information.

We were also featured in a local publication DetroitMakeItHere for our involvement with the TechNow09 event coming up in April.

This is just the beginning so stay tuned as we continue to grow ShopFiber into the best social shopping experience online.