noinput.net

After quite a bit of work, a few months of planning & and a lot of code, I’m excited to announce that yesterday we released the new version of whatsopen.com

Earlier in the year, my man Jason Schultz asked me to work with a fellow developer Brian Hall to release the first version, which became more of a proof-of-concept and PR site. It was fun and simple, we had a good time getting it running and listening to feedback, however we knew that it was only a step towards the final if we really wanted it to shine.

Shortly after that, Brian moved to Guadalajara, Mexico to do some amazing things which we’re all jealous and proud of him for. From that point Jason approached me with the concept that we could take our site to that next level, and I was in. We then started planning, building, designing and building our strategic plans out from scratch. In the end you can see we had a great time with design, and figured that form didn’t only have to follow function these days, they can be just as awesome and work together to break out of the web 2.0 trendy crap. That being said, we’re pretty happy about the final product.

To switch gears to the technical side for a minute, I want to explain some of what’s powering the experience which I built out.

• The design is pretty intense with a lot of transparencies and web-blending modes, I guess you can call it. We did this for a reason. Rather than adhering to every strict standard and loosing the fun & and intention for 90% of our viewers, we decided to go for it.
• When you first visit the site, it will find you, and give you a listing of open entertainment based locations near-by. Typically its accurate up to the closest metropolitan city away, but from my testing and tweaks it should be fairly accurate unless you’re on a corporate web line.
• Based on your location or where you are searching, and what time of day/night it is, we customize the display. For example, search for Los Angeles, CA & then San Francisco, CA and watch the header. Additionally if you do this in day/night, you’ll see a nice change to make you feel at home. Right now we’re live for California and expanding around the country.
• Additionally, based on location, I’m setting your local time. It still needs some refining, but it’s working well. Since our concept is that you’re a local anywhere you go, you should be living in the now. No one cares about looking up listings that are closed or gone because it’s the weekend, so why not enjoy just seeing whats happening, right now.

That’s only a portion of what I got running to really make the site work how we vision it. There’s a lot more we plan on enhancing, adding and refining down the road. Not to mention the API which powers the iPhone app we’re patiently twitting our thumbs for (Apple, where are you.)

Hope you enjoy finding whatsopen.com in your area, let me know what you think.