We are absolutely delighted to introduce you to the first beta of this summer! It is already uploaded on Android Market, although it is only available for the current beta testers that already have an account (hence the private beta). The rest of you, please be patient We are working to give you the best version.

This version of the mobile app has the following features:

• it allows to see the recommendations, all of them arranged according to the proximity to your location,
• adding recommendations,
• modifying recommendations,
• looking up your alerts in a map or in a list,
• silencing the alerts as you wish,
• configuration of the frequencies of actualization, application startup when turning on your mobile phone, visualization mode of the map, consumption and precision patterns that allow you to choose the type of connection at any time.
• off-line mode: notifications will work and will ring without being connected to 3G and without being synchronized to the server,
• map functioning is exactly the same as the one in the web app.

This version of the web app is not on Facebook yet so beta testers should keep on using the old dashboard to check its good functioning, although we are already fully working on the Facebook app.

To the software developers:

Soon you will be able to download the code for the Android app

Do you feel like joining the community?

Get info on how you can collaborate here:

http://team.georemindme.com/

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact us at:

http://georemindme.com/contact/

We have decided to open the application despite we are totally aware that lots of things can be improved and that there are still some issues to be corrected. However we thought the best thing is for you to tell us what you think it’s missing or what would you improve.

That’s the reason why from now on we will deal with any improvements you may want to share with us (or any problem you may find on your way) through the platform we have created for the users community (now all of you can collaborate).

With nothing else to say, I now proceed to list the improvements in this version, along with future improvements and already solved problems. I’d finally like to thank all the people that have been involved in this project for the last two months.

Improvements:

1. Simplifying the registration process.
2. Improvement in the suggestion browser: optimized titles and descriptions of the pages, and a larger number of indexed pages.
   
3. Improved activity, now old messages from the users you follow are also shown.
4. We have added an automatic help feature that helps you the first time you navigate a section.
5. Improvement when showing close suggestions (now to calculate relevance two new factors are considered: assessements and the time for which the suggestion has been published).
6. New software that supports multiple languages (we are currently working in the translation/localization process).
7. New possibility of adding new links and line breaks to the suggestions’ descriptions.
8. The first methods of the communication API (in the documentation process) are already published.

Future improvements:

These are the future improvements in which we are currently working.

• Removing the “unsecure” connection warning in the browser (actually it’s just that some of the files we use are not encoded when they are received, although user data are always sent encoded)
• Publication of the application’s new promotional video.
• English and French translations.
• Improvements in the usability when adding a suggestion
• Beta Android app.
• Beta iPhone app.
• Beta mobile web app.
• Page numbering of followers, followings.
• Section to search users.
• Adding an option to change the position of close suggestions.
• Publication of a Google Chrome plugin (to receive activity notifications, look up suggestions, etc.)
• Launch of the application version for Facebook.
• Solving some interface problems.
• Making some improvements to the printing view.

Even at the risk of being annoying, we say again: if you want to suggest or assess next version’s improvements you can do it through the users community platform.
If you are a software developer and you want to know more you can access our repository in Github.

And remember, if you want to participate/collaborate in the project you only have to contact us at info@georemindme.com and join the collaborators community in Teambox.com.

Solved problems:

• Sending of suggestions and lists through social networks.
• Confirmation link for the fixed mail account.
• Remember password section fixed.
• No more problematic issues with “Like”, “Save” and other buttons.
• The problem with the cronological order of the messages in “Activity” is now fixed.
• There is no longer an option to add comments in suggestions if you have not logged in.
• And some other not so visible mistakes …

Thanks to:

We would especially like to thank for the help offered by:

• Ricardo Caballero – For his effort coming to the office every morning to develop the Android app and for his feedback.
• Rubén Dugo – For all his contribution to the backend and frontend.
• Okmakey – For the help in the making of the communication plan, suggestions, and other types of help.
• Victor Puertas – For making integration so easy with his URLs vavag shortener.
• Angel Miguel – Without him we wouldn’t be creating such an elaborated promotional video.
• Alejandro Castillo – For his help.
• José Luis López Pino – For helping solving bugs, adding content and for his feedback.
• Ioanna Munteanu – For doing overtime and for offering herself as a model for the GeoRemindMe video.
• Draxus – For the feedback and his help preparing the collaboration with Granada People.
• Krzysztof Stopa – For the help translating the platform.
• Annalogik – For the help introducing content, the feedback, etc.
• Roma Gutierrez – For the support with the design.
• Lara Salinas – For her advice with the design.
• Marmater – For helping us with the promotional video’s audio.
• Mohamed (a.k.a. Moha) – For allowing us to record the voices in his studio.
• Guillermo – For his unconditional support to the project and for helping us to keep going with a good perspective.
• And to all of them who I probably forgot to mention… thank you from the bottom of my heart, you are the best!

• The first thing you’ll probably do is to add a suggestion. If you click on the first button in the menu at the top (Add a suggestion), this screen will appear.

Here we can add a concise description of our suggestion, and add it to a list (for example, if you have a list for favourite restaurants or shops). You can use tags to make easier for other users to find suggestions, and add information such as phone numbers of the places or useful links. Then, write the name or the address of the place and a map will show us its location. Finally, we click on “Send” and our suggestion will be posted.

• In the backpack you can find the content you have created, or the content you like from other users, and use it later. You can save suggestions and places that you are interested in so that you can browse them later or create a list of places you would like to visit.

• When you visit the page of a place (for example, the well-known Mirador de San Nicolás in Granada) we will see information about the place and comments left by other users.

What do you think? We hope you are looking forward to testing this application It will be available to the public as soon as possible.

Here you can see a summary of the other projects presented by the other teams:

1. Free Publi Displays (@Freepub) by Rubén Cáceres (@rubnc).
2. Pupil (@PupilsProject) by Serafín Vélez (@seravb ) and Fran Lucena(@frannlu).
3. Truco (@TrucoCUSL) by Antonio Castillo (@kamuisaeba).
4. DAF-Collage (@dafcollage) by Javier Rodríguez and Simeón Ruiz (@simeonruiz).
5. Workespeis FKP byPedro Serrano Prieto, Carlos García Pardillos (@pardiml) and Andrei Corcodel Biboiu (@andreycorcodel).

After presenting the different projects, those attending the Hackathon chose the project they wanted to join. And we would like to thank these 9 awesome guys for having decided to take part in our  growing family!

• Alejandro Alcalde: @ElBaulP, Student of Computer Science.
• Ana Jiménez: @_AnaJi, Student of Translation and Interpreting.
• Ana Oñate: Student of Translation and Interpreting.
• Clara Fernández,  Student of Translation and Interpreting.
• Fátima Fernández,  Student of Translation and Interpreting.
• Fenerando Melero: @FernandoMeleroG, Student of Translation and Interpreting.
• Natalia Fernández, Student of Translation and Interpreting.
• Nazareth Pérez: @Nazapn,  Degree in Translation and Interpreting, with English as 1st language and French as 2nd language.
• Ruth Moya: @Rutmg1, Degree in Translation and Interpreting, with French as 1st language and English as 2nd language.

Team Pic (from left to right): @FernandoMeleroG, Natalia, Clara, Fatima, @jneight @ElBaulP @_AnaJi

Besides, Javier Cordero (@jneight) and Rubén Dugo (@dugo), who usually work with us, has helped in this project. However, this Hackathon Ricardo Caballero (@rcabamo) was not able to help us, but did some of the work last week.

An article summarizing the progress of #3Hackathon is coming soon!

Why?

For several reasons:

• Due to changing policies of Google App Engine (GAE) we have decided to move to Amazon EC2.
• Google Maps and Google Places impose limitations that “do not allow” users to create new places.
• Making progress with GAE is slower and difficult and slows down the development  of the application.
• The program will be much more useful once we have the Android application.
• With GAE we cannot offer you a suggestion’s search engine of quality.
• We want to revise the design and the usefulness of the program.

What does this mean?

For a at least one or two months we will be working on moving everything we had done, so then we can begin the improvements. Meanwhile, the users already registered will be able to continue using their accounts.

We hope to return as soon as possible with a grown-up “chicken” and you already know if you have any idea or comment to make, we are here working everyday.

Regards and thank you for your patience!

We were given some good news yesterday, we have been chosen to participate in the final of the contest, along with another 4 projects:

• Intelliment Security
• MedBlue AIRLINES
• MATesTONE
• Trajesamedida.com

On 6th March we will be defending our project in the presence of the judges

We would like to congratulate not only all of them but also the rest of the projects that have participated in the contest with us. Despite they haven’t been selected, there are really nice projects and we hope that many of them will become companies soon.

We would also like to thank the teachers who have attended the contest for all their support. This has only been possible thanks to them and the help they have offered us when creating the company plan. We would specially like to thank:

• Enrique Carvajal:  thanks to him for all the effort and the treatment we have received.
• Alejandro Estévez: just like Enrique, he is an amazing professional and even a better person.
• Gerardo Puerto:his determination, his interest and his good advice have made possible this project.

• Juan Cid
• Eduardo Adalid
• Fernando Esteban

We were already working really hard and the trust placed on this project only encourages us to keep working with more motivation (if that is even possible ^_^).

We will tell you how this ends soon ;-P; although you can also follow us on Twitter: @GeoRemindMe

Photo of the family closing the event

We presented GeoRemindMe! and we were lucky to be chosen among the 15 finalists in the Innovation category to present the project in 5 minutes to the jury. Not only were we selected for that, but also for Wayra (the business incubator of Movistar), which also showed interest for our project and arranged to meet us one morning together with other 10 projects, in order to get to know us.

You can find the GeoRemindMe! presentation (in Spanish) for the Campus Party Milenio here

Me (@hhkaos) presenting at the innovation platform.

Networking at CP Milenio

The truth is that there were many good projects competing at a more advanced stage than ours, so we knew it was going to be difficult to get the first place.
Finally, as we suspected, another project received the big prize, to be more exact, that of Belén Rubio.
We want to take this opportunity to congratulate the winners and to sincerely wish them the all the best with their projects:

• Innovation and cooperation: REHABILITATION GAMING SYSTEM, project by Belén Rubio
• Science: ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION IN ASSISTANCE (ROBÓTICA Y DOMÓTICA ASISTENCIAL), project by Asier Aranz
• Creativity: HELLO WORLD, project by Frederique Muscinesi

More information (in Spanish) about the winners of CP Milenio can be found here.

Campus Party winners

In conclusion, we gathered that the project is raising great interest, yet we have a long way to go, and no doubt we have a lot more work to do on the prototype we will make in Granada to prove the potential of the project.

You will soon hear more news from us.

¡Un abrazo!

“The code is only a code. The team is important.”

I’m convinced this was one of the most profound phrases of his speech.
I am mentioning this because I want to share with you the stage we find ourselves at since it is an important phase of our project; we have launched the first beta version to test the application, get your feedback and continue evolving with you.

However, today I don’t plan on talking about details or features, rather I want to thank the brilliant minds who form this young and dynamic team, for their wonderful contribution, dedication and the overall thriving atmosphere. I would like to present them so that you understand why I am convinced of the great lengths this project will reach.

I will no longer dwell on this since there are many of us ;-D

Javier Cordero (@jneight); Recently nicknamed “The Swiss” since he has a solution for everything (just like a Swiss knife xDD). He is responsible of 99% of the backend development of the application; not only is he one of the best programmer I know, but one of the most committed people I’ve ever met.

Ruben Dugo (@dugo): Also known as “The flame man” (inside joke ). Without him the project wouldn’t exist; he was “guilty” for igniting this venture one day while out for beers. He is another genius, not only expert in backend development and server administration, but also the best Javascript programmer I’ve met (and I have met many). Nonetheless, what I (personally) value most in him are his character, his optimism and his sense of humor, which never fails to make us laugh at the office. Among Ruben’s numerous responsibilities are optimizing response times and creating and managing an automated test system.

Ricardo Caballero (@rcabamo) Known at night as the “Vaina loca” (hahaha), is a brilliant mind; Charged with developing the Android application, I can say he is a great engineer, professional, fun, curios, enterprising, self-taught, generous and humble – qualities not easily found in one person and that fit perfectly in this great team we are creating.

 Jorge Aguilera; The famous @okmakey, or “the man hugger” at the office, many of you already know him; a trusted person who was by my side for all of my major projects, and a friend who takes his job very seriously. Currently he is in charge of developing the project’s communication strategy and will be primarily responsible for integrating our team with GeoRemindMe user community. There is no doubt his experience and passion for working with social networks (among many other things) make him a part of this fabulous team.

Ioana Munteanu; Known among us as “the vegetarian” ;D, arrived from Chicago to join our team a little over a month ago, and while she hasn’t been here for long she already proved herself to be an intelligent girl, dedicated, with a great capacity to adapt. Also if we take in account her experience in sociology and anthropology, and the four languages she speaks (English, Spanish, French and Romanian) it is clear she also plays a very important role in the team. Currently, she is in charge of globalizing the application and other functions.

I would also like to highlight the profile of those whom we hope will become active participants in the project:

Daniel Molina (@plof_); As of now, Dani collaborates with the project by helping us develop a new system to improve user experience while adding suggestion, and also extracts semantic information from geolocated messages to improve the recommendations algorithm. Dani is an excellent programmer who enjoys challenges and who truly enjoy what he’s doing.

Daniel Calandría: To describe Dani only one word can be used: Genius. Perhaps the most intelligent person I’ve ever met, he is an expert informatician with a natural inclination for maths. Throughout the years Dani proved himself to be a fantastic developer, who was capable of programing the “Pang” in assembler during his sophomore year in college.

Javi Nievas (@javinievas); Javi, another special, valuable man. Not only Javi is funny and positive but also a true expert in web technologies. I was fortunate to have him as my boss during my internship at Garasa where I saw firsthand his admirable problem solving capabilities.

Jose Garcia: Jose is more than a great friend; he is also one of the most intelligent people with whom I had the pleasure of sharing many experiences. An outstanding student and a young researcher in the field of: genetic algorithms, learning mechanisms, genetic programming etc..

As you can see these people are great professionals, yet our team is not closed. We will continue growing, so we will continue organizing events frequently to maintain direct contact with the community.

I wouldn’t like to end this article without thanking again the entire community for the work they are doing, a growing community more active by the day contributing from code lines to video, images, texts, etc. even ideas.

Lastly, I want to thank Evan Sheline for providing the great avatars we used for our colleagues who don’t have a photo.

You will soon hear more news from us!
Un abrazo!yirlaaa