There are two phases to this integration. The first is to allow your Sixent status updates to be synchronized with Twitter and vice versa. The second is a set of pods that will let you pull in Twitter updates to your dashboard, profiles and group pages.

This blog post describes only the first phase which is now live at Sixent.com.

Why Does Twitter Matter?

Twitter may not yet be "mainstream" but it's well on its way with over 18.2 million unique visitors in May 2009 and growing rapidly.

It's a simple utility that inspired our own Sixent status update feature. Twitter provides a way of sharing and following the answer to the question, "What are you doing?". To its credit, it has become much more than this narrow definition and is now at the forefront of the "real-time" Web.

In addition to individuals, companies are embracing Twitter by placing it at the heart of their social media strategies. They use it to connect and converse with their various audiences in an immediate and personal way. Twitter's openness means nearly everything is public. This is important as it means you can choose to "follow" anyone or any company you like without needing permission.

Conversations are possible as each Twitter update can be in reply to another. Replies start with @username where "username" is the person receiving the reply. This type of open conversation is similar to profile comments that exist within Sixent. People can tune in if they like and then join in if they have something to add.

Twitter's own search engine is a great way to monitor your brand or any topic you like. Tags are popular in Twitter and take the form of #keyword. They're also know as "hashtags". It's now common place to follow a conference session and submit questions in real-time by "tweeting" a message that includes an agreed-upon hashtag.

Sixent Profile <> Twitter

What's unique about Sixent's integration with Twitter is that you are able to authorize more than one Twitter account and you can then configure a one-way or two-way sync with any or all of your profiles.

Another nice feature is that we'll never ask you for your Twitter password. It should be secret - so keep it that way. Sixent instead will send you to Twitter to give "Sixent.com" permission to access your updates. You can later revoke access at anytime from within Sixent or Twitter. Smart (and safe).

You may have noticed a new "Pending Action" on your dashboard as shown below. Just click "Sign in with Twitter" to get started.

Next, you'll find yourself at Twitter with two options, "Allow" or "Deny" access to Sixent. Click "Allow" of course. Note that there is a new section in Sixent called "Integration Options", if you haven't authorized any Twitter accounts, it looks like this:

Once you have authorized at least one Twitter account, you'll see more options. They let you setup any automatic synchronization you'd like between Twitter and Sixent.

Given the example below, I have authorized two Twitter accounts and I've connected them in different ways to my various Sixent profiles. Now, if I update my "pdame" Twitter account from my mobile phone, two of my Sixent profiles will be updated automatically.

( click the image to enlarge )

Tweeting Your Sixent Status

Once you're all set up, you don't really have to think about it again. As you update Twitter or Sixent, the synchronization will take place instantly. Easy.

If you want to write a status within Sixent and then carefully pick where it will appear, you can choose, "Select Profiles" as done before. What you'll see now is a reminder of which profiles are connected to Twitter accounts. It will also list the individual Twitter account you've authorized so you can update it directly without updating Sixent.

Updates "via Twitter"

Any status update you or others make that originate from Twitter will be indicated as being "via Twitter" as shown below. Clicking the Twitter link will take you to that specific update on Twitter where you can then reply, favorite, delete, and so on.

Viewing In Twitter

A status update that was posted to, or received from, Twitter has a dedicated page provided by Twitter. Those Sixent status updates will now offer a "View in Twitter" link as show below.

Twitter Accounts & Settings

Over time, you may want to remove or authorize more Twitter accounts or perhaps re-configure how they're matched up with your Sixent profiles. To edit any of these settings, select "Integration Options" from the "My Setup" menu available from your Sixent dashboard.

We really hope you take advantage of this new integration option. In the coming weeks, we'll release our second phase: new Twitter pods that let you monitor, profile and search Twitter all within your Sixent pages.

This update goes far beyond that goal to include a whole host of visual and functional improvements. What's key is we've made Sixent easier to use, more visually rich and fun to personalize.

I won't repeat what I discussed in my last blog post about this release. It already discusses the major changes we've made to profiles and personal content. What I'll do here is highlight the other improvements you'll come across as you re-explore Sixent.

Customizable Banners

Perhaps most obvious is the introduction of a slightly taller page banner area at the top of most pages (i.e. Dashboard, Profile and Groups). The basic graphic is now green instead of gray. We are also using tabs to make navigation more obvious and clear.

What's most interesting and fun about this change is the new green-wrench icon you'll see in the top-right corner. You won't find it on this page as you don't have to right to edit the page. Visit your Dashboard or one of your profiles to see it. Just hover your mouse on the wrench icon and you'll see it stands for "Change Banner".

Clicking the the Change Banner option will cause a new section of the page to appear (you'll see the entire page slide down to reveal the new "Banner Background" section). In this area, you can pick an entirely new banner graphic from a gallery of choices or upload your own image.

Tips for Custom Banners:

• Sixent will resize or trim your uploaded image to fit in the banner but those of you that want "the perfect banner" should focus on the magic number 130. That's how tall the banner is.
• I like to take very high-resolution photos and cut a 130px horizontal "slice". I end up with an image that's short and wide (e.g. 1600px wide by 130px tall). If you can get the image to look good when tiled, then it can be much smaller.
• I put the most interesting detail about 600 to 900 pixels from the left side so it's not behind my photo and name (i.e. keep the focal point on the right side of the banner).

In a group, you can apply one banner to all pages in one step. Just select or upload a new banner for the group's home page. You'll be asked if you want it to include all sub-pages or not.

We look forward to seeing the banners people create. Browse the integrated Banner Gallery and view other people's profiles for inspiration.

Updating the Status Update

You'll also notice that the toolbar has been simplified. Some buttons that were there are gone, such as the Status Update button (it was a megaphone icon). Status updates are now viewed and updated much more intuitively - right in the page banner.

On your Dashboard and on each profile, a white speech bubble appears next to your profile photo and name. Just click on it to set a new status. Your dashboard lets you cycle through all your profiles quickly so it takes no time to update them all.

While changing your status, you can press the "Select Profiles" button to see the active status on each profile and apply one update to multiple profiles (this will look familiar if you've used Sixent before).

Mapping Groups

The power and flexibility of "Pages" and "Pods" remains primarily in your Sixent Groups. Since the pages and their layout are quite flexible, it's possible that navigation to sub-pages can become hidden or you might loose track of where you are. We've therefore introduced a new "Map" tab in all groups. This option is available from all pages while in a group and appears on the right side of the banner as a tab.

Selecting the "Map" tab will show you the group's hierarchy of pages with a clear "You are here" indicator. Group owners and administrators can use this handy tool to better manage their groups. It's a great visual starting point for adding more pages and content or re-organizing pages as the group grows.

Tagging and Content Searches

Tags are typically short descriptive keywords that help identify an item. They help people find relevant items while browsing and searching for content. Tags have always been a part of Sixent but they're now much more useful.

You can add tags to photos, blog entries, bookmarks and files to make them easier to find. The tags you set for your personal items will appear in a tag listing or "tag cloud". Use them as categories for your blog or any other way you feel is appropriate.

Note that we'll soon make it much faster and easier to tag your items by auto-completing tags while you type and listing the tags you've used before. I'll post a blog entry once this becomes available.

In addition to tags, personal content items can now be searched using one or more keywords. Simply click "Filter & Sort" to get started with searching. Just separate each keyword with a comma (e.g. "social network, bookmarks").

Visibility Preview & Sorting

Sixent is known for its great privacy controls. Not only do you get multiple profiles but each item you post can be selectively shared. For example, some of your photos might be public while others are limited to just a single category of contacts. After a while, you may start to wonder if you posted all your items correctly.

We don't think it should take a long time to verify that you've "done it right". You can now see the visibility setting of each item without having to open or edit the item.

Note that you can even sort by "Visibility" under the "Filter & Sort" options. Your mostly openly shared items will appear first, then those shared with all contacts. Next will be those shared with select contact categories and the finally the items you have not yet shared with anyone.

OK, Show Me!

That's a lot to take in so here's a single screenshot that shows nearly all of those new elements together on a single page. This example is my personal blog at Sixent.

   ( click photo to enlarge it )

We hope you enjoy this update to Sixent - we welcome your feedback. There is still much more to come!

Please don't forget to invite your contacts to join today.

Personal content is any photo, blog entry, bookmark or file found outside of a Sixent Group. They are currently posted to an area called, "My Shared Pages". These pages are transforming into "tabs" that appear directly on a profile.

Sixent Groups will maintain the concept of "pages" that have "pods" where many different content types can co-exist.

For current Sixent members, these changes impact the appearance of your profile and personal content items. A quick preview of this release and an explanation of these changes are discussed below.

Improved Profiles

A profile page currently consists of many "pods". These pods are boxed sections that describe the person. They include a photo, recent activity on the network, who they know and other biographical details. A profile also hosts extra pods that can be added by the profiled person so they can share custom content and externally-hosted information.

To streamline the appearance of profiles, each profile will now be been split into three sections:

• Activity
• Information, and
• Pods

Below is an example of the new "Activity" portion of a profile:

( view screenshot full-size )

You'll immediately notice the customized banner graphic and the new appearance of status updates. These are all part of the upcoming release, but represent mainly cosmetic changes.

What's important to note is the Activity section of a profile helps visitors focus on the important "Activity Stream". It also highlights the contact relationships the person has within the network.

Above the person's photo, a set of navigation options will exist to access more information about the profile person. You will be able to select "Information" or "Pods".

Below is an example of the "Information" section for the same sample profile:

( view screenshot full-size )

Note that both the Activity and Information areas have a fixed layout. This ensures consistency across profiles. All of the activity and profile information on these pages can still be customized in the same way.

We found that most people have kept the three profiles Sixent provides upon registration: Personal, Professional and Public. Remember, you can still create as many profiles as you like.

The last section is "Pods". I haven't posted an example of that area as everyone's Pods will be different. Some people will load it with RSS feeds from external blogs and Twitter accounts, while others will fill add videos, photo slideshows and music widgets.

All of these custom additions are added in pods. Pods are again just a section of the page you can move around as you see fit. The Pods area can have one to three columns just like the Sixent Dashboard.

Improved Personal Content

As mentioned earlier, personal content is any photo, blog entry, bookmark or file added outside of a Sixent Group.

The current area called, "My Shared Pages" is a series of nested pages that can contain any type of content and any type of page pod. This more advanced system proved to be a bit too complex for many new members to learn. We wanted to make it easier, more fun and more intuitive.

We decided to keep the powerful "page & pod" structure for Sixent Groups so they can exercise lots of presentation control. For personal content, however, we made it a lot more structured and much more closely connected to people's profiles.

Your current Personal Pages in Sixent will be transforming into "tabs" that appear directly on your profiles. Content will now be grouped by its type: Photos, Blog, Bookmarks and Files. For example, the "Photos" tab is focused exclusively on creating albums and filling them with photos.

Below is an example of a Photos tab showing a series of Photo Albums. There is a Compact and Detailed listing mode for photo albums - what is shown here is the Compact mode.

( view full-size screenshot )

We have designed a new look for each the tabs: Photos, Blog, Bookmarks and Files. In each tab, you will also find great new features such as tag clouds and keyword searches that help you find all the great content people have added over time.

As the owner of a profile, it will also be much easier to "preview" what you've shared publicly or with select contact categories. You will, for example, be able to see exactly which photos you've shared with your "Professional" contacts as compared to "Close Friends". This help as it gives you confidence that Sixent's powerful privacy controls are well at work for you.

Summary: From Pages to Tabs

All of the personal content posted by Sixent members will be automatically transitioned to this new layout and profile-tab style organization.

All items will now appear grouped by type (e.g. blog entries will all appear together) but any content shared selectively will remain that way. There is no risk that your content will suddenly appear to people that couldn't see it before.

The biggest change is that Personal Pages will no longer exist. Any custom pods (i.e. Feed Pods, Embedded Content and External Sites) will not be carried over to the new tabs. Again, all the content from those pages will be kept, just not the custom pods you might have added.

As for profiles, any custom pods that were added to a profile will be kept during the transition. They will simply appear in the new "Pods" section of the same profile.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about these upcoming changes. Please post a comment here or write me directly.

• Examples of different strategies and tactics that best complement using established consumer social networks and white-label platforms

• Some of the advantages and limitations of both that you should be aware of

• Ways to merge custom applications with consumer social networks to maximize benefit

• Visit http://webinars.sixent.com/white-labels  to leave questions and comments for Phil and Steve about this topic, and begin building a dialogue in advance of the webinar.

Event Details

DATE: Tuesday April 14, 2009

TIME: 10am PT / 11am MT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET

It includes the following major new features:

• Profile Comment pod integrated into Activity Stream pod (profile and dashboard)
• Activity Stream "Quick Filter" tabs and filters (profile and dashboard)
• Email Broadcast for Groups (found under "Manage" in any group)
• Ability to introduce contacts (found in "Actions" menu on a contact's profile and in My Contacts)

A few smaller, but equally important, enhancements were also made available:

• Search-as-you-type to quickly find contacts (type in the "Find People" section of the toolbar)
  
• Improved contact selection for category management and group invitations
• Count and link to non-categorized personal contacts and group members
  
• General appearance improvement to Activity Stream entries
• Simplified default Dashboard pod layout 
• More intuitive locking and unlocking of page columns (all pod-based pages)

In the same way that a face-to-face meeting allows for more casual banter than a conference call, an open dialogue on a social network enables informal and worthwhile exchanges to take place. Their value lies in the bonds created and insights gained along the way.

Among the changes we're working on for Sixent, we will be increasing the emphasis on status updates and profile comments. They're already well established in the site but we want to make them even more prominent and easy to use.

Merging Profile Comments and Activity Stream

We have decided to release some of our new features on March 7th, in advanced of a larger update slated for April. This update to Sixent will make available a few of key advancements in this area of "open conversations".

On your Sixent profiles, you will see the Profile Comments pod merge with the Activity Stream pod. The Activity Stream pod is top and center on your profile. It lists everything you've been up to in the network (limited to what's appropriate for the profile of course). Now, the ability to start a conversation and reply to profile comments will be done directly in the stream.

Visitors to profiles will now be prominently encouraged to "Start a conversation..". We hope it will teach people about the availability of the feature while also de-cluttering the profile page.

Activity Stream Quick Filters

To ensure profile conversations don't get "lost" among all the other activity stream entries, we are also releasing a set of "quick filter" tabs. These tabs will let you rapidly focus what's shown so you can find relevant information more quickly. For example, you'll be able to zone in on Photos in a single click. From your dashboard, you can further filter down to specific contact categories like "Close Friends" or "Professional".

Filtering your activity stream has always been possible, just not in the pod. With these new tabs present, I think you'll find yourself spending a lot more time browsing your own activity stream and the activity of your contacts.

Sixent is a free online consumer service but it's also a powerful, branded corporate service we now offer to establish private networks. We are working on both aspects of Sixent simultaneously as they're mutually beneficial. Sixent.com improves Sixent Enterprise by ensuring adoption and usability are solid. Sixent Enterprise ensures Sixent.com remains free while keeping us focused on security, privacy and performance.

The Sixent.com beta site, which opened on July 1st, has helped us learn a lot about how people use and adopt social services. Even our own usage of Sixent at Ramius has improved our team communications. Add to this, thousands of active people with great feedback and we now have a non-stop flood of great suggestions and new ideas.

So what's next?

In light of the feedback we've received, we're now undertaking a major overhaul to Sixent's "personal publishing" side. Currently, this area is called "My Personal Pages".

Since the start, our members told us that Sixent profiles are exactly what they've been looking for when it comes to flexibility and privacy. However, when it came to sharing content, few wanted to learn about "pages" and "pods" or how they relate to their profiles. Most of you just want your content directly on your profiles.

I'm still a strong believer in our modular, pod-based pages and their "topic" vs. "tool" focus. Having this more flexible, yet more fluid way to organize content works amazingly well but it does require some planning and thus more learning. It is unique among social networking services and I think it will continue to differentiate Sixent. Pages and pods will remain, but they will soon only be found in Sixent Groups.

For the everyday person that just wants to blog a thought, exhibit some photos, share a few bookmarks or exchange files... it will now be more obvious and easier to do in Sixent. Profiles and these item types will be "pre-packaged" so to speak. They'll be more intuitively laid out and faster to use. For example, you'll see more traditional photo albums for your photos and folders for your files. All of this will be accessed as "tabs" right on your profiles.

Stay Tuned

Over the coming weeks, we'll share more details about this and other related changes. You can expect an updated look for your dashboard, quick-filters for your activity stream, an improved display of your status updates, custom graphics for your page banners and much more.

Again, please keep the feedback rolling in - we are listening and learning.

At the time of this post, two of the six available demo spots are already filled:

• Dex - a business relationship management tool for professionals & small businesses
• ChoiceBot for e-Retailers v2.0 - decision-assisting tool for shopping sites that allows shoppers to figure out which TV, car, washing machine, etc. to buy in under 2 minutes.

Come and see what people are working on. Learn about new opportunities. Sign up to demo your latest project.

Details:

• When: 7 p.m. start time; Monday, December 1
  
• Where: The Velvet Room, 62 1/2 York Street.

To sign-up, visit the DemoCampOttawa wiki at www.barcamp.org/DemoCampOttawa11. The password is c4mp.

See you there!

We think you'll find the new process is faster and more intuitive.

The goals for this enhancement were as follows:

• Improve the process for replying to profile comments (i.e. easier/faster)
  
  • You can now reply directly on the profile where a comment appears
  • All replies are tracked and therefore appear on your dashboard regardless of where they're posted
    
  • You can reply to any comment directly in the Comments pod without reloading the page
    
  • Email notifications about comments to your profile now include a reply link to help you locate the Profile Comments pod
    

• Make it easier to understand the context of a profile comment
  • A single conversation stays on the same profile instead of being spread across profiles
    
  • More than two people can be part of a profile comment conversation
  • You can isolate a single conversation in the pod by clicking "View Related" below a comment
    
  • The conversation history is also shown to you while you're composing a reply
    

• Ensure all comments from the same conversation are consistently accessible
  
  • All related messages stay on a single profile so the conversation is consistently shared to the same people
    

Posting Profile Comments & Replying

Here are some quick screen captures of the new profile commenting process in action.

1) Declan leaves a comment on Allie's Personal profile:

2) Allie responds to Delcan's post by selecting the "Reply" button below his comment:

3) Alllie's comment appears above Declan's original comment. Subsequent comments related to the conversation follow:

Other Changes

There are a couple of subtle changes to note about this update to how profile commenting works.

Old comments (that is, those posted before today) will not appear in the 'My Profile Comments' pod on your Dashboard. (These comments are still on your profiles). Only new comments posted to your profiles today onward will appear in that pod.

Second, the Activity Stream you see on a profile will no longer show comments that have been added to that profile. (There's no point since the comments will appear right on the profile anyway.) The Activity Stream on your Dashboard will still show all profile comments as usual.

And that's it! Let us know what you think of these changes. We are always interested in your feedback.

Watch the video to see how: (1 minute 49 seconds)

Here's the gist:

1. When you're on the page where you want the Facebook status updates to appear, "Add" a pod. 
2. Choose "General", then "RSS" pod type.
   
3. To get the URL of your Facebook friends' status updates, go to Friends > All Friends, and click the "Status Updates" link. 
   
4. Find the link to the feed in the "Subscribe" box. Copy that link.
   
5. Back on Sxent, paste the link into the pod configuration.
   
6. Check back whenever you like to see any updates!

And of course, you can also keep up with other sites with RSS feeds - news sites, the Delicious popular page... anything with a feed can be brought into Sixent for you to keep track of. 

Please give it a try and let us know how it works for you!

Patrick

When someone searches on a keyword using the People Find function (located on the Sixent menu bar), any Sixent member who has tagged their profile with that keyword will display in the subsequent search results page.

This can be a great way to broaden your connections on Sixent by providing a quick way to find people who share similar interests to yours.

The how-to:

You can add as many tags as you like to your profiles and the process is simple.

1) First, select "Profiles" in the toolbar and click "Edit Profiles". When the Edit Profiles page loads, scroll down to the Profile Tags section and click the "Add Tag" link.

2) Type a keyword in the field provided and click "Save". Add as many other tags as you like.

3) Easily copy your tags to other profiles using the drag and drop function:

 Once you've added your tags, they'll appear on your profile in the Profile Tags pod:

And that's it. And when you're viewing someone's profile, you can just click their profile tags to find other Sixent members who have tagged their profiles the same way.

By adding just a few tags to your profile, you can make it easy for people to find you based on shared interests! 

Upgrade to Item Listing Pod

The "Item Listing" pod is a boxed area that already appears on all your Sixent personal and group pages. It lists all the recent additions to the current page. As of this new release, the Item Listing pod has been upgraded to support a new "Thumbnail mode" in addition to the standard listing.

The Thumbnail mode filters on photo item types. Later it will include bookmark screen captures, videos and any other visual information Sixent will store.

New Full-Screen Photo Slideshow

Closely linked to the new Thumbnail mode is a beautiful full-screen slideshow (image below). It provides a fast, powerful and yet completely uncluttered interface for browsing your photos in all their high-resolution glory.

Showcasing photos on Sixent has really been taken to the next level with this addition.

Try the new slide-show feature yourself at http://pdame.sixent.com/smiles

Creating a Photo Gallery on Sixent

To create your own photo gallery like the one above, start by visiting a page on Sixent that you can already edit (i.e. any of your shared pages or any group you've created).

For example, click "Pages" in the Sixent toolbar and then go to your "Personal" page. Once there, click the "Add" button and select "Photos". You can then upload a batch a photos in one shot (e.g. try 20 or more photos on the same page).

Once photos are done uploading, return to the page to see them listed as you would have before. To get the photo gallery feel, just switch the Item Listing pod into Thumbnail mode using the "change mode" buttons as shown below (top-left).

Once in Thumbnail mode, you can adjust the size of the thumbnails with a simple pull of the slider handle (top-right as shown above). There are five sizes to choose from.

Once you like what you see, just click the "Save Changes" link that will appear in the pod. That's it! You're done.

Going Full Screen

To view any Sixent photo full screen, you need only click on a photo while an Item Listing pod is in thumbnail mode. The full screen slideshow is an all-back background that fills your browser instantly. Photos are then shown as big as they can be, edge-to-edge.

A timed slideshow will begin automatically, which you can pause at any time by clicking on the photo or on any thumbnail along the bottom of the window. There is also a play/pause button in the top-right corner as well as options to speed up or slow down a running slideshow.

The green arrows at the top of the full screen slideshow let you manually advance or go backwards. You can also advance to the next photo by just clicking on the center or right-side of the photo. You can go back by clicking on the left-side of the photo as well.

If that wasn't enough, there's a preview of all your photos in a ribbon of square pictures along the bottom. You can click on those images and even view the next set of thumbnails by clicking the right arrow in the very bottom-right corner. The current photo being shown is highlighted with a thick white border.

Sixent allows you to upload as many photos as you like so don't hesitate to create and share photo galleries with 100s of photos.

As usual with Sixent, your items can be privately shared with a select set of contacts, be totally public, or anywhere in between.

Showcasing Recent Photos on Your Profile

New registrants to Sixent, and those that have not yet customized their profiles, will automatically have a new "Recent Photos" pod on their profiles. It appears in the third column below your list of shared pages (it will remain hidden if there are photos to show on that profile).

If you already customized your profile, you can simply add the photo pod yourself at anytime. To do so, go to your profile and click the "Add" button. Next, choose "Pod", go to the "Page Pods" tab and then select "Photos".

Once you press "Add" you can configure the pod or leave it as is. You can then relocate the pod by simply dragging it to the desired location.

Conclusion

We really hope you enjoy this new feature as much as we do. As always, we welcome your feedback. Just post your comments below.

By default, this new email notification is only sent if you haven't visited your Sixent account in 7 days. It will report any pending actions you have (e.g. contact requests) and provides you with the past 7 days of activity in your Activity Stream. 

Here's how it looks...

Controlling the Frequency of These Emails

You can of course increase or decrease the frequency of your Activity Summary Emails:

• Get the summary email on a fixed schedule
  (e.g. send it every 2 days)
  
  
• Get the summary ONLY after being inactive for a number of days
  (e.g. send it only if I haven't visited in the past 2 days).

I personally don't always have time to read my entire Activity Stream even though I use Sixent every day. I changed my preference so I get the email daily, no matter what. It looks great on my iPhone and so I use it as a quick way to catch up in the morning or while I'm on the road.

To change how and when you get your Activity Summary email, go to the Preferences menu. (It's located under the wrench icon on the main Sixent toolbar.)

Here's an image of what the settings menu for Activity Summary Email looks like:

"Send Now" Feature

A nice option is the ability to send yourself the summary email right away from the settings menu. Just click "send now" from the Preferences menu.

Sixent sends your next update based on the date and time of your last update was sent. This means that sending yourself the update on a specific day and/or time gives you control over its subsequent dispatches.

For example, if you send the summary email to yourself at 9am and ask for it daily... you'll effectively be greeted by a previous-day summary every morning. (Something to review while sipping your morning java.)

So please give the new Activity Summary Email a try and let us know what you think!

When: Monday, September 29th from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Where: The Velvet Room, 62 1/2 York Street

Other presenters include:

• FixIt Ottawa - upcoming local problem reporting tool
• Thinteknix - Communication / Computing solutions for SMB
• GiftMyList - A private gift exchange (a demo login will be available soon!)
• Chide.it - Will be showing two products: fluidSurveys.com and ReviewRoom
• Gazaro - Find the biggest sales!
  

DemoCamps are fun and highly interactive. If you've never been to one before, the format is simple. Each demos consists of:

• 2 minute introduction
• 8 minute demo
• 5 minutes for Q&A and discussion

To attend, sign up on the DemoCamp Ottawa 10 wiki. See you there!

Here's the gist:

1. A group is a great way to keep content private. Only group members will be allowed to see the content posted to the group (unless you make a group "open" to allow the public to view it). Creating a group is probably the easiest way to ensure that all of the content you add will be protected. 


2. Create a page with specific privacy settings. Either within an existing group, or on one of your personal pages, you can create a sub-page that's set up with specific privacy controls. Then, any content you add to that page will have the same permissions as the page itself.


3. Decide on privacy settings for an individual item. When you post something to sixent, you can change its own privacy settings. This means that, even on a page that would be visible to everyone on Sixent (or everyone on the Internet), you can add something that is visible only to you or your most trusted contacts.

The goal of these permissions is to make it easy for you to control who can see what, and to feel comfortable knowing that nothing is going to be more visible than you wanted it to be.

As usual, any comments or questions are more than welcome - either on this post, or by using the Feedback link at the bottom of the page.

Patrick

We received feedback that the Activity Stream could be made easier to read and more visually interesting - so we did just that. The new format we've come up with is much friendlier and it really helps draw your eye to the RIGHT information. This update improves every Activity Stream in the system: dashboard pod, profile pod and full screen version.

Here's what you can expect to see now...

• Improved comments
  
  • Larger and darker text for easy reading
    
  • Text wraps tightly to avoid long lines
• Improved status updates
  
  • Larger and darker text
  • Indented like comments
    
  • Text wraps tightly to avoid long lines
• Doubled thumbnail size for...
  • Updated profile photos
    
  • New photos added to pages
    
  • New Groups
    
• More space between entries for easy reading
  

We also worked to emphasize what's new about an entry. For example, a status update appears in large text when it's posted, but when a comment is made on it, it's the comment that stands out.  Same goes for when people join a group, it's the membership that's new so we don't emphasize the group logo again.

We're not done yet as we also plan to improve how items appear to ensure the item name stands out better. As usual, please post your comment below to let me know what you think of these changes.

Streamlined "Add" Process

This particular enhancement is in response to a lot of great feedback we've received from both Sixent.com Beta members contacting us directly as well as from kind Sixent members who gave up their time to participate in our in-house usability sessions.

Generally speaking, we've discovered that people struggle at first to learn how their "Pages" are related to their "Profiles". Simply put, your pages hold your content, your profiles describe who you are.

The content you add to Sixent lives on pages that are linked from your profiles. For example, items you add to your Professional page are seen and accessed through your Professional profile. The Activity Stream system also alerts your contacts that you've posted new content (reminder, your contacts only see activity from the profiles and pages you've given them access to).

To help make this better understood and to greatly speed up the time it takes to contribute new items to your pages (and groups), the "Add" button located on the top-right of most pages has been greatly enhanced.

Using the updated dialog shown below, you only have to answer two simple questions:

• What would you like to add?
• Where would you like to add it?

Feed Pod and Feed Reader

Bringing "Iive" streams of data from external sources can really enrich a number of areas in Sixent. Our new "Feed Pod" will make it possible for you to add "feeds" to any of Sixent's flexible, pod-based pages (your dashboard, profiles, personal pages and groups).

For those of you unfamiliar with what a feed or feed reader is, Wikepedia gives a succinct and clear definition:

"A feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, news reader or simply aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates syndicated Web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing."

Below is an example of a Feed Pod that is syndicating news stories from CNN.com:

Creating your own Feed Pod

The process is simple. First, find yourself a feed URL from whatever website, blog or other Web page you want to syndicate into your Sixent account, such as "CNN Top News" or "Phil's Twitter Feed".

It can be an RSS or Atom formatted feed. These feeds are just machine-readable (XML) versions of Web page content. Forget about the difference between RSS and Atom - you don't need to know.

Finding the URL to a feed is not as hard to find as you might think. Just look for the green or blue feed icon to appear in your browser when you're on a Web page that has one.

For example, the below image shows what you'll see at CNN.com while using Firefox. Clicking the blue icon highlighted in red below and then the "Subcribe" link gives you the URL you need.

Soon we'll make it easier to find these URLs without leaving Sixent. :)

We've also made reading an entire feed a pleasure by moving you quickly out of the small pod menu into a clean, full-page interface. The full page "Feed Reader" lets you see the richly formatted content provided by the feed as well as the original Web page - all without needing to open another browser tab or leave Sixent.

Note that even podcasts can be immediately played back through an integrated audio player. When you're done with the Feed, you need only hit the red "Close" button and you're immediately back to the previous page.

[ Enlarge Screenshot ]

Here are are some sample uses of a Feed Pod on each of the respective areas in Sixent:

• My Dashboard
  • Follow traditional news, podcasts and blogs
    
  • Follow contact updates (e.g. Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed)
  • Access your own saved data (e.g. Del.icio.us & Ma.gnolia bookmarks)
    
  • etc..
    
• My Profiles & My Shared Pages
  
  • Share your blog or podcast with others right on your profile
  • Share your updates from other sites (e.g. Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed)
  • Share your "dugg" items on Digg and your "shared" items from Google Reader
    
  • etc..
    
• Group Pages
  • Follow context-sensitive news feeds (e.g. all top feeds for one topic or industry)
  • Consolidate a team's activities from various sources onto a single page
    
  • Monitor brands, keywords and names (e.g. feeds based on Google News or Twitter searches)
    
  • Share complex feed aggregations (e.g. output of a a Yahoo! Pipe)
  • etc..
    

To add a Feed Pod to a Sixent page, you simply click "Add" from any page, select "Pod". In the pod selection dialog, "Feed Pod" is located under "General Pods". Now choose where the pod should appear. The only configuration required is to add the feed URL to the pod.

Eventually we will be adding RSS feeds to our own Sixent pages so you could follow activity, for example, within a Sixent group or on one of your contacts' pages.

In my third and final post about new Sixent features, I will discuss how we've streamlined the "Add" content and items process in Sixent.