Blog
Sosius Support Center Takes "Help" to a Whole New Level
We've been told more than once that Sosius provides excellent customer support. However, there's always room for improvement. That's why we've just released the Sosius Support Center - our new and improved help and support system.
One of the best features of the new Support Center is the "public forum". We all know that the members of our close and extended networks are often our best sources of information.
So we've created two community forums - General Help and Developer Support - to allow Sosius members to share questions, issues, ideas and solutions with each other. You can now browse and search for questions and problems, and view and respond to other members' questions. Sosius Support monitors and contributes to these forums, so you can rest assured that you're getting good, accurate information.
We've also added some instructional videos (with more new content on the way!) to make the Sosius Support Center one of the best web-based help systems around.
Discussions Gets an Upgrade
We've just upgraded the Discussions application to make sharing ideas, comments and feedback easier than ever. Discussion forums now include post and view counts, so you can quickly get a sense of the post popular topics.
We've also added sortable columns and given the UI a complete make-over. So go ahead and express yourself - you're ideas won't just sound great, they 'll look great as well!
Showcase Your Documents with New Preview Feature
We've just integrated a great new piece of technology from Scribd - iPaper. Now you can preview your documents using features such as zoom in/out and page forward/back. There's even a key word
search. With preview available in full page and thumbnail format, your documents never looked so good.
New Features to Keep You Organized
Ever get the feeling that you're being managed by your "To Do" list instead of the other way around? And what about that unwieldy daily schedule of meetings and appointments? Thanks to a few new enhancements, Sosius can help you manage your schedule and work more efficiently than ever before.
As I'm sure you've noticed, the Dashboard is now sporting two new widgets - "All Events" and "All Tasks" - to give you an immediate snap-shot of what lies ahead so you never fall behind (well, perhaps that's a bit too optimistic...). What's more, you can view events for just today or as far out as next month, and you can filter upcoming tasks by due date, status or key word.
We've also added a highly-requested feature to the Calendar - recurring events. Now you can schedule daily, weekly, bi-weekly, etc. events and you only need to create them once. These recurring events will appear in your "All Events" dashboard widget, so you'd better have a good excuse for missing that team meeting!
OpenSosius Services Launched!
We're proud to announce the launch of OpenSosius Services, a third party services and applications platform. Sosius is now positioned to provide end users with access to an unlimited number of leading online applications and services from one single platform.
OpenSosius Services connects data from Sosius with other applications and services across the web. It extends the benefits of the Sosius platform to companies, developers and non-developers alike by allowing them to integrate applications and services directly into Sosius. The result is a complete, custom enterprise-grade solution for SMBs.
The addition of third party services increases the breadth and depth of the Sosius suite, creating a single access point for valuable online business applications. Sosius users can now access numerous flexible business applications directly from their Sosius workspaces.
Complementary to Sosius’ robust collaboration and networking functionality, these new services enable our users to edit documents online, sign contracts electronically, create 3D slide shows and conduct web conferences. The first services to be made available within the Sosius platform are:
- Zoho Writer – allows users to easily edit documents online directly from their Sosius workspaces
- Zoho Spreadsheet – allows users to edit spreadsheets online directly from their Sosius workspaces
- EchoSign (e-signature) – users can send documents directly from Sosius to be signed electronically
- PicLens (slideshow) –users can now launch a PicLens slideshow directly from their Sosius workspaces
- DimDim (web conferencing) – users can instantly launch free DimDim web conferences with a single sign-on to any Sosius workspace
To learn more about OpenSosius Services and how you can develop applications for Sosius, visit: http://my.sosius.com/ww/developer/services/
Introducing the Sosius Navigator
You may have noticed that we've been on a roll with UI improvements - from minor tweaks to major new features. Today I'm pleased to announce the release of the Sosius Navigator - a terrific new UI element that adds tremendous usability to the site.
The Sosius Navigator shows you where you are and helps you quickly jump to any section of your workspace. It also lets you see who is sharing your workspace and tells you who in your network is currently online. There's even a section where you can add tags to workspace pages in a matter of seconds. Best of all, it's customizable - you can expand/collapse and add/remove the different parts to fit the way you work.
New Custom Branding Features!
We recently updated our UI to improve the look and feel of Sosius. We also added a feature that has been in high demand - branding! All of our new upgrade options come complete with tools that let you customize your Sosius site by adding your company logo, selecting a pre-set color scheme or creating your own custom color scheme to match your company colors.
You can view a demonstration that shows how you can customize your Sosius site with a custom color scheme and company logo.
Check out our new plans that offer branding and other features such as increased storage and bandwidth.
We're Out of Beta!
Today is a very exciting day here at Sosius. We are officially out of beta! Since our launch at Web 2.0 last September, we have made some major upgrades to the service - including our API, ExpertFinder, Import Contacts, Group Dashboard and Tags - and grown our member base to well over 10,000 users. We are now ready to bring a new era of enterprise-grade collaboration and business social networking tools to small and medium-sized organizations, teams, groups and individuals.
Starting today, all Sosius users have the option to upgrade their accounts with additional storage and bandwidth, SSL and other premium features. Our bundled packages and custom "a la carte" features menu provides an easy and flexible way for users to customize Sosius to meet their business needs.
As always, we are committed to making Sosius available to everyone. So, we will continue to offer a fully-functional free version of Sosius, with 200MB of storage and an unlimited number of users and workspaces.
Speak to your Sosius blog with SpinVox
I've just discovered a great tool to use with Sosius called SpinVox. It's a free service that allows you to update your blog by speaking. You get a free telephone number to call and your voice gets translated to text. Now you can speak your mind and have the text sent directly to your Sosius blog!
Here's how to set it up:
- Create a blog on Sosius - let's call it 'Notes'
- In the 'Notes' blog, click 'Edit details' and choose an email address for the blog (you will find this feature at the bottom of the page)
- Make a note of the email address you created for your blog
- Go to www.SpinVox.com and create a free account, choosing the 'blog' option of use
- Complete the form, entering in the Sosius blog email address you created
- Go to the 'My Account' page on Sosius and select 'Edit email' and add in "spin-my-blog@spinvox.com" as an alternative email.
- You'll get an email from SpinVox with the number you need to call to update your Sosius blog
HTML Editor
We have recently upgraded the HTML editor used on our site. This is a major upgrade of a third party component which includes many new features. Some of the more notable new features include: the specification of font types and sizes, emotions, text and background colours, layers, change tracking, printing and dynamic resizing of text boxes. We hope that these new features will allow you to create richer HTML content in a more pleasurable way.
XFN and FOAF
We have recently added support for two internet standards: XHTML Friends Network (XFN) and Friend of a Friend (FOAF). Your profile and network pages have been updated to include these two new features. XFN and FOAF work together to publish in a machine readable way (i) who you are connected to and (ii) details about yourself. In both cases we respect the privacy settings in your account so that only information you have declared to be public will be published.
XFN is a simple way to represent human relationships using hyperlinks. Any links in your Sosius profile to contacts in your network will be marked up with a XFN tag. This will allow other applications to determine who you are connected to. This information will only be made available to outsiders if you have set you Network privacy to "Public".
FOAF is a simple vocabulary for describing yourself and your social network. It is designed to be machine-readable so web applications and other software can discover information about you and your activities and connections. Once again, we only show information that is already publicly available in your profile. If you look to the bottom of your profile page you will see a FOAF icon which is a link to your FOAF file.
Introducing OpenSosius
When we first launched Sosius, we made a commitment to create a community of users who would partner with us to build the world's most flexible and extendable online collaboration and business social networking solution. For the past several months, we have been working round the clock to develop the most essential tool for making this happen - an API that we call 'OpenSosius.'With 'OpenSosius', developers can now build custom online and desktop applications on the Sosius platform. What's more, we'll soon be launching a way for developers to make their custom applications available to all Sosius members, as either shareware or premium services.
I am very excited about this release and cannot wait to see what nifty applications our users come up with.
Groups Get a Dashboard
We have recently expanded the capabilities of our widgets system. Widgets can now be display on Group homepages as well as Item pages and your Dashboard. We have restrospectively upgraded all of your groups to show a standard set of widgets:
- group members: lists the members in the group
- shared items: which items have been shared to the group
- latest items: the latest content to be added or editing in the group.
These three widgets will help you keep abreast of all that is going on in the group.
Furthermore, if you own the group then you can customise the widgets to better suit your requirements: change their formats, ordering or show more items. If you would rather that group members were not able to see who else is in the group - just remove it from the group homepage.
We think that these changes will make groups much more useful to you.
Import Contacts
You have always been able to invite members by manually entering their email address. Now the process is much easier because you are able to import your contacts from an online email account such as Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo. All you have to do is go to you "Network" page and then click on the "Import" button. You will then be able to enter your credentials for your email account provider. This will return you a list of all your contacts. The next step in the process is to select which contacts you wish to invite into your network.Reflections on 2007 and the exciting year ahead
I hope that the new year has gotten off to a great start for everyone. Life here at Sosius is certainly hectic but very exciting as we look ahead to a pivotal year in our history. Looking back on 2007, I am quite pleased that we reached some major milestones. We launched the beta version of Sosius in September and managed to attract a brilliant member base that is now heading toward 10,000 users! We introduced the Expert Finder as a foundation for our business social networking capabilities and released the alpha version of our API to empower the developer community to create endless new features and applications that will extend the Sosius suite. 2008 is shaping up to be an even more exciting year as our membership explodes and our technology reaches new heights.
It goes without saying that none of this would be possible without the support and input of our members. We are constanting receiving invaluable feedback - from very positive comments to excellent suggestions for improvement - and I am personally very grateful for all of it. I am confident that 2008 will be a stellar year for Sosius. There is no question in my mind that we are building the #1online collaboration and business social networking community.
Andrew Cameron-Webb
Sosius Founder & CTO
Drag and Drop Moving
It is now possible to drag and drop items between folders. This is muchh easier than using the current cut and paste actions which are currently available. If you have selected the view items by either of the "Large Icon" or "Thumbnail" views you will be able to use this new functionality. Just click on the item you want to move, hold the mouse key down and drag the item to the desired folder. When the target folder highlights drop the item into the folder by releasing the mouse button. The item will then be moved into the target folder.New Feature: The Expert Finder
Today I have some great news! Thanks to some nifty new tagging technology (and the amazing work of our chief architect, Murray), Sosius members can now search the entire Sosius community to find people who are experts in almost any field. We call this new feature “Expert Finder.” We hope it will be a valuable resource for all our users and a great way to network.The Expert Finder also allows you to market yourself as an expert. Simply by adding some keywords to your profile in the new “Expertise” and “Interests” fields, everyone in the Sosius Network can find you when they search on those terms. Please note though that we regard your privacy very seriously; you control how much information people can see through your personal settings, and the feature is switched off, by default, until you add your keywords.
We've created a new help page that gives further details about the new Expert Finder feature. Please check it out and let me know what you think!
Andrew Cameron-Webb
CTO & Founder
Finer Privacy Control
You now have greater control over who sees what of your data because we have just added some extra areas where you can configure privacy settings. You now have control over the following areas:
- Profile: the textual description you write about yourself,
- Details: sensitive information such as age, gender, company and URL,
- Contact info: phone numbers, address, instant messaging clients,
- Messaging: who can contact you,
- Network: who can see your network.
We have configured the new areas (Details, Contact info and Network) to have sensible defaults so you needn't worry about your data being opened up to too many people. Only your network will be able to see your details and contact info. Your extended network will be able to see the people you have in Your Network.
Tags now supported
Sosius now supports tagging on all items. Tagging allows you to associate keywords with an item. You may wish to apply categories or location information to a particular item. For example, you might apply the tags "Conference", "Finance", "New York" to an event.
Once you have applied tags to a number of items, you are then able to filter the items by selecting tags. Tagging allows you to mark up information the way you want to and then to recall it using terms you have specified. For example, you could filter to find all items with the "Conference" and "New York" tags.
Everytime you create or edit an item you can apply tags to it. You will also see a "My Tags" line in the footer of the page. It lists all the tags you have applied and allows you to then manage (add, edit, delete) them by clicking the "manage" link.
You can view all of your tags by clicking the Tags link in the top navigation bar. This will take you to a page where you can start filtering all of the items you have tagged.
To find out more on the general concept of tagging please read the Tag entry at Wikipedia.
Berlin Web 2.0 Expo Review
Just back from the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin. While I enjoyed my time there, I found the show to be pretty disappointing. It was held at the Berlin Fairground, which is a huge, cold, concrete building that makes you feel like a student again - or maybe it was just the bad coffee and cigarette smoke. A lot of the speeches were of the ‘pat on your back’ type which I found dull, though the following speeches were noteworthy:
David Recorden’s talk on Opening The Social Graph.
Kathy Sierra’s talk on Creating Passionate Users was fantastically insightful. I learned a lot of good stuff which we will be putting into practice.
Mark Boulton’s talk on Better Typography
James Kalbach’s talk on Designing Tag Navigation
And best of all was Jeremy Keith’s talk on Microformats: the Nanotechnology of the Semantic Web – an excellent speech that got me all excited about using Microformats on Sosius.
After my visit to Berlin I couldn’t help but feel that Europe has a long way to go to catch up to the current Web 2.0 buzz you see in the US. We’ll just have to wait and see if next year’s European Web 2.0 expo will be up to scratch.
Improved Invites
The invite process on Sosius has now been improved. It is possible to send out a short welcome message to the new users you are inviting into a group or an item.
To see this improvement in action for groups, click on "Groups" in the top bar, select the Group you wish to invite members into and then click "Add Group Members". Alternatively, to share an item with new users, navigate to the item you wish to share, click on the "Item Options" drop down box in the top right hand side of the page and then select "Share this item with others".
Secure Login
All users are now logged in via HTTPS. ie. the username and password are encrypted by default when logging in. It is no longer necessary to go to the HTTPS version of our login page to have secure login - it happens automatically.
Date and Time Localization
Sosius now will customise the display of dates and times according to the language settings in your browser. If the setting is for en-gb, en-au, en-nz and a couple of others, the date format will be British format: dd/mm/yyyy. If you have en or en-us specified then the format will now be mm/dd/yyyy. Other languages will default to the US format.
The date format applies to the display of all dates as well as the entry and validation of dates in forms.
Better Timezone Support
We have now added better timezone support across Sosius. Instead of displaying the time of the server, all times will now be adjusted for the timezone which you have set in your preferences. To edit your timezone, just go to My Account and click on the Edit Settings link.
Also, when you go to create certain items such as a blog entry, the automicatically created date and time which makes up the title will be for your timezone. In the case of an event, where the timezone is specified by the creator of the event, the time will continue to show as the time entered.
See You in Berlin!
If you are perchance planning to attend the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin, Germany, please stop over and say hello. The Expo is running from November 5-8 and will be a great place to network with other members of the Web 2.0 community that we are proud to be a part of.Listening to Our Users
When we launched Sosius, we made a commitment to you, our users, to take your feedback seriously and we do. In fact, just days after the Office 2.0 show, we were contacted by a woman who complained that while our suite is wonderfully robust and easy to use, the registration’s security process was inaccessible to blind people. Well, we immediately took her comments to heart and made some changes. Here's what she had to say:"There is truly some justice in the world! The developers at Sosius, the inaccessible website I ranted about in my last posting, has taken my concerns about accessibility to heart. Two days after my initial experience with them they have added a number of new features which now make the site accessible to both sighted as well as blind users." -bostonmargy
To read her full posting, please go to: http://bostonmargy.livejournal.com/14351.html
A Highly Successful Launch
We officially launched the beta version of Sosius at the Office 2.0 show in San Francisco that took place from September 5-7. The response to our service was overwhelming. Our demo pod was one of the busiest at the show and we have had a slew of sign-ups since then.
Thanks to everyone who waited patiently for us to go live with our service - now please tell us what you think of Sosius and how we can make it even better!
A few fixes...
- Top Nav link 'Activities' name has been changed to 'Workspaces'
- The session timeout has been extended to 12 hours - no more logging in every 20 mins!
- New Join and Register forms in-line with Damons designs, we have removed the 'your sosius URL' field - this will default to your username.
- Top Nav has been changed to be left aligned.
Calendar Update
- Calendar hour/day cells are now clickable.
- All day events have simple display.
- View change stays on the correct day.
- EventNew script redirects back to the correct day if redirect is back to parent.
- The EventNew formifier which displays the the "new event" form on the calendar page has become smarter so that is uses the selected day.
- When a user clicks on a day in the calendar the view is "day" even if the current view is week or month.
- When an event is created the redirect is back to day the event was created.
- All day events do not have times displayed - cleaning up display
27th April 2007
- New Share Manager - The old permissions page has been replaced by the share manager, simplifying the process of inviting users and setting permissions.
- Calendar Update - Add participants is off by default.
- Home Page - The new users default portlets have been changed. The new order is: latestMembers, calendar, activities, groups, reminders, messages, rss/blog.
- New Privacy and Terms & Conditions added to the site.
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