Search by technologies and time zones.
As the number of posts grow, we need to be able to search ( may be a fuzzy search ) by timezone and technology.
Fix timezone interface
The current timezone-selector interface is a bit clunky and broken. The GMT-offsets (technically UTC-offsets since GMT 00:00 is noon and midnight) are listed as the offset-as-of-january-1; since many timezones are currently observing DST, these offsets don't reflect the actual offsets currently, and since DST transitions are not consistent from timezone-to-timezone, they can't be reliably used by users in different regions to agree on a time for pairing.
A much more straight-forward and lossless interface would be to allow users to pick from the list of "#{contintent}/#{example_city}" list (plus the Etc/UTC entry), which are timezones that include DST transitions where necessary; these timezones can then be used to output any timestamp in its currently-active UTC-offset and are unambiguous without assuming context (e.g., Central Time – Central US? Central Australia? Central Europe?).
Clarify whether the timezone for sessions
At the moment available sessions are shown with a time block.
This time block doesn't say what the timezone is. This is confused by showing the timezone for a user. Is the time in my local time, or the pair's local time?
Clearing this up would be better UX
I signed up, now what?
I have completed the signup. I'd like to offer help by pairing. How do I do that? How can I find people who need help now? How can I enter the times when I am available in principle?
Offer a pair right now, for spontaneous coding sessions
Spontaneity has its time and its place.
As a solo-coder, when I hit a brick wall, it's great to get a second pair of eyes, and I often code at anti-social hours in my time zone.
It can take several hours to set up a suitable Stack Overflow question.
It would be great to have a Pair Now! button somewhere, like the random pick-up options in MMO gaming.
Get notifications for upcoming session(s) in specific technology/user
- technology X (text comparison based)
- user X
Have pre-defined technology tags
I propose that the site has clear, unambiguous, pre-defined "tags" (ala StackOverflow) to choose from.
Users should be able to suggest or create new tags. But right now it really does not help to have "Rails", "RoR", "RubyOnRails", etc.
Customer support service by UserEcho