@myBase

Do we really need an overly complex place reviewing, scoring, filtering, encyclopedia-like website to help us discover places to enjoy?

When looking for a place, what do we really want to know about them? Do we really need to know, up front, every tiny detail? Would that even be helpful?

I believe it would not be. Too much info and we don’t fully take it all in. Too many options and our minds begin to wonder.

Instead I think there is a specific set of info we absolutely need:

1. What is it?
   We need the name of the place (and the name in English if overseas), any nicknames, what type of place (steakhouse, grocery store, etc…), and some photos to see it.
   
   
2. Where is it?
   Need a map, maybe some driving directions, and possibly even a way to “pin it” on our mobile devices.
   
   
3. Anyone talking about it/is it relevant to me?
   If our friends are talking about the place, we probably want to check it out too. Or, if there have been a lot of check-ins, photos, etc… it’s probably popular, so we want to check it out.

It must be simple too. No extra clicks or page loads just to see small amounts of extra info. All of the basics in one location, and have a venue to read/leave comments on the place.

That’s all we really need! Right?

I’m at a cross-roads. Do I continue down the path AtMyBase is going and ultimately end up not 100% satisfied with the outcome? Or do stop down, re-think/re-imagine, and start building what I know will make me 100% happy with AtMyBase’s future?

Not a difficult problem is it? Duh, who’d pick the first choice?

Re-thinking AtMyBase. What does that mean?

It means, I’ll be doing a “gut check”. What is the core of AtMyBase? The places. The thousands upon thousands of places around our military bases world-wide, which members can discover, document, discuss, etc… Yet, that part of AtMyBase has not yet reached it’s full potential.

So why does AtMyBase have articles!? Yes, they’re useful… yes, they’re informative, etc… but SO MANY other websites already tackle the problem of informing members about the details of the base (PCS’ing procedures, POC’s, units, etc…).

Then there’s Facebook. Everyone uses Facebook, and belong to many of the Facebook groups which relate to their base. With so many of our peers already in the Facebook groups we’re a part of at our base, why not just seek assistance there?

Most do, which is another reason articles bring little to the AtMyBase experience.

So what’s next?

At first, AtMyBase will ONLY support the discovery/documentation of places. Everything else will be removed. However, the entire user experience will be rebuilt to make it AWESOME, for lack of a better term.

Once places is “done”, other services that I truly want AtMyBase to support, which isn’t handled REALLY well by other sites, are:

• Things to do (events, trips, playgroups, etc…)
• Classifieds (other sites do this, none do it REALLY well)

So those will be the BIG THREE: Places, Things to Do, and Classifieds.

However, the second two won’t come until I’m happy with how places have turned out. There’s a LOT of work to do on places alone. I want places to:

• Help members discover new places to enjoy
• Urge, assist, and make as easy as possible, for members to “document” places. This means they can share their own description, write a review, share tips, give driving directions, upload photos, etc…
• Support home enterprises. It can be hard to advertise home enterprises on-base, and through Facebook.
• Monetize. Give business owners the ability to pay to take ownership of their page; granting access to some advanced tools to help promote their business more

Ultra-Fast, Responsive, User Experience

Part of the re-imagining is to rebuild AtMyBase as a “Single Page App”, otherwise known as a SPA. If you’ve used Gmail before, you’ve used a SPA before. I want AtMyBase to be the absolute fastest, smoothest, experience you can have while discovering and documenting places around your base.

It should also be responsive, making it 100% usable no matter what type of device you’re using it from: iPad, iPhone, Android, PC, etc…

Data Re-imagined

Going forward, I don’t want AtMyBase to simply act as a giant list of places around our bases globally. It should do some work for you:

• What places are popular nearby the base? 
• What places have the most reviews? 
• Which have none (and therefore need some help)?
• What are some places similar to the one you’re looking at now?
• What are some places your friends have been to? What did they think?
• What places of [type] are within 5km of the base? 10km? 20km? …
• What places of [type] contain [keyword] within 10km? …
• If overseas, what places within n kilometers don’t have their English name set?

Those are just examples of data scenarios. I want AtMyBase to be flexible enough to be able to answer those, and any number of other similar questions that may pop into out minds at any given time.

Simplified Interface

In fact, I want the interface to be super simple. Perhaps just asking “What are you looking for today?” You can then proceed to fill in the blanks ad-libs style:

• “I’m looking for a pizza joint within 10km of Yokota AB, Japan”
• “I’m looking for some hot wings”

This is useful if you know specifically, or somewhat closely, what you’re looking for. What if you don’t? I want AtMyBase to further dig in a bit. Perhaps below the question above it could have things like:

• Here are some places you’re friends have been to recently
• Here are some popular places nearby Yokota
• Here are some places similar to others you’ve discovered on AtMyBase”

The Tech

For those techie geeks out there like me, the tech behind the next AtMyBase will be HTML5, ASP.NET Web API, Knockout, and jQuery (with some third-party libraries to help mesh things together).

In the military community we hear these words often. They’re supposed to be words to live by, to strive for excellence.

Attention to detail

I’m working on an upgrade to AtMyBase right now which, if I were to title it, I would name it “attention to detail”. What the heck does that mean, right? Essentially, I re-working the place pages, and I’ve give myself 2 weeks longer to tweak and polish the crap out of it, before releasing it.

The place pages are being broken up by their content. The first page you’ll see will be the overview page. It shows descriptions of the place, and previews of reviews, tips, directions, etc…

Then each section is a separate part: reviews, tips, photos, and directions. Each section will beautifully show you the content AND give you elegant tools to help you both understand that you can contribute, and make it easier to do so.

Above and beyond

When I said elegant tools, I meant it. The forms used to contribute are a short as they can be. They’re also immediately noticeable. You won’t miss the fact that there is something you can do on the page. Previously many actions were hidden behind buttons (which many would likely never click).

Then make them operate smoothly. The forms are easy to complete, and easy to submit. They’ll stay out of your way as best they can, while giving you the power to contribute when you want to (and remind you that you can). 

The next update is going to be great, can’t wait to release it for you!

Over the course of the next few days, we’ll be restructuring the place page layouts a bit more. There will be some cleanup, to make the pages neater, as well as some additional pages created to show more information when needed.

For example, if a place has 20 reviews, you probably don’t want to see all 20 in a straight list all together, right on the front page of the place. Instead, it will show you just the first few, then give a link to see more. Same goes for tips, driving directions, descriptions, and photos.

On the “new pages”, depending on the type of content, there will be form directly inline to help you share your experiences about places. For example, on the reviews page, there will be a form right inline to let you know you can review the place, and make it easy to do.

Discoverable content

These new pages will be easily “discoverable”, by a simple change in the url. For example, the url to see a photo gallery of a place would be something like www.atmybase.com/yokota-ab-japan/Places/Show/{PlaceId}/Photos. Notice the /Photos on the end of the url? This is how you’ll know you’re on the photos page of a given place.

Stay tuned, more to come! 

Right now, when you’re logged into AtMyBase, by default you get a lot of really cool information. You can see which places you’ve discovered, places you’ve viewed most, activities you’ve taken on the site, and even the contributions of others… but there’s one problem:

It’s BORING!

Maybe that’s not fair. The information itself isn’t boring, the presentation is. It isn’t interesting to read lists of places, even if it is separated by tabs. So what can we do instead?

A “narrative assistant”

Instead of long lists of places, you’ll see some narration. Possibly something like:

“Hello Chad, here are five popular places you haven’t discovered yet.”, or “Here are the five places you’ve look at the most, but haven’t reviewed yet. Got time now?”

The narrative is structured in a way to give you interesting information in a “human tone”, and gently nudge you into participating a bit (by asking you to review places).

Clean, orderly, and entertaining…

The narrative doesn’t have to be boring either. It absolutely does need to be short, and easy-to-read… but why not make it entertaining too? Something like:

“Looks like you’re a BBQ aficionado! Here’s a couple more BBQ places you haven’t checked out yet. Enjoy, and let us know what you think!”

This makes AMB feel more in-touch with our needs as humans; a site built for us, not robots. Can’t wait to get this released to see what you think, we believe you’ll love it!

I know, I know… so many other sites do classifieds already, why create your own?

Well, while I think the other sites provide a great service to the community, I think AtMyBase can do it better. Here’s what I’ve got planned for buyers and  sellers on AtMyBase:

• post as many ads as you want, no limit (well, within reason… if you begin posting hundreds of ads at once, perhaps you’re spamming?)
• ads auto-expire after 30 days, unless “bumped” (with bumping restrictions), you will be notified 3 days in advance of this
• you can attach as many photos to the ad as you want, from your Fb albums (literally no limit. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, how many can you fit into a full album? :)
• your ads can be auto-posted to as many Fb groups you belong to as you want
• not only post to groups, but auto-bump the posts when the ad gets bumped on AMB
• not just bump, but remove the ads posted on Fb groups when an ad expires, or is marked sold
• provide a central “marketplace” right inside Facebook so potential buyers can browse ads without leaving Fb
• geo-tag the ads so they can be displayed on nearby bases (for example, Yokota-based ads can appear on Camp Zama’s marketplace since the two bases are close enough to possibly sell to each other)
• have sharing tools on each ad so visitors can share them with friends
• have only a few broad categories: baby & kid stuff, clothing, vehicles, video games & electronics, etc… The key is just a few categories to make it easy to pick, and have a decent selection of ads within each category
• monitor views and show stats to the seller
• show buyers how long the ad has been online (in case they wanted to barter with the seller)
• show vehicle ads on the Newcomer’s page, since most will likely be searching for a car when they arrive
• tie ads into the overall search function on the site, so as visitors search, they could find ads too

Once upon a time, you were new to Yokota (& Japan for that matter). Think back. Do you remember what it felt like? That fear of getting lost your first steps outside the gate? Maybe your sponsor told you how delicious yakiniku was and you wanted it right then and there! But you didn’t know where to go? What if you had help?

Now when you view lists of places, they show a large photo - overlaid with the place’s name. This solves 2 problems:

1. Makes the list much less boring to look at
2. Gives you a glimpse at what the place offers

I’ve gotten a couple questions about this in the last couple hours. Here’s the reason we can’t upload photos directly to AtMyBase: storage space/hosting costs.

At this time, AtMyBase earns no profit; it’s completely out of pocket. So I’m trying to keep operating expenses as low as possible.

However, in the future, when AtMyBase is earning some margin of profits, I’ll be adding the ability to upload photos. I’ve already got the plans in place for when that day comes.

I really appreciate your understanding in this, and look forward to seeing your contributions on AtMyBase. Thank you!

Due to some AWESOME testing/feedback from members of the community, the way places are listed will change. Turns out, the way they’re listed now is… ahem, BORING!

Right now they’re just listed, by name, in a list next to a map with map markers. While that’s pretty cool, it’s not cool enough (and rather dull to look at). This method fails because it provides no hints as to what each place is/offers before you actually click the place.

Pictures to the rescue!

To remedy this, the list will change. By default, it will show only places which have photos, but that’s not all. Instead of just a boring name in a list, it will show a large image of the place, with the name of the place overlaid on top. Then, if there are more photos available, tiny thumbnail photos to let you see a bit more of the place.

These will show in the list directly to the left of the map, making an overall nicer experience with the added benefit of giving you a hint of what the place offers.

Thank you for the great feedback!

A fringe benefit of the log-in code updates I made a couple days ago is that now you can log in from government computer systems. Now, keep in mind that AtMyBase is not a DoD product. If you connect to it from a government computer, please make sure you’re conducting yourself in a manner compliant with your office rules.

Here’s the DoD legalese

The Department of Defense does not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with the material posted on AtMyBase.com. Any information or material placed online, including advice and opinions, are the views and responsibility of those making the comments and do not necessarily represent the views of The Department of Defense, the United States Government or its third party service providers. By submitting material to AtMyBase.com, you agree that the Department of Defense, the United States Government and its third party service providers are not responsible, and shall have no liability to you, with respect to any information or materials posted by others, including defamatory, offensive or illicit material, even material that violates this Agreement.

Spent the last couple days digging through all the code which authenticates members on AtMyBase. Found a whole bunch of optimizations, and the result is a faster, more responsive AtMyBase which also more reliably keeps you logged in!

If you were experiencing a strange, intermittent, log-out while in the middle of using AtMyBase, you should no longer experience that awful bug.

Facebook Permissions

Also, I added the user_photos permission request to logins. What this does is ask you to authorize AtMyBase to read your photos on Facebook. This is to allow you to attach your Facebook photos to AMB places!

Yesterday I released a new capability on AtMyBase, the ability to attach any number of photos from your Facebook photo albums, to places on AtMyBase.

It’s quite slick actually. While logged into AMB, and viewing a place, you click the “Contribute” button, then choose “Attach Photos”. You’ll see a popup which will list your Fb photo albums.

Clicking an album will show the photos in that album. Clicking on photos will add them to a list of photos to be attached to the place. You can select as many as you want.

What about security & privacy!?

Here’s what’s going on behind the scenes:

First, keep in mind that when you list your Fb albums, it’s ONLY you who sees them. They’re literally loaded directly between your computer & Facebook, AtMyBase doesn’t see them at all.

Upon clicking an album, the photos of the album load similarly: directly between your computer & Facebook; not 1 bit of your photo data touches AMB servers.

You then click photos that you would like to attach to AMB. Still, at this point, AMB is completely unaware of your photos.

After you’ve selected the ones you’d like to attach to the place, you click the “attach photos” button. It’s at this point that AMB receives the list of photos (literally only a list, not actual photo data).

In fact, AMB doesn’t save the photo itself either. It only creates a link to the photos you selected. AMB will allow you to link any photo in any album, but it’s entirely your choice which photos to attach.

Please be careful

When attaching photos, use your best judgement. If it’s a private photo you don’t want others to see, please don’t attach it. AMB won’t prevent you from attaching photos which you’ve marked as private.

Now the footer of AtMyBase has links to our social media pages. Use them to stay up-to-date with changes to AMB.

We’ll also be publishing, every 12 hours, the contributions our members have been making. Like our Facebook page, or follow us on Twitter to be notified when AMB members have added new content.

It comes in a digest format, once every 12 hours (if there have been any contributions in that time frame), containing a list of the contributions members have made. Things like: adding English names, describing places, writing articles, reviews, tips, etc…