The MyBlogLog Blog

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.

MyBlogLog Contacts: New, Improved and Un-limited!

Today we released a better way to manage your contacts on MyBlogLog. Click on the add/manage link below your Contacts to see the new screens. It's pretty straightforward. If someone adds you as a contact, they will show up on the "Pending" tab. You have the choice to then add them as a mutual contact, keep them as a "Follower" or "Block" them and never hear from them again.

Those of you who have asked for a way to quickly sift through your list of "admirers" (now called "followers"), your prayers have been answered. Hit your MyBlogLog profile page and up top you'll see notification of how many pending contact requests you have waiting. Now you can sort through that list, friend those you like, block out any spammers, and help clean up your neighborhood. The better your Contact list, the better the signal on the stuff you see in your New with My Neighborhood page.

Because there is a better way to control your Contacts and you've always been able to limit who can leave you messages (just your contacts, or everyone), we've lifted the 15 contact requests/day limit. Yay!

So take this opportunity to clear out your Pending Contact list. We've got something really kick ass in the queue and it'll be even better if you clear the plate now so you can see how it works.

 

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

We just set loose on 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 is a bit 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 is you though - this service works great for folks like Rocking April but less so for the John Smiths out there.

MyBlogLog and OpenID

Starting now you can  use your MyBlogLog profile URL to login to any site that supports OpenID.  Visit the Yahoo Open ID site to learn how.

For those of you with big, long fugly default urls, visit the Change your Profile page to pick something short and sweet and get one step closer to Profile Zen.

Why would you do this?

Let's say you come across a site that accepts OpenID for authenticated comments. You can use your MyBlogLog profile here so anyone wanting to click through and learn more about you will go to your MyBlogLog page and see all your blogs and latest updates on your New with Me page.

Many thanks to Shreyas Doshi, Allen Tom and the Yahoo Membership team on helping make this happen.

UPDATE: Once you add your MyBlogLog profile URL to the list, you don't need to use your entire profile URL. Just type "mybloglog.com" and we'll take it from 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!

Person Chris Messina

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@MyBlogLog on Twitter

MyBlogLog is about connecting to people, where ever they may be. When we took a look at the number of you who have added your twitter account to your profile, it was obvious that this was an important channel for communication. We all have our own accounts but we felt it's important to have a unified voice for the product.

To let you know we're here, we've added a script to follow everyone that adds their twitter account to their MyBlogLog profile. Some have wondered if we're a bot but I assure you, it's nothing that fancy. Just a few blokes trying a little experiment.

You can follow us on twitter.com/mybloglog for occasional updates. We'll use this channel to let you know when we've got something special to announce or the occasional tidbit or shout out. We'll also reserve this as a Bat Phone should something go wonky on the site and we need to keep you posted.

All of us at MyBlogLog HQ will be watching this account if any of you want to contact us via this channel. We'll do our best to get back to you but I can't promise immediate responses (we do sleep sometimes) but if you have a quick question or comment, try us out.

As always, if you have a detailed question, please check our FAQs first or the Contact form where we'll be more disciplined about getting back to you.

See you on the 140-character web!

MyBlogLog's Quiet Rollout of MicroID

Last week we rolled out support for MicroID. I want to thank Micah Laaker for prodding us to get there and will also crib from his blog post which explains why this addition is significant.

. . . it boils down to a decentralized and lightweight trust system that would allow the software behind any site at which I’m recognized to provide relevant content/recommendations. That, and I wouldn’t need to spend any time sharing all my other account usernames with a site I’m not even sure I want to continue using.

If you use a service such as claimID, you can now verify your ownership of your MyBlogLog profile page.

Thingfo: Using the MyBlogLog API to jumpstart your community

Mike Grishaver stopped by recently to tell us a little bit about his new startup, Thingfo, and how he used the MyBlogLog API to make the registration process a little easier for his Thingfo social network.

If you have stories about how you've used the MyBlogLog API in interesting ways, we'd love to hear about them!

MyBlogLog Brings the FOAF... and Kent Brewster's It Up

One of the great things about having an open platform which developers can play around with is that your community hits you up with cool visualizations that open your eyes to what's possible.

Kent Brewster has done just that (again!!!) with Foafster. Kent egged us on to encode all MyBlogLog profile pages with FOAF (Friend of a Friend) data to complement the recent XFN markup addition. He's now used that to build an interactive browser.

In the screenshot above you see all of Kent's MyBlogLog contacts overlayed on top of an enlarged version of his avatar. In the upper left are links to all his services, down below is a history of all the faces I've clicked on before coming to Kent's page. Clicking on any face re-draws the screen with that new user's service links and their MyBlogLog contacts.

And so on, and so on.

MyBlogLog is now officially FOAF'd.  Members' FOAF files are at /foaf after their member name.  (e.g. http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/iankennedy/foaf)