Hey guys, I hope you’ve had a great weekend and are ready for the coming week. We’ve integrated some new features in response to what we’ve heard from you, so keep the suggestions and ideas coming, they’re great. Also, expect updates on a regular basis: once the dust settles we plan to release features every Tuesday. Let’s get into it.
Reading Blogs
We have made a few changes to the way the Streamy blog reader works. First, “saves” are personal bookmarks of stories you’d like to save for later viewing. If you’d like to publish the story to your profile, you can share it without a receiver (using the new share module below).
Hot Keys
For hot keys, we thought you would be best off with a hand to mouse, so we started with the left home keys. These will actually work with any stream (for the most part) and our hot key support will improve as we go. So we have…
| A | Open Current Story |
| S | Close Opened Story |
| D | Previous Story |
| F | Next Story |
| R | Save Current Story |
| E | Share Current Story |
| V | View Original of Current Story |
| T | Return to Top |
Imports
One of the first features we plugged in was the OPML / Subscription import. You can import from Google Reader, Bloglines, an OPML file URL or upload. The import feature can be found by clicking Blogs > Add Blogs > Import from…
Reading and Saving Items
There are clear indications that you have viewed or saved a story: read stories are faded and italicized; saved stories have a star. There is also a quick link to your save stream on the left, above the blogs you follow.
Popular Images
We admit that pictures are nice. So, on top of your recommended stories, there is a film strip of popular images, which open the story upon clicking. It’s a nice way to get a visual snapshot of what’s going on. Also, notice the “hide” button oh the recommendations: clicking this will replace the selected story with another recommendation. Try it out!
Story Features
We made two great additions to story viewing: “Discussion” and “You may also enjoy”. The first is a simple commentary system, which tags along with stories around the site. When you leave a comment, the event will be published to your profile. The second addition offers recommendations based on the viewing patterns of others. This makes a great way to keep moving through Streamy if you’re just having fun exploring.
Multi-Share
The share module has become a mass-sharing tool. You can bring this up by picking up a story, and dropping it on the “Multi-Share” action bubble. By default, the selected story will be published to your profile. To share directly, you can add people, groups, and services (i.e. Twitter & FriendFeed) and send to them all at once. Of course, adding a comment to the share tags along some context.
Setting Your Status
We updated the status display with your most recent status, and the ability to quickly change your availability. Upon clicking the bubble, you can post the update to any or all of your services. To change your availability, simply click on the word “Available” to change it to either “Invisible” or “Unavailable.”
General Updates
We of course have made lots of small updates to fix up the site and improve the Streamy experience. Here are a few.
Notifications
On the Home page, you will receive actionable notifications as they happen. For example, when a friend shares a story with you, sends you a message, or comments on an item in your profile. Now, you will receive notifications when you attract new followers and when you are invited to join a group.
Followers
You can now browse a list of your followers. Find it by clicking People > Followers > Browse All.
Twitter users were not able to find each other for a few days after the launch. If you remove / add Twitter again, you’ll ensure that they will be able to find you when they click People > Add People > On Other Networks.
Usernames
There was a registration bug where usernames were being overwritten, so we were forced to change the newer usernames to keep them unique. The problem has been fixed. If you’d like, you can change your username, any time, at http://openid.streamy.com/username
This Week
You’ll hear more from us as we roll more updates into production. Expect some nice additions on Tuesday. Until then, stream on!
Don
Great changes. I just found Streamy and really like what it offers. Couple of suggestions in the first few days of using it.
1. FriendFeed data should include images for things like Flickr posts, blog imports, etc. You’re really close to the perfect FriendFeed interface (especially with the inclusion of search). Not seeing the images takes away a great feature of FriendFeed for managing Flickr contacts.
2. Facebook data should include more information like Links, Notes, etc. (all available via RSS at a minimum).
3. Support commenting back to Facebook like you do for replying on Twitter.
4. Add support for “Like”-ing FriendFeed entries and sending that information back to FriendFeed
5. Comments on FriendFeed items don’t appear to do anything either on Streamy or on FriendFeed. Returning this data to FriendFeed would be valuable.
Great product. I can’t wait to see what is coming in the next release.