QuoVadis Live! Is Growing

You might remember we mentioned some while ago (see this post) our server was so busy at times he simply couldn't cope with more connections. As traffic increased at an unexpected rate the "Sorry! Kinda difficult to keep up right now. Please try again in a few minutes." cartoon message was starting to show too often which was becoming kinda embarrassing... We immediately figured we'd better do something about it or we could kiss our project good-bye. So last week we've moved to a new server upgrading all the code to take maximum advantage of the new architecture. In the process our development team has increased too with addtional members (thing we really needed to do as well). We've been re-enabling features bit-by-bit and are going to release new ones in September. We haven't completely finished yet. But the new QuoVadis Live! is already looking really good. Stay tuned!

Local Search on quovadislive.com

We've just released a tool to search places nearby an event. Of course, the local search feature is not new. But it's still handy to have! Therefore whenever you land on a geoevent page on quovadislive.com you can easily have nearby hotels, restaurants, shops, etc. showing on the map around the location the event is taking place.

Check it out at quovadislive.com!

Google Earth on QuoVadis Live!

Good news for all the Google Earth aficionados out there. We've just integrated Google Earth into QuoVadis Live! When clicking the "View" button on the top-right of a map, you can switch between Map View to Satellite View to Bird's Eye to Street View and from now on also to Google Earth View. Meaning you can now view geoevents locations, friends geolocations, places and geotours in 3-D, zoom out to space and zoom in back to earth, look around the buildings, etc.

Check it out at quovadislive.com.

Privacy Rules on QuoVadis Live!

Privacy is a big thing for us at QuoVadis Live! Thus everytime you map a geeovent you can decide who to share it with: everybody, only a few or "for your eyes only". The same applies to geotours, groups you setup or when you map your geolocation. But rather than a lot of bla... bla... bla... and to make a long story short our in-house cartoonist has once again gone straight to the point. Enjoy!

Map your point of interests too with QuoVadis Live! geowizard

Seemed kinda obvious isn't it? Until today users could add new venues only when mapping geoevents or geotours. From now on, users can also map tourist point of interests (POIs), that is places worth visiting (and not strictly commercial), and sport and leisure centres. The "Map event!" button in the top bar has also been replaced with a simple "Map it!" button. Clicking the "Map it!" button launches our user-friendly Geo Wizard which will guide all the way to map your geoevent, POI or activity successfully. Know an unmissable geoevent, a POI worth visiting or a nice sport & leisure centre? Feel free to map it at quovadislive.com.

QuoVadis Live! celebrates Apollo 40th Anniversary

In a few days, it will be 40 years since the first moonwalk... Wow! 40 years already! Apollo Missions represent an amazing testimony of the great things mankind is capable of achieving. 40 years ago 400,000 people working together simply won the biggest challenge to date: to land a man on the moon. What many of us are dreaming of, only a few 12 have achieved. The Apollo Program is trully inspirational to us in that sense it makes us always push the outside of the envelope.

WE at QuoVadis Live! quovadislive.com would like to pay a tribute to all those men and women involved in the Apollo Missons and especially to those lucky enough to walk on the moon. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first man on the moon, we've implemented a little control at the bottom right of each quovadislive.com map that will rocket you directly to where these heroes went.

Again happy 40th anniversary to the 400,000 people involved in the Apollo Program. Kudos to them all.

Apollo 40th Anniversary at NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/40th/index.html

Apollo Landings on Google Maps:
http://www.google.com/moon/

Send events to QuoVadis Live! from your Twitter account

If you've got an account on Twitter and if you are following QuoVadis Live!, you can now send your event to QuoVadis Live! as a direct message which has to have the following format:

EVT*<name>*<date>*<time>*<location>*<admission>*<category>*<type>*<short URL>

Name is the name of the event;

Date is the date of the event in dd/mm/yy format;

Time is the time of the event in hh:mm format;

Location is the location of the event in venue,city,country ISO code format;

Admission can be F for Free or T for Ticket or R for Registration or I for Invitation;

Category can be A for Art&Culture or B for Business or C for Comedy or D for Demonstration or F for Family or M for Music or S for Sport or T forTechnology;

Type can be C for Conference/Seminar or E for Exhibition or F for Festival/Concert or M for Meeting/Match or T for Tradeshow or W for Workshop;

Short URL is the event's short URL.

Example:

EVT*The Rocky Band*19/08/09*19:25*The Top Notch,Dublin,IE*T*M*F*http://short.net/abcdef

Unlike geoevents directly mapped at quovadislive.com, events sent as direct messages are not immediately published. Once published, you can update and complete the geoevent information with more details (description, picture, movie, etc.) if you have an account on QuoVadis Live!.

Login to QuoVadisLive.com from your Twitter account

If you've got a Twitter account, you can now login from Twitter to QuoVadis Live! even if you don't have an account on QuoVadis Live! yet. All you have to do is to click on the "Login from Twitter" button in quovadislive.com homepage.

Then you're taken to Twitter for authentication purposes where you'll be given the possibility to let QuoVadis Live! connect to your Twitter account which is needed to update your status on Twitter whenever you map a geoevent on QuoVadis Live! or you report your geolocation (except when in hidden mode). And because we've implemented OAuth standards you certainly don't need to enter your Twitter name and password in QuoVadis Live!.

Quovadislive.com and your Twitter account

If you've checked QuoVadis Live!'s Support Page or if you're following us on Twitter, then you already know that QuoVadis Live! works with Twitter. For if you wanted to know "but never dared to ask", here's exactly what you can get with your free quovadislive.com account:

Have your followers automatically informed about your geoevents, how to get there, weather forecast, who plans to go as soon as you map them...
...and also the country, the city, the street (you decide!) you currently are in.

Be immediately notified via a direct message (not public) as soon as a friend of yours is in a particular area or an event of a particular type happens in one of your places.

"What do I need to do?" you may ask. Well, you just have to click a "Connect with Twitter" button in your QuoVadis Live! account settings page for Twitter.

"Do I have to give away my Twitter account password for this?" No way! We're following OAuth standards.

Try it out at quovadislive.com!

Street View now available in QuoVadis Live!

It was about time! One of our users asked us this week if it was possible to have Google Maps' Street View in QuoVadis Live! quovadislive.com. This is actually a feature we had in mind since Google released Street View for its map API but never been a top priority feature to implement as we had other work to do first. However the specific query of that user was also a call to action and using the time between two tasks we decided to finally implement it. From a "feature wish" it became a requirement. Therefore we're happy to announce Street View is now available in QuoVadis Live! along with the map view, the satellite view and the bird's eye view. And by the way, if you too have a special feature you'd like to see in quovadislive.com let us know!

A Very Busy Month at QuoVadis Live!

We've been quite busy this month and we still are which explains we haven't been able to publish any post last month. Having reviewed the way our geoevents and geotours are mapped we've decided to shake the code a little bit and perform some lift up by adding extra-fun features we hope you'll enjoy as much we're developing them! Don't worry, we'll let you know as soon as it goes live!

Five things you can do with QuoVadis Live!

• Easily map and share geoevents you know about


• Browse geoevents mapped by QuoVadis Live! members


• Add geoevents to your QuoVadis Live! calendar


• Create original geotours and share them with your friends


• Embed geoevents and geotours maps in your website including MySpace, Facebook, etc.

And there is more: check it out at http://www.quovadislive.com/ !