Preview/Feedback: Splitwise 2.5 (iPhone)

photo 1Mere hours ago, Apple approved version 2.5 of Splitwise for iPhone. We weren’t expecting this to get through the review queue before the holidays, but lo and behold, we’re here!

As we described in the version 2.5 web preview Ryan and Jon just posted, we’ve been trying to make Splitwise continuously more simple and delightful as we release new versions. This is just the beginning, but we’d love to get your feedback, either here, at our dedicated feedback site http://feedback.splitwise.com, or email us via support@splitwise.com. Continue reading Preview/Feedback: Splitwise 2.5 (iPhone)

Display Bug On Website [UPDATE: fixed]

Hi Splitwise users,

We’re heard reports of some strange display errors on the site this morning. We just rebooted one of the servers and this seems to have fixed the problem from our own internal testing. We are double checking now with users who saw the problem.

Not to worry, everyone’s data is safe and secure. This was just a website viewing issue.

Let us know if you experience any further issues at support@splitwise.com, and we will report back here and on Twitter with any updates.

UPDATE: Problem seems to be fixed as of 11:41AM. Let us know if you experience any strange behaviors on the web.

~ Splitwise Team

Splitwise Launches “Adorable Kitten”: Android App, PayPal, More!

Adorable Kitten
Splitwise is not just for roommates anymore. Adorable Kitten includes a new Android app, redesigned website, and PayPal integration. Split costs easily with any friend!

Today Splitwise is launching a major update to all of the “Splitwise” apps, on Android, iPhone and on our website. We’ve code-named this beta version “Adorable Kitten”.

While Splitwise has always been the best way to track roommate expenses, Adorable Kitten makes Splitwise the best way to split any bill or IOU. Now, you can create “friendships” and split a bill with any subset of friends – which is useful for group travel, bachelor or bachelorette parties, spotting a friend $20, and many more situations.

To make Adorable Kitten even more awesome, we’ve released a slick new Android app to keep up with our majorly redesigned website, which for the first time today integrates free P2P PayPal payments.

Continue reading Splitwise Launches “Adorable Kitten”: Android App, PayPal, More!

O2 / Telefonica paying for links? The fairness of the internet

What started out as an innocuous piece of spam in my inbox has lead me to multiple sources of evidence that O2, a major UK telecom provider owned by publicly traded Telefonica (and sponsor of the England Rugby team and Arsenal football club) is benefiting from a pay for links scam. I’ve found 6 suspicious backlinks to O2 that exactly match the pattern of an illict “advertising” offer sent to the Splitwise blog.

The most likely explanation (if the JCPenny / SearchDex scandal is any guide) is that a search engine consultant or marketing company hired by O2 has created a scam on O2’s behalf to increase their search rankings.

“We are unaware of this activity and, as a result of your findings, we are now conducting a full internal investigation,” said John Malley, reputation manager for O2 UK, via email on Tuesday morning EST.
Continue reading O2 / Telefonica paying for links? The fairness of the internet

An Interview With JumpOffCampus

JumpOffCampusRecently, Katie from JumpOffCampus conducted an experiment: what happens if you tape record me talking for 15 minutes, and post it almost word-for-word on the internet?

Find out the results by reading the interview on the JumpOffCampus blog (except for the parts that were “too colorful for the internet”, kindly censored out).

JumpOffCampus is, in my honest opinion, the world’s best off-campus housing tool. It’s only available with schools that partner with them, so if you are a student and looking for a good apartment search tool, you should reach out to them.

A widget-ized version of the rent calculator is currently available as a resource on their page, which we hope will be very valuable for their students. Woot!

Rentin’ Rooms in your House

Why U No Use Rent Calculator?
Most Splitwise Man In The World

If you are going to rent out a room in your house, especially to a friend, you need to pick a fair price that also reflects the market. One reader asks:

Dear Splitwise,

How would you charge if you rent out a room with a private bathroom in the home that is your primary residence, which you own?

Sincerely,
Landlord in Training

Hi Landlord in Training,

Great question. As it happens, I just had to help my parents do this. Here’s what you need to know: Continue reading Rentin’ Rooms in your House

Welcome, Nellie!

The Splitwise blog is back, and back in force. Here to the rescue – Nellie Hughes! Welcome!

Nellie in the Splitwise office
We welcome Nellie at the Providence, RI Splitwise office.

Nellie is joining us as writer, project manager and all-around research person. She’s got a background in game design and creative project management, and we love her sense of humor. She just started Monday – woot!

Despite the last month of no-blogging, things have in fact been humming along. In the words of our good friends and fellow Betaspring alums Recovend:

Why U No Blog?
Why U No Blog Anymore?

We’ve got great stuff brewing: a new Android app, and a sexy web re-launch. We’ve also been busy moving to Providence, and of course hiring Nellie. Apologizes if you’ve been waiting a long time for us to respond to your Dear Splitwise – we’re working on catching up on the backlog, as you’ll see later today.

The Splitwise Tax Fairness Project

Tax Fairness Project
How would you rewrite the US tax code?

Since we launched Splitwise, we have mostly focused on our core app: an expense-sharing platform for roommates and friends. What motivates us is the goal of improving relationships between friends. We make it easy for friends and family to organize shared bills, agree on what is fair, and be transparent with each other.

We realized one morning over coffee that the federal income tax system could use the Splitwise treatment. What do citizens think is a fair tax plan? How can we improve the quality of political debate and make taxes easier to talk about and vote on? We realized in our conversation that despite our passionate opinions on tax reform, we could not even remember what the tax rates actually are or where the brackets fall.

Enter the Splitwise Tax Fairness Project – a fun and educational way to visually modify and vote on tax proposals. Our in-house tax estimator, derived from IRS, Census, and NBER data, estimates the expected revenues from your tax plan. We are doing this as a non-partisan tax education project, and we plan to open-source our code so others can help us improve our tax model.

The idea of the Tax Fairness Project is to let Americans decide what is a prudent and fair tax code by letting anyone submit their own proposal. Visitors can play with the current tax code, see popular proposals and their impact on the budget, and vote on their favorite tax code through Facebook or Twitter. Splitwise will send the three most popular proposals to every member of Congress.

As President Obama and Governor Romney further outline their tax proposals, we will visualize them alongside top-voted user proposals.

Let us know what you think by commenting below, or email us at taxes@splitwise.com!