So.Massive.ly

A featureful blog for massively small products made by Particle. 

Robo.to: Home screen your homies!

Homescreen

Check out a pretty cool feature that lets you put all your friends faces right on the foreground of your iPhone or iTouch. A quick glance lets you get a sense if they've made an update, and instantly tap to launch their robo card.

The image above is from my home screen with all the folks from Particle added.

Give it a shot:

1) In your browser, go to their robo page. For example http://robo.to/jedward

2) Click the "+" button at the bottom of your mobile screen. Choose "Add to home screen".

3) Done!


Robo.to: Adding a background image

Theme

Here are some simple steps for adding a background image to your Robo.to page.

1. Add the Customizer module. You do this by scrolling down to where all your modules are listed and selecting it.

2. Select a color theme from the drop-down menu. This is set to "default" if you haven't changed it.

3. Once you have selected a color theme, you will see the ability to upload a background image. Select the tile or wallpaper image you'd like to use and upload it.

If you are uploading a large wallpaper image, make sure it isn't larger than 1.5 megabytes in file size or it will be rejected. Heavy files will make your page load slower.

Crusher: Sending reminders

Massively_announce

Automatic reminders are set within the Date Module of your Crusher event page. You can set reminders to send 1, 3, or 7 days before the event - by default this is set to 'none'. To edit or turn-off automatic reminders, simply click 'edit' at the top right of your Date Module.

There is another way to remind people. If you aren't too shy about using your own voice, you can turn-off automatic reminders and choose to manually send announcements instead.

From your crusher event page or from your guest list page, click Send Announcements. Your can send an announcement to any batch or combination of the following batches:

  • People who responded positively
  • People who responded negatively
  • People who have not yet responded
  • Invitations sent to mailing lists

You may choose to send announcements whenever and however many times you like.

Go to Crusher now!

Sometimes, even robots have growing pains.

Hey! Robo.to is growing at an astounding pace! So, in the flurry of nuts & bolts, and the clicking & pinging clamor of stretching metal, you may encounter an error or two as we race to support the daily influx of new users. It's no "fail whale" by any means, but hey, we know it's down right frustrating when your video ain't working.

Welp, for moments like those, we've created a guide; a guide to help you understand what's really up, and how to get back to the business of updating your oh-so-goodlooking self.

We've introduced a new friendly messenger built into the recorder -  "God's voice" as we like to call it internally. Basically, whenever something gets snagged, it'll read out what's happening in a not so "404-the-world-is-ending" kinda way. Here's the official list of possible snags with their respective meanings and potential solutions:

"Robot lost" 
This might mean you lost your connection for a second. The video maker automatically tries to reconnect for 4 seconds. If the message disappears, you're back in business.  If not, check your wifi or internet connection and give the page a refresh.

"Robot unplugged" 
Hmm... that's probably another internet connection issue. A page refresh with a solid connection will solve this immediately. This seems to happen most often with spotty wifi. 

"Lonely robot"
That's our bad. This one is extremely rare (as in, it hasn't happened yet) but if it does happen, it means we made a boo-boo while updating things and we'll (hopefully) get it back to normal within a few minutes.

"Record failed"
This could be one of two things. Either you lost your internet connection while recording, or you didn't have enough bandwidth to successfully record, which is possible on slower connections. Give her another shot. If you encounter it again - you might want to try posting an update from your phone until you can find a place that has a decent internet connection. 

"Video failed"
Ouch. That's gnarly one. Since something momentarily went wrong when you were right in the middle of recording that last video, and now we can't play it back. Try deleting that last post from your archive and record again.

"Can't find video" 
This is a more hopeful type of recording error where we might be able to salvage your video. If you don't need it, delete it. If it was THE one you had been working so hard for, we'll see to it personally and try to get things back in order.

"Video not found"
Pretty straight forward. This is the same as a 404 page not found, but only relating to the video file itself. There's probably something wrong with the unique url of the video file. 

If you encounter any of these, well hey, you're in luck. We're small and spry and always happy to help.  
Send a link to your robo.to page to help [at] particularplace.com and we'll sort it out as soon and as best as we can.

Posted by Cole Rise 

Comments [0]

What's the status of all the invites you sent?

There's a lot of anxiety around putting on an event and we want to alleviate that as much as we can. When you send off invites via Crusher, it help to have visibility into where it is in our system. A new invite status column in the Edit Guest List page now shows you the status of each invitee's invitation.

To see, go to your event page and click Edit Guest List.

What the status labels mean:

Sent
We've successfully sent the invitation to this email address.

Waiting
It's waiting for our robot to wake up and get to work. If this lasts a long time please let us know and we'll give it a kick.

Stumbled
Be patient. There's some trouble with the email address. We tried to send it but for some reason it failed. We will automatically re-try a total of four times. After the fourth...

Failed
We tried several times to send this invitation and it failed each time. You can click "Resend" to try sending it again – or re-invite the email address manually in case you had a typo.

Digest
This person has their email notification set to put all invitations into a "Digest" - so we won't be sending this person an individual email invite. Instead, a note about your invitation will be included in their daily digest. It's up to you if you need to be more direct.

Ignore
This person has their Crusher notification set to "Ignore" all invitations - so we won't be sending this person an email invite at all. You might want to try contacting them another way.

Unsent
Essentially an error state. You shouldn't be seeing this. If you are, please hit the feedback button and let us know.

Responded
This person has RSVP'd to the invitation.

Crusher: How to make absolutely sure everyone gets your invite

Ogl

It's true, there are some cases where inviting people via the Crusher invite flow (enter email addresses + hit send) may run into some snags. Some friends have strict spam blockers and unless it comes from an email address they know it ends up in the spam/bulk folder. Sigh.

We do a good job in avoiding these as much as possible. You can help us by adding no_reply@crush3r.com you your address book. This tells the robots that we are safe.

Here's a way to get around it all:

1) Create an event page like normal.

2) In the "Invite People" pane up top, select Open Guest List (see image).

3) Email your friends about the party and include the URL of the page.

Done! When they click the URL to go to the page they will be able to add themselves into the guest list and RSVP.

Crusher: How to broadcast real-time updates from your party

You can set up a booth at your party that lets your guests make Robo.to updates. It's kinda like having a 'photo booth' but instead of photos it makes short video status updates. Publish these updates in real-time on your event invite page.

Click here to see an example invite page

1) First, create a new invite page using Crusher. Enter all the relevant party info, and invite your guests. Include the 'Custom' module. Note: You don't have to use Crusher. You can do this with a website or blog, basically any service that lets you embed some code.

2) Go to Robo.to and copy your badge embed code which you can find under the "Share my face" link at the bottom of your Robo.to page. Paste this embed code into the custom module within the Crusher invite page.

3) Later on during your party, download the Maker app and set it up to run on a computer as a full-screen kiosk. Follow the simple setup instructions and have it point to your existing Robo.to account.

You're finished. See your updates publish on your invite page.

Robo.to: How to set up relationship strength

In Robo.to you can now set privacy settings on contact information you want to share. If you wish to make use of use privacy settings beyond just Public/Private, you can further specify the strength of your relationship with people within your Contacts.

1) Go to your Contacts page and click "Edit". 

2) Click the "Relation" button next each contact.

3) Relationship strength has three levels:

  • In my inner circle (closest)
  • A friend
  • A contact (furthest)

By default, anyone you add to your Contacts is automatically set to the furthest level, a contact. This covers the majority of people in your address book which are acquaintances and people you meet in Robo.to who you just want to watch.

When you add your real friends to you Contacts you can set them to the middle level, a friend. And among those friends you can elevate those few who are closest to you, your inner circle.

Crusher: How to invite group email lists

Group_email

Ever wanted to invite your entire church choir or lacrosse team and didn't know each and everyone's personal email address? Crusher now lets you invite group email lists!

All you have to do is enter the group email address like any regular email address but precede it with a hash "#" symbol.

For example: #team@crush3r.com  Inviting the entire Crusher team to your party is a great idea, but that's just an example.

When your invitees receive the invite and click to go to the event page to RSVP, they land on a page where they quickly negotiate who they are. No membership is required so they can just enter their individual email address and it's done. If they're already a member, all they have to do is log in.

Go to Crusher.

Broken link on your widget? Here's a fix!

Welp, since our last post, and through all the helpful feedback we've been getting, we realized we had a small typo in the embed code. If you got the code from the widget customizer, your robo.to might not link back properly in all browsers. Our bad.

Here's a simple fix to get it up and linking again. It might require your eagle-eyes for a moment, so bear with us.

Step one: 

In your embed code, look for the word href - it'll show up twice  This is what tells the widget where to link to. You'll notice the second one is significantly more confusing looking than the first one. That's the one we're going to replace.

<div style='width:288px; height:288px; border:7px solid #000000;'><object width='288' height='288'><param name='movie' value='http://robo.to/swf/smirk.swf?href=http://robo.to/cole&sName=SmirksController&fx=1&hideBlerb=0&target=_blank&loop=1&cURI=rtmp%3A%2F%2Frobo.to%2Fsmirk_ul&uuid=6ff2c8e387236c907ca839301597801e6453800b&sURL=http%3A%2F%2Frobo.to%2Famf%2Fgateway'></param><param name='allowFullScreen' value='true'></param><param name='allowscriptaccess' value='always'></param><embed src='http://robo.to/swf/smirk.swf?href=http%3A%2F%2Frobo.to%cole&sName=SmirksController&fx=1&hideBlerb=0&target=_blank&loop=1&cURI=rtmp%3A%2F%2Frobo.to%2Fsmirk_ul&uuid=6ff2c8e387236c907ca839301597801e6453800b&sURL=http%3A%2F%2Frobo.to%2Famf%2Fgateway' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' allowscriptaccess='always' allowfullscreen='true' width='288' height='288'></embed></object></div>

Step two: 

Copy the first one href=http://robo.to/cole (where "cole" is your own username) and Paste it over the second one so that they both match. Be careful not to paste-over the "&" following your link - that'll break it too. Once you get it working, you can even use a different link here if you want - that part's up to you :)

<div style='width:288px; height:288px; border:7px solid #000000;'><object width='288' height='288'><param name='movie' value='http://robo.to/swf/smirk.swf?href=http://robo.to/cole&sName=SmirksController&fx=1&hideBlerb=0&target=_blank&loop=1&cURI=rtmp%3A%2F%2Frobo.to%2Fsmirk_ul&uuid=6ff2c8e387236c907ca839301597801e6453800b&sURL=http%3A%2F%2Frobo.to%2Famf%2Fgateway'></param><param name='allowFullScreen' value='true'></param><param name='allowscriptaccess' value='always'></param><embed src='http://robo.to/swf/smirk.swf?href=http://robo.to/cole&sName=SmirksController&fx=1&hideBlerb=0&target=_blank&loop=1&cURI=rtmp%3A%2F%2Frobo.to%2Fsmirk_ul&uuid=6ff2c8e387236c907ca839301597801e6453800b&sURL=http%3A%2F%2Frobo.to%2Famf%2Fgateway' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' allowscriptaccess='always' allowfullscreen='true' width='288' height='288'></embed></object></div>

And you're done!

Our apologies for the mix-up. Send us an email at info [at] particularplace.com and we'll send you a free Robo.to wallpaper pack for your phone, as seen in the Particle Shop: http://www.particlebrand.com/v2/shop.html

- Cole http://robo.to/cole