Top of the Ladder

Good news everyone! LadderToHeaven.com has been featured on SimpleSpark, an online catalog of Web 2.0 applications and services. Please feel free to checkout our profile on SimpleSpark & write a review.

We’re currently working on many fronts to popularize this amazing new service. Programming-wise, the members of our development team are still in the never ending process of optimization and improving user experience. Expect a new wave of features in the upcoming weeks.

For now, the best thing you can do is to keep on posting & praising. To all you new members — Welcome! =) Even if you don’t have the time to write a good deed about yourself or another individual, clicking those “Praise” buttons is just as helpful!

The moment you’ve all been waiting for is finally here: Ladder To Heaven is live! We invite you to go to www.laddertoheaven.com and sign up for your free account. Go ahead and start posting your good deeds. We can’t wait to read your stories!

A few moments ago, the latest copy of LadderToHeaven iteration 1 has been installed on the official web server. Iteration 1? Yes, iteration 1. Our team of dedicated developers is devoted to the goal of perfecting user experience. In the next six months, expect updates & upgrades on a weekly basis. Although our current features list is quite impressive for the first beta release, we are planning to expand LadderToHeaven’s capabilities once there is a considerable pool of users. Rest assured! For those of you who plan to use this service as the sole place to keep a log of all the good things you have done, data posted & points earned in early editions of LadderToHeaven will definitely carry over to the next version, guaranteed.

Hey Harvard students! Hope exam period went well. If you’re bored over intersession and want to test out a special preview edition of LadderToHeaven, post a comment below with your name and contact information. We’ll email you more details about how you can access LadderToHeaven before its grand opening.

We are launching LadderToHeaven for the general public 2/2/08.

We are very excited to report Ladder to Heaven is on track to launch February 2nd, 2008. Final testing of the core code concluded last night. Right now, besides prepping the server and ironing out some final bugs involving the points system, things are pretty laid back. Our core development team in India and our dedicated beta testers have put in countless hours to ensure LadderToHeaven’s top-notch usage quality and reliability. Everything looks absolutely fabulous. To give you a sneak preview of the beta design, check out our final color palette:

The site is aimed to reach audience members of all ages. First time impressions from Harvard students who previewed the site were extremely positive. Older family friends from across the United States also agree.

7 days to go!

The moment you’ve all been waiting for!

Chen and I are proud to announce the official launch date for Ladder To Heaven: February 2nd, 2008.

Keep your calendars marked, your eyes open, and your deed list growing for the arrival of LadderToHeaven.com!

Thanks to support from Duncan Riley @ TechCrunch and Glen Stansberry @ BlogFuse, Ladder to Heaven now has its own Facebook app. From the very beginning, we debated whether or not to build Ladder to Heaven solely on Mark Zuckerberg’s popular platform. The decision to construct our own site was due to the fact that — there are huge parts of the world population Facebook is currently not reaching. Wait, what am I saying? What kind of a claim is that? No seriously. One of our main goals is to make Ladder to Heaven open to people of all demographics. I don’t know about you, but I doubt my grandparents are avid Facebook users. What if they want to post a good deed about their neighbors?

But, for those of us who do use Facebook, having a way in which we can see the good that’s come out of Ladder to Heaven is also important. In this very first venture into the Facebook development world, we are offering an application that will provide a very simple list of the latest, most praised deeds from Ladder to Heaven. Want to stay up to date with all the amazing things people are doing all across the world? This app will provide you and visitors of your profile with a stream of inspirational stories.

As most of you already know, Ladder to Heaven is currently in closed beta. We are almost there. Currently, the articles displayed will mainly cover our development process, (the entries you are reading right now). But you don’t have to wait until the launch date to install this application! If you believe in our cause, please add the Ladder to Heaven Facebook app and the deeds will automatically flow in once the site launches.

Happy New Year everyone. The team has made incredible progress in the last few days of debugging. Soon, we will be in final approach of opening Ladder to Heaven to the public. Sadly for us Harvard students — studying for final exams will take up a lot of time in the upcoming weeks. Brett & I along with the rest of our beta testers will try our best to get things in line as fast as we can. Please stay tuned for an announcement of the official launch date.

Still confused about Ladder to Heaven? Check out our FAQ.

Ladder to Heaven : spread the joys of life

Chen and I would like to wish everyone a happy holidays and wonderful new year. As 2008 draws near and you start making those new year’s resolutions, think about all the good deeds you have done in 2007 and wish to do in 2008. Get ready, because the official launch of LadderToHeaven is just around the corner!

As some of you might now, PostSecret is a very popular service to view and submit secrets. Since its establishment, PostSecret has grown to become a worldwide community art project in which people mail their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. On January 1, 2005, Frank Warren, the architect behind PostSecret, began publishing thousands of these works online. So what differentiates LadderToHeaven from PostSecret?

The Most Obvious Difference

LadderToHeaven is a place to post good deeds whereas PostSecret is a system for people submit secrets.

No Postage Required

Unlike PostSecret, the LadderToHeaven’s story submission process is all online. There is no need to find a postcard or buy stamps. Deeds can be submitted from the comforts of your living room sofa, a school library, even from your iPhone.

Instant Gratification

Users do not have to wait several weeks to see their story online. Deeds are posted instantaneously.

Be as Creative as You Want

In order for your secret to be publically recognized at PostSecret, the postcard that you submit has to be somewhat decorative. Here at LadderToHeaven, we provide you the tools to spice up the story description (such as a WYSIWYG, images-enabled editor), but adding so much flair is not necessary! In fact, a very compelling deed does not need to be jazzed up by colorful text and images. You do not have to dig up crayons, color pencils, and matting paper in order to submit a deed.

Kid Tested, Mother Approved

Some of the secrets on PostSecret are not PG even according to today’s standards. LadderToHeaven was designed from the grounds up to be a user-friendly service for people of all ages. Once you see the homepage, you’ll see what we mean.

Everyone’s Welcome

The PostSecret webmaster screens all postcards to his likings. There’s no Frank Warren here at LadderToHeaven. All deeds have an equal opportunity to gain popularity.

A Friendly Community

On that note, LadderToHeaven offers a friendly community of users to judge whether a deed is worthy of being praised. Want to share your thoughts on a specific deed? Users have ability to interact with the person behind a certain deed along with other LadderToHeaven users via our commenting system.

A Social Entrepreneurial Venture

PostSecret currently claims to be the largest advertisement free website on the web. With your help & your good deeds, LadderToHeaven can definitely top that.

LadderToHeaven is all about you: we want you to tell everyone about the good deeds you do and witness every day.

Your personal LadderToHeaven profile page will contain all sorts of information about your involvement with our site. Besides personal information that you may choose to enter and share, your profile page will list your latest deeds, top deeds, deeds you have praised, and much more. But the most original and special feature of your LadderToHeaven profile page is your profile ladder. This ladder has rungs that represent ranking on our site. The higher you are on the ladder, the higher your rank, which is a measure of both the number of deeds you have published and the number of praises you have received for your deeds. The arrow next to the ladder will tell you the number of points you currently have and your height on the ladder. So go ahead: show off your ladder to your friends and family!