The MyBlogLog Blog The source for all things MyBlogLog.

MyBlogLog adds updates from Zillow and Trulia profiles

MyBlogLog had the pleasure this week to sponsor and attend the very first REbarCamp here in San Francisco. In honor of the event, we thought it was about time we showed some love to our rockin’ real estate blogger community!

Many of those in the real estate business already know that MyBlogLog offers all the right tools to help stay connected, and now we made it even more useful! Since Trulia and Zillow added RSS feeds to their profiles, we're now crawling those profiles for new information every hour and feeding that into your New with Me feed where it gets syndicated along with all the other content that you share on MyBlogLog.

For Trulia, we pull in any answers you've given to questions asked on Trulia. For Zillow, we pull in any new listings you add on Zillow. Speaking with both companies today, it looks like they'll be sharing more content via RSS so when it makes sense, we'll add those too.

If you have a Trulia or Zillow account, hop on over to the Services tab and add your ID and we'll take it from there. If you have your own site, you can also list these services in your About Me widget and show everyone your latest activity.

Find Missing Links in your Social Networks with MyBlogLog Connector

Its a big world out there online, but MyBlogLog can help keep you connected. I think of the web as a huge city, with little neighborhoods that people hang out. The photographers are all kicking it at flickr, the chatterboxes are tweeting away at Twitter, and you got your musicians over at last.fm rocking out. MyBlogLog Connector makes it easier to be an online social butterfly and get connected with what's going on in Internet City.

We first gave you a place to show off what you are up to with New With Me, and gave you the tools to find out what places you hang out at. Then we took that one step farther by delivering you the updates online that are most interesting to you in New With My World, all the buzz online, based on what you have told us is cool.

Then it was time to mingle. Friender showed you who all the cool people are that live with you in Internet City, your friends of friends of friends. We help you make that initial handshake, "Hey! You know Jane too? No way! She's one of my best friends! We definitely should hang out". And with New with My Neighborhood, we kept you in the loop to what they were up to.

So now that we showed you what was going on in your city and introduced you to the people that you need to know. We are taking that last step further and showing you the neighborhoods where your friends hang out, and giving you the tools so you can hook up and hang out there together!

Check out Connector. Your own personal online social directory of where all your friends are! We give you a list of all the people you consider a contact, and all the social web sites they are using. We not only tell you the places they hang out, but the exact table they are sitting at. For now, making that first impression is up to you. We will point you to them, but its up to you to go over and sit down.

How does it work? Let's say you are connected with Jane on MyBlogLog and are chatting it up with her on twitter and sharing photos on flickr. Connector looks at the public friends lists on del.icio.us, Pownce, Digg, Last.fm, and YouTube to see if you're connected there as well. If you and Jane have shared your third party identities on these services on your MyBlogLog profile, we'll do the work to figure out if you're connected or not. If not, the green plus icon will take you to their page where you can connect (once direct authentication is supported, we'll build in-line friending). That's it! Now you can share links, music, and videos and stay that much more in touch with your friends. Use Connector to fill in the gaps in your personal social network.

Its a small (online) world after all.

Is that a blog post in your Messenger window?

If you upgraded to the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger for Windows  (9.0, Beta), you may have noticed a new type of status message next to your contacts which shows the latest articles they may have Buzz'd or changes made to their Yahoo Avatar.

Starting tonight, MyBlogLog is feeding in MyBlogLog activity (adding contacts, joining communities, tagging) as well as your most recent blog posts into Messenger as well. What's cool about this is that it makes your Messenger contact list really come alive, transforming it into a socially aware RSS Reader.

Now, before you IM your friend about the Celtics last night you can read their scathing blog post and adjust accordingly. Likewise, you can post to your blog and automatically notify everyone on your IM list that you're not in a particularly good mood this morning.

Messenger 9.0 Beta (sorry, Windows only)
Manage what you share
Read about that Celtics Game

Mini-Robots Refresh your Site’s Thumbnail on MyBlogLog

It's now really easy to refresh the thumbnail screenshot of your site on MyBlogLog. We added a link that will  instruct our mini-robots to surf on over to your site, take a mini-screenshot on their mini-browsers and upload it for you to your community page.

Look for the link on your site's "Settings" page, click refresh to add you URL to the queue or "upload" if you want to roll your own.

Now's your chance, refresh your screenshot and let's get rid of those ugly, grey boxes!

MyBlogLog Friender uses Master Graph to Suggest New Contacts

OK. Everyone have time to sort through their Pending contact requests after yesterday's announcement? Ready for the new coolness? Go your Contacts page by clicking on the add/manage link under your contacts. We added a new tab called Friender. You can also go there directly.

What is it? It's basically a list of friends you know elsewhere and others they know in a rank ordered list for you to connect with. As you add new contacts or hide those you don't know, you can quickly fly through the list and grow your network. We look at friends of friends too. Chances are, if someone knows five of your friends, you probably know them too.

The cherry is that it's done in real-time! See that little "recalculate" button? After adding your third contact, the whole graph gets recalculated based on your most recent connections. Friend recommendations,  adjusting in real-time, based on a dynamic list of your identities across the web. MyBlogLog calculates the shortest route to people you know.

Welcome to People DNS.

Yahoo Answers, Google Reader, and Seesmic added to MyBlogLog Lifestream

We just set loose a new batch of gophers that will now go out and pull in your updates from Yahoo Answers, Google Reader, and the hot new micro-video startup, Seesmic.

Specifically, whenever you:

• post a question to Yahoo Answers
• share an item on Google Reader
• post a video on Seesmic

MyBlogLog will post those events and make them part of your New with Me page.

If you have shared your Service IDs in your Profile, the updates should start showing up. If you haven't added your Answers, Reader, or Seesmic IDs, whaddya waiting for? While you're there, check out the Find My Other Services button - it's a pretty neat trick.

As usual, if you notice anything odd or unruly, drop us a line.

UPDATE: Stuff already updating. For example, check out Cathy Brooks' page for Seesmic, Mani Kumar's page for Google Reader, and Santanu Chatterjee's page for Yahoo Answers updates.

Add Services Shortcut, a new service from the Keystroke Conservation Front

The Services tab on your profile can be daunting at first. With almost 50 services to date, it's a pain to think of all the profile IDs that you'll need to enter just to fill out your profile and reach Profile Zen.

Today we made it a little easier for you.

Most people use the same handle for all of their accounts. If you've either updated your default profile url or entered two or more Service IDs, our script monkeys will go out and ping all the services to see your handle exists on any of the other services so you can add them all with a single click.

Make sure it's you though - this service works great for folks like Rocking April but less so for the John Smiths out there.

MyBlogLog hCard & vCard: More Microformats, More Portable Data

Those of you that follow MyBlogLog on Twitter got an early preview of a new feature the MyBlogLog team rolled out today.  (To badly paraphrase Ferris Bueller, "If you aren't on Twitter, I highly recommend setting an account up.  It is so choice.")

So, what's new?  MyBlogLog has added the ability to quickly add your contacts and other MyBlogLog members to your address book.  Simply click the new hCard or vCard icon that is displayed on each member's profile page (see screen shot at right) to get started.

So, why two icons?  Today, most users will likely want a standard vCard -- the white icon on the left.  This should automatically open your default address book application (Outlook, Thunderbird, Address Book on Mac, etc.) and prompt you to add the new contact.

Many advanced users have setup custom processing in their browser for hCards and will prefer to use that format -- linked by the green icon on the right.

What's more, hCard is a microformat.  Like the other microformats we have added to MyBlogLog recently -- XFN and Rel=me -- hCard makes it easier for members to use their MyBlogLog information at other services around the internet.  As the hCard wiki entry says, "hCard enables applications to retrieve information directly from web pages without having to reference a separate file."

But wait, their more...  The MyBlogLog team has incorporated member's privacy settings directly into the hCards/vCards.  If a member chooses to share their email address and phone number only with their contacts, the information will only be included on the hCard/vCard when clicked on by their contacts.  Everyone else (and other services online) will only receive the public information the member has shared.

Finally, the team wants to thank Chris Messina for his continued help in getting MyBlogLog microformatized (new word?) and even more open.  You rock!