I like it!!



Good work!
Maria_, Jul 10, 2009 @ 02:51

Looks good.

Now it's wait and see ;-)
rainer_d, Jul 10, 2009 @ 03:25

Well done!
Vitor, Jul 10, 2009 @ 10:52

Excellent! Congrats on the growing number of new members. Are you going to rename the site to grow-cals?
tigre, Jul 10, 2009 @ 11:03

Hi, I'm not sure I like it yet. I have to see more pages.



It's very visual, photos dominate, but at many events no photos are taken. Or some in the photos do not want them published. On the forum, rather than the members photos, to me the messages are more important. There could be thinner columns and you could show more postings, photo left and text in 3 shorter lines rather than one long line.



We have not many glocals members in Berne, because we have several other efficient methods to keep the community jumping. It would be useful to be able to export glocal events and import events from other calendars e.g. http://www.meetup.com/meetupberne/de/calendar/ and google calendars.



Graham

grahamtritt, Jul 10, 2009 @ 11:14

Hi Graham,

Thanks for the helpful feedback - much appreciated.

Some thoughts re the points you raise:

• Event pics: these will be 100% optional for organisers / participants.
• Pics on Forum section of Homepage: interesign idea to kick out the pics and make more room for text. We'll probably launch with the current design, and do improvements to it later.
• Export / import events from other site: I like it. Again, it won't come straight away, but we'll get on it in the future. What are the other site (except Meetup) that are big in Bern for getting folks to do activities together?

Thanks again,

Nir
Nir Ofek, Jul 10, 2009 @ 11:37

it looks fantastic!



Congratulations for the new looks + membership growth.



eXodus
exodus, Jul 10, 2009 @ 12:19

A really nice to have to make screen navigation easier is to "colour" the background to the Login Icon in Green and the Logoff in Red.

;o)
Jivebaby, Jul 10, 2009 @ 14:44

Looking good! :w00t:

>> Seperate Local & Global forums:  Some forums will be visibile only in certain cities to ensure local discussions get more focus.

 

Wonder why you are doing this though... will Lausanne people never go to Berne? Or Geneva folks to Lausanne? Or even to Zurich...

Maybe try to arrange it so your local forum is at the top... and other cities near the bottow. But why "hide" it?
kejago, Jul 10, 2009 @ 16:02

Hi Kejago



The default view for each city will be global forums + the city's local forums, but people will be able to view local forums for other cities if they choose to.



Very similar to the way you can currently see activities in Geneva, or in other cities.



Oded



SiteAdmin Oded, Jul 10, 2009 @ 17:02

[quote]Hi Graham,

Thanks for the helpful feedback - much appreciated.

What are the other site (except Meetup) that are big in Bern for getting folks to do activities together? Nir[/quote]



Hi, for events in Berne, see www.living-in-berne.ch on the community page, also www.englishclub.ch, icberne.2ya.com, and bernagora.wordpress.com. The last two have google calenders. But the most important communication method is the yahoo group / mailing list swisscc, see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/swisscc/ There are also a bunch of other yahoo groups for dancing, tennis, books, children, etc. Also some Berne groups are on facebook, Xing, and couch surfers.



Perhaps some of these can be replaced by the use of glocals, we will see how things develop. I would have to see the social controls, for instance for private groups.



Graham
grahamtritt, Jul 10, 2009 @ 18:51

I liked the way it is organized, warm and nice colors, reminds facebook :).
Shadowuz, Jul 11, 2009 @ 02:15

Finally the new site... screenshots suggest a design more in line with member needs, and glocals goals. Impressive. Congratulations Nir and Oded.

A few suggestions..

1. On Member Activity page, the location should be hyperlinked to Google Maps or http://map.search.ch. Helpful particularly for recently arrived expats. For example: Hotel Mandarin, Quai Turrenttini, Geneva

2. On profile page for each member, list their Forum Posts. For example, Forum Posts of Inbar Riss. Some members are very helpful, others funny etc... these posts add substance and depth to their profile.

3. Consider default settings to respect member privacy, such as for chat...

Congratulations glocals on reaching 30K members. Wishing you a speedy 1 million mark!

Best Regards,

Someone who misses the wonderful people he met through glocals
colorado, Jul 12, 2009 @ 04:54

Great work guys....The new site does look very nice and the way information is organized seems to be quite effective.



Here are few suggestions though:



1) Rather than showing people from your country, there should be some sort of back end configuration in the user profile to select what sort of profile one wants to see: Country based, new members (just like before)



2) Any hope that the new glocals chat will work on other browsers other than Internet Explorer which most people usualy use. It would be great if you could test and fix the chat for other browsers as I mostly on non-Windows machine and could never chat as I can't install Internet Explorer.



Since with the phenomenal success of glocals ( it have been so useful to meet other people), with more and more people there would be additional load on your servers and i think your new site is more resource heavy than the previous one. As a result, it would be good idea to rigorously stress test it and plan for contingencies (like a new server etc).



Thanks a lot for running and maintaining glocals site :-). It's a great way to meet fellow expats so keep up the good work!



Omer
hyeomer, Jul 12, 2009 @ 11:19

Hey Marina - thanks!

We'll be using a brand new chat system, which is a bit similar to Gmail chat. It's key features:

• Faster
• You see when someone else is typing
• The chat window 'travels' with you between pages
• You can easily close the chat window when you had enough

Hope you'll like it - I'll chat you up as soon as we launch...(-:

Nir
Nir Ofek, Jul 12, 2009 @ 13:43

Omer, Thanks for the helpful feedback. 1. Which people to show on the Homepage: For speed's sake, we're launching with a 'dumb' application that just showed members who are originialy from your country. But the plan is to then quickly move to a 'tailoered' application that allows each members to choose which people he/she wants to see on their Homepage: by hobbies, by activity level, by country of origin, etc. 2. Chat working on all browsers: Yup, we developed the new site with this condition in mind, and the site will be launched with 100% fit with FireFox & Exporer. A bit more work is still needed for the other browsers, and we're on it. 3. Fast site: With the move to the new site, we're also moving servers, to a far more powerful setup. We're also stress testing the new site as we speak. So I think it will work well. Thanks again for the feedback! PS - I keep saying 'we' in my reply. But it's really siteAdmin (Oded) who is leading all this work. Nir

Nir Ofek, Jul 12, 2009 @ 13:46

[quote]



Hey Marina - thanks!



We'll be using a brand new chat system, which is a bit similar to Gmail chat. It's key features:

• Faster
• You see when someone else is typing
• The chat window 'travels' with you between pages
• You can easily close the chat window when you had enough

Hope you'll like it - I'll chat you up as soon as we launch...(-:



Nir[/quote]



Looks good - much cleaner and visually pleasing and it looks like navigation will be simpler. Congratulations and three cheers to those who put in all the hard work to do it.
Ellen, Jul 12, 2009 @ 13:46

[quote][b]Nir_ (12/07/2009)[/b][hr]

Hey Marina - thanks!

We'll be using a brand new chat system, which is a bit similar to Gmail chat. It's key features:

• Faster
• You see when someone else is typing
• The chat window 'travels' with you between pages
• You can easily close the chat window when you had enough

Hope you'll like it - I'll chat you up as soon as we launch...(-:

Nir[/quote]

One more thing about the chat on the new site - for the time being, people will only be able to chat with their friends.  This should help cut down on the unwanted chat requests and help get rid of the 'hunters'

Oded
SiteAdmin Oded, Jul 12, 2009 @ 13:52

Hey Colorado,

Thanks mate, good to see you back! Where are you these days?

For the points you raise:

1. Integrating Maps with Activity posts
Makes sense. We won't have maps on the launch phase, but we'll add it to the list of potential future aps. We will bigger things to fix / improve first tho.

2. Showing forum posts on members' profiles
Yes, fully agree. Our objective is that by looking at a profile, you'll be able to see if that member is active or not, and what kind of person he/she is (while respecting their privacy settings). So showing forum posts fits well with this. Let me look into the tech side of it a bit more.

3.  Default settings to respect privacy
Yes, that's the plan.

Thanks again,

Nir
Nir Ofek, Jul 12, 2009 @ 13:55

Ellen said: "Congratulations and three cheers to those who put in all the hard work to do it."

----------

Thanks Ellen. All thanks goes to SiteAdmin. He spent a ton of efforts on it, managing the plans and the execution and the programmers and the servers and his brother.
Nir Ofek, Jul 12, 2009 @ 14:01

Hi Nir,



I have another comment to make about the color combination. Although it looks nice but it's does not come that contrasty on the eyes. e.g. I find the present colors (use of red) quite on the present site..



But it's a good idea to change the color scheme with the new launch of the side. I would suggest to use cool-nice-on-eye kind of color similar to facebook (blueish). This way people, instinctively, will feel comfortable with it. This is or more less using positive inclinations of people about some thing and will certainly increase the uptake of the site too as newcomers will percieve it more as "online social networking" along the lines of MySpace/Facebook.



And just to throw another idea: a Facebook app for glocals could be nice too :-)



Cheers

Omer



[quote]

Omer, Thanks for the helpful feedback. 1. Which people to show on the Homepage: For speed's sake, we're launching with a 'dumb' application that just showed members who are originialy from your country. But the plan is to then quickly move to a 'tailoered' application that allows each members to choose which people he/she wants to see on their Homepage: by hobbies, by activity level, by country of origin, etc. 2. Chat workingon all browsers: Yup, we developed the new site with this condition in mind, and the site will be launched with 100% fit withFireFox &Exporer.A bit more work is still needed for the other browsers, and we're on it. 3. Fast site: With the move to the new site, we're also moving servers, to a far more powerful setup. We're also stress testing the new site as we speak. So I think it will work well. Thanks again for the feedback! PS - I keep saying 'we' in my reply. But it's really siteAdmin (Oded) who is leading all this work. Nir

[/quote]
hyeomer, Jul 14, 2009 @ 22:29

Hi,



I have an idea for the new activities page. It would be nice if you somehow included the functionality from www.doodle.com as an option for activities. Some activities have a fixed date. A concert is always going to happen at a certain time and place, but others won't happen at all if no one shows up, e.g. playing tennis, practicing a language. And for these sorts of activities it would be preferable to not give a fixed time but rather to allow people who would be interested in the activity to suggest times when they could make it, and then later you could have the activity creator decide "okay, it's going to definitely happen at this time and place" b/c that's the time when most people will be available.



Greg
gkellum, Jul 20, 2009 @ 14:15

I just can't wait for the super chicken... You should get someone to sponsor the chicken!



Like Shake-n-bake or something. Do they have Shake-n-bake in Switzerland?
JMfromTO, Jul 20, 2009 @ 15:28

[quote]Hi,



I have an idea for the new activities page. It would be nice if you somehow included the functionality from www.doodle.com as an option for activities ...

Greg[/quote]



I'm not too experienced with glocals, but a brief discussion amoung members indicated to me a need for registrations, maybe, reminders, list of attendees etc. My groups on www.meetup.com have such functionality. I hope you can include it.



Thanks for all your hard work

Graham
grahamtritt, Jul 20, 2009 @ 16:25

Greg,

Thanks bro. You just earned yourself a free Banana at the gym tonight.

A feature that let's organisers hold a 'vote' for the best date - a la Doodle - sounds useful indeed. To be honest, we didn't really think of it until now, so thanks again for the idea!

We won't launch with it, for speed sake, but it's surely something we'll now bounce around more users to assess how useful it would be.

Thanks again mate,

Nir
Nir Ofek, Jul 20, 2009 @ 16:35

Graham,

Thanks - fully agree. We view Meetup as the Best-in-Class when it comes to event organisation, and there's certainly lots to admire about them.

The new site will have many of the features you mention:

• Auto RSVP
• List of who's coming
• Easy way for organiser to contact all those attending
• Auto reminders (at phase II)

Pls keep the feedback coming...

Thanks again,

Nir
Nir Ofek, Jul 20, 2009 @ 16:36

JMfromTO:

No shake n bake here, but there's a few other chicken things that might be game for it...and even if there's no money in it, it's worth it just for the laugh...(-:
Nir Ofek, Jul 20, 2009 @ 16:39

HI Nir..

Excellent looks great.

Ive just seen that the new one is called G-locals but the present one is Glo-cals

 

What will be the final decision?

G-Locals or Glo-cals
genevorine, Jul 20, 2009 @ 18:37

[quote][b]genevorine (20/07/2009)[/b][hr]HI Nir..

Excellent looks great.

Ive just seen that the new one is called G-locals but the present one is Glo-cals

 What will be the final decision?

G-Locals or Glo-cals[/quote]

Its still Glo-cals.  Does the new logo look like its now G-locals?

Oded
SiteAdmin Oded, Jul 20, 2009 @ 19:19

HI

Yes it looks looks like G-locals because 'G' is has a completely different colour -font and 'locals' has a different colour-font.

As for the present format its easily recogniseble the Glo and cals .:-)

I like the present format:-) , it looks fun and cool.

Regards

X
genevorine, Jul 20, 2009 @ 19:36

I too agree -the example in the "new" site lacks clarity and style. 

The confused type-face/mixed fonts present a very unidy incoherent logo.  ;o(
Jivebaby, Jul 20, 2009 @ 20:13

Hi Nir,



First congrats to the work behind the website with many amazing functionalities! I think the showing of pictures for activities, the improved chat, the much better org of activities, the integration of friend feeds, and overall stronger customimization are fantastic assets being brought to the platform!



Yet, I will be quiet honest: as an old member my key comment is that I feel the site is less "warm" hence friendly than the old one. Althrough it looks like the functionalities are fantastic (really great honestly:P), I have the impression that the new style/format - althrough looking more professional - looks more serious/businessy:smooooth:, less a place I want to hang out and more a formal organizational place. Less a place I would dare to organize... Overall, I think it is due to the site loosing the identity that was being established little by little as a nice/friendly place with mixed colours, friendly faces, round shapes, certain colours... Specifically:



--- Red, grey and orange colours: Colour coding was red/grey and some orange which are not the classic "business" colours of brown/grey/blue in the new one (except orange at the top). Are red/grey/orange not part of the identity of the Glocals brand? The current logo would suggest so. I would revert to the same colour coding of red/brown + dark grey (with orange as well).



--- Keep the logo: Strange to change the logo of Glocals again, if you are building a community/brand I wouldn't imagine you are changing it after barely 1 year unless there is a problem with it? Or maybe I am growing so old and it's more than a year now? So sorry... overall, I like how friendly and cool it currently is and clearly communicating both messages of local/expat, you build it so amazingly, why change that too?:w00t:



--- More round shapes: The old format had even rounder shapes for all the boxes which made it very approachable, feeling relaxed rather than formal. I would make all the boxes as round as before, that's a tiny comment but well..the little things get together...



--- The use of yellow: I always thought that the use of yellow as background colour to text was original and part of the identity of the site too. If it's not the case it's a pity and I guess it will disappear..but I thought it a cool way to highlight things in a friendly/non-classic way.



--- Profile page with the friendly stuff: What has happened to the friendly and nice stuff on the profile about individuals? About the questions that required people to say a bit of themselves? About the activities people would tick? The pages now look very serious and mild in colours..again, maybe the site is growing older..or I am just nostalgic, sorry...but I think it feels less friendly..colours are a question of taste indeed..and maybe you want to be more serious than before..and Glocals is changing..



As you will have understood, unless there was a major issue with the template itself (not the functionalities!), I would recommend coming back to some brand identity elements of the old one for the launch or at least keeping as many things common as possible. It may sound strange but I think Glocals should dare to be relaxed/bit different and friendly, not try to mold into the culture of formal/structured/business:sick:. That's part of the fun, the identity and why peoeple hang around - with people that are friendly here! :w00t:



Hope it helps and hope constructive enough that you can make something out of the comments..I guess that's what you get from the old guard..I didn't bitch when this website came online vs. the previous (quiet the contrary!) hence pardon my French and feel free to disregard :) Continue to make this community great and thanks for your huge work behind the scenes, I am soooo happy Glocals exists thanks to you and the team!



Jim (alias Jimega)
JiMEGA, Jul 21, 2009 @ 02:49

Thanks alot for the feedback folks.

In a couple of days, we will invite you to try out a test version of the new site, and then you can tell us what you think of the design and functions after playing around with it a bit.

Re the logo and colors - the logo is not finalized yet, and the colors can be changed if people don't like them.

Thanks again folks

Oded
SiteAdmin Oded, Jul 21, 2009 @ 18:56

Hello,

Thanks, you work hardly!



I wanted to tell you about a very small detail: in the title, you wrote Glocals.comunity.



Community is with two m

I understand why (Glocals.com unity) Is this for this kind of reason or is it a mistake?



Cheers.

Dottie
Dottie, Jul 22, 2009 @ 00:25