

Seeking alpha testers for Beepl - jparicka

We have an early alpha out, and I was wondering if I can find some volunteer alpha testers over here?  The address is http://alpha.beepl.com<p>I cannot wait to hear back from you.  Thanks!
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atgm
I tried to log in with twitter and got the following, using Opera 11 on
Windows 7:

Incorrect string value: '\xE3\x81\x8C\xE3\x81\xAA...' for column 'text' at row
1Request Method: GET Request URL: <http://alpha.beepl.com/register/new> Django
Version: 1.2.4 Exception Type: Warning Exception Value: Incorrect string
value: '\xE3\x81\x8C\xE3\x81\xAA...' for column 'text' at row 1 Exception
Location: /opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/warnings.py in warn_explicit, line
102 Python Executable: /opt/bitnami/python/bin/.python.bin Python Version:
2.5.4 Python Path: ['/home/jparicka/svn/beepl',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/site-
packages/MySQL_python-1.2.3c1-py2.5-linux-i686.egg',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/site-packages/tweepy-1.7.1-py2.5.egg',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/site-
packages/simplejson-2.1.2-py2.5-linux-i686.egg',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/site-packages/oauth2-1.2.0-py2.5.egg',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/site-packages/httplib2-0.6.0-py2.5.egg',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/site-
packages/rdflib-2.4.2-py2.5-linux-i686.egg',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/site-
packages/jsonlib-1.6.1-py2.5-linux-i686.egg',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/site-
packages/oauth_python_twitter-1.0-py2.5.egg',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/site-
packages/python_twitter-0.6-py2.5.egg',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/site-packages/flup-1.0.1-py2.5.egg',
'/opt/bitnami/apps/django/lib/python2.5/site-packages',
'/home/jparicka/svn/beepl', '/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python25.zip',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5', '/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/plat-
linux2', '/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/lib-tk',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/lib-dynload',
'/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.5/site-packages'] Server time: Sat, 15 Jan
2011 12:51:25 +0000

~~~
atgm
Going to the page in a new tab shows that I'm logged in fine, apparently.

As a side note, the font that you use in the post-it notes looks like Comic
Sans, which makes it look a bit tacky. Perhaps a font that's more clearly
different from Comic Sans or closer to "handwriting" would help?

~~~
jparicka
Will do. Thanks!

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atgm
I'm not quite sure what the bee logo that shows up on beeps (tweets?) is for.
There's nothing to indicate what it does when I mouseover, and the page it
takes me to is filled with all kinds of stuff.

I was looking for a way to respond to answers.

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atgm
Now that I'm logged in, here's a feature suggestion... it would be kind of
cool to be able to flip through suggested questions randomly, or perhaps look
at "genres" of questions if you're in an answering mood.

~~~
jparicka
Sounds good. Our idea is to match relevant questions to you - those in which
you expressed the strongest interest. This is what will effectively turn beepl
into a question distribution platform. I am hoping to have this in place
sometimes next week. Thanks for a great feedback!!

------
jparicka
A quick note for those who signed in (thank you for that btw), you can send
questions to beepl directly from Twitter simply by adding #ask hashtag to
them.

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atgm
My biggest complaint is that there's no page to explain what beepl is or how
it works -- things I'd like to know before I sign in with my Twitter account.

~~~
jparicka
Good point. Once you sign in, it allows you to ask questions via twitter,
simply by adding #ask hashtag to them. Beepl finds these questions,
semantically analyse them, find the experts and the relevant answers and
prompts you once it figured out the answer. I will try to communicate it
better on the home page. Great feedback, thanks!

~~~
atgm
That explanation's good enough for me, honestly; if it were listed simply on a
separate, clearly linked page, I would be satisfied.

------
jparicka
PS - please keep in mind this is ALPHA. Things change every day as I'm working
on it.

------
jparicka
Thank you, folks. Great feedback.

~~~
jparicka
Although, I really hoped someone will ask some question to give this a try..
It's just a prototype anyway. So thanks again.

~~~
atgm
Hmm, I tried asking a few questions through beepl's interface with the twitter
checkbox selected, but none of them are actually showing up as my tweets.

~~~
jparicka
Yeah, I disabled this temporarily. I thought it's not a good idea to allow
this in the alpha stage.

~~~
atgm
Ah. Might want to let users know when it's disabled, even in Alpha. If I
hadn't been able to ask and the questions hadn't shown up in twitter, I
probably would have just left and never bothered to try again.

