In the next two weeks, we will have new interns here, Clément (F / Dev) already started this week, Alain (D / Dev), Laure (F / Marketing), Thomas (F / Dev), Morgan (USA / Marketing) and Christopher (D / Dev) will start beginning of February, so our small office is going to be a bit more packed again. Daniel and I are looking forward to it, and the future interns do so as well. I took some pictures of nice "real" wall postings from Annie, Moritz and the team. :) Annie, we miss you too! We will open up an office in Madrid one day! :)

Yesterday we found out that there is a 1994 House anthem called "I love this place". The beginning is a bit boring, but the vocal part rocks! We have our hands in the air a few times a day. ;)

Recently we had a nice launch party with a lot of the people who worked for us in the last months to celebrate the go-live of our new version. One more time thanks to all who made this possible, we love you! Now we fix the last bugs, then we finally let the world [...]

Last week, we didn’t have access to the internet for a whole day, so we went the 54 meters down to the St.Johanner Markt and had a good time there in the sun, saying farewell to Lenaïg and Sebahate, the two marketing interns from the University of Metz, France that left us a day later.

Today, Yanni and Arno (University of Trier, Diplom-Wirtschaftsinformatik) leave us. Our twins Heiko and Olli, also studying at the university of Trier, also Diplom-Wirtschaftsinformatik (not sure how this translates perfectly, I guess it is “Business Information Systems”), will stay for another two weeks. Thanks to you all, you did a great job and we had [...]

Lilli, Dmytro and Rick leave us today, so we took the chance to take some farewell pictures. They did an awesome job, Dymtro and Rick developed really cool tools you can use in a few weeks, Lilli did a great job in updating especially the Croatia content on earthfaves and supported Yanni with the creation of marketing documents. Thanks for the great time we had and take care!

Here is today’s team, from left to right – a really international SaarLorLuxPfalz Team:

Kiril Popov, originally from Bulgaria – Medieninformatik (FH Trier)
Xiaoyan Yao, originally from Shanghai – Finanzdienstleitungen (FH Kaiserslautern)
Daniel Stötzer, from Saarbrücken – Entwicklung
Dmytro Osmachka, originally from Ukraine – Kommunikationsinformatik (HTW Saarbrücken)
Ljiljana Zilic, originally from Croatia – Historisch orientierte Kulturwissenschaften (Universität des Saarlandes)
Normen Rosch, from St.Ingbert – Diplom-Sozialwissenschaften (Universität Koblenz-Landau)
Markus Schneider, from Saarbrücken – Produktmanagement
Frederick Klauss, from Forbach, France – Informatik (HTW Saarbrücken / Université Paul Verlaine – Metz, France)

Here we are, the new interns of Earthfaves:

Kathrin, Caroline, Denise, Daniel (one of our bosses), Yulia (me), Jose and Tatiana.

Now it is very international group, as we have German, Russian and Spanish interns. When Jose and me arrived, we didn’t speak any German, but we both speak English.

We will never forget Earthfaves, for me and Jose is a big school, not only for our professional development, it is also for improving our German. When we arrived, we could not understand any German, but our bosses and all interns helped us a lot. Now we know how does Earthfaves work, and this experience will be very useful for another job. I hope we will stay in contact after go back to our countries!

Hi folks, long time no news! We are busy getting our platform ready for 2009! Here are some new things we added recently:

1. Videos: two new introduction videos on the homepage, one about the benefits of earthfaves, one about how to add earthfaves – don’t miss them!

2. Your new location recommendation network size overview: the area on your user home page that shows the number of all the location recommendations you have from your friends and their friends at earthfaves!

3. New “Invite your friends” tool: on top of the page you now find the tool to quickly grow your number of friends at earthfaves. This is important, as the more friends you have, the more earthfaves they have, the more and better location recommendations you can get. So invite your friends!

4. Your discovery rank score – the points you got so far for adding earthfaves and for people that earthfave them. You get 10 points for adding an earthfave, 20 points if someone earthfaves them and 10 if you earthfave another users’ earthfave. You start as “Freshman”. With 1000 points you become “Pearldiver”, with 5000 “Connoisseur” and with 10000 “(Wo)Man of the World”! So adding earthfaves and finding people who like them increases your reputation in the network a lot!

5. “Recommendation rank”™ results: if you are logged in and you search for locations, you get results filtered along your personal trust levels. This way, we make it easier for you to always find the best and most trusted results first. Your own earthfaves appear on top, followed by those of your friends, those of your friends of friends and then those of other earthfavers.

6. Messaging: if someone wants to become your friend or if somebody has earthfaved one of your earthfaves, we send you notification mails so that you quickly can reply to the other users actions.

7. Mapping: simply by copying and pasting code just like at youtube, you can now add your map with your earthfaves to your blog or any other website. This helps you to make more new friends quicker and, for sure, you can show the great places you know much more easily to your friends and readers. You find the link on your user home page.

We plan a lot more for 2009: especially we want to improve the search and the adding functionality (please always search first if you want to add new earthfaves ;). We also want you to say about earthfaves “I love this place”, so keep us posted with your ideas and the bugs you find at info@earthfaves.com.

We wish you and your families a great year 2009!

Happy discovering & recommending!

Your earthfaves team:

Barrett, Daniel, Markus T, Oliver, Tim, Tom, and Markus S.

Von unserer Praktikantin Stefka: Am 09. August war es endlich soweit: eine ausgiebige Feier auf geräumiger Terrasse in gemütlicher Grillatmosphäre. Markus und seine reizende Familie, sowie Freunde, Kollegen und Nachbarn feiern das Projekt earthfaves und die baldige Fertigstellung der innovativen Plattform.

Zur Zubereitung kulinarischer Köstlichkeiten, wie Lammrücken, Kanninchenspiessen, Schweinefilet und den sehr beliebten Merguez-Würstchen wurde ein handgefertigter, echt saarländischer Schwenker verwendet, der für einigen Qualm sorgte. In der schönen Umgebung der Terrasse inmitten von spielenden Kindern, wurden anfängliche Schüchternheiten schnell über Bord geworfen und man unterhielt sich angeregt in einer großen Runde.

Nachdem das letzte Stück Grillgut an den Mann (Daniel) gebracht wurde, konnte der Gastgeber zur Präsentation des Projektes earthfaves übergehen. Im hinteren Teil des Wohnzimmers wurden mithilfe eines Beamers die verschiedenen Bereiche auf der Web-Seite aufgezeigt und unterschiedliche Funktionen getestet. Die Demo auf Firefox lief sehr gut und die begeisterten Gäste legten ihre ersten earthfaves an, d.h. ihnen bekannte, schöne oder beliebte Plätze weltweit. Dies konnte entweder ein gutes Restaurant, ein gemütliches Hotel, der beste Strand zum Surfen oder auch einfach ein Berggipfel sein.

Währenddessen machten sich einige der Gäste über das aufgetischte Kuchenbuffet her oder genossen die kühle Abendluft bei einem Glas Rasteau auf der Terrasse. Alles in allem war sowohl die Präsentation, als auch der gesamte Abend sehr gelungen und die Vorfreude auf den Tag X, den Geh-Online-Tag, ist weiterhin ungebrochen... Hier ein paar Eindrücke:

(download)

Click here to download:

earthfaves-new-design-goes-live-soon-party-tmkJkgukxipHsbqIAbdI.zip (257 KB)