Recent Activity

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  Barcamp 2 Rocked the Sydneyness

  Mind-expanding, inspiring and without question worth getting up early on a Saturday morning for!

  I had a great day - was brilliant getting Mike from Atlassian and Nick from 3eep in the same room and thoroughly picking their brains - definitely my highlight of the day

  After going to a couple of these 2.0 events, it is pleasing to see some familiar faces - great to see the community grow
  Top work on the organisation front too!
  
   

  Posted 25 Aug 07 in Bar Camp Sydney

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  VC Connect ACT 2007

  Thought people would be interested in this event.

  The inaugural VC Connect ACT is to be held on Wednesday 25th July, 2007.
  
  Australia's leading Venture Capital firms dedicated to investing in early-stage technology companies and successful entrepreneurs will share their experiences of how venture capital works.
  
  Attending VC Connect ACT will help you:

  • gain a greater understanding of whether venture capital can help your business
  • evaluate the right VC firm to meet your needs
  • discover the challenges and opportunities ahead for fast-growing companies
  • hear the experiences of those who have built companies and achieved successful exits
  • network with VCs, angel investors and technology entrepreneurs

   

  http://www.slatteryit.com.au/vcconnect2007/act.html 

  Posted 16 Jul 07 in Tech Events and Happenings

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  Usability

  Hi dekrazee1

  That's a very good idea - we are about 2/3rds of the way through implementing the new homepage (working with a graphic designer to do this), but I agree, more indepth browsing would definitely help.

  Cheers,

  Mark 

  Posted 31 May 07 in Rave About It Beta Group

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  Question

  Hi dekrazee1

  This 'filter' filters search results by business subcategory (though we should make this more obvious). Cheers for pointing this out

  Posted 31 May 07 in Rave About It Beta Group

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  Intro

  Rave About It aims to provide an enjoyable way in which users can search, rate and discuss what they think of services in their local area and beyond. We've researched a large number of reviewing websites in Australia and overseas to come up with a reviewing platform that we feel best represents firstly the needs of the user and secondly those of the business.

  Some things that make us different:

  •  Weighted reviews (currently being implemented - see 'Competition' Topic for more info on this.
    
  • First open reviewing platform in Australia (we're making our reviewing technology available to websites that wish to have a reviewing feature, but not invest in the time required to build their own.
  • Industry-specific reviewing criteria - reviewing a mechanic is different to reviewing a hairdresser, so we've taken this into account
    

   

  Posted 31 May 07 in Rave About It Beta Group

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  Competition

  Hi Mick,

  I guess one our main diffrentiators is that reviewing is central to our site, whereas it is secondary for a large number of other sites that we have looked at. In addition, we have spent a significant amount of our time creating our reviewing platform (with some key features yet to be implemented).  One of the key features is our weighted reviewing system:

  Why weight reviews?

  We felt that a simple single score was not accurate enough, but existing multiple criteria rating systems on most existing sites were not flexible enough to handle any type of business.  Below are the factors we considered...

  Different rating criteria depending on the business type
  Not all businesses are the same and reviews should reflect that.  Punctuality and workmanship may be relevant to a mobile plumber, but not a child care centre.  To refine this concept further we will also dynamically rank these in order of which criteria users think is more important.

  Business' review history
  Different businesses in the same industry have different competitive advantages.  They might be a lower price point with more basic customer service, or they might be a high end or niche provider which provides more intensive customer service.  Realistically, very few businesses will acheive great intensive customer service and great value.  Most reviewing systems will tax those that don't acheive both, but our weighting system will overcome this inaccuracy.

  Users review history
  Different users have different expectations and we analyse a few factors in the review history to accurately weight one review in the sea of others.

  Age of the review
  There are many internal (new staff, managers, owners, rennovations, rebranding) and external (competition, legislation) factors that can render an older review irrelevant.  Over time the importance of a review will diminish which keeps the weighted overall score more accurate.

   

  Regarding competition.. some other sites in this space: 

  1) Word of Web: http://www.wordofweb.com.au/ 

  2) Total travel http://www.totaltravel.com.au/ - see 'Recent reviews', halfway down page, right hand column.

  3) Cheap Drinks http://www.cheapdrinks.com.au/sydney_willoughby_Dan-Murphys.pub

  and a large number of bar/restaurant type guides. 

   

  4) Bizcom

  ABN Search related Business comment site

  http://www.bizcomrate.com.au/ 

   

   

  Posted 26 May 07 in Rave About It Beta Group

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  Suggestions

  Hi dekrazee1, 

  We do have currently  have rankings in search results, including a breakdown of a review on mouse hover - see

  http://www2.raveaboutit.com.au/search?refSearchId=&tags=springbok&location=Sydney+Metro&x=0&y=0

  However, given the low ratio of unreviewed vs reviewed businesses in the database, for a significant number of searches, the search results will show businesses with no reviews, which would most likely have been the reason why you did not see any rankings.

  We could explore having a greyed out ranking box for an unreviewed businesses 

   Cheers,

   Mark

   

  Posted 26 May 07 in Rave About It Beta Group