binovy moved from its internal alpha to a closed beta at binovy.com on September 1, and cut over all systems from test sandboxes to production. The move came with a redesign of every page, a new way to sign in, a network of vetted repair shops, and a rule about how binovy writes. This post covers August 29 to today.
the new design
On August 31 every page on binovy moved to a new design system. We named it Windmill, after the slow band of colour that turns behind whatever binovy puts in the light. The header is words: new, auctions, pieces, collections, results. There are no icons anywhere on the site, so nothing needs a tooltip to say what it does. Money and countdowns use the same typeface as everything else. Light mode is now a full equal of dark mode, and a switch in your menu moves between them.
Home opens on what is new: auctions, collections and pieces added recently, with a row of chips that sets how far back "recently" goes. There is no landing page. If you are signed out, one line above the rails says what binovy is, and the rest of the page is the pieces themselves.
photo galleries
On a piece page and on a lot page, photos now sit in a mosaic. The lead photo takes the large cell and the others fill in around it. If there are more than fit, the last cell shows a count and opens the full gallery.
binovy now measures every photo as it is uploaded and stores its width and height. The mosaic reads the shape of the lead photo and picks a layout to match, so a tall photo of a Walkman and a wide photo of a receiver get different mosaics. Photos uploaded before this week were measured after the fact.
binovy.com
The alpha ran on a subdomain with test money. On September 1 binovy moved to binovy.com as a closed beta. Auctions settle in real money, shipping labels are real, and the terms, guidelines and privacy pages were rewritten for a marketplace that handles both. The simulation bar came down. Access is still by invitation.
Fresh database. New data. “Let the records begin.”
signing in
We migrated binovy from usernames, passwords, and federated sign ons to passkeys. There is no password on binovy anywhere. If you are on a device that does not have your passkey, binovy will email you a sign-in link instead. Passkeys are managed in the users’ settings screen.
A passkey is bound to binovy.com by the browser itself. A look-alike address cannot ask for it, so the usual phishing trick does not work here.
the BART network
BART is short for binovy approved restoration tech. A BART shop is a repair or restoration business that applied to binovy, proved their identity and experience, and spoke with us before being admitted to the BART network.
From any if your piece pages you can send out a request for work to a shop within the network of your choosing. The request moves through stages both of you can see: requested, accepted, shipped, in work, returned. When the work is done, the shop will file a service entry on the piece's record with the shop's name beside it (automatically verified).
A shipping address inside a repair thread is shared as a card, never typed into a message, and you can withdraw it while the request is open.
If you restore electronics, the application is a short one (and we’re easy to talk to) at binovy.com/bart/apply. You’ll be asked about your shop, your work, and when you can take a call.
easier to understand recorded events in a pieces history
Every entry on a piece's record now carries a label that says how it got there. "recorded" means the owner logged it and nobody has checked it. "verified · binovy" means the owner asked for verification, attached documents, and the curation desk found they met the published rubric. "verified · BART" means a BART shop filed the entry itself. Verification is free.
With the Windmill design, requesting verification on a record claim now opens a panel that shows the entry, the rubric in one sentence, and the piece's documents. It will not send until at least one document is attached, because documents are what the curation desk rules on.
smaller changes
- Collectors' own photos now appear wherever they are named, on tiles, in comments and in the header. Initials are the fallback.
- Pieces has its own page in the header, with search and filters for category, condition and year.
- The owner card on a piece page shows the collector's follow counts, their public piece count, and any badges they have earned, such as approved seller.
- A private profile now warns that marking pieces public does nothing while the profile is hidden.
- In the add-a-piece wizard, the condition note is the headline, and each field says where it will land on the piece page.
- The curation desk can ask a seller for an identity check when it wants one, instead of every seller doing one up front. The badge, once you have it, reads "verified".
the words
The redesign came with a writing rule we had been circling for weeks and finally wrote down. Every sentence on binovy has to be easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to translate. Sentences are short and use common words. Each concept has one word: a piece is a piece, a named group of pieces is a collection, everything you hold is your portfolio, and a piece at auction is a lot. When binovy is the one acting, the sentence says so, in lowercase, because that is how the name is written. A business term gets a plain sentence of explanation the first time it matters.
Some copy did not survive the rule. Empty states that tried to be clever now say "no comments yet." Lines that sounded like an advertisement were deleted rather than rewritten. The help pages and the legal documents went through the same pass. A scan now runs over every string on the site and fails the build if a retired word comes back. The one flourish we kept is the indigo period after the name.
This post is written to the same rule. If a sentence in it reads like a sales pitch, tell us and we will fix it.
That is the week. binovy is in closed beta at binovy.com, by invitation.
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