stuff about autopendium

Let’s keep it short and simple: you can now comment on other user’s vehicles.

This was something I’d been meaning to implement for a while — messaging other users is great (and essential), but sometimes you want to just say, “Great car. Love the …” and other times you might have a question other users might be interested in.

Anyway, the functionality is now there, and pretty soon we’ll be rolling it out to individual posts too, so go ahead and start commenting (but be friendly, OK?)

It’s been a week or so since Autopendium was opened to the world, and gradually it’s starting to attract some traffic, despite the minimal marketing.

The reaction has been very good, both from those I’ve pointed in the direction of it, and a few unprompted reviews (see here and here and here), and Google has been merrily indexing the site (finding a few minor bugs along the way), and sending people in its direction.

So, where are we up to with it. Pretty Good, I’d say (as in Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery and Pretty Good Privacy).

Not perfect (a word that’s been used way too much with the admittedly innovative iPhone, even by normally sober commentators). Not revolutionary. And certainly not ultimate, that overused, under-deserved, devalued word that these days means almost nothing.

This is what I think when I see people or companies use ultimate to describe their products.

1. Marketing bollocks, written by people who will say anything to hook you in. Therefore anything else the company says should be treated with suspicion (Even the UK Guardian newspaper has caught this bug recently, with one ‘ultimate’ guide after another).
2. Poor Quality Control. If the people putting together the product really think it’s the ultimate, then they’ve got pretty low standards. Don’t look to them for new features, improvements or bugfixes — they’re too busy congratulating themselves on their ‘ultimate’ product.

So, in the past week and a half, I’ve made nearly 50 improvements, bugfixes, and tweaks to improve the site, and I’m not finished yet. Each one makes Autopendium easier to use, more useful, better. But not perfect. And very much not the ultimate car website.