Soshiku Blog

Introducing Soshiku Mobile for Smartphones

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:21:06 -0800

I’m happy to announce the release of Soshiku Mobile for smartphones! Soshiku Mobile is a mobile-optimized version of the Soshiku website that works on any modern smartphone. This includes the iPhone, all Android phones, Blackberries, and Windows Phone 7.

When you’re not near a computer, you can use Soshiku Mobile to view your upcoming assignments, create assignments and tasks, and see what your partners are up to.

Soshiku Mobile is a website and not an app, so there’s nothing to download! All you have to do is visit http://soshiku.com on your smartphone and you’ll be taken straight to it. I hope you enjoy Soshiku Mobile! Please let us know what you think.

Special tip for iPhone users: Add Soshiku Mobile to your home screen by going to http://soshiku.com in Safari, tapping the middle arrow icon in the bottom toolbar, then tapping the “Add to Home Screen” button. A Soshiku icon will now be on your home screen and it’ll be full screen just like a real app!

Amazon Launches New iPhone App for College Students

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:44:52 -0700

Amazon Launches New iPhone App for College Students:

Just in time for back-to-school season, Amazon has launched a new iPhone application targeted towards students. With the “Amazon Student” app, college students can perform instant price checks on textbooks and other items, keep lists of items they want to buy, and post used textbooks, games, movies, or gadgets for trade-in.

New: Organize your courses by semester

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:56:05 -0700

We’re happy to introduce a better way to organize your courses. You are now able to choose which semester (or quarter) your courses belong to whenever you create a new course or edit an existing one. This feature has been available for a few weeks now, but we’ve just worked out all the kinks and believe it deserves a proper introduction.

And if you’d rather not organize by semester, that’s fine too. Just uncheck the box before creating your course.

Also, your courses are now listed by “Current Semester”, which you can change at any time by selecting the desired semester in the menu located above your courses.

Please note that the “archiving feature” is no longer available, but we think this is a great upgrade for students wanting better course management. And it’s available to all users!

Have a great summer!

The 10 Sites That Will Get You an A in School

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 14:09:41 -0700

The 10 Sites That Will Get You an A in School:

A great compilation of websites we think all of our users should check out.

Soshiku has a new phone number for text messaging

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:06:00 -0800

We would like everyone to be aware that our phone number that you use to send text messages to has changed. From now on, please send text messages to (206) 504-2212. Also from now on, you do not need to add “soshiku” to the beginning of your text message.

One more little benefit is that there are no ads in the text messages you receive now. Yay!

Our old number still works in the meantime, however you will receive a notice to use the new number as the old one will not work in a week or so.

To see everything you can do with text messaging, check out this section of the help page. You might learn something new!

Partners page and privacy updates

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 16:57:00 -0800

If you’ve seen your “Partners” page recently, you may have noticed we have updated it to prominently show all of your partners’ activities in one place. This is a great way to keep up with all of your partners’ activities, such as creating assignments or creating new tasks. We are also working on an RSS feed you can subscribe to.

We have also updated the privacy aspect of your activity feed. On your preferences page, you now have the option to show your activity feed on your profile to everyone or just your partners. Please take a moment to look over this option and select the right one for you.

Celebrate Soshiku's birthday by getting 50% off Soshiku Pro

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 18:55:08 -0700

Soshiku just had a second birthday on September 25th and we’d like to celebrate it by giving new Soshiku Pro users 50% off their first month. That’s just $2.50! Better hurry, because the offer only lasts until October 16th.

How can I get 50% off?

All you have to do is sign up for Soshiku Pro if you’re not already a user, or upgrade if you are already a user. There is no coupon code to enter; you will automatically get 50% off your first month. Please note that while you sign up, it will say the cost is $5 after your free trial. We will have to manually take off 50% your first month and we’ll send you an email confirmation.

We hope you enjoy Soshiku Pro and we’re excited for the year ahead!

Top 25 Free & Freemium Web Apps for College Students

Wed, 12 May 2010 22:26:31 -0700

Top 25 Free & Freemium Web Apps for College Students:

Thanks to Nurse E.D.U. for including Soshiku as number 7!

Soshiku has been featured on Chompie!

Sat, 08 May 2010 14:53:12 -0700

A big thank you to the people at Chompie.com for featuring Soshiku on their site. In their words, “Chompie actively updates a collection of the most useful new websites, applications, products and services on the internet.” Glad to know Soshiku fits their criteria!

Soshiku on Chompie

Are you a Pro user? Take our survey!

Fri, 07 May 2010 16:12:05 -0700

If you are a Pro user, you’ll see a message (shown above) with a link to a survey the next time you log in. This survey will help us know what you like and dislike about Pro, and what we can do to make it even more useful to you. Thanks so much!

Feature update: discussion email notifications

Wed, 05 May 2010 19:52:23 -0700

Last year in August we added a new feature that let you receive email updates when new messages were posted on certain assignments, but you had to click a checkbox for every assignment you wanted updates for.

With the launch of our newest feature (sharing assignments with partners), we’ve decided to merge the two features and make it more automated. Instead of having to explicitly mark which discussions you want updates for, you will now automatically receive email updates (given you have your email set in your profile) on assignments that have been shared with you.

For example, if Mark shares an assignment with Katie, they will both receive email updates when someone adds a message to the discussion (Mark too, since he’s the owner of the assignment).

We decided to do this not only because it “slims down” Soshiku and makes it easier to use without compromise of features, but also because you most likely would want to receive important email updates for an assignment that has been shared with you.

A help article has been added regarding this change.

How to get SMS notifications if you're not in the United States

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:47:00 -0700

I get plenty of emails from people in other countries asking if there is some way they can use the text message notification feature of Soshiku. I frown every time I have to say “sorry, you’re out of luck” since the text messaging service we use does not support carriers outside of the US at this time.

There is a workaround, however, but only if you don’t plan on having notifications sent to your email. You also have to be with a carrier that supports email gateways. An email gateway is an email address that, when an email is sent it, acts like a text message and it gets immediately sent to your phone. For example, if you use Bell in Canada, your email gateway address would be [your number]@txt.bell.ca. If I send an email to that address saying “hi! :)”, it would get sent to your phone as a text message.

To see if your carrier supports email gateways, go to this page and look up your carrier name. Replace the “n” with your number. When you have your address, go to your profile in Soshiku and type the address in the email field, like so:

Now whenever you add an assignment, just check the “email notification” box and the notifications will get sent to your phone as a text message!

Soshiku 1.1 for Palm Pre and Pixi now available (and in other countries, too!)

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 11:30:00 -0700

Soshiku 1.1 for the Palm Pre and the Palm Pixi has just been approved in the App Catalog! This update includes:

The ability to create recurring assignments (available to Pro users)
Amount of incomplete tasks are shown next to assignment names
A check mark is shown next to completed assignments
A recurring symbol is shown next to recurring assignments
The ability to edit and delete tasks (tap task to edit, swipe task off the screen to delete)
Redesigned assignment page (shown above)
Redesigned create and edit assignment forms
Redesigned profile page
Minor tweaks and bug fixes

The Soshiku app is also now available for Palm owners in Canada ($1.99 CAD), Ireland (€1.92), and the United Kingdom (£1.44)!

These changes have been pushed to our Github repo. If you’re a webOS SDK developer (or a JavaScript developer wanting to learn the SDK), we’d love you to peruse over the code and change/add/delete anything you want. Fork to your heart’s content!

New in Soshiku: Share Assignments with Partners (for realz this time)

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:06:52 -0700

We just released a big new feature: sharing assignments with partners. Yes, your partners have always been able to access, add tasks, and attach files to your assignments, but how would they get to them? Either you had to send them the link or they had to go to your profile and look in your activity feed for the assignment.

Not anymore! Now, whenever you add or edit an assignment, you have the option to share it with selected partners.

Then, when your partner(s) log in to their Soshiku account, your assignment is shown on their homepage as if it were their own. Here’s an example:

You can tell “Project” is not really this user’s assignment, since it says “from Patrick” (the user who created the assignment) next to it.

It is now easier than ever to access and collaborate on your partners’ assignments!

Where are the privacy options?

As you could probably tell, the privacy options have been replaced by the sharing options. We believe the privacy options were slightly flawed, since the very nature of assignments aren’t really meant to be “public” or “private.” Yes, public assignments were accessible by anyone, but no one (except partners) could add tasks or attach files, and they would have to have the specific ID of the assignment to get to it anyway. Also, we don’t think any homework will be so top secret that they should be marked as private. In the end, we believed the privacy options might have been confusing to most people. We like to think of this as a big upgrade to the privacy options.

We have also created a new help article for this feature.

Add recurring assignments via SMS, email, and quick-add

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:13:04 -0700

Pro users are now able to add recurring assignments via text messaging, email, and quick-add. We’ve added both an “every” and “recurring” keyword to make the assignment recurring, however they vary slightly. For example,

Journal entry in english due every tuesday

Sets the due date to next tuesday and makes it recur. But if you have a recurring assignment which is due at a later date, add “recurring” to the end of your query, like so:

Journal entry in english due apr 18 recurring

The help page has been updated to include this information.

Soshiku 1.0.1 for webOS now available

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:34:00 -0800

Soshiku 1.0.1 is now available in the App Catalog for the Palm Pre and Pixi. This update includes:

A “sign up” button on the login screen for new users
The enter key submits the login form
When viewing an assignment, only incomplete tasks are fetched instead of all tasks (speeds up loading time)
When viewing an assignment, tasks that are assigned to other people now have the check box disabled and text under the task that says “Assigned to [person’s name]”
Profile pictures on discussions and on “My Profile” are asthetically improved
A specific reason is given when an error occurs instead of a generic error message (if applicable).

These changes have also been pushed to our Github repo.

Soshiku Pro - not bad for an 18-year old

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:24:04 -0800

The awesome Christopher Dawson over at ZDNet Education, who has written about Soshiku back in 2008, has just shared his thoughts about Soshiku Pro. He writes:

While this is all well and good, many of the students who could benefit the most often can’t afford the $5/month. If Soshiku were to explore licensing deals with schools, however, then districts could provide the service to their students for free and enable chat and collaboration among classmates.

After expressing my glee and thanking him about his article, I posted my response in the comments:

I completely agree with your points about students and pricing (which I hope the low price helps with, cheap enough for most students yet still supports my expenses). I would love for Soshiku to team up with schools and become the norm in progressive classrooms. I dream that will be our “next big move” (I wrote about that briefly in a blog post titled “The Future”: http://is.gd/a6vZ2). I just need to figure out how to execute something that big. ;)

You can read the full article at http://education.zdnet.com/?p=3709

Introducing Soshiku Pro!

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:25:00 -0800

We’re excited to announce that we’ve just launched Soshiku Pro. Soshiku Pro is a new subscription-based paid plan which comes with some really cool new features. Here’s what you get if you upgrade to Soshiku Pro:

Unlimited Everything — With the free plan, you can only have 10 courses, 20 assignments, 20 tasks, and 10 attachments.* Once you run out of space, you have to delete them in order to make room for more. But as a Pro user you don’t have to worry about how much of anything you add. Keep unlimited amounts of everything for as long as you want.

* per assignment

Realtime Discussions — With the Pro plan, you and your partners are able to chat in realtime; your partners’ messages show up instantly as soon as they hit “Send”. No hitting refresh! You can pop out the discussion window so you can browse other parts of Soshiku, or even other websites while chatting.

Recurring Assignments — Now you can add assignments that are due every week! No need changing the due date every week; on your specified week-day, Soshiku automatically updates the due date to a week ahead for you.

Quick-Add — Have a lot of assignments to add and don’t want to wait for pages to load each time you add them? Just invoke the Quick-Add window, which lets you add assignments the same way you add them via email or text messaging which uses natural language parsing.

Fast Complete — When you need to mark an assignment as completed, you need to click several links and wait for pages to load. Not with Pro! You don’t have to go to each assignment’s page; just check the box next to the assignment’s name. Your assignment is instantly marked as completed and there’s no page to load.

And No Ads!

Get a 7 day free trial when you upgrade today! Soshiku Pro is only $5 per month. Compare the Basic and the Pro plans at http://soshiku.com/plans.

Soshiku now available for the Palm Pre

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:47:31 -0800

Soshiku is now available for the Palm Pre & Palm Pixi! Here are the features:

Manage your courses and assignments
Edit notes
Add and check off tasks
View attachments
Share messages with your partners
Receive email and/or SMS notifications

The Soshiku app syncs with your account on Soshiku.com. Find it for just $1.99 on the App Catalog.

Soshiku for webOS source now on Github

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:33:00 -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.