Merecal Blog

It’s been a long time coming, but Merecal has officially launched today.

Matt Jackson and I originally started discussing the need for people to be able to keep up with their favorite artists, actors, authors, directors and video game publishers last summer.  Like most people, we are very into music, movies, books and video games and would absolutely love it if we could get notified when new releases come out, rather than having to hunt for them online or in stores.

We did some intial research and found that there were sites that do a fairly decent job of keeping you in-the-know, but only for one of the media types mentioned above.  There didn’t seem to be a central place for tracking new releases across the popular types of media and using your own likes and dislikes to help shape how you get notified about those new and upcoming releases.

That’s where Merecal comes in.

In late summer/early fall of last year, we put the rubber to the road and started coding away.  First we built the pieces that go out and fetch all the thousands of releases that come out each night.  Next, we started putting together mock-ups of the home page, which needed to showcase all of the best releases coming out that week as well as in the weeks to come.  We then started to build out the concept of subcategories, enabling chill dudes like myself to track all the latest releases in Ambient music, for example.  Then we added in the ability to “favorite” releases and the people or publishers associated with them, which enables registered users to really tailor Merecal’s release notifications to their own personal interests.

Because both Matt and I are lucky enough to have day jobs, getting to this point took us until this past Spring.  I’d be remiss not to point out that, after putting in so much time into a site we really believe in, we were able to then depend on family and friends to take an early look at the site and give us the brutal, honest feedback we needed.  Through their willingness to try the site out and send us feedback big and small, we were able to make a whole lot of adjustments in a relatively short period of time.  We feel and hope that these adjustments will make the site easy for you to use, and most importantly, your go-to source for information on new and upcoming releases in books, DVDs, Blu-ray, music and video games.  So thank you to all of you who helped us out (you know who you are).

One of the final touches we wanted to get in place before launching was a screencast demonstrating the various features that Merecal has to offer.  Matt was kind enough to put the following screencast together, so take a look at what Merecal can do for you:

If we were previously in a “quiet open beta,” we’re now in a loud open beta.  We’re hoping to see you and your friends and family joining the site, so if you like what you see, please spread the word.  We also want all of our users to know that we are open to any and all feedback on the service and its features, either via comments here at our blog, in email, or on Twitter.

Most importantly, though, we want you to know when the new releases you care about are coming out, and want to continue to ensure that you are kept in-the-know from here on forward.