New Site Features

[Michael]

Ok, I am planning on adding some functionality to the main website (not the forums).

Things we are considering:

Newletter - sends daily or weekly emails telling you what stories were added to the site. Potentially an option to notify you whenever anything is added to the site.

Photo Gallery - a way for users to upload photos taken with their camera phones so that others can see what the camera is capable of. Uploaded photos would need to be approved before being made public, of course. We'd link to the galleries from stories.

Does anybody else have ideas? If so, post them.

Thanks.

[Andy]

As well as photos would it be possible to also add video clips? The quality of clips does seem to vary a lot.
You could also have a small section, currently released phones you have reviewed and recommended, just a slowly evolving list, maybe limited to the last 5 phones you reviewed and liked.

Andrew

[Michael]

The problem with video clips is generating a thumbnail. I wouldn't know how to do that automatically.

The list of review ratings is probably a good idea, though.

[edeab220]

Would the gallery be connected to the forum in some way (ie. PhotoPost or Coppermine), or be some of your special "home-built" software?

I like the idea of review ratings too...

[kadooky]

Would the gallery be connected to the forum in some way (ie. PhotoPost or Coppermine), or be some of your special "home-built" software?

I like the idea of review ratings too...


What about a public review section where users can write a little short review on their phone?

[edeab220]

What about a public review section where users can write a little short review on their phone?
That can easily be set up in the forums. Sid or Michael can do it in a second :D.

[Box215]

Thats a good idea. We just have to watch out for fanboy bashing and the sort and morons who just rate phones when theyve never actually seen the phone.

[YJT]

I've always liked the 'Top Ten hottest phones' list on Cnet asia that shows the ten most popular phones every month. I think the list is based on popularity as opposed to the ratings given by the editor. i think that there is also a top ten list in terms of ratings too. something along those lines can be quick and convenient for keeping people up to date and also act as a guide for some tech fans to see whether they're up to date with the latest gear etc..

[shaheen]

the photos thing is a good idea. here are some other things i thought up

1. a best photo taken competition?

2.a phone VS phone vote thing, ive seen it alot on other sites where they put this chick next to another and they have Challenger VS champion at the top. same as www.ridejudge.com so we see how long one phone can stand as champion till another comes in and kills it and takes over...itll be fun

3.a design your own phone competition? maybe a flash game where we put parts together and list our own specs, or maybe we just make our own pics by ourselves then submit and see who wins...prizes are just the awe and respect from fellow site members. no physical prize unless michael is feeling generous.

4.can i just add a suggestion? remove the user rep thing..

5. Yes and also have a section for self reviews...makes more sense then posting it in the forum and letting it fade away after all our hardwork undertaken to write it up.

thats about it..

[commedecargons]

1. a best photo taken competition?

arghh~~ will get bored very fast

a phone VS phone vote thing, ive seen it alot on other sites where they put this chick next to another and they have Challenger VS champion at the top. same as www.ridejudge.com so we see how long one phone can stand as champion till another comes in and kills it and takes over...itll be fun

yupe, a very general thing but hey~ they heats up the hype right?!

a design your own phone competition? maybe a flash game where we put parts together and list our own specs, or maybe we just make our own pics by ourselves then submit and see who wins...prizes are just the awe and respect from fellow site members. no physical prize unless michael is feeling generous.

can i just add a suggestion? remove the user rep thing..

total agree here, but if it's easier to leave it than remove it. Just leave it, i've forgotten it. :rolleyes:


Yes and also have a section for self reviews...makes more sense then posting it in the forum and letting it fade away after all our hardwork undertaken to write it up.

hard to do quality control i guess.

My suggestions:

1. Lesson of the day thing. - leaked some special things regarding phones to us. or teach something rare. or start with the "Did you know?" thing and tell us something regarding these technologies. some of us people here doesn't even know how to set up the pop3 email or imap ones. so mayb u gurus have something to share with us?

2. get more administrators

3. pick two most destructive fanboys and set a date for them to settle once and for all...err for example bxrt vs zalxmxh....K700 vs N6230. Then we all can chase the battle, or maybe some very free people can act as judges which gives point to every aspect the challengers argue and let the points decide who's the best cellphone worshipper and who's the tagged fanboy... hehe :D

4. keep the categories as few as possible. people like to hang out in the same 'channel' and blow almost everything there, this'll make the forum effective. for example those- ringtone, or technology threads should be left out... right?)

5. Set up a "If i were u i would go for..." not everyone choose phones base on their specs and performances, some would just go for a certain one cos they 'like' what reason they won't know. So maybe u guys can put up something like that and make choices totally BASE ON TOTAL PERSONAL UNFAIR BIASES . can??

[prateek]

hey u can add the compare phones table like in the nokia site to compare the phones features.
but in this case u can add the pros and cons and not limited to one company
and put up the price too addin to the pro can thingy

[shaheen]

"arghh~~ will get bored very fast"

highly doubt it..i like seeing pics taken by people..look at those threads done in howardforums and secentral.net howardforums one has gone to about 200 pages already...about over 2000pics. that aint boring. and this is just for motorola phones.

"yupe, a very general thing but hey~ they heats up the hype right?!"\

actually come to think of it its not a good idea... cause remember what happen when i created the thread, mpx VS S700? people went berserk and started slamming me for comparing 2 phones of different categories..this thing will definitely have phones that arent in the same category against each other.





"total agree here, but if it's easier to leave it than remove it. Just leave it, i've forgotten it. :rolleyes: "

fair enough...


"hard to do quality control i guess."

thats the whole point, there is no need for quality control or approval by michael and sid, its our review, we write what we want and we write at the bottom or something a disclaimer saying that typos and grammatical errors in this review was not administored by the owner and mods please PM "such and such" if any information needs to be cleared. thank you

My suggestions:

"1. Lesson of the day thing. - leaked some special things regarding phones to us. or teach something rare. or start with the "Did you know?" thing and tell us something regarding these technologies. some of us people here doesn't even know how to set up the pop3 email or imap ones. so mayb u gurus have something to share with us? "

frankly speaking whenever theres a bluetooth headset review or just something not a phone being reviewed on this site i never read it... like im sure not many people use pop3 email and imap, hell i never heard of imap till now. itll just be a waste of space..if its something on just phones and specs and pictures then everyone is gona want to see it cause this site is just for that.

"2. get more administrators "

why?...Sid, Michael and Deviant are doing a good job. and i think theres another dude, forgot his name..

"3. pick two most destructive fanboys and set a date for them to settle once and for all...err for example bxrt vs zalxmxh....K700 vs N6230. Then we all can chase the battle, or maybe some very free people can act as judges which gives point to every aspect the challengers argue and let the points decide who's the best cellphone worshipper and who's the tagged fanboy... hehe :D "

thats just immature and asking for flame wars..forums try to avoid flame wars as much as possible..its stupid and leads to major spamming.

"4. keep the categories as few as possible. people like to hang out in the same 'channel' and blow almost everything there, this'll make the forum effective. for example those- ringtone, or technology threads should be left out... right?)"

wrong..its better to be organised that way we know where to look when we are looking for information...if ringtones was under nokia and a guy wanted ringtones for his SE phone how is he gona know where to find it???

"5. Set up a "If i were u i would go for..." not everyone choose phones base on their specs and performances, some would just go for a certain one cos they 'like' what reason they won't know. So maybe u guys can put up something like that and make choices totally BASE ON TOTAL PERSONAL UNFAIR BIASES . can?"

this just sounds like a forum...its already what most of us are doing...

[cdover]

why?...Sid, Michael and Deviant are doing a good job. and i think theres another dude, forgot his name..

A great job. Um, and also Sean and Andrew.

[Viipottaja]

Michael,

I think the best thing on this site are your and other reviewer high quality reviews. I would focus your limited (I am sure you are facing some capacity, time, money constraints) recources to timely, comprehensive and unbiased reviews. But I agree with some, a list of "highly recommended" reviews would be a fairly low cost useful addition.

Photo section.. sure, fun, but you guys having to check every single picture before you put it up.. is that really worth the time and effort? I would rather you spend that time too on industry analysis (some kind of editorials on where the business is heading would be interesting) and reviews. That's what we come here for, primarily. An alternative, if you really want to have the photo section, would be to not to review the pics and if somebody then posts a pic of his ****, you would simply ban them forever (not sure if that's easy technically, that person could just keep creating new profiles).

I come to the site every day anyway, so a newsletter is of no added value to me (you basically already have it on the front page in that yellow box) so again, is it really worth your time and effort? I realise you are trying to attract more traffic to the site and thus more add revenue though and a newsletter might help in that.

In short, I guess, my comment is: focus on what you do best and leave gimmics to others. :)

[Mary]

Michael,

Any chance of incorporating a 'printer friendly' option in the site? I would love the ability of printing some of the reviews and news articles without needing a new colour printer cartridge each time :eek: ! As you know these are very expensive, and I'd rather put the money towards a new Sony Ericsson handset or accessory! :D

I also agree fully with Viipottaja's comments.

Thank U.

[shaheen]

get another mod to watch the pictures....

and what do u mean printer friendly? just copy the whole review, paste into word, select all, change to black colour so no need for colour printer. and print...sounds pretty friendly to me

[TheZodiac]

Hmmmmm..... how about a side module on the 5 most popular threads in the forum? Or. recently posted to threads :)

[Mary]

Time is of the essence - if the review is 17 pages long, as is the K700i review, do you really want to do that 17 times.

It is an easy option that can be incorporated into a site and is used by most!

[commedecargons]

AGREE AGREE AGREE, to all of ya! :D Please do the enhancements quick.... whenever there's no news, mobileburn is dead boring.

[cdover]

Or. recently posted to threads :)

:).

Don't we have that already on the main site?

[shaheen]

Thanks for that IT lesson and for stating the obvious Shaheen, but time is of the essence - if the review is 17 pages long, as is the K700i review, do you really want to do that 17 times.

It is an easy option that can be incorporated into a site and is used by most!

Now, end of subject and how about a more constructive effort on your part.

ouch, 3rd post and already shes on a warpath... if youre too lazy to copy and paste then go bug michael to do something about it.why bother printing it out anyway, its always gona be on this site, anytime u want to just refer to it. and for times u dont have internet access then just print out bits you need..

[dhub]

I personally like the idea about the photos, but I agree that you may need a moderator for appropriateness etc.

I would also like more editoral comment from the Michael and Sid, like what they do over at brighthand and infosyncworld, not to copy them but just to give us some of your thoughts on the industry from your inside perspective.

Also I love the length of the reviews and the depth of photos that you guys provide.

Thanks and keep up the good work.

[TheZodiac]

cdover, we probably do! (we meaning the site and comunity) Though I rarely look past the top two news releases before I hit the FORMS link :-P I guess ill start scrolling now! Ha!

[Michael]

Would the gallery be connected to the forum in some way (ie. PhotoPost or Coppermine), or be some of your special "home-built" software?

I like the idea of review ratings too...It would be part of the main site, not the forums.

[Michael]

What about a public review section where users can write a little short review on their phone?No, I don't want reader opinions ont he main site. That is what the forums are for. And this thread is for talking about new features on the main site.

[Michael]

hey u can add the compare phones table like in the nokia site to compare the phones features.
but in this case u can add the pros and cons and not limited to one company
and put up the price too addin to the pro can thingyThat requires all the specs to be stored in a database. It is very hard to maintain. Rich from phoneScoop does that.

Good idea, and one I get asked about constantly, but it requires way too much effort.

Will never happen.

[Michael]

Photo section.. sure, fun, but you guys having to check every single picture before you put it up.. is that really worth the time and effort? I would rather you spend that time too on industry analysis (some kind of editorials on where the business is heading would be interesting) and reviews. That's what we come here for, primarily. An alternative, if you really want to have the photo section, would be to not to review the pics and if somebody then posts a pic of his ****, you would simply ban them forever (not sure if that's easy technically, that person could just keep creating new profiles).It actually won't be much effort at all to approve the photos. The admin will auto-generate thumbnail images, display a page full of them, and have an option for "select all." Then we just deselect the bad ones, and hit approve. Can't see it as taking more than 5 minutes a day.

[Michael]

Any chance of incorporating a 'printer friendly' option in the site? I would love the ability of printing some of the reviews and news articles without needing a new colour printer cartridge each time :eek: ! As you know these are very expensive, and I'd rather put the money towards a new Sony Ericsson handset or accessory! :D Hmmm, that wouldn't be hard at all, I figure. Is there really a demand for such? I know a few camera sites that do that and such, but it just never seemed to be of any use to me.

But that is just me, a guy that is online 18h a day.

Anybody else have thoughts on the printer friendly version?

[trickyd]

1) Fanboy debates on specific head to head phones battles would be interesting and valuable. BUT, I would make them invited speakers, and they should be presented in the main site not a forum. They could be archived so a user could use it as a resource to compare and purchase new phones. Ideally, you would want the format of those debates to move toward a standard presentation of the phones.

2) A what you need to know guide about buying a specific phone. For example, it would be valuable if I were buying a K700i to know not to touch any firmware under R2L, and not to buy a branded phone from Vodafone because it removes a certain functionality, etc. It could include a street price for the phone. It could include non-OEM accessory recommendations. Must have accessories and thing to do without. MICHAEL: I know you are not looking for new editorial content to manage, but this might not be that painful.

3) How about feature stories on emerging technologies? Maybe a story on telecomm initiatives and partenrships like Nokia and Visa's e-wallet. you might even get them to provide the content (wishful thinking).

4) Is there a way to capture frequent complaints and highly desirable wants from consumers that can be sold back to carriers as business intelligence and marketing research? It becomes a win win scenario. Consumers air their complaints and desires, you capture them and sell the informatuion back to carriers who hopefully implement changes. ( OK now I am really dreaming.)

Maybe some of these items can be ciontained in your newsletter idea, but you might get more mileage out of individual stories or content sections. Sometimes newsletters are overlooked. If you do newsletters, I would advise pushing the content to users and archiving on the site. Subscribing will give you a good indication of demand. If people are not subscribing pull the plug and just add the content to your site as articles.

Just my opinions!

[trickyd]

Anybody else have thoughts on the printer friendly version?


Photos to compare would be great! Maybe even a section of reference photos ( 1 or 2 at most for each phone) of the same object under the same conditions, like you and Sid do with your desks or something like that. As for printer-friendly, that is not valuable to me at all.

[alex89]

maybe you should change the look of the main page and make it a bit flachy :cool: maybe you could use some other colors for the main page!!! ande change the structure of the main site that would be very cool :D :cool:

[Viipottaja]

Printer friendly sounds good to me, reading 10-15 review on paper would be nicer than on the screen. I support Mary here. :)

[Michael]

Photos to compare would be great! Maybe even a section of reference photos ( 1 or 2 at most for each phone) of the same object under the same conditions, like you and Sid do with your desks or something like that. As for printer-friendly, that is not valuable to me at all.Outside of using my photo studio equipment, there is no way to compare camera abilities by taking photos "in the same circumstances" simply because the circumstances wouldn't be the same.

The sun is brighter one day to the next (or at least the amount of sunlight reaching us is changing, before one of you smart-alecs goes on about the sun not changing).

And a studio situation is not exactly common. Just because a camera works well in my setup with studio lights doesn't mean it will work in daylight well.

Sid and I went around and around with this a while ago, which is what led me to the user submitted photo gallery idea in the first place.

[commedecargons]

Maybe you guys could add a section where we can all download videos of advertisements, released or unreleased; it'll be cool. For example the earlier Sony Ericsson ad which were then took down upon request by SE. Most of the phones then were already released or announced; therefore maybe it's ok for u all to post, us to download i guess.

P.S. I already downloaded that, but mine is already compressed to a very low quality 2.3MB file. Any original file available? That file is under WMV, when i convert it to 3GP it's even worse, it makes up only about 800+kb-- imagine the quality!!

[kyoots]

Yes, Michael. Adding a photo galleries section would be great, but surely, we also have to consider stingent screening of the photos - e.g. to be sure that the photo was taken from a K700i and not from a sony cybershot.

The newsletter is also a good idea so that members will know what's new on the site.

[eMumu]

I think the site can use a well designed user interface. As many phone companies are upgrade/renewing their product style, Mobileburn can also have a face lift. Whatever is not consistant, the layout, the visual hierarchy, widgets, oh yeah... the logo... all have great room to improve. As site data is growing, it would be better to take care of this part as early as possible. I also think on the manufacture page, if the page can be arranged with some information for each phone such as released date, price range... Also, page break scheme on reviews need rethinking. Besides knowing there are 5 pages, user has no clue on what are they on each page but walk thru all of them page by page. There is a digital camera site, dpreview.com, which I think they have done a incredible job on both information architecture and user interface and interaction design. Even the forum is in lined with the overall site style. Way to go!

eMumu

[commedecargons]

Yes, Michael. Adding a photo galleries section would be great, but surely, we also have to consider stingent screening of the photos - e.g. to be sure that the photo was taken from a K700i and not from a sony cybershot.

The newsletter is also a good idea so that members will know what's new on the site.

It's very easy from what i know, the properties sections of the photos will tell where they're from.

[Michael]

Also, page break scheme on reviews need rethinking. Besides knowing there are 5 pages, user has no clue on what are they on each page but walk thru all of them page by page.That is 100% intentional. A business decision, not a UI one. I get paid based on page views, not on the user having the easiest experience possible. The reality of the situation is that even adding the controls at the top that show the links to each page has cut down on the number of page views, and thusly in the amount of advertisements that get shown. That means less money for me.

In the end, this is a business. It isn't something I do just for kicks.

There is still a possibility that I will add a DPreview type set of page controls, but I have not decided yet. For now, it stays as-is.

As to a site redesign, that is already in process. As I have said elsewhere, I hired a designer to code a new layout for the site that is xHTML compliant and that relies more heavily on style sheets.

[pixados]

I think the reviews on this site are quite good, but I personally miss a good look into how user friendly mobiles are. The areas of 'look and feel' are extensively discussed in the reviews on this site, but how easy to use the mobiles are does not get enough attention in my opinion.

For example: the new Motorola V3 Razr is a great looking mobile, but Motorola does not have a good reputation on being user friendly (especially if you compare them with Nokia phones). From the review of the V3 I cannot get a good impression on how this phone performs at that point.
<<I don't want to start a discussion between Motorola and Nokia enthusiasts here, so please stick to the subject if you reply!!>>

So maybe every review can include a standard test on this point with comments on:
- How easy is it to add new telephone numbers?
- How logical and easy is it to find your way through the menu structure?
- How easy it is to use the mobile handsfree (easy dialling in the car through easy access to numbers and/or voice dialling can prevent accidents!)

[shaheen]

frankly speaking i think Michaels doing a kick ass job already. i really cant think of any really substantial things to add to this site to make it better. its about phones and he does phones well. on the business side he needs page hits and i dont see any other way of getting them besides reviews...so yea..do more reviews!

lol. gd work Michael..

[jc_seremify]

*skipped most of the posts*

I've stopped caring about the Rep power.. I don't understand how it works so it doesn't really affect me anyway =S

My suggestion? I think it would be cool if there was a way we could list our phones and comments on them, and somehow incorporate it into our profile in a way other than just putting it in our sig.

I can't really think of much else which applies to the site in terms of suggestions because I like the content as its detailed, and it covers things which interest me. Some sites have commenting features on the news stories- maybe it might be possible to do this on all articles and reviews, linking them to the forum? I know that the reviews is already an option, but its not automated? Thats about all I can think of.

[DAN55]

i still cant access the main site?

[DAN55]

still cant :(

[fabarati]

*also skipped most of the posts*
A Xhtml/wapsite. that's all i say

[Michael]

For example: the new Motorola V3 Razr is a great looking mobile, but Motorola does not have a good reputation on being user friendly (especially if you compare them with Nokia phones). From the review of the V3 I cannot get a good impression on how this phone performs at that point.We haven't reviewed the Razr V3. Only posted specs and a general description.

As to the other suggestion about user comments on phones or such that somebody mentioned, that is what the forums are for. They have no place on the main site.