4 posts tagged “beta”
Now that most of the office dogs have all come back to work, our productivity has skyrocketed. Check out what's new:
Neighborhood Activity
Want to know what your neighbors are up to? Now when you visit the home page you can see all the recent activity by your neighbors, including who has added new neighbors, changed their theme, joined a group, added a favorite, or updated their profile photo or tagline. It’s kind of like spying out the front window when your real life neighbors go to get their mail, except this is more interesting. If you want to keep your goings-on private, head to Account > Privacy & Defaults and uncheck the box next to “Share my recent updates”.
Speaking of neighbors, we’ve just added your personal tagline to the display in the Neighbors sidebar. To edit or add a personal tagline, go to Accounts > Profile and find it under the Biography heading.
Vox This & Links List
A few posts ago, Steve tipped you off to the new Vox This feature. Did you get a chance to try it out?
Vox This lets you easily bring content from other sites into your Vox, and we hope it's not long before we see other sites out there adding Vox This buttons to their pages.
It’s easy to use it. Just drag the button below to the bookmark toolbar in your browser (in Firefox) or right-click it and add it to your favorites (in Internet Explorer, you probably want to put it in the Links folder). Then, whenever you come across something on the web that you want to Vox about, you just hit your Vox This button.
Try it out, and be sure to (re)read Steve’s post for the full instructions on how to use it.
As you add links via the Vox This button, they’re saved and archived for you in the new Links list. What’s the new Links list, you ask? You can display the five most recent links you’ve uploaded by adding the new Links list to your sidebar. To add the Links sidebar to your blog, go to My Vox > Design and click on “Customize your sidebars”. Check the box next to “Links” and click the Apply button.
That Links sidebar will display a stream of the links you’ve added via Vox This. You can also type a link into the blank to add it to the stream. To see the archive of all the links you’ve added this way, click on “View more of my links”. From there you can edit the links or change the privacy level.
Changes to Edit & Share Links on Assets
We’ve made a few changes to the menus you see on each post and asset.
As we mentioned last time, we have renamed and changed the Digg This link to be a broader Share option, with a dropdown menu that lets you select where you’d like to share: choose del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Newsvine or reddit. You can use the Share menu on any post, photo, video, book or audio you see, whether it’s yours or someone else’s.
On your own assets, you’ll notice that we’ve consolidated the edit menu, taking out that extra bar so it takes up less room on your blog. Just click the link to edit, or click the arrow to see the options to “Add to group” or “Delete”.
New Themes
We're always adding new themes. Check out Kinetic, Stripes and Maple Leaves in the Design area under "Featured".
There are also two new Branded themes from one of our partners. We could all use a little more energy, right? If you're looking for new ways to stay alert, Diet Pepsi Max has zero calories, ginseng and extra caffeine. They've created two themes you can apply to your Vox, both of which change three times throughout the day. If you need a drink to wake you up, head over to the Diet Pepsi Max site to check it out.
Mo’ Beta
If you’ve signed up to be a beta tester on Vox, you can get a sneak peek at the upcoming VH1Eyecandy conduit when you’re uploading photos and videos. They’ve only just added a little bit of celebrity content so far, so try searching on Kelly Clarkson, Demi Moore, Hillary Duff or Bruce Willis to test it out. They’ll be adding photos and video of a ton of artists and celebrities before the official launch, so stay tuned for more details.
-- Krissy
We're back, did you miss us? We just launched some new features, so read all about 'em!
Personalized Sharing
You can now include a personal message
when you use the Share feature to send posts or assets to your
friends. Now they won't have to wonder why you're sending them that
photo of a chihuahua - you can tell them right in the message! You can
share with someone who's already on Vox, or send to any email address
and the message will include an opportunity for that person to join.
In the Groups tab, you'll now find a Featured Groups box below your invitations. To get started, we're featuring mostly Vox-related groups, but we'll be featuring more of your groups as time goes by. In the future, we'll add a way for you to nominate a group to be spotlighted.
Updates to Features in Beta
A big thanks to everyone who shared their feedback about the blog dashboard that we introduced in beta in our last release.
It was very helpful -- you've inspired us to re-work the dashboard a
little bit. We're pulling it off beta for now, but look for a new and
improved version to return at a future date.
Starting next week, you'll be able to sign up in beta to receive Vox digest emails which include the last five updates from your neighborhood. We'll tell you more about this next week, with full instructions on how to sign up, so stay tuned!
New Themes
This batch of new themes includes Comic Book,
Mondrian, several colors of Leaves, new Nokia themes and some sponsored
themes from Havaianas. Get the Haivaianas themes while they're hot
because they're only going to be around for a few months! Look for the
Latest Themes module on the home page that displays the most recent themes we've added -- just click the arrows to scroll through all the new designs.
Did someone ask for Sidebar Widgets? (Coming Soon!)
Good news for all of you who want to embed your crazy code and widgets -- in our next release we're bringing post embeds out of beta, so everyone will see the Embed button on the Compose page. Also in that release, you'll be able to add one embed module to your sidebar. We know you want more control over your sidebars and we're working on it, step by step. So hang on for just a few more weeks because we're launching these embedding features in June.
- Krissy
As we've mentioned before, there is a way to opt in to test new Vox features before they are released. Your testing and feedback help us make tweaks and changes before we roll out the features to the entire Vox community.
One of the latest features we're beta testing is the ability to embed code in your posts. Embedding lets you put all sorts of neat things into your posts, like polls, charts, slide shows and much more.
Currently you can only test the embed feature in posts -- you cannot embed media into your sidebars. We've already gotten feedback that you really want to be able to embed code into your sidebars, and we're looking forward to this ability too! But please be patient, it's going to be a little while longer before we roll out that capability.
You have to become a beta tester in order to see the embed button in the Compose page. To participate in beta testing new features, click Account and go to the Your Account page. You'll see Vox Beta along with the statement "Yes, I would like to test new features." next to a checkbox. Just check the box and click the Save to become one of our testers. Be sure to leave your feedback by following the "Beta Feedback" link in the control strip! We're also currently beta testing the new control strip, which you can preview before we roll out the final version to everyone next week.
For more information, read the full instructions about opting in to Beta testing new Vox features and also about Embedding Media in a Post.
How will you use the new embed feature?- Krissy
We're happy to bring you the latest features, fresh out of development. Onto the highlights:
Share This Made Better
We've expanded the "Share This" feature to allow you to share all asset types, including photos, video, audio and books. You'll see the option to "Share This" on the confirmation page after you upload the item as well as on the asset itself.
You can also now share non-public assets with your friends and family who aren't on Vox yet. We'll send them a notification email which will prompt them to first register for Vox and once they're signed up they'll be able to see your non-public content.
A Fresh Coat of Paint
We've been working on the all-important first impression Vox makes to the world, so today we launched a new logged-out home page. The goal is still to bring in brand new users to Vox, and we're hoping to do that by giving a glimpse of some of the great things that are going on inside the community.
The new logged out home page shows Team Vox news, some featured Vox users, and a search box to discover content. This [this is good] box also shows up on the redesigned page, so the Voxers' posts and photos that are featured will be seen by a lot more people!
Re-Blog
This
The "Re-blog" feature is now just called "Blog This". The "Blog This" link adds the asset to your library and creates a new post with the asset already inserted.
If you just want to add the item to your library without creating a post, you can use the new "Add to your Vox library" link.When you're looking at assets in your blog or someone else's, you'll also notice we moved a few links around, including the link to favorite it and comment.
New Themes!
Introducing new themes
from Lauren Musni, Tiffany Chow, Akiko Kurono, Michael Sylvian, Lynn T., Metro UK and Yasmina Haryono.
And there are more themes available for groups!
New Control Strip Beta Testing
We're beta testing a new
control strip that we think will make Vox even easier to use and navigate
around. This will be rolled out in a future release, but if you'd like to opt-in
to participate and test now, read the full
instructions here.
Coming soon
Team Vox is hard at work on a ton of new features.
In the coming weeks, look for group custom themes, improvements in the About Me
section, more Neighbors page enhancements (which we mentioned are on their way),
full-text search and more.
Hope you like what you see!
-Mena
