Thank you Morninglory - you're right, I did mean Amora! So hard to keep it all straight, especially since I do most of my reading on my smartphone! Thank you for clarifying - crossing my fingers the timing works!
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Too Big? No darling, when it comes to jewels that is simply ... impossible.
US - Our additional Amora Gem slogan of "Beyond Diamond Beauty" is now in progress at the USPTO, and has been assigned case #85557504
Things may get a bit slow for a few weeks here as we are now working with our patent attorney to file patent applications on the remaining cuts.
Once that is done, we'll start showing videos of the finished cuts. The reason is that US patent law has now changed such that it is 'first to file' and no longer, 'first to invent', and thus we now file first, then publicly show
A small glimmer of news though for the US Operation Freedom (the patent invalidation effort). It appears that we are likely to hear from the USPTO by this October with their initial ruling, termed a 'First Action on the Merits' which will likely indicate which way it's going to resolve. Thus, we may hear sooner than Summer 2013 for the US, and that will be a nice update.
Amora Gem Q&A
Quote:
Q - Will you release all the cuts at the launch or will cuts roll out in staggered fashion?
A - The plan is for a staggered rollout, with the H&A Rounds to be released first, esp. 7.5 and 8mm sizes.
The reason - based on our sales of current products (Asha and Amora Enhanced) and from emails from customers wanting to be notified when the Amora Gem releases who specified what they were after, the H&A round in those sizes dwarf's the demand for any other cuts/sizes.
Therefore, these will be the first to launch. The other cuts won't be far behind, but our focus is on meeting the bulk of the demand initially and that is the H&A round in 7.5mm and 8mm sizes.
As we get closer to release, we'll update with the expected staging and more details.
BTD General updates:
First, a quick note - our message boards officially turned 10 years old this week (4/4/2002 - 4/4/2012)!
It's been interesting to see how many other boards have come and gone in that timeframe, but happy to see our board continuing to grow (currently adding 6 new users per day in fact).
And as a humourous aside - back in March, 2002, when I first was working on setting up the boards, I told my girlfriend (now wife) at the time that I was setting up a jewelry discussion board. Her response - "No one wants to talk about jewelry!" …. With 6,000+ visitors per day now, it continues to be a good chuckle 10 years later.
Secondly, we had a small restock this week of Amora Enhanced Moissanite (rounds from 6.5mm - 8mm). On that topic, we've moved our sourcing of the raw moissanite to a different 'pond' for now, and the rejection rate appears to have improved so the dirty pond theory proposed last week seems to have been correct.
However, the problem remains that there is only one other pond beyond this one, and so the longer term supply for Amora Enhanced unfortunately remains sketchy, but at least we've extended it a bit for now.
Thirdly - as promised - it's time for a sneak preview of RingExplorer!
RingExplorer.com
For those who don't know, Ring Explorer is our upcoming search engine for rings, where you can directly search for rings/bands from a wide variety of vendors all in one spot.
The advantage versus say Google, for example, is that Ring Explorer is being built from the ground up to only handle jewelry - thus when you search on 'tiffany reproduction ring size 7 platinum' it pulls up a complete listing of tiffany reproduction rings, available in size 7 and in platinum from all of the underlying vendors.
You can immediately view all of your available options, with all the details as you move through each ring…no more going to each individual site to see if they even have a tiffany reproduction, one site at a time.
We're still perfecting the engine, but here is a sneak preview of the User Interface from our designer (David Olson). It is still in development, and these are mockups with dummy data and some humour (ala the bogus review by Jerick), but you can get an idea of how it is shaping up:
First, the homepage:
The data and rings shown are of course, just proxy for now - but the key points are: 1 - A free form natural language text entry to start your search 2 - Some initial filters if you want to select from a more guided search. And 'Awesome' won't be a real style offered
Once you enter your initial search, either via freeform text or selectinng using the filter, you'll see a result set displayed in either grid format as below:
or list format (additional text will be shown to the right of each ring…):
Finally, clicking on a specific ring takes you to the details page, as below:
In all cases, on the left side you'll have a much broader set of filters that you can check or uncheck to further refine or expand the result set as you decide on preferences, after reviewing the results. The result set is then filtered accordingly.
Once you find some rings of interest, you can favorite them by selecting the heart icon - that will save it to your favorites folder, or a subfolder (i.e. my 10 year anniversary ring) to help you organize the rings of interest. Searches can also be saved.
One nice feature is that if a ring has a matching band, the details page will have it linked so you can then jump to the band. Conversely, if viewing a band that has a matching ring, you can then jump directly to the matching ring.
Finally, to purchase, you can then click through and go directly to the underlying ring vendors site.
An important part of the site is that user's can post reviews on the rings/bands, so you'll be able to see reviews and ratings from consumers around the world on RingExplorer for each ring or band.
As you may have noted on the top header, there are three sections - Rings and Bands, which puts you in either Ring search or Band search mode, and then Custom Jeweler.
The Custom Jeweler is a feature we will add later, but is a search engine to let you find say, a custom jeweler who works with rose gold and Asha. This way you don't need to contact each vendor to see what they will work in or not, you can just search and see up front. And similarly, you'll be able to leave reviews on each vendor as well.
That's the very quick tour - we're still refining the interface but the above is the 'draft' version of the User Interface and we'll continue to flush it out.
We're hoping to get to the point of having an initial beta test in late June - there will initially be a limited amount of rings, but the point is more to test out the functions and features.
After that we'll refine and start the 'ring expansion' with the goal of getting to 10,000+ rings in due course!
Misc:
I'm short on time this week, but I had hoped to continue to trace back the origin of all precious metals to their true origin (beyond that they all came from a huge meteor shower hitting Earth, which then cooled into the veins we mine today… which was explained last time). Thus, next week we'll look at why are meteors running around loaded up with precious metals? Anyway, we'll pick that up in next week's update.
So to close - as you likely know, BTD routinely gives to support a number of animal welfare related charities.
One of these, Oceana.org, emailed this week with a sneak peek trailer on a film that they were involved with, and I'm pleased to be able to share that to wrap up this weeks update.
The film is 'To The Arctic' and will be shown in selected Imax (3D) theatres starting on April 20th. It follows a mother polar bear and her two cubs. My impression is that Oceana was involved with this as a way to hopefully help involve people with polar bears and related arctic creatures, as their habitat is on the decline due to…global warming.
The film looks visually stunning, or as Steve Jobs would say "Insanely Great!". Here is the preview (for best viewing, expand to full screen and enjoy)!
Have a great weekend! Less
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Recipient: GIA Diamonds Certificate
A small glimmer of news though for the US Operation Freedom (the patent invalidation effort). It appears that we are likely to hear from the USPTO by this October with their initial ruling, termed a 'First Action on the Merits' which will likely indicate which way it's going to resolve. Thus, we may hear sooner than Summer 2013 for the US, and that will be a nice update.
Yippee!
Originally Posted By: lessw
BTD General updates: And as a humourous aside - back in March, 2002, when I first was working on setting up the boards, I told my girlfriend (now wife) at the time that I was setting up a jewelry discussion board. Her response - "No one wants to talk about jewelry!" …. With 6,000+ visitors per day now, it continues to be a good chuckle 10 years later.
Ha ha!
Originally Posted By: lessw
Secondly, we had a small restock this week of Amora Enhanced Moissanite (rounds from 6.5mm - 8mm). On that topic, we've moved our sourcing of the raw moissanite to a different 'pond' for now, and the rejection rate appears to have improved so the dirty pond theory proposed last week seems to have been correct.
However, the problem remains that there is only one other pond beyond this one, and so the longer term supply for Amora Enhanced unfortunately remains sketchy, but at least we've extended it a bit for now.
Good news for those interested in buying more Amora Enhanced Moissy!
Originally Posted By: lessw
RingExplorer.com
And 'Awesome' won't be a real style offered
Well, it should be!
Originally Posted By: lessw
The Custom Jeweler is a feature we will add later, but is a search engine to let you find say, a custom jeweler who works with rose gold and Asha. This way you don't need to contact each vendor to see what they will work in or not, you can just search and see up front. And similarly, you'll be able to leave reviews on each vendor as well.
The pages for each of the Scintillating Six Amora gem cuts are now posted on our our site, under the Amora Gem menu.
At the bottom of each page is the full dimensional measurements of the various sizes for those who wish to plan for future rings.
This is great Less. I'm just wondering if you've given any consideration to 6mm/0.75ct Round Brilliants? Not everyone likes to wear big honkers. I just got a 6mm Asha and while I love it, I'd really like to be able to "upgrade" the ring to an Amora gem one day.
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