I’ve released a brand-spankin’ new Rails plugin, designed to serve as a means for providing dead-simple Jabber support for multi-app-server Rails apps. We’re using this in blippr internally already, but I figured it was useful enough to package up and unleash on the world at large.
Read more at http://github.com/cheald/jabberish/tree/master, or
script/plugin install git://github.com/cheald/jabberish.git
It’s released under the MIT license, and is still extremely new, so practical testing is quite welcome!
Blipping is addictive, no doubt about it. And reading blips is just as fun. But today we’re excited to announce that blippr has teamed up with 12seconds to making adding and finding micro-reviews even more fun. Like us, they’re all about brevity. So, given 12seconds’ video focus, and our review and recommendations focus, we thought it was the perfect pairing. As good as PB&J, or milk and cookies, or mac and cheese, or… you get the point.
As one of 12seconds’ first API partners, you will soon be able to go above and beyond adding just 160 characters to review your favorite (and least favorite) books, games, movies, and music—you’ll be able to add 12 seconds of video. Or, as we like to call them: vlips (video blips). For an invite to the 12seconds alpha, email blippr@12seconds.tv and they’ll be sure to send you one within the day.
As usual, if you have any questions, ideas, or issues, be sure to bring them up with us on Get Satisfaction or Twitter. To find out more about our 12seconds’ newly released API, read what they have to say about the exciting news, or visit 12seconds.tv/developers for more details.
We’ll be sure to let you know when vlipping is avilable to all. Look out for it this week. Happy blipping!
Update: Vlipping is live. Just look for the “record a video blip instead” link underneath the status bar of the blip form. And have a webcam ready, of course. Happy vlipping!
Thanks to Kim Komando and her awesome Show for covering blippr and honoring us with her Cool Site of the Day recognition.
I’d also like to thank Alan Henry of AppScout for a wonderful recent writeup of blippr. In fact, this is just another one of many kind blog posts about blippr by you, our users, who both see the value in—and add value to—blippr. We couldn’t do any of this without any of you.
Keep up the great blipping, everyone! And stay tuned for some more exciting news coming tomorrow.
A great article about Twitter, written by Adam Lashinsky, appeared today in
Fortune’s online counterpart,
CNNMoney.com.
We’ll comment on the article’s content later perhaps, but primarily we would like to mention that blippr is mentioned. It’s only a sentence, sure—an incorrect one at that, given it says we offer restaurant reviews—but we’ll take the free press. We have no idea how this one came about, but hey, it’s
Fortune! No complaining here.
Not only has it been an exciting few days for us in terms of press and everyone’s wonderful feedback, we also have the great pleasure of announcing that Rodney Rumford of FaceReviews has joined our advisory board. Given his extensive knowledge of the social media landscape (not to mention his jolly personality), we’re excited to have him join us in our mission to make blippr the best way for people to discuss, discover, and organize media with their friends, as well as make it a profitable, long-standing business. Both a blippr user and a savvy social media entrepreneur, we couldn’t be more pleased with our first official advisor to the blippr team.
Welcome Rodney!
Jaiku and Plurk integration! (Pownce is coming, too, but it’s a little trickier.)
Keep your eyes open for ‘em!
We’ve pushed a new build to address some of the hiccups folks were experiencing yesterday. Hope that clears up the majority of them, and as always, if you have issues, please do start a topic on
Get Satisfaction, and we’ll get to it ASAP!
Check out
the latest NextWeb post about blippr from TheNextWeb when you get a chance. Read either Chris’s or Jonathan’s comments in the post for clarity on the “cons” Joop has listed, though. We’re all about DataPortability (of course).
Hey folks, just as a heads up, we changed the format of usernames a bit tonight. If you didn’t set a username when we use the first part of your email, prefixed by a “~”. Before, we would append two numbers to the name.
If your email was “joe@megacorp.net” then your username might have shown up as “joe52”. It’ll now show up as “~joe”.
To set a username of your choice, just go to “edit my profile” and enter your username of choice. Of course, if you’d already set a username, this change won’t affect you.
Happy blipping!
What will you find with the newest version of blippr? Lots.
- A better design; though we warn you now that it is radically different and eagerly await your feedback
- A new personal homepage that will act as your personal command center when you’re signed in—we will no longer make you visit your public profile (intended for friends) to complete important actions or get to important data (intended for you)
- A newsfeed on your homepage to stay up on more than just your friends’ recent blips; undeniably, it is inspired by Facebook’s
- A blip stuff! page, which will help you find more books, games, movies, and music to blip now, save for later, or ignore forever
- Better friend filtering and sorting features, as well as a much improved people search
- A new signup process
- And more!
Most importantly, you’re now able to connect your profile so that, when your blips post to Twitter, FriendFeed, and Facebook, your friends can browse blippr on their own and sign up if they want. It only takes about six seconds to join and you’ll get better recommendations as a result of following them, so why not, right?!
We won’t be making big news out of this new version for a short while… just enough time for you, our faithful current users, to test it out, invite more friends, give us feedback, and the like. Please don’t, don’t, don’t be shy. Use the “feedback?” link in the bottom right corner of every page to let us know your thoughts. Or DM us on Twitter. Or voice your opinion on Get Satisfaction. Or start a discussion on our Google Group. Whatever your method, please do let us know your thoughts. We’re listening.
Thanks to all of you for bringing blippr to this point. It’s a humble effort by two friends-turned-business-partners (though I must give most credit to our only developer at this point, blippr’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Geek, Chris Heald), and we look forward to bringing you many more features and integrations with other services in the near future. Many additions, revisions, fixes, and more polish will be coming over the next few days and weeks, too, so bear with us and any numbers in the 499-501 range that you might encounter along the way.
Now, go blip!
