Summer Update: New Features have Landed
Hi Friends-
I’m thrilled to let you know that after months of work, the new version of Jemsaw is live AND it’s packed with a lot of great new features.
Reimagined Interface
The first thing you’ll notice in the new version is… well… a lot has changed. The redesign had one objective: to make getting around easier.
Simplified Site Navigation
Jemsaw now has 3 clear sections: Loves, Collections, and Friends.
You’ll find these three icons to navigate between them.
Grid view
You, the users, have spoken and I listened. In the previous version of Jemsaw, I employed what I called the Salon layout that did its best to account for a variety of sizes and shapes of loves. The downside to this was a fairly cluttered and chaotic view. So today I’m pleased to introduce the grid view that supports tall, square, and wide images - like this:
(if you preferred the Salon view, you can turn it back on in your Settings).
Love Discovery and Search
I’ve made it easier to discover what people around Jemsaw are loving. In the Loves section you’ll find two new tabs: Discover and Search.
The Discover tab has two views:
Recent shows the most recently loved items on Jemsaw.
Popular shows the most beloved items in Jemsaw, ordered by the number of users who love them. Would you believe that the current most popular item is Korean BBQ? Who knew?
The Search tab gives you the ability to search for loves both by name and type. So if you’re looking for Moonrise Kingdome, type the name and search. Likewise if you’re looking for food, you can simply type “food” and see the many kinds of food in Jemsaw.
Share your Collections
This is a new feature that I’m particularly excited about. You can now share a link to Collections that you make via email, Twitter, and Facebook.
Go to the Collections section. Click on one of your existing Collections (if you don’t have one, create one!), and in the top bar, you’ll see the Share arrow. Click it and you’ll be able to chose how and where you want to share your collection. I’m enjoying putting mine up on Twitter.
Added a couple new ‘Favorite Films’: jem-saw.com/collectionView…
— Matt Silas (@matty8r) July 12, 2012
Collection Tabs: Favs and Explore
Collections have been cleaned up. Now any of your friends’ collections that you have favorited will appear in the Favs tab of the Collection section. No more digging around the the navigation bar (it’s gone).
The Explore tab will show you all of the Collections your friends have made that are NOT your favorites. It’s a nice way to see all of your friends’ collections in one place.
Media and Location Links
It’s now easier to connect items in Jemsaw to the real world. To start with, Movies, Books, Music, and Places are receiving additional attention in this release.
If an item in your stream falls into one of these categories, you’ll see an icon in the lower right hand corner that looks like one of the following:
If you click on the Movie reel, you’ll be taken to IMDB to learn more about the item.
Clicking on the Book icon will take you to Amazon’s book store where you can peruse a chapter or two.
The Headphones will take you to an MP3 preview of the song, album, or musician in question.
The Location pointer will take you to a Google Map of the place.
Much More
There are a lot of additional small touches throughout the app for you to discover and enjoy as well.
Some Stats
Jemsaw has been usable for just over a year. In that time, over 1,500 unique items have been captured. Users have loved items more than 3000 times. More than 700 impressions have been written, and more than 200 collections have been made. Not bad for a private alpha consisting of 60 users!!
Next Steps
I’m interested in seeing how Jemsaw scales and how it sticks, so please feel free to invite your friends. The gates are open.
Jemsaw is a work in progress that needs your input and ideas to help it become your favorite place to capture, share and discover everything you love, so please don’t hesitate to send your feedback to jemsaw@gmail.com.
Thanks so much for your interest and support.
Caprice is something that’s super interesting to me. One of the things that I’m excited to see with Jem-Saw (I’ve started seeing glimmers already) is how seeing what your friends post will spark a thought about a whole topic area that you’ll be able to mine for what you love. An example, my buddy T tonight loved Peaches, which I loved. Amanda saw that come through on her Lovestream. She doesn’t love peaches, but she does love Meyer Lemons and Pink Lady apples. I posted a bunch of drinks earlier tonight and she loved one of those and added another one. It’s fun. The brain just needs these little nudges. So far, I’ve loved over 200 things, and yet I’m thinking of new things all the time and it really does give the feeling of getting to know, or at least track, yourself better.
