Dantoon Blog
July 8, 2010
A New Dantoon for a Better You (or something similarly inspirational)
Midsummer is upon us (well, technically not for a few weeks, but I’m feeling Shakespearean), and Dantoon has spent a long, toilsome spring getting ready for a bunch of awesome new features. It’s now my pleasure to introduce them to you, live, on this very site:
- Facebook Connect: It’s hard to say which new feature is most important to the site, but the ability to integrate with the world’s largest social network can’t be far from the top of the list. Now you can log in with your Facebook info, automatically find and import your friends on Dantoon, and send notifications of your Dantoon activities to Facebook (but only if you want to). This will give your posts infinitely greater exposure, and import much of that addictive social goodness from the undisputed ruler of the social web. YIPPEE!
- Categories: Posts are now organized into categories (with “Personal & Random,” and even “Other” an attractive option for those of us who just want to shoot the breeze – I speak for myself). This makes browsing and discovering content much easier; I encourage you to try it out!
- Topics: Posts (and people) can now gather around specific topics, with the most popular topics rising to the front of the site (within each category as well as generally). This is a feature I’m particularly excited about, as you can now invite people not only within Dantoon but also from outside to join the discussion on topics that interest you. Simply click on “Start a Topic” on the left side of your homepage to get going. By joining a topic, you don’t even need to contribute: you can just subscribe to updates as they come into the site. Aside from pressing topics such as the world cup, the current heat wave in the Northeast, and annoying grammar mistakes in everyday speech, I have a few esoteric topics in mind that should only interest a few nerds of my own acquaintance, and I can’t wait to make Dantoon the virtual gathering place of our geekdom. You’ll love it!
Other functional and design upgrades can be found throughout the site. Much of these changes and the new features outlined above is the direct product of your feedback. I’m thankful for all the guidance and advice that went into this new version of the site, and I’m always thirsty (nay, parched) for more. Whatever you think, I wanna hear it. As always, contact [at] dantoon [dot] com is the way to get in touch. Or just find me on the site.
Finally, I’m proud to announce we’ve been accepted into the Founder Institute startup incubator in New York City. Beginning this September, we’ll be attaching a rocket to this thing and majorly picking up the pace in our plan for world domination. SHAZAM!
I’ll see you all on the interweb (or offline, if you wanna hang out, or whatever).
Your devoted founder,
Teymour
March 23, 2010
Yahoo! and Google and Dantoon, oh my!
It’s my great pleasure to announce the ability to sign into Dantoon with your Yahoo! or Google Account! No need to create a separate account on Dantoon if you already use Yahoo! Mail or Gmail; simply click on the appropriate icon to sign in through the service you already use. You can also import contacts from your Yahoo! or Gmail address book directly once you log in.
Enjoy logging in without having to sign up!
Your devoted founder,
Teymour
February 24, 2010
Going Public! (No, not in that sense)
Welcome everyone! And I mean both words literally. I heartily mean “welcome,” and I literally mean “everyone.” A few months after unveiling an early testing version of Dantoon to a closed group, the new, expanded, revised website is now open to everyone on the internet. For those of you who’ve been here since the first beta release, I’m delighted to tell you about some of the new features:
- Dear Dantoon: You can now post short yes/no questions about anything you want, and let the whole world answer. Should you stay in your relationship? Is Pepsi better than Coke? Should you shave your chest? Think of it as the “Ask the audience” lifeline from “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” but you write the question and the entire internet is the audience. Ask Dantoon anything you want, and let people you know, or people you don’t know, reply with “Yes,” “No,” or “Can’t Answer.” Then sit back and watch the breakdown as answers come in. You can also answer other people’s questions by clicking on the “Dear Dantoon” widget on the homepage, which will serve you question after question after question. You don’t even need to be a registered member to answer questions. Do it directly from Dantoon.com without logging in. How’s that for procrastination?
- Import your contacts: from places like Gmail and Yahoo! Your friends are Dantoon’s friends!
- Integrating with the world’s most popular blogging platform: WordPress. If you have a WordPress blog, now you can link it to Dantoon and update your Dantoon account with all your recent WordPress posts at the click of a button. And if you have a self-hosted blog powered by WordPress.org, you can add a widget to show pictures of your subscribers on your blog, and add a “Subscribe” button for anyone who stops by your blog.
- You can also link your website to Dantoon, if you’re more of a personal website type (or a small business) than a blogger. With the new Dantoon widget, you can add pictures of your subscribers on your website, and add a “Subscribe” button for anyone who stops by your web page. As my grandmother would say: “heart, what more could you want?” (But she’d say it in German.)
In addition, many small changes have been made, following precious feedback from many among you.
- Web Links within posts are now clickable from the post page.
- You can take your time with long posts without being kicked out after fifteen minutes on the site!
- You’ll be able to stay in the loop if one of your comments inspires further conversation.
- You can invite as many people as you want… You don’t even need to invite them: just send them a link to Dantoon.com and now they can register directly, whatever their emails.
Thanks to everyone who bore with the site through the overhaul, and to everyone who participated, contributed, gave feedback and made suggestions. Thanks to Roya and Mr. Opinion for their advice with Dear Dantoon, and their glorious posts. Thanks to Charlie for the added conversation notifications within comments. Thanks to Jilly for showing me how frustrating lost comments (written before you log in) can be, and for upping the ante with her scintillating posts from Vanity Fair, the Huffington Post, and Blogger. Thanks to Chris for his invaluable suggestions, especially regarding further ways to integrate with the blogosphere, and for taking Dantoon to another level by letting us rub shoulders with Newsweek. Thanks to others for remaining faithful, inspired, and inspiring while the website remained under construction (I’m thinking about Felca, Katie, Silversound, Paul, and others…).
Dantoon may be open for business, but we’re still in beta! There may be bugs and glitches on the website, and the sky’s the limit in terms of room for improvement. Your feedback and suggestions are as appreciated as ever. Some pointers by the relentless Mr. Opinion and others have already set plans in motion for further changes… Please don’t be shy. I’m always available here, or by email at contact[at]dantoon[dot]com.
Now that we can have as many people as our (new) servers will handle (and we can always expand those), please don’t be shy about spreading the word!
Some of you have referred to me as the “architect,” or as “Dan” (not my name; the site’s name has no logical meaning), but I remain, first and foremost,
Your devoted founder,
Teymour
December 1, 2009
Dantoon is 1 month old! (sort of)
It’s been a busy Thanksgiving for Dantoon. After a couple of relatively big changes, the website is just about done wiping gravy and cranberry sauce off its chin and ready to greet visitors new and old. There’s also a bit of (birthday cake) frosting involved, since Dantoon turned one month old on Sunday, November 29. For most of this month, the website was closed to new visitors (and registration is currently still limited) for the purposes of testing. And yet, in spite of these restrictions, activity has been increasing daily, and early feedback has already led to major improvements on the site. Even if it weren’t the season for giving thanks, I’d take this opportunity to thank everyone who’s been on Dantoon so far. Thank you for making it so much fun, so fast.
And now for the news.
First and foremost, I’d like to draw attention to a bit of press this early testing release of Dantoon has received, in the form of a very nice article published on the Fly By blog of the Harvard Crimson: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2009/11/29/dantoon-shahabi-opera-post/ Read it, send it to your friends, and frame it above your beds.
There have been major new developments inside the website itself. The most obvious change is the addition of the new “All Posts” tab, which allows people (whether they’re registered on the site or not) to browse the posts chronologically, from newest to oldest. Thanks to Mr. Opinion for the suggestion, which does allow for the discovery of content that doesn’t make it to the Top Posts. Now you can read absolutely everything submitted on Dantoon, starting with the latest posts to reach the website.
In addition, there’s now the possibility to thread conversations within comments thanks to the new “reply” functionality. I noticed that much of the action going on was taking place within comments, but there was no way for the author of a comment to see the reactions to his/her contribution without checking the post directly. Now you can reply to specific comments within posts, which will allow you to engage in direct conversation with the people whose comments interest/delight/enrage you.
By the way, I’ll grab this chance to alert you to a cool feature that isn’t new, but that still seems relatively underused on the site: using the “Share” button, you can publish any Dantoon post to your Facebook or Twitter account, or email it to contacts outside the website. This uses an awesome little application that does it all very fast, and I recommend you check it out.
Finally, as of today, the website is officially open to members of MIT. I’d like to increase the pool of contributions for this testing release before opening it up to a wider public in early 2010, and MIT is the obvious next step. I look forward to seeing new Cantabrigians on the website, and I’m very excited about welcoming this brilliant community to Dantoon.
That’s about it for now. At the expense of repeating myself, I will restate that this is still a private beta (testing) release of the site, and I’m more than ever open to comments, suggestions, and questions regarding any aspect of the site at contact [at] dantoon [dot] com.
Thanks for hanging out on Dantoon, and have a great day.
Your devoted founder,
Teymour
November 23, 2009
Getting rid of the hallway, making the living room bigger
People who\'ve been here before will notice that the homepage (or, more accurately, the landing page) has changed. Though I did find the previous earth from space image pretty cool, its removal was a very necessary change... People who actually signed into Dantoon and started using it seemed to love it and come back all the time, but others just never got to that stage. So, instead of hoping to bring people to that stage, I decided to bring it to them. From now on, anyone going to www.dantoon.com will be able to see exactly what the site is about without having to click on anything. More importantly, people can start hanging out and exploring posts and profiles without even signing up. (I told myself: just imagine where YouTube would be if you had to jump through all those registration hoops before watching a video. By the way, registration itself has been simplified and streamlined.)
My goal was to turn www.dantoon.com (the actual link) itself into a fun destination full of content, as opposed to a cryptic gateway to such a place. There have also been other changes, ranging from the much-requested comment box redesign to subtler issues like a new way to jump to profiles directly from posts. I\'m profoundly grateful to everyone who\'s emailed or Dantooned me for suggestions; you\'ve already tremendously enhanced the site I put online a month ago. So welcome to the new Dantoon. I wouldn\'t want to think of it as a new version, since the idea is to keep iterating indefinitely as feedback, usage, common sense, and new ideas dictate. By the way, membership is still restricted to members of the Harvard community and their guests, so feel free to get casual.
As always, I\'m here if you have any more comments, suggestions, questions, issues, or lonely Saturday nights begging for an underslept entrepreneur\'s diversion. I\'m particularly grateful to the rising stars that have taken Dantoon by storm over the past couple of weeks. I\'m particularly thrilled by their contributions because many of them are people I\'ve never even met in real life, so I must be doing something right.
As this new homepage attests, there\'s no Dantoon without you guys, so please don\'t hesitate to go crazy with posts, comments, thumbs up, and responses, and pass the word on.
Your devoted founder,
Teymour
November 11, 2009
IT\'S ALIVE, and MOVING!!!
After a couple of weeks of intensive testing and debugging, the website is finally ready to greet some new members and grow.
Over the past two weeks, I\'ve asked some of my close friends to join Dantoon in order to gather constructive feedback and advice, and, more importantly, to see if the freakin\' thing actually works. These two weeks were a success on both counts. My friends\' comments and suggestions have already greatly improved the site, both in terms of design and functionality. Some of the biggest enhancements include a "Look Inside" link on the landing page so people can see what\'s going on before joining, as well as subtler fixes on some of the site\'s most important elements ("My Stream," invitations, post pages, browsing through subscribers, etc.).
Best of all, the early users have shown that the site actually works, and I don\'t mean just on a purely functional level. The idea behind Dantoon has been vindicated. When I see my Charlie writing about Jilly\'s cat (one he\'s never met, never having even seen Jilly herself in person), and then Charlie\'s girl friend Sarah commenting about Jilly\'s experiences at work, I realize the site actually has a serious shot at becoming a new manner of hub for minds communicating from all over the world.
Since first unveiling the site, I\'ve felt like a parent who\'s finally letting go of the seat for the first time as his kid tries to learn how to ride a bike. It\'s been scary, and often bumpy, but the bike seems to be moving, and the kid seems to be staying on. I\'m extremely grateful to those of you who\'ve tried Dantoon out over the past few weeks, for making it come to life, for making it a better site, and, most importantly, for making it fun.
Users new and old should know that this is still a beta release, which means the site may still contain some glitches. None of them will harm your computer, but please do not hesitate to email Dantoon at contact [at] dantoon [dot] com if you run into any issues (or for any other reason). As always, Dantoon would LOVE to hear from you.
Finally, please check out the Jobs link at the bottom of every page or just send an email to jobs [at] dantoon [dot] com if you\'re interested in joining Dantoon.
I hope you enjoy the site.
Peace,
Teymour Shahabi
Founder
October 29, 2009
IT\'S ALIVE!!!
Welcome to Dantoon. The website is now live, up and running.
Please enjoy the site, go crazy on it, hang out there like you\'re a koala and it\'s a good tree, live there, get cozy with it, make it yours. If you like it, please pass the word on, and invite your friends (and everyone else you know). Currently, only people with Harvard email addresses can join the site, but every member, once registered, can send email invitations to 7 other non-Harvard contacts (and to as many Harvard contacts as he or she wants).
This is the first and most basic version of Dantoon, and it\'s a beta release, which means the site may still contain some bugs and other issues. Don\'t worry: none of them will harm your computer. For example, you may occasionally see some glitches in the visual layout of pages (though I hope that won\'t happen at all). In any case, as they say in the New York subway, if you see something say something (si ves algo di algo) by sending an email to contact [at] dantoon [dot] com. You can use that email address to contact Dantoon about any aspect of the site and your experience there. Dantoon would LOVE to hear from you.
Dantoon is also currently hiring. Please check out the Jobs link at the bottom of every page or just send an email to jobs [at] dantoon [dot] com. We\'d love to talk to anyone interested in joining Dantoon.
That\'s it for now. Many thanks to the people who made this first release possible. I hope you guys like it. I\'m glad the site is up. Now I need to get a haircut.
Peace,
Teymour Shahabi
Founder |