We have been live for a while now in the UK and it’s been a ride so far. Reviewing this Roamler submissions I have laughed, smiled, giggled, frowned, been amazed and even once shed a tear, even if I did go and hide to do it. Therefore I thought that I would share some of my personal favorite submissions that we have received so far.

We have asked you to show us your city or town on two different occasions, the most recent one was specifically about London and in an earlier one we wanted you to show us one of those secret places in your city that you really loved. Both Tasks had some fantastic submissions that really showed the UK at it’s very best. Here are some of my personal favourites.

One of the, if not the first Task you get to do is Roamler Red and we have and a ton of fun entries, you guys have submitted some really creative red things. From candy to shower gel and some very red trousers.

Which brings us to the end of this Fridays little blog. We are looking forward to seeing your submissions and if you don’t have an invite yet then send us a Tweet.

… Oh! And one more thing (I just had to do it)…

Wiggert one of our founders and Merel from the UK Roamler team will be in London next week so if you have the time and inclination you go have a drink and ask questions about Roamler, give feedback and just hang out on Thursday at a location to be announced near City Road. 

Dirck Barendz is also the name used for the 1.4 release of Roamler. We use the names of Dutch painters for releases, just to make it more fun. So that leaves the question: what has release 1.4 - Dirck Barendz to offer?

 

 

Once upon a time when map makers got to drawing unknown parts on the map they would leave it white, just the outline and nothing else, and write here be dragons. Because no one knew what was there, it was all a thrilling adventure.

And adventure is what Roamler at the end of the day is all about. Launching in the UK is the big adventure that we are embarking upon now and there are white spots on the map. A white spot is a place where there are not enough, if any Roamlers and if you live in that area you don’t need a code to register. You just download the App from the App Store, and click register, fill in the details and you’re a go. Keep in mind that some areas don’t have Roamlers yet, but aren’t on the whitelist yet. If you’re in one of these area please mention us on Twitter and/or Facebook and we will make sure to get back to you with an invite as fast as we can. If you really want to get started, you can email Klaus (klausATroamler.com) or Merel (merelATroamler.com) and we will get you started. Below is a little something about how to register and if you scroll down there are a few posts about how you get the most out of Roamler as a whole.

Roamler Registration

So how does registration work exactly when you have gotten your invitation code in the mail? The email contains a link to App Store, clicking that will take you straight to the download page, quick and easy. From there you need to open the App and on the very first page you find a button called ‘Click Here to Register’ at the bottom of the screen.

This opens your default browser and takes you to a registration page. Enter the registration code and your details.

If you’re located in an area with very few Roamlers then the process will skip your need entering a registration code, you don’t even need to sign up for one first on the site. Just click ‘Click Here to Register’ , fill in your details and start Roamling.

Getting invited

There are many different ways to get an invite code, one of the best ways is to keep an eye on our Twitter or Facebook feeds, here higher level Roamlers who have received spare codes might sometimes give them away, start little competitions for them. We here at Roamler give them away as well from time to time.

With the arrival of Roamler in the United Kingdom, new possibilities arise to compare Tasks between different countries. And this is exactly what we have done with the Christmas window shopping Task in which we asked Roamlers to take a picture of the best decorated  Christmas windows they could find. The results? Some of the Dutch windows are serious competitors with the British ones.

The Netherlands
Dutch Roamlers mostly took pictures of windows from clothing stores and department stores. Windows of the “Bijenkorf” were mostly photographed, with Roamlers stating that these windows were ‘something else’, ‘pleasant’ and ‘fairy like’. Not only windows of the bigger shops were photographed, pictures below show the window of a hairdresser (with a huge Christmas stable), decoration stores and small boutiques.

United Kingdom
Some of the windows in the United Kingdom take decoration a bit further, compared to the windows in the Netherlands. Windows are painted, we see dancing turkeys and one window is filled with cards, like App icons. Most Roamlers define the decorated windows as ‘Bright’, ‘Colourful’ and ‘Classy’ .

Some windows of both countries were very much alike. You took pictures of covered windows, so only parts of the decorated window were visible. Two Roamlers also noted the more interactive way of displaying products, even with a window in the Netherlands that changed by people passing by. This window should actually be captured with a video (a feature that is not in the app at the moment).

In these pictures you’ll find the partly covered windows (above: left UK, right NL) and below the interactive windows.

After all these Christmas tasks, it is time for New Year (including related tasks of course.)

The Roamler Team wishes you a happy New Years Eve and a great 2012!

The Roamler HQ Christmas Tree!

It was the 2nd day before Christmas and it was quiet in the Roamler office. Apart from a few little red dressed elfterns Merel and I are more or less alone. Now I could write something about how we had a really great office party yesterday and how we wished that you could all have been there, you out there in Roamler land are as much part of this as anyone I share office space with, even more so. So merry Christmas, Midwinter, Yuletide or any other celebration of light in the dark that you observer.

Staying on the subject of Christmas I wanted to talk a little about presents. There is a task live today called ‘Last Minute Shopping’, its all about the presents that we forgot to get, the ones that slipped though our fingers or are just so hard to get because we have no idea what to get the person in question.

For me it’s my partners sister and her partner, I have no idea what to get them! Not too expensive, not too cheap, something they can use. See the thing is that they are having a baby and everyone are giving them things related to that, I want to give them something for themselves. Just so they don’t forget that they are still people, something nice. And that is what the task is really about, the last minute gift and how to give it. Merel and I are looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with and we hope that you have a great holiday.

Please remember that from today and until Sunday things here at Roamler will be a little slow and it might take a little more then 4 hours before we can review your submissions so please be patient with us.

Merry Christmas!

If you’re an active Roamler then you have probably at some point gotten a funny little message or an email from me. Since Merel introduced herself I thought I would do something similar, let you in on who the weird man with the glasses is.

My name is Klaus and no I’m not Dutch, in fact I’m not English either. I was born in Copenhagen , but lived in London for long enough to call it home. Being a bit of a traveller, having lived in Paris, Berlin, London and now Amsterdam.

My road to Roamler is a long and winding one that took me from graphic design to customer support for a large games company, to community and moderation and ever onwards.

I’ve been working for Roamler for little more than 3 months, mainly I’m responsible for community support, I don’t like the title Community Manager, Representative is much more apt. I am the user, player and clients voice internally and the company’s voice. I also provide support, try to fix your problems with the App, pass on bugs to tech and of course I blog.

When I’m not working I write bad pulp horror, I might even one day share it with you if your nice. Play the drums, badly read when I have some spare time which is way too rarely. Also I take pictures of everything with my iPhone and post them on Twitter.

Much hugs,

Klaus

This is the view from an airplane window and the view from the road to work

And a shot a rainbow in Berlin:

The entrance of Roamler HQ

I’ve been working for Roamler for almost six months now. In Holland the company has seen a huge growth in these six months. From 500 Roamlers (when I started), we are now close to 5000 Roamlers! And from three launching partners we now have dozens of clients. I think this success is due to the personal approach of Roamler and the combination of fun/creative tasks and tasks that make you earn money quick.

My job consist mainly of community support; review all the tasks the Roamlers perform, awnser all their questions, come up with creative and fun tasks for the Roamlers and/or compagnies, write blogs, etc. And now I’m also gonna be partly helping with the UK! I’m really excited and curious to see how things will go in the UK. Are you guys as creative as the people in Holland, are their big differences between the jobs you will like, are their more oppurtunities in the UK?!

As you may notice my English is not perfect. I appoligise for this right here and now in this blog. Please keep in mind I always try to be as correct as possible . I hope we can learn a lot from each other and that Roamler will be a big succes in your country. Please email (merel@roamler.com) or Tweet(@merelcoolen) me if you have any questions, ideas, feedback or anything else. I am here to help you! And my name is Merel (which means Blackbird in English!).

For more information see the FAQ on our website and maybe it’s fun for you guys to have a look at our Dutch blog, offcourse you can’t understand the words, but I think you will love to see the pictures and different tasks you can find there!

Here a selection of my Roamler submissions which tell something about me:

My breakfast.                                                            My guitar!

How I go to work.                                                What I love doing when I don’t work.

A few weeks ago we launched the First 50 test group in the UK, as part of that the Dutch Roamlers did an assignment about the things that reminded them the most of the other side of the channel. Apparently we are a nation of tea, liquorice all-sorts and minis, who knew. We did however get a lot of positive energy to pass on to the newest branch on the tree, they are truly excited about having you join us. Just as we are excited here in the head office to be launching in the UK.

We wanted to pass on some of that positive energy to you so here are a few of the pictures was submitted and a few of the well wishes that went with them:

Ralph G: Welcome to Roamler , enjoy and be sure to have fully charged iPhone with you at all times

 Peter W: Enjoy the renewed perspective on your everyday life! Roamler is great!

Michelle W: I really love this city(London)…!

Samantha S: Enjoy this great app and explore and see your own city / country in a different way!!! It’s fun, inspiring and gets you creative side active. But be aware… You’ll get hooked for sure!!!! Welcome

Wissam A: Welcome to roamler, lets make it roamlertastic!!!! 

Laurens B: Be prepared for a new addiction! Roamler gives you a learnfull view on your environment. Good luck roamler!

With all of those warm welcomes from the Dutch Roamlers I thought we should reciprocate, there is now a Task available asking you to tell them what you think about when we say “Holland”, give it a go, we are looking forward to seeing your submissions and will be putting up a similar post about what you guys think. And remember you can find us on Facebook and Twitter so don’t be a stranger and come say hi.

Cheers,

Merel and Klaus

An essential part of the Roamler experience is sharing, not only does it let the world know that you’re using Roamler, but it also lets other Roamlers know what’s going on, that there might be a Task that they would think is fun or interesting or earn them a couple of quid.

First you need to set up your sharing, the App doesn’t just do it automatically. Go to the account screen, it looks like this: Then from there click the settings button in the upper left corner and select either Facebook or Twitter depending on what social network that you want to share your Task completion to, or both.

Then enter your log in details for each of the networks, Roamler does not automatically gather this information, we want you to chose when and what you want to share.

Congratulations your friends can now keep track of your adventures in Roamler land. Now if you are anything like us you will be a bit curious to see whats going on with other Roamlers, maybe have a look at the share page. You log in to your account and click ‘Shared Tasks’, form there you can see all of the Tasks that you have submitted, if they were approved or rejected and best of all, you can see what your fellow Roamlers submitted, get inspiration and share their experience. We hope that you find this blog both helpful and inspiring and remember to have fun and get out there.

Roamler is still in beta and that means that there are a few little things that still needs tweaking, testing and changing. The key to a good experience using the App is to know a little more about what these are and how to avoid them.

The first up is battery drainage, a few of you have complained that the app drains your battery really, really quickly, that is of course not how it’s intended to work. This happens when you leave the app while on the map screen, all apps that has an active locater will place a small compass needled on the bar at the top of your screen.  This will put a drain on your iPhones battery, to avoid this make sure that your are not on the map screen when you leave or close the App. This is a feature in iOS that keeps tracking GeoLoc’s, you might want to make sure that other Apps with a GPS/GeoLoc functionality is not doing the same thing in order to prolong your battery life. Another confusing message is the “Unknown Reason” message, this somewhat ambiguous error actually only covers one issue, it means that the timer for the Task ran out, luckily its being updated next week but I just wanted to mention it. Normally you have 2 hours to complete a task, it will say in the Task description if it’s longer or shorter. Another point of confusion related to the “Unknown Reason” message is that the time left on the Task description screen, it’s normally says 7, 14 or 21 days, it does change from Task to task, but when you pick up the task you have 2 hours to actually do it. This has confused more then a few Roamlers and I just wanted to make sure that it was out there, in the actual briefing the Task will show you how much time you have left to complete it.

So until next time, we hope that this clears up a few things that might have been a little
weird and keep the feedback coming and more importantly have fun.