For the past year, Vinfolio has been working on an all new, dramatically enhanced version of VinCellar, our free online cellar management software which we estimate will launch in early 2008. View demo.
Why we made a substantial investment
As good as the current VinCellar is, there's always room for improvement. With feedback from our users on desired features and new Web technologies available to enhance the user experience, we decided in late 2006 to overhaul VinCellar. Our goal is to make it the compelling choice amongst cellar management software alternatives. Best of all, it will remain free!
New features
- Community tasting notes - You can already create personal tasting notes but you will now be able to share them in a myriad of ways including on a dedicated VinCellar website, through Facebook, and via a new format we call "Wineposts". We'll even pay you (in the form of wine credits in our store) to submit your personal tasting notes prior to the official launch. Learn how to participate.
- Reorganization of tasks by individual wine - The redesign enables us to pull tasks related to given wine (such as Add, Remove, Move, Sell) into a single page while preserving your ability to build lists of wines for acting upon as a group.
- Valuation data - We will continue to have all wine auction price data from the Wine Price File plus licensed retail price data to enable you to monitor the changing value of your collection. With VinCellar 3.0, we will be upgrading our capabilities in the retail pricing area.
- Cellar analysis tools - Our current graphical reporting capabilities will be taken to a whole new level.
- Visual browsing of your cellar using a special "label view."
- Integrated third party content and links - VinCellar already offers about 100,000 professional reviews which Vinfolio has licensed and there is more to come. We're also building in links to other frequently used wine reference sites.
- Buying and selling made easy - You'll be able to easily know when Vinfolio has wine in stock which is relevant to your interests and also be able to sell anything from individual bottles to your entire collection through a new format of an auction mechanism we've created. (This functionality has already been designed but will be rolled out in a second phase).
- Robust reporting, including printing in a restaurant wine list format.
There's a lot more and we actively want your feedback once the beta version launches (visit our new VinCellar 3.0 topic in on our Vinfolio forums page). As a Web-based application, we'll be rolling out updates on a continuous basis.
Bottom line: By integrating comprehensive cellar management capabilities with community and professional content, and combining it with social networking standards such as Facebook and Vinfolio's ecommerce capabilities, you'll finally be able to satisfy your wine-related needs in one place.
Stephen-
Sounds Great! When will 3.0 launch?
Posted by Rob Stavis at Monday January 14, 2008
The post says "we estimate will launch in early 2008." There are numerous variables in play but our intent is certainly Q1.
Posted by Steve Bachmann at Monday January 14, 2008
Oh, you forgot one fundamental thing. What about cross-browser support? Cross-browser does not only mean IE and Mozilla! Don't you think it's old-fashioned, lame, stone-age-esq to support only selected browsers?!
Posted by cruster at Sunday January 20, 2008
IE and Firefox together dominate the market so "no" I don't think it's lame only to support them (we're supporting IE 6 and 7, FF 1.5 and 2.0). We have finite resources and can't do everything. Microsoft even announced last week that it is going to force an update to IE 7 from IE 6 even though 1 in 3 people still use IE 6.
Posted by Steve Bachmann at Monday January 21, 2008
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