Let’s start with performance. Many of you have been suffering through long load times on the Tweet What You Eat! hompage. Those days are over (for now at least). We’ve improved performance on the homepage and will be addressing other site sections as well in the near future. Thank you for all of your patience. We know things have been slow and we’re on the path to fixing it. Now on to the fun stuff!

• We just launched an iPhone app - YES, Apple has just approved Tweet What You Eat’s iPhone app which is now available in the App Store. The TWYE iPhone app is a simple Twitter client that makes constructing your food diary entries easy. It also supports the ability to take pictures of the foods you eat and post them to your TWYE food diary! The app was made possible by our friends at Newcastle University in the UK, so a big thanks to the team there for getting this out. We look forward to your feedback! Read more about it.

• A picture is worth 1,000 words, so take one! - You may have noticed the new column in your food diary labeled “pic.” Tweet What You Eat! now supports picture posting of the foods you eat through your favorite Twitter photo service such as Twitpic, yFrog and Tweetphoto. SImply include a photo link from one of the afeorementioned picture services in your Twitter message to TWYE and we’ll parse it out and display it in your diary. The TWYE iPhone app makes this easy, so download the app and give it a shot. Here’s an example of a Twitter post with picture that will get parsed:

  d twye ham and cheese, apple, chocolate milk - http://www.tweetphoto.com/a5C68

• Posting publicly - many of you have probably tried posting to @twye versus ‘d twye’ and wondered, “why isn’t this working?” Posting to @twye has never worked because we’ve wanted to leave @twye as a way to communicate with us (we the people who run Tweet What You Eat). Instead, if you want your food diary entries to appear in the public timeline, include the #twye hashtag and we’ll pick it up and put it in your food diary.

• Notifications for forum activity - Have you ever posted to the TWYE forum and wondered whether or not your post has gotten a response? Chances are the answer is yes. You can now opt-in to receive email notifications when any forum topic you’re active on receives a comment - not just the ones you’ve posted but the one’s you’ve responded to as well. Activate the setting from the TWYE Forum by clicking the checkbox in the right column.

• TWYE has been mobilized! - Blackberry users, iPhone users, Android users, we now have a mobile version of the site! It’s iPhone optimized at the moment so we’d love feedback from users on other platforms like Blackberry and Android as to what the experience looks like, but by far it will be better then before. Check out www.tweetwhatyoueat.com from your mobile device and let us know what you think of the new mobile site.

That’s is for now, enjoy the new changes, and please let us know your thoughts. Enjoy an improved TWYE!

Tweetwhatyoeuat has had a very fortunate run in the press recently. We recently received some mainstream media attention on the global stage that has helped to internationalized the Tweetwhatyoueat community, adding thousands of new members! Below is a run-down of some of the recent press mentions:

• The Huffington Post
• ABC News

Tweetwhatyoueat was also mentioned in the UK in The Sun, The Telegraph, Marie Claire and Grazia, a leading woman’s magazine. We’re trying to get hold of hard copies of the articles so that we can post scans. There have also been some press mentions in Brazil and Argentina. If you’ve seen Tweetwhatyoueat in the news, post a link to the news in the comments so we can update this article with a comprehensive list.

Thank you all for your support! We look forward to continuing to release new functionality enforcing our position as the easiest food diary you’ll ever keep.

Notice anything different? Team Tweetwhatyoueat has just completed a long anticipated redesign and we’re ready for your feedback! TWYE 2.0 is a complete redesign of the Tweetwhatyoueat service aimed at making your diet and weight tracking easier, faster and more fun. As part of the redesign, we’ve added a topic-based forum - the first step in connecting the TWYE user community around the foods they eat, goals they keep and all their food and diet interests.

Check out the new Tweetwhatyoueat here: http://www.tweetwhatyoueat.com.

You can start using the new Tweetwhatyoueat today! Simply enter your Twitter login on the homepage to create a new food diary, or if you’re a returning user, login with your Twitter account to access your existing food diary.

Here’s a run-down of some of the great new features in TWYE 2.0:

Easier Access

• Login to Tweetwhatyoueat using your existing Twitter account - use your Twitter login to access your Tweetwhatyoueat food diary.
• Add entries directly from your food diary - add food entries directly through your Tweetwhatyoueat food diary through the new diary entry form

Better performance

• Faster load times - Tweetwhatyoueat’s redesign includes code improvements making the site faster to load

Cleaner look

• New branding, cleaner look, improved design - ‘nuff said, we believe in the new look and feel!

New features

• Community forum - connect with other Tweetwhatyoueat users around food and support-based topics in the Forum
• Do Note Eat list - not proud of something you’re eating? Post it to your Do Not Eat list and track how many times you’ve eaten that food or share it on the Forum with other members of the community. Perhaps they have some alternative suggestions?

The beta period will last approximately one week after which the new TWYE 2.0 will be accessible at Tweetwhatyoueat.com. Take this time to get familiar with the new interface and post your comments about the design on the forum. We look forward to your feedback and we hope you enjoy the new Tweetwhatyoueat.

Thank you for your support in making Tweetwhatyoueat the easiest food diary you’ll ever keep. We look forward to your feedback!

-Alex Twitter: @aressidi

Tweetwhatyoueat is taking the first step towards a site redesign by having the Tweetwhayoueat logo refreshed. We’ve chosen to hold a design contest, awarding the best logo design and badge art for display on our Twitter page $250 cash. The contest is being held by 99designs and so far we have received 13 submissions, all of have been good. You can see all the current design submissions here: http://99designs.com/contests/11943

Help judge the submissions or submit one of your own!

Have you written in with feedback on the TWYE design in the past? Do you have a critical eye? Are you an active TWYE user with an opinion? This is your opportunity to provide feedback and shape the future design of Tweetwhatyoueat. Your vote counts!

Take a look at the contest page here. Add your comments on design submissions by referencing the design # on the contest page in your comments. Hurry though, the contest ends in 6 days.

The contest page has design all the design requirements from our team here. We want a logo that’s fun, has character, and gives a slight nod back to Twitter which has made the Tweetwhatyoeuat application possible. Feel free to share your ideas, critiques of the design submissions so far, and suggestions for imagery to try as part of the logo below in the comments. We will get the feedback to the designers working on the logo.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Sometimes you get caught up in the excitement of building cool new functionality and you forget to do the always important, often loathed QA. That was the case with our last release where we debuted weight tracking. We introduced a number of small problems, many of which were not reported by users like you, but discovered in my own day-to-day diary use (my diary can be found here: http://www.tweetwhatyoueat.com/diary/aressidi).

If you were none the wiser and these problems did not affect you, great! On the other hand if you were scratching your head, wondering why certain things that once worked no longer worked, then please accept our apology. Know that the problems have been fixed, and that the pipeline is filled with great new functionality.

Here is a list of small bugs that we’ve recently fixed:

• Positioning of the food profile dialogue in Firefox and IE - with CrowdCal setting active, clicking a linked, calorie value in your diary would open the food profile dialogue though it would not line up with the selected entry. This has been fixed.
• Selecting an alternate food profile failed! - with CrowdCal active, clicking an alternate food profile from the dialogue would not activate the profile in your diary. Instead nothing would happen. Now if you click an alternate profile it assigns the selected profile to your entry, and to all previous entries. This applies to entries marked with a “?” as well.
• There’s no way to delete a weight entry! - that was by design, though I’m not here to keep you honest, that’s your job. Added the ability to trash weight entries if you entered them incorrectly.
• Calendar problems adding and editing entries through the web - these I believe have all been fixed and include the calendar defaulting to 2007 rather then the current date. Another problem was that you could not add entries to dates in the past.

Some miscellaneous Internet Explorer display issues have also been fixed. Feel free post any problems you’ve experienced in the comments as I’m on a clean-up bender before moving to the next phase of functional development.

Team TWYE has been working furiously through the summer heat to bring weight tracking to Tweetwhatyoueat. A new “Weight” tab will soon be added to your diary allowing you to post, and privately view your weight entries as easily as you post food entries on TWYE today. Below is a screenshot of the new Weight tab. Your diary will now have two tabs allowing you to toggle between food entries and weight entries (food tab show active).



Posting a new weight entry is easy! Here are some syntax examples.

• ‘d twye #170’ weigh-in at 170 pounds
• ‘d twye #171 - couldn’t keep my hands out of the cookie jar’ weigh-in at 171 pounds with optional comment! Add a comment to your entry by using a dash “-” followed by the comment text

Weight entries are broken up by month and display the: date/time of your entry, the weight value in Kilos or Pounds, and an optional comment about the weight entry.

A new setting under Edit Settings will allow you to choose your preferred unit of measure for weight entries - Kilos or Pounds.

A few other quick things of note:

1. Weight entries will not appear on the homepage. Rest assured
2. People viewing your diary will only see food entries, not your weight entries

The target release date for weight tracking is end of July. Please feel free to post comments/questions about the functionality below. Any other ideas for weight-related syntax are welcome!

After nearly two months of development and testing, TWYE has just released version 1.5 which includes a host of great new features that we hope you’ll love! Here’s a breakdown of the new functionality:

• CrowdCal calorie look-ups – activate the CrowdCal setting under Edit Settings in My Diary, and TWYE will attempt to auto-fill uncaloried entries in your diary with calorie profiles submitted by other members of the community. With CrowdCal active, you can also click on any calorie value in your diary, even the ones you’ve submitted yourself, to see how other users in the community have caloried that same food. You can also see how many other users are using the various profiles. The popularity of a calorie profile is indicated by the number of users using it, allowing you to make informed decisions about which profile to use yourself for foods where you don’t know the calorie amount.

• Sticky Food Profiles – when you enter a calorie value for a food you’ve eaten, TWYE will now remember that value and apply it to your next entry. If you say a “Coke” is 140 calories, we’ll take your word for it, and the next time you drink one, you can leave off the calorie value and we’ll plug the calories you previously assigned to that food automatically.

• New privacy setting!– One feature we haven’t otherwise announced is a new privacy setting which allows you to opt-out from having your diary entries appear on the homepage. This is a feature a handful of users have requested, and one we were able to sneak into this release. The setting can be found in My Diary under Edit Settings.

Many thanks to TWYE’s beta test team, specifically Wirble, ivndtrrble, and ma1825. Thanks for all your help and valuable feedback! Please post your impressions of the new release here in the comments or shoot off an email to info@tweetwhatyoueat.com.

Tweetwhatyoueat is putting the finishing touches on some exciting new changes to bring you an improved, one-of-a-kind food diary experience with unparalleled ease of use. We’ve added this News section to keep you informed of the upcoming changes. Here’s what’s in store for the new Tweetwhatyoueat!

• Sticky Food Profiles – Anytime you enter calories for a food in your diary, TWYE will remember that value and automatically apply it to all subsequent entries. We call these “Sticky food profiles.” You can override the profile on an individual basis by editing an entry directly.
• Zero calorie, calorie look-ups – Enable the new “use food profiles” setting and TWYE will automatically try and match uncaloried foods in your diary with calorie entries submitted by other users. It’s calorie crowd sourcing and it’s a first, only from Tweetwhatyoueat.

Below is a sneak peak of how your diary will look when the new “use food profiles” setting is on. “n/a” entries in your diary will be auto-filled with calorie amounts if someone else in the community has eaten that food and assigned it a calorie value.

Clicking the calorie amount opens the food profile dialogue (as seen above) revealing the available calorie profiles for that food. Profiles in the dialogue are weighted. Any profile submitted or selected by you appears at the top of the list and is designated with a “me” icon. Profiles are then ranked by the number of users using them.

The calorie value of the active profile is shown in-line in your diary. If you haven’t selected or submitted a profile directly using the food profile dialogue, the highest ranked food profile will be used by default when the setting is activated. You can always select an alternate food profile from the dialogue at any point by clicking it. This will retroactively apply the profile to all previous entries for that food.

We’d love to hear from you about these changes so please post your questions and comments.