3 posts tagged “search”

It may be vacation season around here, but that doesn't mean we're slowing down.  That's right, it's already time for another release. 

Soup Up Your Profile!
Up until now, you could only add plain text to the "Biography" section of your profile.  Look again and you'll see that you can now add links, plus you can also bold, italicize, underline or indent the text. 

Why not take a five-minute break today to soup up your profile?  Access your profile by clicking on Account or while viewing your profile just click on the Edit your profile link in the About Me section.

Search Your Neighbors List
We've made it a little easier to find a specific friend's or neighbor's blog using your Neighbors page (located at http://yourvoxname.vox.com/profile/neighbors/).   Look for the search box we just added, and type in the person's name or blog name.  For instance, typing in "Lilia" will show you all the Lilias in your neighborhood.
 

Note that this only lets you search on people you've already added as neighbors and friends.  If you're searching for someone who's not in your neighborhood yet, use the People search on the Explore page.

Relative Time Stamps
Everything's relative, now even time stamps!  What are relative time stamps, you ask?  It's the difference between a post shown as written on "Jun 13, 2007 at 10:10 AM" versus being written "12 minutes ago". 

When you're browsing through your neighborhood page or a list of search results, we're hoping that these relative time stamps will make it easier to get an idea of how fresh a post is.  We'll show these relative time stamps in measures of minutes, hours, days or weeks.  You'll see stamps like "3 minutes ago", "2 weeks ago", or "a moment ago" in the case of posts that are just seconds old.

You can still see the actual date and time stamp when you're looking at the detail pages of individual posts or media items.
 

[this is good] Moves Back Home

Those of you who have been with us since the olden days (yeah, we're talking waaay back to the second half of '06) might remember that the [this is good] box has moved around a bit.  One of the most memorable moves happened when we took it off the Home page, and a bunch of you let us know you wanted it back.  Well, the [this is good] box has moved back home!  Scroll down on the home page and you'll find it just below the neighborhood updates section at the bottom.  It's still at the top of the Explore page too.

To celebrate its move back home, why not nominate a great post or photo to be featured there?  Nominate posts or photos by clicking on the "suggest this is good" link.

-- Krissy

Today we bring you a mini-release, following up on last week's - check it out!

Full Text Search
The team has been working hard on some improvements to Vox's search feature.  You'll notice that now you can search all content on Vox via words and phrases, whereas previously the search only brought back results based on tags.  (If you do want to just search for tags, on the Explore page just click on the link to toggle to tags.  And say "toggle to tags" three times fast.)

Try it out -- we hope it helps you find content and people more easily.  

New in Beta:  Neighborhood Digest Emails
Today we added neighborhood update emails as a new feature in beta.  To sign up as a beta tester, just follow these instructions.

The neighborhood update emails will show you excerpts from the last five updates from your neighborhood, plus recent photos or media that were added by your neighbors as well as the current QotD.  Think of these digest emails as a quick snapshot of some of what's happened in your Vox neighborhood -- the emails won't show you everything, but they'll give you a good at-a-glance idea of what's new in your 'hood.  

By default, we'll send beta testers these emails on a weekly basis, every Thursday at midnight in your time zone.  To change your settings, click on the Account tab, then on Notifications.  You can receive the digests weekly or daily, or just uncheck the box to stop receiving them.  For now, you have to be signed up as a beta tester to receive the digest emails, but we will launch them to everyone at a future date. 

As usual, you can share your feedback and feature requests by clicking on the Feedback link. 

- Krissy

From all the great feedback you give us through the Feedback link at the bottom of every Vox page, we know that many of you love Vox's integration with YouTube, Flickr, Amazon, and other web services. We recently made it even easier for you to pull that outside content into your Vox blogs by adding more specific searches for some of those sites.

Let's walk through an example.  Say you've had a sudden epiphany about how your entire worldview has been shaped by the movie "The Princess Bride" that you've seen a million times since you were a teenager. Of course, you need to share this with the Vox community, and you have several media items to include in your post. Unfortunately, you have just a few minutes before you have to leave for work. How will you ever pull it all together in time? The following improved searches come to the rescue!

Managing Photos:
You have the perfect photo to show how your fascination began early with your Dread Pirate Roberts Halloween costume as a child. It's already uploaded to Flickr, but it's got the tag "childhood" along with dozens of your other Flickr photos. Instead of going through a tag search, just search the Flickr URL or Photo ID of that specific photo to immediately find and add it to your Vox blog.
 
Managing Audio:
The soundtrack of the movie has also been a big part of your life: You and your own Princess Buttercup even used the song "Storybook Love" from the movie as part of the music for your wedding. There's no need to search through several CDs on Amazon to find the right one; just search on the ASIN (B000002LCB) or URL (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000002LCB) to find the specific soundtrack.

Managing Video:
There's no surprise that you need to add some videos to your post. You're talking about the movie that's shaped your life after all! You decide that you have to share the "Dread Pirate Edition" of the DVD, so you add that to your post from Amazon by using the ASIN (B000F9RBBC ) or URL (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000F9RBBC/). With so many editions of the DVD out now, it's nice to be able to go directly to the one you want to share.

Speaking of the DVD, you still remember when the Dread Pirate Edition was released and how excited you were, so you decide to share the DVD trailer with everyone reading your post. Lucky for you, it's already on YouTube, so you just search by URL (http://youtube.com/watch?v=ksETP325o40) or Video ID (ksETP325o40) to add it to your post. 

Managing Books:
Finally, you decide that the post wouldn't be complete without mention of the book that started it all - The Princess Bride by William Goldman. To quickly add that hardcover anniversary edition you love, just type the ISBN/ASIN (034543014X) or URL (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/034543014X) in the Amazon search box.

Once you've gathered all your media assets, it's time for you to share with the world how one movie has changed your life completely. And you still have time to grab a coffee on your way to work. See, Vox is taking care of you!

   

Of course these newer URL and ID searches will work with any photos, audio, videos or books.  Maybe you want to add a recent YouTube video, and it's not yet indexed for you to search for it with tags. No problem! Want to quickly add some older photos from your Flickr account without going through multiples with the same tag? Again, we've got you covered!

We hope this helps you spend more time creating and sharing memories and less time hunting for them!

-- Brandy & the Vox Help team