After listening to lots of constructive feedback, we’ve been plugging away at the problem areas.
There’s going to be a pretty decent UI update within the next day ( the /user and /findmeon sections have already been upgraded a bit )
This isn’t an official / big upgrade — we’re still working on getting resources to bring an expert in. This is more like the first of a long series of ‘band-aids’.
I just updated the server – 20 second of downtime. I hope no one got mad.
The upgrade procedure is pretty stupid: modperl goes down, a barebones ‘be back shortly’ goes up, the servers sync, and modperl is replaced.
What should happen is this: modperl-2 goes up, nginx gracefully reloads to proxy content from modperl to modperl-2, modperl goes down. the end.
unfortunately, i need to figure out a way to do that and not have the system serve js/imgs from one version to another. so this update procedure will painfully be around a bit longer.
So anyways, the updates (nothing exciting):
- The ‘public’ facing pages just got reskinned to be 800px wide. They’re a bit better laid out too.
- Fixed a bug that caused a Critical Error when trying to create OpenSN profiles
- Fixed a bug that caused friendships to not display correctly on page views.
There’s an update with the verification history that will go live sometime later tonight. I’m a bit unhappy with the display, so I’m trying to fix that up.
What was exciting about the updates, is that the behind-the-scenes changes to force the updating required a bunch of upgrades that were in the queue for from the RoadSound system (RS and FMO use the same backend). I cleared 11 internal tickets — woo hoo.
Two updates will be pushed live sometime within the next few hours — there will be a 30 second downtime in order to push it live.
A_ Better Passwords
At the moment, the system is set to regex against a ‘word’ field, not a password field.
The regex is using the correct field right now- letters, numbers and the following characters are valid:
-_!@#$%^&() ={}:”;’<>,./?|
B_ Change your password link re-integrated
This amazingly got lost during earlier HTML reorganizations. I’m terribly sorry. Thanks to several people for pointing this out.
This is coming up a whole lot in reviews, so here are the points that I answer with:
FindMeOn was heavily inspired by OpenID, but has nothing to do with it — OpenID is a decentralized service focused on interactive identity ( login , authentication , secure transport ), Fndmeon is focused on passive identity — no interaction with any server is necessary.
Findmeon grew out of a use where I *really* wanted to use OpenID , but the design of the protocol just didn’t support it.
OpenID is simply amazing though, and I encourage everyone to use it when applicable.
ClaimID is focused on publicly claiming an ID for search / analytics. It’s great for the things that you want people to know about — like your family photos, personal blog, corporate email & writings — and in that arena, claimID is incredibly useful and your best choice for promotion. Most people I know are either already using it or should be using it.
FindMeOn, on the other hand, is compltely different. We’re focused on being able to claim an ID through a specific ‘lens’ of another ID, and shielding it from the rest.
Lets say you have a myspace page thats a little ’sketchy’ — you probably don’t want your mom& dad googling you, finding that profile, and seeing you flirting with 16 yr old girls who make jokes about you buying them beer the night before.
You probably also don’t want those people on myspace seeing your family photos on flickr ( maybe your regular photos are ok, but the ones with pix of your house, and your brother & little sister )…
So thats why we have FindMeOn. Using public/private key cryptography, instead of linking accounts to one another, we link accounts to keys — and then we can control which account can see the other accounts through the keys.
In my opinion, the 3 projects — while they are very similar — their design/function/features are mutually exclusive and serve completely different purposes. I’d like to think there’s not just room, but a need for all 3.
A hastily typed line of code in the BadgeBuilder made every badge use the compressed findmeon node ( href=”http://node.findmeon.org/ )
It’s fixed now.
We were on lifehacker today
http://lifehacker.com/software/social-networking/findmeoncom-identity-aggregator-211211.php
They said exactly what we hoped to hear:
“The FindMeOn preview isn’t very easy to use, but it’s a step towards solving a problem all of us has and it employs open standards to do so, which is a promising start in our book.”
Waxy.org had this to say:
http://waxy.org/links/
“FindMeOn (identity aggregation; still way too hard to use, but a step in the right direction )”
I’ve got a slew of stuff that will go live later tonight ( once server load is down )
a- After several requests, OpenSN will support ‘About Me’ , ‘Who I Want To Meet’ , and ‘Dislikes’. I’m debating a ‘Friends’/'Enemies’ field.
b- The Tour page now has an ‘In a Nutshell’ response.
c- Syndicated feeds now return ’status=”error/success” result=”error/success”‘ to be in line with the API results.
d- The Interactive shout badge is getting a preliminary ‘Am I connected?’ trial, plus some fixes for allowNetworking=”internal”
That’s done already.
Thanks to all who have been chiming in with feedback. I’m listening — see!
Flash Player v9 introduced a new ‘feature’ called ‘allowInternal=”never”‘
I knew that it disabled a lot of browser integration — what I didn’t know is that it completely cripples browser integration. LoadMovie works, but GetURL doesn’t.
That means that FindMeOn.com flash badges won’t work on certain blogs/forums/social networks that rewrite tags to ‘allowInternal=”never”‘ IF the viewer is running a 9 series flash movie ( v6,7,8 are unaffected )
Never Fear, an interim solution is in place–
click 1x, and a badge will getURL
click 2x, and a badge will show a selectfield that lets people copy/paste a url
Right now the url is for the FindMeOn.com virtual link that handles tracking , so users can still handle tracking. Hoever, that might change to the real url in the future , if visitors aren’t happy with that method.
We’re working on better long-term solutions. Hopefully we’ll find some soon. In the meantime, FlashBadges are fully functional again — albeit awkward.
FindMeOn went live on Wed Oct 25.
Thanks to everyone who was providing feedback during the private beta and ever since.
There are a slew of usability updates that are scheduled go live by Monday — though they might start appearing on Saturday.
Keep sending your questions and concerns to feedback@findmeon.com !
