• Reachably’s “Countdown to New Years” Contest is here!

    Our countdown to New Year’s contest is live!

    image

    Here’s how it works:

    • Each daily contest will run from 12pm EST, when we’ll announce the theme, to 10am EST the following day.
    • For your entry to count, you have to add #contest to your post along with the @tag of the day.
    • You can add up to 5 photos for each daily contest. However, adding one quality photo will get you farther.
    • Use the site to add photos from your computer, or the web. If you’re on the go, use our app to snap a photo or add one from your library. From reachably, you can easily send your post to friends by text and email, or post it to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest. Encourage them to vote for you!’
    • They’ll be a daily winner based on the day’s points and an overall winner chosen raffle-style on New Year’s Day. It’s an easy way to win fun prizes and up to $500 in cash!
    Source: contests.reachably.com

  • Dogfooding Our API

    Reachably wasn’t always Reachably - we used to be called “dtime”. This was back when we were building our initial prototype with a focus on making decisions. We learned quite a few lessons there - some business (people didn’t like the formality of making a decision publicly online) and some technical (we had a mess of a code base from all of the changes we were making).

    Our most important lesson was that it’s really hard to evolve an app rapidly without making a mess of the code. One of the messiest parts of the code base was where we started building in JSON api components so that we could start building Backbone components to make our site more dynamic. Building the JSON API parts as needed led to a very haphazard style that wasn’t useful at all to external apps. We also ended up taking some shortcuts with our views, allowing too much logic to creep in.

    Read More

  • Reachably co-sponsored Kurrenci’s #smartupbk event last week. Here are some shots of the team!

  • Helpful Tools for HTML Email Testing

    Here at Reachably, we are always sending emails! Invites, Mailers, and Transactional emails are being sent out constantly. That means that there’s a lot of coding like it’s 1999 going on… it also means we have to test our emails, a lot. Here are some great tools that I use when the task arises!

    Email on Acid

    This site has a free tool that allows you to test Gmail, AOL, and Outlook. It tests for spam and disabled images for all three. Useful for preliminary testing. There are expanded paid plans as well.

    MailChimp

    We have a premium account at MailChimp, so we have access to their nifty tool called Inbox Inspection. I think it runs on Litmus and offers a wide range of options for email tests. We use this one the most, it’s pretty great.

    Premailer

    Not necessarily a testing tool, but a huge time saver. Instead of writing all of the inline styles yourself (like I was doing before!), you can just write it in a style tag in your <head> and this tool will inline the CSS for you! Had great results with this.

    Thunderbird

    When testing my emails early on, I like to use Thunderird to send out emails to my own accounts. They have this easy “insert HTML” button that lets me pop in my code and send it on it’s merry way.

    Campaign Monitor

    The only paid testing we did as at Campaign Monitor, for $5 per test. They also use the Litmus API, which is great because this is pay per use and I don’t think Litmus offers that themselves.

  • We’ve open sourced some JavaScript tools!

    Over the course of the last year at Reachably, we’ve developed a number of JavaScript functions that we’ve found handy. From hover tags to autoexpanding textareas, they can help speed things up when making a user-facing website.

    They’re written in CoffeeScript, the JavaScript pre-processor language that we’ve written our app in.

    Before we go any further, you should check out the demo page!

    Included in Coffee Filter, you’ll find:

    • hover tags for showing notes on an element (e.g., a username when hovering over an avatar)
    • placeholder text for browsers that don’t support the html5 spec
    • textarea autoexpand when typing large blocks of text
    • fill a square with an image of arbitrary dimensions
    • position an image of arbitrary dimensions in a square
    • saving and default states for buttons/links when using ajax
    • autolink urls in a block of text (great for comments!)
    • set a custom tabindex on an array of items
    • outerHTML()
    • a check to see if keyboard shortcuts should be enabled (if not ie8 or typing in a field)

    http://mgeraci.github.com/Coffee-Filter/

  • Reachably Is Hiring Brand Ambassadors!

    Hi! We’re Reachably, a new NYC social tech startup, and we’re hiring brand ambassadors!

    We’re seeking energetic and entrepreneurial-minded individuals that can become social advocates for Reachably. You’ll be working alongside a talented marketing / PR and tech team to spread the word and grow an incredible community of users. You must be an active social network user that creates quality content and has a large following. 

    To apply:
    Check out our recently launched site (http://www.reachably.com) and download our iPhone app (http://www.itunes.com/apps/reachably) before applying
    Email us (hello_world@reachably.com) with a short blurb on why you’re interested in being a social media brand ambassador for reachably and any creative ideas you have to get new users
    Along with the blurb, share links to your social media profiles (facebook, twitter, instagram, tumblr, pinterest) to help us gauge how active you are and what type of following you currently have   

    Job description:
    • Quality content creation
    • Attract and retain new users
    • Community management

    Commitment:
    No minimum time commitment. Pay is based on performance. Don’t have to be based in NYC. Co-location in our Hell’s Kitchen loft is optional.

    —

    More about Us:
    Reachably is the best way to reach the right people for relevant, real-time sharing. Consider us the evolution of the hashtag, offering you new and smarter ways to reach people based on their tastes, interests, backgrounds and passions- anything that’s meaningful to you. Share and hear from @foodies, @fashionistas, @budget-travelers, @twenty-somethings, @urbanites as easily as you reach family and friends. We’re advancing how you connect to your world and are excited to have you be part of it!

    Like us on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/reachably
    Follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/reachablyinc
    Learn more about our CEO: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickvidal

  • @pumpkin-obsessed jealous of my Wednesday

    @pumpkin-obsessed jealous of my Wednesday

    Source: reachably.com