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Posts Tagged ‘cat’

Pets in your Pocket – Mobile Site Goes Live

Monday, June 13th, 2011

First off, belated happy birthday to us as the site is now two years old.  As a practical form of thanks to everyone who has given their encouragement, support and advice on this project, I have today released version 1.0 of our mobile site.

Will It Work With My Phone?

The Lost and Found Pets Ireland mobile site should be compatible with the majority of  ‘smartphones’ out there now including iPhone, Symbian, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile based devices.  While it is not intended as a full replacement for the main website in terms of functionality, I think there is enough there to make it useful for many – especially considering that almost 8% of our traffic at this point is coming from Facebook mobile.

Mobile Site Home Screen

So What Can It Do?

The mobile site allows users to search and view our listings just as they can on our main site.  Search results can be filtered by status (lost, found or both), species (dog, cat etc) and county.  Full listing details are available along with facilities to easily call or text the person who posted the free listing.

If you have a GPS device built into or attached to your phone and a browser that supports it such as Mobile Safari (iPhone/iPod) or a Webkit based browser such as those found on Android and Symbian devices you can view a map which displays the listings around your current location.

Lost and Found Pets Listings Near Me powered by GPS

Finally for now, there is a simple feedback form which you are welcome to use to let us know how you are finding the site, your ideas for improvements etc.

OK, Sounds Good – Where Is It?

Those using mobile browsers will be automatically redirected to the mobile version by default.  You can disable this by clicking on the ‘View Full Site’ button on the mobile site homepage.  For those of you on regular PC’s and those of you who wish to re-enable the default redirection, there is a graphic link just below the logo on the main site.

The Mobile Future

I hope later in the year to release an Android app which will provide full site functionality.  Given the costs involved in creating an iPhone app it is unlikely I will be providing one in the near future without some form of sponsorship.

Final Thanks

Building a mobile site which works consistently across so many different devices is not a simple endeavour  and I want to think some folk for their help with testing, specifically Siobhan Borgo for help on the Android side of things, @CookiieDivine for the indispensable iPhone/iPod screenshots and @SoniaKd and @LindaHayden1 for feedback on the UX.

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Posted in Site Features, Social Web, Website | No Comments »

What’s the Story? Lost and Found Pet Listing Outcomes

Friday, February 4th, 2011

Several times during the life of this site so far, one question has come up again and again; what happens all the lost and found dogs and cats and other pets listed on the site? Up until now unless those posting took a proactive approach and contacted me to inform me of the outcome of their listing there was no way to answer that question for many of the pets that are listed here.

When I started the site, the focus was on getting the maximum exposure for listings possible.  This involved making the process of posting a listing as easy as possible, building out the mechanisms for posting the listings to the third party social networking sites we connect to and working to build up communities of active and involved followers and fans there, optimising the listings for accurate and efficient indexing by the search engines and putting tools in place for site visitors to easily share listings both off and online.  With all that to do, outcomes had to take a bit of a back seat.

But not anymore.  Now when a listing is removed manually, the user is presented with a form which they can complete to let myself and the community know the outcome of their listing – good or bad.  I’m hoping that presenting the form as an integrated part of the removal process will encourage people to let us know how things worked out in their particular case – happy ending or other outcome, we want to know.  However, in line with our ethos of not obliging users to engage with the site any more than strictly necessary to publish a listing, completion of this form is totally optional.

In addition, listings that expire automatically after the 30 day active period will now be flagged with that particular outcome.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be working on mechanisms to automate the communication of these outcomes back to the community which, in additon to keeping you all much more informed, should free up some time for me to start work on building out the next phase of the site.

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Posted in Listing Tips, Site Features, Website | No Comments »

The Poster Child for Social Petworking – Literally!

Sunday, January 30th, 2011

A preview of our offline promo posterI know, I know, the post titles are getting worse but bear with me because this one is to let you all know that following a conversations over on the Facebook page, I have just uploaded a poster which you can download and print for distribution in your local area to help us promote our service in the ‘real’ world.

The poster is in Adobe Acrobat PDF format and will produce an A4 sized poster when printed.  In the unlikely event you don’t already have Adobe Acrobat already installed on your computer, you can download a copy for free from here.

Possible venues for you to get the poster displayed in would be your local vets, groomers, butchers, convenience stores, hairdressers and any other community noticeboards you know of.

Let us all know where you put yours via the comments facility below.

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Posted in Social Web, Website | 3 Comments »

Pet Photos – The Ultimate Low Cost Pet Insurance

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Don’t get us wrong here, we are not advocating that you let your regular pet insurance policy lapse, but having had a couple of listings already today without photos attached, we are struck by how much less impact listings without photos have.

With automated display of listing photos first on Flickr and now on Twitpic, the reach of your listing becomes that much greater when you add a photo.

So, snap a couple of pics of your beloved pet right now and store them away for safe keeping – you never know when you may need them.

Tips for Good Lost & Found Pet Photos

  • Use a dedicated digital camera and not a mobile phone camera as most mobile phone cameras will produce lower quality photos and this quality will degrade even more as photos are manipulated for reuse.
  • Make the pet the subject of the shot.
  • If you have multiple pets, take shots of each individually.
  • Avoid taking shots with a publicly identifiable background scene to protect your own privacy.
  • Also for your own privacy, keep yourself and other family members out of the photos.
  • Consider the angle you take the shots from. It can be wise to keep a very distinguishing marking out of the public domain. Such markings can be used by those who may find your pet to help prevent nefarious types claiming your pet.
  • Use a background which has a significantly different colour palette to your pet’s colouring – a shot of a ginger tabby sitting on a sofa with a faux tiger skin throw is not the way to go.
  • Take the shot in natural daylight to avoid red eye (can often result in ‘blue eye’ for animals) which can really change the character of your pet’s appearance.

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Posted in Listing Tips, Social Web, Website | No Comments »