Home inventory on iPhone — hinventory.com

April 12, 2010 – 10:39 pm

We’re pleased to announce the availability of our hinventory for iPhone application.  Creating a home inventory just became even more easy and convenient.  Point your iPhone at a room in your house and snap a photo.  Tag items right there on the iPhone or upload the image to hinventory.com and tag your items later.  hinventory for iPhone has the same features as our Web site including:

  • Photo capture and tagging
  • Save item information like where purchased and current value
  • Capture item receipts
  • Manage your home inventory photo and item lists
  • Sync with your account on hinventory.com

You really should try it.  I don’t think I have ever seen an easier way to create a home inventory.  Learn more about our iPhone application.

Cheers!

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hinventory.com Makes Home Inventory Easy

March 23, 2010 – 2:59 am

I put my money where my mouth is today (again).  I deleted all my information on hinventory.com and started over.  You see, I am very excited about the new rooms feature and also wanted to make sure that doing a home inventory with hinventory.com was still as easy as when we started.

With digital camera in hand, I went around my house snapping photos of all the rooms.  There are always a few spots that I almost forget each time like the antique wine barrel on the front porch or the glassware in the pantry.  Here’s the thing…

Snapping photos of my entire house took 7 minutes.  That’s S-E-V-E-N minutes!

Now I have a visual record all my stuff.  I signed into hinventory.com and the new rooms feature prompted me to check boxes for all the rooms in my house.  I checked 14 rooms.  Uploading the photos was the next step.  Just for fun, I clicked the evaluation report and hinventory.com projected I should have 24 photos.  I have 22 on my camera.  Definitely in the ballpark.  My house is an older house in downtown Napa so some of my rooms are probably smaller than average.

Uploading the photos took another 5 minutes.  At this point, if something were to happen to my house, I could at least go to another computer and generate a PDF to work from.  But wait a minute, what about the detailed list of all my items?

The truth is I can get as detailed as I want.  I have a couple of folders in my office filled with receipts for all my electronics, appliances and art work.  I plan to tag all the items in the photos and upload a copy of the receipts at some point.  Until then, I have copies of everything in a folder with the hinventory.com PDF printout of my photos.  The whole thing is going to my safety deposit box. Wait a tick.  That means…

In less than 15 minutes I have a complete and secure record of my stuff.  That’s ONE-FIVE!

Some people I know will catalog everything.  These are the people who have detailed filing systems and put all their transactions in Quicken with detailed categorizations.  Other people I spoke with only want secure photo storage.  They may never tag items.  I hope not.  Even if they don’t catalog everything they already have, I hope they will at least make a habit of uploading the receipt for new major purchases.

I hope this helps you get started.  Most people find out how important their home inventory is when they really need it.  Don’t wait for then!

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hinventory updated Mar-21-10

March 23, 2010 – 2:56 am

Another product update and the biggest change is…ROOMS!  Rooms are a very powerful feature.  You can now list the rooms in your house and then place photos in each room.  Better yet, you can tell us if each room is small, medium, large or grand and we can tell you how many photos you should have.  Rooms help with organization, reporting, tracking progress and a lot more.  How did we ever launch without rooms? (just kidding on that last part)

Existing users will see a new home page asking for your rooms.  You simply check the box next to what you have in your house or apartment like Kitchen or Bathroom.  If you don’t see a room you need, just enter the name in one of the fields.  The home page is displayed once you define your rooms.

The release also includes:

  • Rooms
  • More product information
  • More reports
  • Bug fixes and cosmetic errors

By the way, did I mention we now have rooms?

Cheers!

By hinventory | Posted in Product update | Tags: , | Comments (1)

Photos provide a good way to track your possessions

March 6, 2010 – 5:37 pm

We know that using photos to track items in your house is a good idea because we have used hinventory.com ourselves.  A recent post on LifeHacker confirms we are not alone.  People are already using online photo and document sites to create a secure record of their homes.  That’s good news to us because it confirms our approach.  Better yet, here are some of the benefits you get by using hinventory.com instead of a generic photo site:

  • PDF documents that list all your items and photos.  You end up with a permanent record of your inventory that you can print and put in a secure location.
  • Inventory evaluation reports to tell you where you are missing key information about your possessions.
  • Receipt upload to validate possession ownership and value.
  • Periodic enhancements and updates to the software.  Other sites are great for online storage, but will they add features to help you manage your home inventory like we do?

Creating an online and secure record of the items in your home just makes sense no matter how you look at it.

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hinventory update Mar-3-2010

March 5, 2010 – 10:14 pm

We just completed another update to the site.  Here’s what is in it:

  • Added slide sorter and photo listing (this used to be just one combined interface)
  • Improved menu bar and user interface
  • Summary report and recent activity list
  • Mouse hovering on images no longer displays black lines
  • Original value of items more prominent in PDF
  • Added feature list, marketing pages to help demonstrate the value of the product

Please use out support request form to report any issues with the update or to request an enhancement.

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How do I delete a photo?

March 3, 2010 – 7:59 pm

Photos can only be deleted when all items have been removed from the photo.  The link to remove a photo shows up once you have removed all items.  Learn how to remove items from photos here.  Once you remove all items, view the photo and then click the Remove link near the bottom of the page to remove the photo.

We realize that some people may want a faster way to remove a photo.  We could remove the items for you when you delete the photo.  However, we know users sometimes click through warnings before realizing the implications of the change they are making.  If you went through the trouble to tag a lot of items in a photo, we’d hate for you to lose that work accidentally.  We may change this in the future but at least now you understand why the product works the way it does.

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How do I remove an item from a photo?

March 3, 2010 – 7:50 pm

You remove items from photos by viewing the item and then removing the link to the photo.  When you view an item, all photos displaying the item are presented near the bottom of the page.  Click the Remove link to remove the item.  Removing the item from the photo does not impact the photo or item as you can have items not in a photo and  photos that have no tagged items.

By hinventory | Posted in Support | Tags: , , | Comments (1)

How do I tag an item in a second photo?

March 3, 2010 – 6:04 am

When you click on the item in the second photo, you see a link in the Create item pop-up at the bottom that says Select existing item.  Click this link to display a list of existing items that are not already tagged in the photo.  Click the Add to photo link next to the item you wish to tag.

You can tag the same item in multiple photos if you want.  You can also add items to your home inventory that are not in any photo by going to the item list and clicking the Add new button.  If that item appears in a photo you add later, you use the instructions above to link the item you created to the new photo.

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Ideas for determining the value of an item

March 3, 2010 – 3:55 am

Setting the value of your possessions is an important part of your home inventory process especially when it comes to insurance and replacement value.  We have a couple of suggestions for how to go about this.

Items you recently obtained:

  • Upload your receipt.  If it was a gift, ask for a gift receipt to at least save where you got the item.
  • Use PriceGrabber or Amazon.  Find the item on one of these sites and note the value.  You can even take a screen capture of the page and upload that as your receipt.

Items you have had for a while or that were not new when you got them:

Some final suggestions:

  1. Record the original value along with the current value of an item to help calculate depreciation.  Depreciation determines how much the value has depreciated, or appreciated as is often the case with antiques, over time.  Insurance companies often use depreciation to set the replacement cost.
  2. Put as many important facts as you can in the item description including the model number, the serial number and any attributes specific to your item.
  3. Use the hinventory.com evaluation report to see where you are missing key information.  We’ll tell you which items do not currently have a value set.
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Release quick. Release often.

February 26, 2010 – 10:48 pm

Like many other micro-ISV’s, we want to be responsive to customers and adaptive to the market.  We don’t work on big hunking releases that take months to complete.  Instead, our goal is to release an update every two weeks and more than that if we can.  How do you achieve this type of aggressive goal? We follow these 3 guiding principles:

  1. Don’t let your eyes get bigger than your stomach. Plan for what you can get done.
  2. Test, test, test, and then test some more.
  3. Let customer feedback drive your priorities as much as possible.

As an example, we’re working on another update right now.  It has just a few changes in it including:

  • Several display bugs related to mouse hovering and black lines (customer)
  • Put the original item value on a separate line in the PDF (customer)
  • Provide an easier way to remove a receipt from an item
  • Enhancements to our admin panel to better support customers
  • Fixed a bug in the last updated date

Releasing often means customers don’t have to wait as long for their issues to be addresses or for enhancements to the product.  What makes this strategy achievable is the evolution of Web technologies such as software frameworks and cloud computing.

A software framework is collection of technologies that create a foundation for developing a product.  This is like building a house from materials designed for home building instead of chopping down a tree and milling the wood.  We use Ruby on Rails for hinventory.com.

Cloud computing offers virtual resources for hosting a solution that companies share.  We don’t have a lot of servers or infrastructure to maintain.  We share resources with other users of the cloud and instead focus on updating just our piece.

These technologies and others combine to create a development environment that is agile and adaptive.  We get updates to users in a more timely manner as a result and do so without risking quality.

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