Thinking Aloud

Hello

You may be interested to see the new My Trends feature on the site, this allows you to test big races with year on year data since 1997 recorded. You can load them into the builder and then test as you wish, plus you can save them (and it doesnt use up a system slot!).

We are making steady progress and you will continue to see improvements as we go along. Some new tools are going to be nice additions. I dont like to waffle on about whats coming too much as sometimes it takes a lot longer than we hope, but im confident a couple of the new additions will really catch peoples imagination.

Little changes/improvements you see in different sections all come through member feedback. To give you an idea of how i see it all working, let me use the Stat Attack feature as an example. Initially i was on the bus one day and got chatting to an old mate of mine, he made a comment in passing about there being so many stats and wouldnt it be great to be able to just call up the ones you want. I then put up a very basic tool - then we received a mail from one of you guys saying "why not add this". Then we got more mails and we continued to act upon them. This will continue forever more and the tool will never stop unless there is literally no way of improving it (lets face it you can always improve anything).

I say all this because its important for members to understand what HorseRaceBase is and why it is a different type of service. I truly believe the key, is for us to genuinelly listen to feedback and act upon it. By making continual advancements for the good of all we can only grow and offer more.

Using another example to illustrate my point, there are certain categories in the System Builder i never use, i possibly never will, but members requested them and do use them. Others who didnt suggest them also now do, so ultimately the point i am ramming home is - this is a joint effort between all HorseRaceBase members.

On to a couple of other points i wanted to make. More and more we are receiving requests from people for us to supply tips - this was never our intention and we will never give a tip - but we are thinking of introducing a selections area, this will be done in an intelligent way though and be used to illustrate the benefits of the tools etc.

Next thing i wanted to mention was about the donations. I offer sincere thanks to everyone who contributes but wanted to just clarify that the €7.50 minimum donation is just that, a bare minimum we have set to ensure small-time punters and those with little income can still use the site. If you use the site every day, rely upon it for your daily activities and are in a position to do so, perhaps you should consider upping it slightly? Fairs fair.

Last thing i wanted to mention for now was a loyalty bonus we have coming up soon. Its being worked on still but we are hopeful will be ready soon enough. We need to generate additional income and will be creating further areas where we can sell e-books etc. We have always said members shall receive everything for the monthly donation and shall honour this agreement, therefore whatever we do create will be made available to all donating members at time of release as a loyalty bonus.

Shall hopefully post again soon

Cheers

Chris

Progress

Hi,

Happy New Year.

We are making nice progress and you will see improvements coming thick and fast over the next month as we try and capatilise on the many hours of work we have put in behind the scenes.

The Builder is now on, in its new format and the feedback has been extremely positive, so thanks for that. Many of the other areas we have been developing can now be finalised and loaded up.

One thing we are launching is a daily email service. This will be of huge benefit to quite a few members and will be sent out at the night stage of updates. It will include qualifiers etc and we have several other ideas to add in as time goes on. If you do not want to receive the daily email you can opt out within your account settings. Also in the account settings is a email setting to ensure we have your most appropriate email address on file, we will be putting a prominent link to this area over the coming days so all members are aware of this new service. Finally in this regard you may want to check your junk folders if you dont receive as your server may not recognise our email address.

In terms of the development work, all is based on discussions, feedback and comments from members, so please do continue to get in touch with your ideas and wishlists. We will get round to as much as we can, as quick as we can.

As mentioned in previous blog, December was a very tough month indeed due to the lack of racing but the only way to handle this is to work even harder to move forward over the coming months.

For now i will sign off, thanks ever so much once again to all members for supporting the site as we continue to advance. This is only possible through members donations.

Cheers

Chris