Soshiku Blog

Soshiku for webOS source now available on Github

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:33:08 -0800

Hey webOS developers! Want to help us test out the Soshiku app on a device and send feedback before we submit it to the app catalog? The source is now on Github.

The Future

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:55:32 -0800

Since there hasn’t been any exciting or big news in these past months, it might seem like the development of Soshiku has been stagnant. Today I decided that Nonatomic should be more transparent, so I’d like to share with all of you what’s happening, why there hasn’t been significant updates, and the roadmap for everything I want to do in the future.

These are listed in the order of what I want to do first to last.

Launch Soshiku Pro — These past few months I’ve been paying attention to our most requested features and have been working on Soshiku Pro, a $5/mo plan that includes most of these features. Soshiku Pro is ready to go, but the reason it hasn’t been launched is because I’m still waiting to obtain a merchant account, which is a special type of bank account that is needed to accept payments from credit cards. I won’t go into much detail, but I’ve had a very hard time getting a merchant account since I just turned eighteen and have no credit. Ideally, I’d like to launch Soshiku Pro in February.
Release a Palm Pre and Pixi app — I’m very enthusiastic about Palm’s new platform, webOS, as well as developing for it. I’ve been working on the Soshiku app for a little while and I really like what it has become so far. The reason a webOS app is being released before an iPhone app is because the webOS SDK uses technologies that are familiar to me, while the iPhone SDK requires time to learn and understand. The app is going to be open source and be posted on Github so other people can contribute. Expect the app to be released sometime in February.
Release an iPhone app — I’ve been slowly learning the iPhone SDK for a while, but after the Palm Pre app is released, I’m going to work on the iPhone app full force. The iPhone app is also going to be open source.
Release an API — Developers, developers, developers! Those two Soshiku apps need something to interface with the Soshiku website, so I created an API for internal-use for now. Though after the apps have been released, I’m going to work on and refine the API and release it to the public for everyone who wishes to develop with it. I also plan on creating a page on Soshiku that showcases third-party apps. I can’t wait to see what developers will come up with!
Soshiku for schools? — I’m mulling over the idea of Soshiku for schools and teachers. Imagine being able to see the assignments and exams your teachers have added, even keep up to date on school news. Obviously this will be a big addition, and I hope that Soshiku can someday change education for the better.

So this is everything I have in mind for Soshiku in the future. I feel like 2010 is going to be a great year not only for Nonatomic, but for all of you!

Excellent walk-through of Soshiku by eduTecher!

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:36:15 -0800

Excellent walk-through of Soshiku by eduTecher!

Add assignments to courses with long names more easily via SMS

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:24:18 -0800

An anonymous user on our UserVoice site came up with a good point:

It’s great that I have a course called “Historical Challenges of the Roman Catholic Church”. But it’s a total pain in the rear to text!

Well I’m glad to announce that we’ve made it easier to add assignments to courses with lengthy names when using SMS. Now, Soshiku first looks for courses with the exact name and if none are found, courses are searched with partial matches of your text.

So if you have a course with the name above, you can just say “hist”, “chal”, or even “roman c”. (With the final SMS being “essay in roman c due today”, for example).

And like always, if no courses are found, a new one is automatically created for you.

New redesign, new business name

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:42:00 -0700

Soshiku’s company has a new name!

We’ve changed our name from Definitialize to Nonatomic. Actually, Definitialize was not an official business since it has never been registered as one. The name was a placeholder until we could think of a better name for our official business. We didn’t like Definitialize too much, so we went with Nonatomic. And good news: Nonatomic has been registered as an LLC in Washington state! This is a big step forward so we can execute our big plans in the near future. ;)

Now, about the redesign. It’s been a little over a year after the launch of Soshiku in September 2008 and we figured Soshiku was in store for a slicker, newer interface. Not only have we updated the look of Soshiku, we’ve also made some changes that we think enhances the user experience.

Smaller logo and header

Gives you more room to focus on your content.

New “Jump to” bar

Now on every page is a “jump to” bar that lists all of your courses. This lets you instantly go to any of your courses from any page. Speaking of courses…

New course layout

We thought the courses page were a bit lacking, so we’ve updated them to look just like your home page with the calendar and all, except only showing the assignments and tasks belonging to that course.

New overall look

Out with the boring, light blue look and in with the more sleek, softer look of the menu bars. We hope you continue to enjoy using Soshiku!

Preview the new Soshiku redesign

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:21:00 -0700

We’ve been hard at work with giving Soshiku a much-needed facelift. We are planning on making it live sometime this week, while in the meantime making sure there are no bugs we have to squash. If you’d like to preview the new design right now, just visit http://s.soshiku.com. You can log in and use it just like the regular Soshiku site, except be aware that the profile pictures do not work (this will be fixed when it goes live). Have fun and let us know what you think!

AcceptEdge

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:05:29 -0700

AcceptEdge:

AcceptEdge is a cool new startup that launched today to help find the right college for you.

Updated feature: Get email updates for discussions

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:55:00 -0700

We’ve just made it easier to receive email updates for discussions that are important to you. If you want to receive an email whenever someone adds a message to a discussion, just go to that assignment’s page and check “Get email updates” under the discussion section.

People have been able to get email updates for quite some time now, but it only worked if someone left a message on your assignment. For example, if a partner left a message on your assignment, you would get an email letting you know. But if you replied to that message on the same assignment, your partner(s) wouldn’t get any email. Now they can!

The email problem has been fixed. We’re sorry for the inconvenience!

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:05:54 -0700

The email problem has been fixed. We’re sorry for the inconvenience!

We have just discovered a problem in which no email is being sent at all. We are working to fix this...

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:45:21 -0700

We have just discovered a problem in which no email is being sent at all. We are working to fix this ASAP.

Scheduled Downtime

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:39:00 -0700

There will be scheduled downtime tonight at 12 AM PST. The downtime should only last a few minutes.

Ding. Time's up!

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:40:43 -0700

We have now completely switched over to our new SMS service. Thanks everyone for being such good sports about updating your info!

Reminder: you have two weeks left to update your phone number on Soshiku before it’s gone...

Sat, 30 May 2009 13:04:07 -0700

Reminder: you have two weeks left to update your phone number on Soshiku before it’s gone forevaaaaah! Please refer to this post for more info.

Important notice to everyone who uses their phone with Soshiku

Wed, 13 May 2009 18:37:00 -0700

We have a very important notice to everyone who uses their phone with Soshiku. Starting immediately, we are changing the way Soshiku handles text messaging. If you have already verified your phone number, please go to your profile and verify it again.

You have 30 days to change over (until June 12, 2009). If you have any assignments right now that will notify you via SMS, you’ll still get the notification; but in 30 days we can’t send you notifications unless you verify your number again.

What are the changes?

You now need to send text messages to 41411 instead of add@soshiku.com.
You now need to start your messages with the keyword “soshiku” for it to work. Example: “soshiku essay in english due in 3 days”
Any assignments, tasks, etc. you add from your phone will be added immediately instead of up to five minutes (which is the way it is now).
You will get confirmation messages saying that your assignment, etc. has been added. If it couldn’t add it, you will get a message explaining why.
We don’t need to know your carrier anymore. We automatically work with all major US carriers, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, Virgin, Cricket, T-Mobile, Alltel, and more.

This is a huge and important update, no doubt for the better. It is way more reliable, and it is more robust in terms of parsing your text messages.

Again, please go to your profile and verify your number again (it’s very quick) to take advantage of these new changes. People who just use email are unaffected and still use add@soshiku.com. Thank you!

Awesome article about Soshiku on The How-To Geek

Wed, 13 May 2009 10:35:37 -0700

Awesome article about Soshiku on The How-To Geek

You don't have to be a student to utilize Soshiku...

Tue, 05 May 2009 19:49:54 -0700

You don't have to be a student to utilize Soshiku...

Great school presentation about Soshiku!

Tue, 05 May 2009 14:15:00 -0700

Great school presentation about Soshiku!

Soshiku is now on twitter!

Mon, 04 May 2009 23:20:41 -0700

Soshiku is now on twitter!

Find your partners easier with People Search

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:09:20 -0700

When you visit your partners page, you’ll now notice a form titled “People Search” which allows you to search everyone on Soshiku. Now you can easily find potential partners in the Soshikusphere. Can we keep using that word? :)

10,000 users later...

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:44:00 -0700

Can you believe it? Soshiku just recently hit 10,000 users (we’re also nearing 50,000 assignments). Ten thousand users in a six-month time span may seem miniscule, especially compared to more popular startups, but to me this is a truly wonderful milestone. I had no idea Soshiku would become as popular as it is today, and it seems like just the beginning.

I thought it’d be fun to share some statistics on what’s going on inside Soshiku:

50% of all assignments have been completed
45% of all tasks have been completed
5% of users have at least one partner
13% of users have uploaded a profile picture

14% of users have their cell phone verified to use with Soshiku

Let’s see the percentage of carriers used:

44% AT&T, 39% Verizon, 18% T-Mobile, 15% Sprint, 5% Alltel, 3% US Cellular, 3% Virgin

13% of all courses have been color coded

Of those 13%, here are the percentages of colors used:

21% Red, 18% Green, 18% Blue, 16% Purple, 14% Orange, 13% Yellow

Assumptions: People are more in favor of cool colors than warm colors, except for red which is the most popular. Yellow is gross.

Users can choose a default privacy setting for their assignments. Here is what they chose:

85% Public, 12% Private, 3% Partners Only

26% of all assignments have notification options enabled

Of those 26%, here is a breakdown of the time of day users chose to be notified:

64% Morning (9 am), 16% Afternoon (3 pm), 12% Evening (7 pm), 7% Noon (12 pm)

And last but not least:

100% of users have found the best way to manage their schoolwork :)

Pretty cool, eh? If you thought this is all we’re doing to celebrate 10k users, just wait until we announce something really big in a few days. It may or may not have to do with this earlier post. Thanks for reading!