How long?

Has it been nearly a month since the last post? It's certainly been a busy time, with lots of meetings going on to try and get this thing to stand on it's own feet. We've got quite a few people using the site now (passed 300 the other day), which is great, but unfortunately with all these meetings (and a few other things going on), I've not had a lot of time for coding. The air travel stuff is mostly written, but it's forcing me to make some changes to the display side of things as well, so there's a bit more to do yet. Forum activity is increasing as well, with lots of suggestions and feedback coming my way, which is brilliant - keep it up!

The thing the site really needs is more publicity, so please, if you can, let people know about it! Invite your friends to join, write on blogs, post to news sites, anything you can think of - it all helps!

So, in summary, nothing major to report at the moment really, but I thought I'd keep you all up to date. The project is still going, it's just getting to be a bit of a handful for one person with no funding :)

Long haul

I've just completed my the Carbon Diet version 0.9. It's been a whole month since 0.8 was completed, so this one has taken quite a while. I've been uploading the changes as I've been making them, so there aren't actually any major new features to announce right now; this is just a way to close off that cycle. It was mostly aimed at social features like the comment system, working avatars, league tables for your friends and groups, and so on. There were also a few major bugfixes; for instance, the email reminder system should now work properly.

Anyway, now that this iteration is complete, it's on to the next one. This one is quite exciting, because it will add the one major thing the site is missing, and which a lot of people have been asking for - air travel! Watch this space, there will be something to play with very soon!

Avatars

One more announcement for today, before I go to bed. We now have working avatars, so you can put an image of yourself (or something else of course) on your profile. I was using an external site called Gravatar for this before, but it's not been working for a couple of months now, so I've dumped it. Apologies if you went and signed up for a Gravatar account because of the Carbon Diet, but at least it works now. I look forward to seeing all your pictures :)

Canada & Australia

After repeated requests on our Facebook group (join us, if you're a Facebook user), we've added data for Canada and Australia. It'd be hard to find two countries more different - Canada generates well over half of it's electricity from renewable sources like Hydroelectricity, whereas almost 90% of Australia's comes from coal! Unfortunately, this means that if you're in Australia, your electricity is going to have a much larger carbon footprint! At least now you have the Carbon Diet, you can start to cut that footprint down :)

Bugs & Updates

Minor update to the group and friend rankings this morning - it should be quicker, and you now get a nice pie chart showing the contribution of each person in the list in a nice graphical way.

I've fixed a bug in the group signup code, which prevented you joining groups without being invited, so that should all work now.

Also, if you've tried to use Gravatar to customise your user picture on the site, you've probably noticed that it's not working. Fortunately (in a way) it's not just the Carbon Diet. Lots of sites using Gravatar seem to be having the same problem. Unfortunately, the people behind it have disappeared, and left their site in a broken state. I've been trying to contact them for ages about this, but to no avail. I'm going to look round for an alternative method of letting you customise your pictures, so I'll keep you informed.

Compare to your friends

You can now compare yourself directly to your friends on the Carbon Diet! On your friends list, as well as in your groups, you will now see a rankings section, which takes all your friends and puts them in order of their annual carbon footprint. Obviously, we're trying to cut down around here, so the person with the lowest footprint is #1!

Comments

Another update for you all to play with! You can now add comments to your friends profile pages, as well as to groups you are a member of. They don't show in the news feed yet, but will do soon. Enjoy!