Which new features do you want the most?

@Ellysa: I’m not sure if this is what you want, but each account has a Tea Ratings page that may just do what you are asking here (you may have to be patient to wait for it to load, as for some reason, the page always takes awhile to load for me). You can also sort with the Sort by drop-down menu positioned just above the rating of the first tea (here is the link to your Tea Ratings page, sorted by Highest rated http://steepster.com/abhayamudra/teas?sort=rating which you can access through your account drop-down menu at the upper right hand corner when you are logged in).

Once you are at the page the beauty of the setup is all you have to do to change the rating is to left-click the rating number, make your change on the bar, and select Save.

Oh my gosh. Thanks for pointing that out… that is essentially what I wanted. I thought I had clicked that link before, but you’re right about it taking forever to load. Maybe I just didn’t wait long enough? Thanks so much!

Yea, that page is running a bunch of calculations that really slows things up – it’s basically calculating every rating order for each possible filter on that page. So if you have a lot of ratings it will take a while. If/when we get a chance to go back and optimize things, we do have that on our list.

No problem, I understand completely! I have no problem exercising my patience when it’s for something I appreciate. :)

For the first suggestion, just shoot me an email and I’ll take care of it (jason @ steepster.com)

For the second, that is trickier. That will probably be considered farther down the road.

I would love this also! This would be so helpful to follow locals, see what they are drinking, where they are shopping, etc.

Exactly Ellyn. It may be because I’m in the heart of east texas, but I slightly feel like some sort of a minority among coffee drinkers here lol. I suppose for some big city steepsters this may not be much of an issue because they have so many tea lounges around, but for people like me… fellow tea drinkers are a rarity.

:) That’s actually on our list of little bugs to fix/improvements. It’d be great not to have to, but obviously it’s necessary. I try to do my best to keep an eye on it, I just can’t keep up with them all the time.

We know. I can’t shake the feeling, though, that every time one spam message pops up, you get pelted by twenty notifications about it from the users :/

Good idea! It might be hard for all of the prices to stay updated to the dollar and cents amount, but even a general price range would be helpful.

$-$$$$$
Nice, but $ for me may be $$$$ for you, and $$ for one kind of tea may be $ for another and $$$$$$!!! for another kind.
$15 is in absolute terms may be a large amount of money for an ounce of tea, but for a fine DanCong it’s quite affordable, and for rooibos, it’s highway robbery!

er.

Interesting things to think about, for sure.

I think that’s a great idea, and I’m even amenable to having it just in US$. Clearly I don’t use the greenback on a daily basis being an Australian, but I think currency conversion is so readily available these days it wouldn’t be too much of an issue. As long as it was clearly stated at the top of the page/homepage.

A similar issue is the amounts. I think this should definitely be in metric. Most of the world uses metric now. I have no idea how much an ounce/pound is, and always have to convert it whenever I come across it (I can usually remember the dollar conversion, it’s on the news every night after all!).

TassieTeaGirl: I hear you on the belief that the tea amounts should be in metric. I’m an American, and I do feel a little embarrassed that we Americans still haven’t embraced the metric system (I remember my high school science teacher telling me we will eventually go metric. That was over 20 years ago. : – } ). I personally still think in the ‘old ways’ (in English measurements), but I can do most of the conversions to Metric pretty easily (I’m one of those math nerds). At least many of our food products and drinks now have both measurements on them (I don’t think they did when I was younger, but I can’t remember for sure). They teach both ways in the grade schools here in the states. It’s funny too, that we haven’t converted yet, because a base 10 system makes so much more sense than memorizing things like: 3 tsp = 1 tbsp, 2 tbsp = 1 oz, 16 oz = 1 lb, etc. Unfortunately I don’t think we will ever completely make the switch in my lifetime, though. Sad.

Including prices for the tea would be great, but it’s somewhat problematic, as Spoonvonstup wrote above. I personally include a description of the price in most of my tea reviews, sometimes simply based on my perspective of how expensive it is—which is, of course, subjective— but if it’s readily available, I try to include the data, too—which, of course, can change over time.

Now including that data so we can search on it means a change to the interface and to the underlying database. Cool idea, but it would take some work on our illustrious overlords’ end.

Simplicitea – I’ve not really noticed a huge change in tea prices over time for the companies I usually purchase from, more the accessories that change prices. I’m sure there must be a way around that though!

I agree. I’d love to be able to log my experiences away from my pc…. but most importantly, when I’m out and about and I see a new tea, I’d love to have an app just to see the tea ratings before I buy it. I would easily settle for a mobile version of the website too.

The problem with the photos is the site’s bandwidth. :[

love that idea!

I use this website 99% of the time from an iOS device, and I can tell you its almost mirror to a non-mobile browser, not slow to load, an does not eat up all my data. The only difference I have found is the slider bars are more difficult to maneuver in the tea rating window.

This idea is fantastic. I particularly like the geotagging. While the price paid option would be helpful, the geotagging would be my first vote. :)

Great ideas! I suspect implementing these would be difficult, though. Still, it’s always great to dream, and give voice to those dreams!

It wouldn’t be hard to implement at all. Obviously the price option could be added to the site (globally) within minutes. The geotagging option would also be extremely easy since the base has already been introduced to the site (via tea lounge directory), but this would just work off of that idea. Allowing steepster members to add store locations on their own time will eventually build up a MASSIVE database across the globe. If a store is already added, then it won’t need to be re-added later… steepster members would just start building a database of the teas at that specific location as they buy them there. In the end it’s a simple design that depends solely on the users to build it from scratch.

Wonks: I know it may sound easy on the surface, but as a programmer/developer in a past lifetime, it is my experience that often-times (not always, mind you) these things can be much harder to implement than it seems, unless I truly understand the underlying technology, that is. And usually with complex systems such as software that rely on a database, a user interface, etc. no one person understands it all: there usually are a group of people who do. And getting them all on that same page is also not an easy task. Anyway, this is my vocalizing my mixed feelings about technology: it’s great when it works, but the more complex it is, the harder it is to manage. At least, that’s from my experience being on both a user’s end and a developer’s end.

Have you ever read, ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?’ Sometimes simplicity is the best option. : – )

I have fairly extensive experience in web design with xml (but it was only 1.0). I am jumping to conclusions when I say that it should be a very simple task, but it SHOULD be a simple task. I’m not sure what kind of programming you have experience in, but all html is very straight forward and xhtml is no different imo. I think that a cluttered code and directories can make things a super big pain (which would make it a not simple task). However, Disrupto is a wonderful team of 7 web designers that have done big projects for companies like Samsung, BET, Madison Square Garden, and even NY Rangers. So I doubt that it’s less of “they don’t want to spend the time adding a price option” and more of “they’re super busy with payed contracts”.

Wonks: Wow, interesting information about Disrupto, and impressive. My experience is more on the back end (programming/database), with very little on the front end (GUI). I hear you on the SHOULD. There are many things that SHOULD be simple (or seem like it on the surface, even to those with experience, myself included), that in reality, aren’t. For example, adding a new field to a database, and any associated keys, and what-not (admittedly this is going back many years for me), is not necessarily a simple very task (from what I remember). And yes, if the system is designed with flexibility in mind, then adding a field that we can do a search on SHOULD be a simple task, but I have found that software systems rarely seem to be very well designed, especially when it comes to flexibility.
.
Anyway, my responses here are about my own personal disillusionment with technology and its purported benefits and ease of use, and not about you or anyone elses technical capabilities; I have found that the benefits of technology always come with a cost, which almost always involves greater complexity.
.
And I hear you on your last comment. Again, I have rubbed elbows with some pretty competent, intelligent, educated, and experienced technicians and software programmer/designers (I do not place myself in that category, btw), and too often I remember hearing casual comments from the best of them like, “To do < that > all we need to do is < this >,” only to find out (not always) we all discover it is not as easy as it first seemed on the surface. That is why I got out of the business of technology (what I sometimes refer to as my ‘former life’). Personally, I’d rather deal with people than technology. I find people to be more predictable, more reliable, easier and more pleasant to work with, and even more understanding and forgiving than technology (It may not sound rational, but I personally find it to be true).
.
Ah, well. The rantings of a former programmer. Take it for what it’s worth.