Trapper Markelz

A big day at GamerDNA

Yesterday we launched a new version of our product at GamerDNA. It marks another step forward for my company... and we are all really excited about the new opportunities that this revision will open up for us. This is the result of about three months of hard work by my awesome team. Everyone pitched in, used all their skills to not only make a beautiful application, but also a much more usable, high-performance, and scalable one.

To give you some sense... here is where we were:

Here is where we are now:

 

A couple of the accomplishments include:

• A system wide alerting system to let you know when things are happening. Making it easier to get involved in the conversation.
• Complete conversion from a "friend" model to a "following" model.
• Real-time activity feeds of what people you are following are doing on the site, as well as any content being added around games that you are interested in.
• A "Spotlights" feature that bubbles up stuff you might be interested in based on all your past gaming and content consumption... it learns as you use the site... each day suggesting up to 10 items for you to check out.
• A roll up of games that your friends are playing, what is hot, new, and upcoming based on people similar to you.

In general, we have done everything we can to make the site smarter about you as a gamer. As you use gamerDNA, these systems learn what you like and the content you get becomes more relevant.

In addition, the profile section is revamped to better showcase your identity. Here are some examples...

The profile page starts out with showing your most recent gaming activity.

 

All of your gaming history is aggregated. Because we now import games for new users from their favorite services, you can have a rich game page of data from the get go. In some cases (when we can) we pull your friends form networks as well, so you can have a good set of people to follow as well giving you a good content stream.

 

Media is also a big part of interacting on the site... so the content you upload (screen shots) is now presented in a fun gallery format.

 

All in all, it has been a really fast three months. What you don't see is also all the improvements that were made to the system architecture... and also all the work we did to build a full set of commercial tools for our targeted media network (which is really exciting if you are into behavior targeting and ad networks).

In short, times are awesome at GamerDNA! We have an awesome new consumer product, some really powerful commercial products that are lighting fires in the ad world... what more could we ask for?

I love my job!

Seven Years of Marriage

Today is Maureen and I's seventh wedding anniversary. We celebrated by getting a baby sitter for all three kids... and hitting up Tryst, which is our favorite Arlington dining location. Tryst was the first restaurant we visited when we came to Boston, and we continue to go back for special occasions. 

For your seventh anniversary, the traditional gift is copper. 

Maureen got be some copper cufflinks...

I got her a copper tea kettle...

Maureen also got us an anniversary journal that she filled with pictures and memories of each of our anniversaries up until now. We have to take a second pass to fill out some more of the details. 

After dinner, we finished off the night watching the Cubs beat the Reds 4-1 at the restaurant bar sipping decaf coffee and dreaming of a full night's sleep.

It was a perfect little excursion to cap seven perfect years. And even though that might NOT sound like a party to you... here is a photo from this summer's Flybridge Capital Partners summer costume party that shows we still know how to hang... 

(The theme was Heros and Villians and we went as Guitar Heros!)

The kids are doing well.

June Bug
Originally uploaded by Markelz Family

For our third child, we really lucked out that June is a good of a baby as she is. She is only a few months only and she is already doing crazy things like sleeping through the night on some occasions (not nearly enough for Mo)...

I was thinking the other day about how your birth order seems to control your general temperament... and there are probably very good evolutionary psychological reasons for it:

Think about Neanderthal times or something...

1. The oldest child is typically the strong attention hound... they are the first one out... they get all the extra food and are use to that treatment.
2. The middle child shows up... is normally a handful... has to be to offset the attention-hogging powers of the older and fight for what they can get.
3. The youngest child is often the quiet one... tries to fly under the radar... by this point extra food is running low... just trying to not get left behind.  

At this point June is definitely flying under the radar... so much so I keep checking for that paint-on stealth material they use on the invisible black aircraft.

She she does make her presence known, it is typically in a very positive way. She has taken to cooing... smiling... and sticking our her tongue like a humming bird when you go to kiss her.

On the other end of the spectrum is Hannah... who can swing by herself on a swing now... is learning to dribble a ball... and spends all day freestyle rhyming anything she can... "A hood and a snack are like two in pack, chakka chakka chack, give a fruit bar back." etc.

And then there is Lucy.... poor Lucy. She breaks stuff... or drops stuff... always when we need her to be quiet... and she wipes out a lot... my new nickname for her is going to be "Princess Road Bacon"... but man, she just gets a little smile on her face and grabs your face with both hands and says "La Loo Daddy"... and you just melt.

So yeah... the kids are all doing well.