The book is open
Just a quick note to those of you waiting to take a look at the MyBlogLog API that we've opened it up so you can at least take a look at the documentation to check out what's there.
http://developer.yahoo.com/mybloglog
As always, if you have feedback, please leave a note on the Suggestion Board.
Shuffling the Deck
(photo borrowed from Environmental tip of the week)
Over the next week we are upgrading hardware in our datacenters. We do not anticipate any downtime but some of you may experience 'less-than-snappy' (yes, that's the technical term) response times for our widgets and web site while we shuffle data around. Here's the deal:
First - upgrade West coast datacenter and copy mass quantities of data from East coast to the West coast. During this time, anyone that normally would hit our West coast datacenter will be re-directed to the East coast.
Second - upgrade East coast datacenter and copy mass quantities of data from
West coast to the East coast. During this time, anyone that normally
would hit our East coast datacenter will be re-directed to the West coast.
I'll update this blog post as we work our way through so come back here for the latest status.
UPDATE: 2/1 4pm PST - so we've finished everything on the West coast and are bringing these servers back online. Moving on to the East coast so we'll be redirecting everyone that normally hits our East coast colo over to the West coast while we peer under the hood.
UPDATE: 2/5 Noon PST - all done! We'll now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification? Puhleeeze!
It just occurred to us that the verification feature released yesterday is a golden opportunity to involve the entire MyBlogLog community in a collaborative art project. Right now, the default text for your verification link is Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification. As more and more sites use this phrase to verify themselves, the search engine ranking for MyBlogLog for this phrase will rise to the top. Basic SEO stuff, right?
An accurate description of what's going on? Yes.
Boring and, shall we say, a tad, "lifeless?" Most Definitely.
Here's what we propose.
Leave a comment below with a phrase you think would be cool to come up as a result #1 on your search engine of choice. Manny, (the engineer who coded the feature) suggested, "best site evar" - we threw around a couple of others but then I thought - why not let everyone in on the action.
This can be our own little easter egg. Something to show your friends.
Why Verify?
You'll start seeing this little checkmark on community sites. It's an icon, a "seal of approval" that basically tells you that the owner of the site has spent a few minutes proving to MyBlogLog that they have write access to the blog featured on the community page.
Why did we do this? The interwebs is a dynamic place. People come and go. Sites change ownership, domains change. We wanted to give people an indicator that the page that they are looking at has a relationship with the website it features and has been "blessed" by its owner.
That's not to say we discourage fan sites. It's cool when people do that, we just wanted to create something special for those that have ownership and give those members a way to indicate that.
Currently this is nothing more than a visual indicator. For details on how it works, check this page for more info. In the future, we'll use the verified flag to indicate a higher level of "truthiness" and will use it help us better promote that site.
So what are you waiting for? Visit your site's community page and click on the "Verify my site" in the Author's section and testify!
Are you worthy?
photo by mariachily
Yes, the rumors are true. MyBlogLog has been working on an API. The team has been hard at work and now we're ready to have some folks check it out.
We're going to remain an invite-only beta for the time being but if you're a tinkerer and are interested in giving us some feedback, please sign up for the beta and describe your application. When we launch, we'd like to do a bit of a splash and feature the best apps on stage at an upcoming tech event.
Some of the things you can do include:
- get all the websites associated with a particular
tag - get all the members' contacts on
MyBlogLog - lookup by ID on a service such as flickr or twitter and
find that user's profile on MyBlogLog-
get a member's profile data including sites authored, tags,
and identities on other sites
Who will you vote for in the US Presidential Elections?
With Iowa, Wyoming, and New Hampshire behind us, the US Presidential Elections are now running full steam ahead. Yahoo News is a great resource for all the latest news on the campaigns and candidates and of course MyBlogLog is right in there with a Community for each candidate. We're not claiming to be Gallup or anyone but if we use community member counts for each candidate, here's how each candidate matches up:
Democrats
- Barack Obama 71 members
- Hillary Clinton 31 members
- John Edwards 14 members
- Bill Richardson 5 members (AP says he just dropped out)
- Dennis Kucinich 3 members
- Mike Gravel 0 members
Republicans
- Rudy Giuliani 10 members
- John McCain 8 members
- Mitt Romney 8 members
- Duncan Hunter 3 members
- Mike Huckabee 1 member
- Ron Paul 1 member
- Fred Thompson 0 members
Add yourself to the candidate of your choice - we'll check back from time to time and update the standings.
Color Me Widgets
Sometimes you want just the perfect hue for your sidebar widget and no matter how much you play around, you just can't seem to get it quite right. You know who you are, copy-paste-publish-refresh, copy-paste-publish-refresh, over and over until you get things just so.
Today, I stumbled across thinlight.org who has glued together the MyBlogLog Recent Reader JavaScript code with mooRainbow color picker to come up with an interactive color picker where you can not only pick from the full spectrum of available colors, you can also see your choices interactively as you fiddle around.
MyBlogLog Widget Colorer, very cool. Check it out.
About Me Widget – Now in Variable Widths!
One of the most requested features for the About Me widget was the ability to customize the width without having to muck around with the CSS. We've added a slider to the bottom of the configuration screen so that you can now configure the width of the widget anywhere from 150 - 370 pixels.
Enjoy!
Not sticky enough
Some of you have noticed that your profile avatar and nickname is having trouble "sticking."
For those impacted (thankfully it's only a few of you) in Edit Profile selecting a different photo or nickname works fine but every time you try and save, it just reverts back to your original photo or nickname. Repeated efforts to update fail and no amount of cursing, pleading, tears, or prayers seem to have any impact.
Rest assured, we feel your pain (my profile is one of those afflicted). I think we've figured the source of this bug and have a fix scheduled first thing Monday morning. I'll keep you posted with updates on this blog.
UPDATE: As of January 7th 10am PST, this issue has been fixed. Thanks for your patience everyone.
Hot Member: Leo Gartsbeyn
Our latest Hot Member earned his place in the spotlight by trouncing everyone in the MyBlogLog Problogger Contest. Known for his RSS feed directory site, Feedest.com, it should be noted that Leo had not one but two community profiles in the running.
In addition to his winning entry, his, "trash can art" blog doodlage blog placed a respectable 11th. We especially like the post poking fun at the default gray Yahoo avatars which was all part of Leo's grand plan to win the contest as he details in his blog post, How to Win a Contest. Case Study.
Join the Feedest community here.
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