Thanks to everyone who has taken time to look at Relevenz, try it out and give some feedback.
Now that the service is live, I'd like to take a little time to explain what we're trying to do with the service.
The Kitchen Calender - Sharing Plans
To put it simply, Relevenz is an electronic "kitchen calendar".
If you haven't used a kitchen calender before, it is a paper based calendar that is usually hung on a wall in your kitchen. All the things that are going on in a family get listed there, things such as doctor appointments, parent teacher meetings and a whole host of other plans and events.
The reason for doing this it so that any family member will know what the other members are doing at any time. It is really useful when trying to organise your own time.
But there are problems:
1. It is paper based. This means that it gets quite messy when events and plans change.
2. It is in the kitchen. Of course it is! It's a kitchen calender after all. However, most of the notifications we get for things to do or places to go occur when we're not in the kitchen.
3. It is limited to the family sharing the kitchen. There are others that we need to inform about our plans - extended family, friends and so on.
Why not use an electronic calendar?
All calendars are innately personal. Mine contains a wide range of things that I've got planned, in work, at home and with friends. If I want to let others know of my plans, I've got two alternatives:
1. I can send them an invitation to specific events. This is not satisfactory as I am not actually inviting them to the event, but rather letting them know that I am going.
2. I can share my whole calendar. This equally is not satisfactory as my calendar contains a mix of things and I don't want everyone to see everything.
What does Relevenz 1.0 do?
In the first version we have released, you can enter the details of plans and events that you have and share them with particular family and friends.
Our choice of using a Facebook login is primarily around making it easy to share your plans and events with an existing list of friends rather than making it necessary to forge new connections in a new social network. It also uses wall postings to let people know that their friends have shared plans and events with them.
Your plans and events are shown in a list format on the main dashboard in Relevenz. Any plans or events that have been shared with you are also shown there. The key thing is that only the people you have shared your plans with get to see them.
What now?
There are many ideas that we have, including filtering, integration with regular calendars and so on. But first, try it out and see what you think!
If you have any comments or suggestions on how the service can be enhanced, please let me know by leaving a comment below or emailing us at info@relevenz.com.
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