couch potato
Team Members
- Jacques Crocker
What
get alerts (email/sms/im) when new episodes of your favorite tv shows are available
Where
- Entry URL:
- http://alertme.tv
How
Ruby Libraries
- merb / datamapper
- httparty
- compass
- dm-paperclip
- vlad
Icons
- One Bit Icon Set
http://www.icojoy.com/articles/44/
- Developper Icon Set
http://sekkyumu.deviantart.com/art/Developpers-Icons-63052312
- Orb Icon Set
http://www.axialis.com/free/icons/
- Loading Icons
http://ajaxload.info
Javascript:
- jquery
http://jquery.org
- jquery tools
http://flowplayer.org/tools/
- jquery ui
http://ui.jquery.org
- livequery
http://github.com/brandonaaron/livequery
-fancybox
http://fancybox.net/
Stylesheets
-960 grid
http://960.gs
Template
- Folioblogger
http://themeforest.net/item/folio-blogger/35546
Comments
Also, you need a log out button as well as a place to input my SMS number. I would rather have a text message sent than an email, but noticed after I chose that option, there was no place to input my phone number. ;D
It would be helpful to add more options for the reminder alerts. For example, 1 hour or 2 hours before the t.v. show is set to air. Most people would forget within a day and an hourly option would be more realistic as a reminder. :D
Would be cool to be able to get alerts by rss/atom feed as well
I signed up for this app cause it beats my current dashboard widget(not very efficient). It would be awesome if you could get an alert like 1 or 2 hours before instead of a day before. Great app and very polished. The UI is very slick and the ajax is well implemented. Congrats guys!
In the era of DVR, what is the point?
Really great app for those of us who forget when their shows are coming home. Same day or hour before alerts would be way more useful tho!
JamieD… totally agree. Plan is to give very user a customized RSS feed that shows just their shows. This will enable people to use alertme.tv without ever setting up an account, or giving us any data at all, aside from what shows they like.
Someone also asked me to integrate with http://codingcurious.com/automatic/ to provide automatic torrent downloads from the RSS feed. Seems like a good idea, I’ll look into it
Great app idea, especially for people who like to keep up with their favorite shows but don’t wanna waste time watching reruns. love the look and feel as well as simple interface. think twitter / hulu integration would be useful additions.
RSS is a must have feature for this site. If I could have a custom RSS feed with all my shows I would use this site all the time.
I really like what I see. Maybe I didn’t see it, but I’d like to see OpenID and twitter options as well. Great idea and something that I could really see myself using. Congrats on a VERY polished app.
Really needs @ or DM tweet notification.
Hah, yeah, I added an email validator on the gtalk id at the last minute and forgot to do :allow_blank => true.
Easy fix for everyone is to set gtalk to a@a.com when saving contact info. The alert process will just ignore any domains that aren’t gmail.com.
I like this a lot. I can’t say it’s terribly innovative but it’s really well done. It looks good, works well, and is incredible for a two-day, one person project. Please carry this forward.
I love that you can save shows and create an account later. However, I agree with smeade – I got the same error about gtalk and didn’t really want to put in my gtalk id (since I chose email alerts).
Great design, very visually compelling and I hope you keep improving it.
Appearance/UI: 4/5
The design is professional looking. It would fit right in with a major TV network’s website (and even surpass some of them). It was not immediately clear how to set up my email address. I did find that you click on ‘Alerts’ to set the contact settings. Yet, it should prompt for contact info on the first alert I create.
Completeness: 3/5
I was unable to save my alert contact settings. I entered my email address, leaving the rest of the fields blank and got ‘Error Saving Contact Data/Gtalk has an invalid format’. Other than that, everything else seems to work and it seems to be feature-complete.
Innovation: 4/5
Innovative idea.
Usefulness: 4/5
The idea is very useful on a daily basis (if only I could get my Alert Contact Settings set).
Overall, a great job, especially for a solo effort.
I like the idea, especially that I can be alerted via sms, however I live in the UK I couldn’t see any way to set timezone or channel for my reminder. And while being reminded a day early is nice, an hour early is better.
nice app – especially for a solo project! I’ll use this to ensure my DVR is already queued up!
Nice, but you just need sky+
Thanks everyone for the fantastic feedback. Has been hugely encouraging! I’ll follow up on all your great suggestions and incorporate them in a new build shortly after the rumble ends.
Appearance: 4/5
Great job with this. You provide a ton of content, without sacrificing page speed. Your page renders quickly, and the color scheme lets the shows draw attention to themselves. The design is simple, elegant, and consistent across every page. Only issue…the error page is plain text on a white background. I’d make sure to update that. Also, you mentioned a link to show off our favorite TV shows, but there’s no link on any subsequent page. Make this easy to access.
Completeness: 4/5
A single point off here because I didn’t see any warnings when I set notifications without setting up the contact information. I don’t like, however, that you require people to fill in a Jabber ID to save their notification information – this isn’t something that people consistently posess, and it will turn people off of using your site. I very much appreciated that you allow the user to fully use your site prior to signing up, and that the signup process is as easy and hassle-free as you could possibly make it. You’ve gotten a ton of stuff very well done here. I’m very excited to see what you choose to add or revise, because I’m at a loss.
Innovation: 5/5
This is a great idea, and I’m not familiar with any application like it. I hope you plan to add a networking component to this application.
Usefulness: 4/5
I’m absolutely using this application, so be sure to keep it up and running and reliable. A small point off because it’s not configured for international television, and because of the notification requirements.
Overall, fantastic submission, and really great work. Thank you.
-Kevin W. Gisi
This looks awesome. But as someone living outside the US, I really need some feedback regarding when the shows air. That way I’m sure that it doesn’t work for me. Maybe when you display the nice banners for each show you can put a “Mondays 9 PST” or something.
There are a couple rough edges I’m sure you noticed already, but that’s understandable.
It does look awesome. Phenomenal work for a solo team :)
Cool idea. I’d like to be able to be reminded a few hours before instead of just choices for days and weeks.
I’d like to see twitter integration get added. An API would
also be nice. I’ve been looking for a service like this. Very nice.
This is a really great idea for an app. Really nice work and I can definitely see people using this. Thanks!
Very good and useful service for those great shows that pop in and out of existence. I happen to like like Kings and Lie to Me but I get frustrated that I can’t ever figure out when they are going to be on. So I like this service. Useful, the visual design is great. Had a hard time trying to figure out where to enter my email address and then the form errored because it required a gtalk id.
I love the fact that you can start setting alerts before setting your email. But an email lightbox popup form would be really cool if someone choses to set am email alert and they don’t have one. With that the system would be pretty complete as far as user experience is concerned.
Good job. My scores don’t count but: 5445
Pretty damn awesome. Great look, simple UI, all the functions I tried worked well. Look forward to seeing how this app is developed! Nice work!
The alert options could benefit from making them more social, available on Facebook, etc. Very well done. One of my favorite Rumble projects by far!
Adding to Facebook and Twitter for viral hooks and creating a Facebook Connect integration would be terrific.
The general design is excellent, although the action popups are a little busy for my taste. All in all, an impressive effort.
Nicely done: I am invited to use the site before creating an account, which is a nice way to show the value up front.
Rough edges: unclear confirmation when I take action (favorite or set alert). Given the slickness of the other interactions, this is clearly a time constraint issue and not a reflection of any limitation of the team.
Untested: I’m guessing that much of the notification system is not yet wired up.
Problems saving contact info – otherwise – NICE APP. Truly useful for the TV junkies like me.