8 days before the launch of alpha! Wow, just typing those words sends shivers through my spine, tomorrow it will be T – 7 the following day T – 6 and so on and on. Reminds me of the feeling of counting down the seconds before the beginning of the new millennium….That night the world held its breath wondering if Y2K would bring a blackout, we will be holding our breath and hope that everything goes as planned.

Building a service like trustedplaces is a work of love and passion, but also of sweat, anguish, and pure stubbornness in the desire to building the best website for reviewing, sharing and discovering great places.

Getting to this stage has been both fun and intense. Intense in finding a name that easily spelled out what the service was about, short, easy to remember, cool, and of course not already registered. But probably the most intense had to be what we deliver on the 14th of July. On one side we want to offer the most comprehensive website possible so that the users will find great tools to do many different things. On the other side is the need, no… the absolute necessity, to focus on the core functionalities that will answer the core requirements of our users. As Peter Nixey, our consultant advised, “It can be so easy to be tempted in adding new cool functionalities”. Whilst these new functionalities could be cool they can also distract and especially confuse the user on what our service is about and how to use it.

Luckily, both Soks and I have had the luck to surround ourselves with great people, such as Dima, who have helped us, guided us, and contributed to building trustedplaces. Dima, our Head of Technology, is masterful at pulling out a rabbit out of a hat and providing great and simple solutions to complex problems. Without his expertise and creativity our site would still be in the Stone Age! You’re the best Dima

During the next 8 days we are going to be working round the clock as there is still so much to be done. All the pages have now been designed in the UK and are being put into HTML/CSS, in Serbia. Dima will then integrate them to our backend systems in Russia before sending them back to our servers in the UK. Yes the power of the global Internet at its best!

Today we are bringing in a fresh new recruit to start populating the site with basic entries of places, so that when users create reviews of these places, the database would already hold the basic info. Tomorrow we are going to select a geocoding application to transform postcodes into longitudes and latitudes for us to show you where your place is on a map. Saturday we are gathering with our friends to collect their reviews and profiles. Sunday more and more things to do but hopefully a bit of time left to see the final of the World Cup…Allez les Bleus et Allez Zizou!!! ……we do love Italians too

Thanks to everyone for your ongoing support and feedback!