FindMeOn.com Blog

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I am pleased to announce that as of February 1st key features to both SyndiClick properties, FindMeOn and RoadSound, are patent pending.

In regards to FindMeOn, a lot of intellectual property is being protected — and a lot isn’t.

First, we should note what is not being covered by current patent applications:

The findmeon spec is now, and always will be, free and open.

FindMeOn is not protecting anything about listing all of your profile identities on a single page, list your RSS feeds etc. Everyone is doing this now, and we neither don’t know who thought of it first , nor care. We’re not looking do to this style of aggregation at all — and see little difference between it and existing social networking sites with a ‘list your accounts here’ box. If you only want that sort of functionality, the best implementation we’ve seen of it has been Claim ID, and we strongly suggest looking there. There are also a ton of new sites every day that kind of do that, and toss on misc bells and whistles , but its all the same and Claim ID shows the most utility by far.

In terms of our current patent applications, we are are seeking protections for: ( please note, this is generalized. Because there’s so much activity in this field right now I don’t want to get into the exact claims until they’re made public by the USPTO ):
How we isolate accounts and identities from one another with privacy
How we syndicate identities and links to other networks via clickable badges ( the webring-ish feature of our badges )
How we handle profile management , permissions, and syndication
How we handle cross-network friendships
a bunch of other stuff that isn’t public yet

The RapidRegister system and developer toolset will be launching within the week, and a host of new user searching tools will as well.

FindMeOn QuickList is an exciting new feature that we’ve been eager to launch for the past few months — and have finally decided to unveil in a series of consecutive Phases at the start of the new year.

QuickList “Phase 1″ lets 3rd party websites redirect their users to FindMeOn.com using specially formated links. These links contain specific information to rapidly create new entries on FindMeOn.com for the accounts, then redirect users back to their originating website along with the unique FindMeOn resource id.

Using this resource id, 3rd party websites can seamlessly integrate syndicated user content and up-to-date profile information from the user’s aggregate identity via the FindMeOn API.

FindMeOn.com will shortly unveil QuickList “Phase 2″ , a toolset aimed at startup developers, which is still undergoing QA testing.

FindMeOn.com is commited to enriching the online experience for end-users and developers alike. FindmeOn’s initial product - a user profile management suite and streamlined developer API is designed to 1) help the average internet user effectively manage their online personas and pool the resources of their various online accounts together and 2) help online webservices keep up-to-date with their user base, always showing the most timely and relevant user information in their social networking operations.

The way we handled login attempts didn’t work well with all browsers, and kept some people from logging in last week. The process has been more standardized now, and no one should have issues.

FindMeOn.com was down on 2006.12.10 from 3PM EST too 6pm EST

We’re truly sorry.

There was a bug in our proxy server, and it took a while to realize what it was.

Everything is fixed, and we rolled the system back to an earlier imprint.

Phase 1 of our OpenID integration is about to launch…

All public records on FindMeOn.com ( the /user/ and /findmeon/ directories ) are now ususable as OpenID ‘Urls’. They also all point to the http://openid.findmeon.com server.

The OpenID server is used to handle all logins and simple-registration. Right now, it requires a seperate login — but it does use the same email/password as your FindMeOn.com login, as well as account information from your FindMeOn.com profile.

The service also uses abstracted FindMeOn.com identitifiers — so each account you list with FindMeOn.com has its own identity URL. Everything uses the same login/password and profile description — but this approach keeps your identitiy urls shielded from one another.

Within the next week Phase2 will launch - which is mostly our own extensions to the OpenID protocol.

FindMeOn.com plans on offering mulitiple login/identity services for its users. OpenID is just the first implementation.

A fieldname typo resulted in the “Current Location” of OpenSN profiles to not be auto-filled on updates. That has been fixed.

Shouts have been bumped up to 200 characters, which is the max available screensize on the the Interactive badge. Some clipping may happen when flash justifies text. To get around that, a scroller will be introduced ( and text may go up to 300 chars )

There’s a major update being worked on right now. Its very hush-hush, but I think many people will be excited by it !

//Jonathan

I originally thought that CrossSiteVisits (under the stats section) would be receiving the largest number data.

I was dead wrong.

Identity record views are getting massive hits across the board- about a 20:1 ratio between their use and cross site visits.

Upcoming versions of the stats system will definitely take this into account.

The bulk of the the temporary UI improvements are now in effect.

There are 3 big changes:
1- 90% of pages now fit within 800px wide.
2- Some ’steps’ and ‘icons’ are being used in confusing portions of the site.
3- The site now has a preliminary color scheme.

The scheme will undoubtedly change during redesigns and upgrades. But for now, here’s the color code:
viewing a public findmeon record
light blue
viewing a public user record
light green
security alerts
red
account stuff
orange
search
green
corporate stuff
yellow

I pushed an update live @5am, and at 11am woke up to find that it broke the search function ( the page wasn’t in svn somehow ).

Search is back. More updates on the way.