As you may have noticed, we’ve moved the entire application under SSL.FM in order to implement our new architecture, and the Bizroof.com will be used only as a gateway site.

Behind SSL.FM, there are 4 application servers with 8 CPU each, and they are talking with 2 master MySQL database servers, which are then connected with 2 salve database servers for data backup and statistics purposes.

If the application was a car, we’ve replaced its V6 engine with a V12. Hope you enjoy and let us know if it is still easy to handle.

Over the next couple of days, some of you will see change-picture buttons appear when you hover over the default profile icons (see screen shot below) within the people, companies, events and users modules. Click “Change” and you will be able to upload an image for that record.

The uploaded picture will be displayed in all the listings and search results (see screen shot below)

An even bigger image will be shown on the detail information screen (see screen shot below)

Initially, we only rolling this out to small groups of users to help us test the new feature, so in the early stages many of you will not see it.

Bizroof Internationalized Checklist:

1. Date Format DONE!  (Options: 20/08/2008, 08/20/2008, August 20 2008, August 20th 2008, 2008-08-20)
2. Time format DONE! (Options: 19:30, 7:30pm)
3. Time zone DONE!
4. Currency DONE!
5. Week start on DONE! (Options: Sunday, Monday, Saturday)
6. Full name format DONE! (Options: Jason Smith, Smith Jason)
7. Multi-lingual Done the Chinese language package!

Screenshot 1: The sales site

Screenshot 2: The Application

This important service announcement is being sent out to all
developers who have Fire Eagle application keys.

Due to a potential security vulnerability, revisions have been
made to the OAuth protocol. This is the protocol that allows
different services to connect to one another without sharing
passwords -- and is a core part of Fire Eagle.

To address these concerns, we've implemented support for
OAuth 1.0a and will be phasing out support for OAuth 1.0 over
the next couple of months.

** If your application does not yet support OAuth 1.0a, you will
need to update it over the next few weeks. Otherwise users will
be unable to authorize your application. **

Existing authorizations (i.e. you already have access tokens)
will continue to work.

In the meantime, any users attempting to authorize applications
that don't yet support 1.0a will be presented with a screen that
warns them about the OAuth vulnerability and discourages them
from continuing.

Developers are already at work rewriting aspects of the OAuth and
Fire Eagle libraries. You can find out more about this and the
changes to OAuth below:

* http://oauth.net/advisories/2009-1
* http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/developer/documentation/using_oauth
* http://mojodna.net/2009/05/20/an-idiots-guide-to-oauth-10a.html

If you have any questions or need help, please don't hesitate to
ask via the Fire Eagle Mailing List. You can also keep up to date
with the latest Fire Eagle happenings on our Twitter feed:

* MAILING LIST: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fireeagle/
* TWITTER FEED: http://twitter.com/fireeagle/

Yours,

The Fire Eagle team

You can safely connect your Bizroof account with Yahoo’s fire ealge without sharing passwords. To do that, you need to login Bizroof, click your name on the top right cornor on your dashboard, and then click the Upload Location link on the following page, and… you will see the following page to confirm the connection -

Since last month’s data importing feature, we’ve increased our focus on helping users manipulate their data in batches. Over the last several weeks, we’ve been working hard to develop a data exporting tool to help them backup their data and work offline.

We’ve designed the new tool in such a way that they can choose the data in which module to be exported, and an option of including notes or not. Additionally, the exported files are following the MS Outlook, iCalendar  specifications and the open data access protocol. So, they can be imported into other software with no hassle at all.

To access to the tool, you need to login Bizroof, and click the Export to Excel link on the left hand side of your dashboard. Now, you need to choose the module you want to export and whether or not to include notes, and then when you click Export & Download button Bizroof will create a CSV file for you to save to your computer.

Let us know if this data exporting tool works for you!

Bizroof Internationalized Checklist:

Date Format DONE!

(Options: 20/08/2008, 08/20/2008, August 20 2008, August 20th 2008, 2008-08-20)

Time format DONE!

(Options: 19:30, 7:30pm)

Time zone DONE!

Currency DONE!

Week start on DONE!

(Options: Sunday, Monday, Saturday)

Full name format DONE!

(Options: Jason Smith, Smith Jason)

Multi-lingual Working On!

You can change your default currency setting on your account detail page (click account details on the left hand side of your dashboard) and change the rest of them on your profile page (click your name on the top left corner).

Last week, we’ve received great feedback from Sam Guzman (operations manager at BrightBox Creative studios ). He suggested that there should be a way to set up default privacy level on Bizroof so that all the new things being created will inherit it. We totally agree and we believe it will bring benefits to other users who share stuff within groups. So, we’ve just implemented the new feature 2 days ago.

You might already have noticed that the default privacy setting is available on your profile page, and you can choose among public (anyone in your company can see it), group (only the users in the chosen group can see it) and private (only you can see it), and then the setting will be applied to the things you create in the future, including contacts, documents, cash flow items, and events.

Send us your feedback or talk to us on Twitter

If you want to change the name to be displayed, you can go to your dashboard, and click account details on the left hand side of the page, and then click Edit account name on the following page.

(Screenshot: Firefox 3.0.7 ↓)

You will see a dark border around the text if you are using one the following CSS3 enabled browsers, including: Safari 3+, Firefox 3.1a, Opera 9.5+ or Konqueror (Screenshot: Safari 3 ↓).

Bear in mind that all the browsers will eventually support CSS3, and it is just a matter of time till you can see the shadow effect on yours.

We believe that usability is as important as, if not more important than, features. So, we decide to spend this whole week just on improving usability. Guess what is on the top of our list? Rounded corners, which are so adorable and getting more and more popular in the whole web 2.0 world. They simply make web pages look smoother and more user-friendly.

(Screenshots taken before the changes)

(Screenshots taken after*)

(*It works well on Firefox, Safari, Chrome etc, but it does NOT work on IE since it barely supports CSS3)

It requires some basic knowledge about CSS and HTML to read the following techy part.

There are hundreds of pages and therefore thousands of sharp corners need to be rounded throughout the entire application, and we certainly don’t want to change each of them manually. Also, we don’t want to use javascript, which slows down page loading. Using images is not an ideal solution as we have to create different images to match different boxes. So, the only option left is to use the CSS file. Yep! Use pure CSS naturally.

Take the search box (3rd screenshot) for example, the highlighted 2 lines below are the only changes needed!

.searchWrapper {
padding:20px 50px 18px 50px;
border-left: 1px solid #CAE6FF;
border-top: 1px solid #CAE6FF;
border-right: 1px solid #8EB1D1;
border-bottom: 1px solid #8EB1D1;
background-color: #EFF7FF;
-moz-border-radius: 5px !important; //for Firefox Mozila etc
-webkit-border-radius: 5px !important; //for Safari and Chrome etc
}

If you don’t want to round all the 4 corners of a box, you can choose from the following lines instead:

To import multiple people into Bizroof, you’ll need to export them from your original data source as a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file, and then upload the CSV file into Bizroof.

At the same time, you can specify the privacy settings for the whole batch. You can make all these contacts available to everyone; make them visible only to a group of users; or make them visible only to yourself. Also, you can add tags to the whole batch to make them easier to find later.

Another cool thing we want to mention is that we support data in multiple languages, and we’ve tested it in French, German, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese so far.

Why do we develop this feature?

It is simple – Customers like yourself told us to!

We only develop features being asked by our customers, and we make sure the new features are easy-to-use and add value to you.

What’s next?

You know what I am going to say, don’t you? —– Please Let us know what do you need from Bizroof CRM and we will build it for you.