If you would like me to add support for a region to Skuttler, email me at skuttlebot@skuttler.com. Also email if you would like to help by translating Skuttler into another language.
Yesterday, Canada AM’s Portia Favro talked to me over the telephone on the subject of Skuttler, and so I was inspired to finally do something that I have been thinking about for a while. I fired up Blender and made a little explanatory/promotional video for Skuttler. It’s posted below and I will post it on the site’s About Skuttler page.
The interview was about the possibility of featuring Skuttler on “Canada AM,” which is a regularly scheduled broadcast on a media consumption technology called the “television.” It’s not 100% that they’ll talk about Skuttler, but she was pretty excited about it, and so was I!
I’m really tempted to start working on a native iOS version of Skuttler. My next exam is on Tuesday, so it’s possible that I’ll be a good student and study until then. Maybe after that, I’ll start on it.
It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a while. I like the simplicity of having only the web version to think about, but I’ve found that because it only works when there’s an internet connexion, and it only works well when the connexion is fast, it makes Skuttler inconvenient at times.
I mean, if I’m walking downtown and I see a guy texting while driving, I want to send a message to him NOW—I don’t want to have to wait for my phone to get on the internet, and then I have to log in and let the page load, then look up the plate … by the end of it, I sometimes give up.
It turns out that there was another problem with the avatar uploader: I didn’t write any BMP support. I decided not to support BMP’s ultimately, but now it fails gracefully and it lets the user know to upload the avatar as a PNG, JPG or GIF.
I think there was a bug that made uploading pics in Internet Explorer mess up sometimes. I figured out what the problem is, and I’m pretty sure I fixed it forever.
For those of you who are using mobile Skuttler, there’s a treat for you tonight! You can now update your user settings on the mobile version of Skuttler.
Also, I noticed something about new users of Skuttler: They often had trouble figuring out that I wanted them to type in the two-letter code for their state, so sometimes they would type in the whole name for their state, and they’d get the “region not found” error.
So, I wrote something that helps Skuttler guess better what region you’re looking for. Now, if you type “Wisconsin” and it will guess you mean “WI.” And if you type, “Wisc,” it will also guess you mean “WI.” But, if you type “New” and you mean “New York,” you’ll still get the “region not found” error, because there’s quite a few regions beginning with “New.”
Basically, as long as what you type uniquely identifies one region, Skuttler will be able to guess. Hopefully, this will avoid some confusion.
As of today, both the full web version and the mobile version of Skuttler are functional. The icons and avatars are even optimised for use on a Retina display, like on the iPhone or iPod touch. iPads will use the regular, full web version of Skuttler.
Things that still need to be done:
Settings need to be enabled on the mobile version (right now, you can’t change your settings there)
I need to double-check over all the French language localisation (“revendiqué” should be “reclammé,” par example)
I need to do some serious field-testing (anyone wanna help me?)
Once it’s field-tested, I will have a grand official launch!
Last night I was inspired, and now, wherever it used to say “Nouveau skoot” on the French version of Skuttler, it now says, “Diskooter.” For the anglos out there, “discuter” is French for “discuss.”
But it also contains a syllable that sounds like “skoot.” It’s a pun and it’s in French!
This is the second most intelligent thing I have ever come up with in my life. The most brilliant thing I ever thought of in my life was in second year at UWO, when I gave the cheese drawer in my fridge the name, “Solid Dairy Confinement.” I knew then, that at the tender age of 19, I had reached my life’s intellectual peak.
