johnmccrea
May 9th, 2007, 11:49 AM
Update, May 22, 2007:
Plaxo Preview Testers,
First, thanks again for helping us beta test the new version of Plaxo! And please keep your feedback coming via e-mail to preview_support@plaxo.com.
Second, we just made a major update to Preview, with lots of bug fixes. And we added several planned features that were either missing or were recently pulled. These include:
• Google Calendar Sync – You asked, we’re delivering! We got a bunch of feedback for Google sync and we’ve been busy fixing bugs and making the system more robust. The Google sync endpoint should now be back on for syncing calendar only. Check it out by clicking on “Add Sync Points” in the Sync Dashboard at the bottom of online app. (We’re still working on getting the Gmail address book sync rock solid, stay tuned…)
• Mac Calendar Sync – A long time feature request, making an official appearance for the first time; now you can sync calendars between Outlook, Google, Yahoo!, and Mac iCal. You can get the latest Mac client from the Sync Dashboard, or download it directly from here: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/mac/latest/PlaxoMac.zip?lang=en
• Notes – In addition to your contacts and calendar entries, you can now get access to your notes in Plaxo Online. Check it out by clicking on the “Notes” tab. Coming soon: Tasks!
We also added one really interesting, totally new feature that we’d really like your feedback on. It’s something we’re still experimenting with that aggregates feeds of publicly-available content from the people in your address book. The initial feeds include Flickr photos and Amazon.com Wish Lists, and blogs (for Plaxo members who put their blog in the website field of their cards). To check it out, go to the “My Network” tab. Then click on “Scan contacts.” You might not see any results right away, but content should start coming in within an hour or so. We’re planning to add a rich set of privacy controls, so please view this as just a pre-beta sneak-peek. (And please let me know what you think.)
There’s also a new version of the Outlook client with a bunch of bug fixes. Please take a moment to upgrade; direct links to download follow.
English: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_en.exe
French: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_fr.exe
German: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_de.exe
Japanese: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_ja.exe
Portuguese: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_pt.exe
Simplified Chinese: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_zh_cn.exe
Spanish: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_es.exe
And lastly, we are continuing the localization effort. International users may notice some English language in this interim release, but the local language content should catch up shortly.
John
If you like what you're seeing in Preview, consider voting for Plaxo for the "Next Web Awards" in the category "Social"!
http://awards.thenextweb.org/
Thanks!
May 9: Hip Tip: Sharing Calendars and iCals
I’m sure most of you know that our latest release of PO3 allows users to share their calendars and subscribe to iCals. I think one of the first things a lot of people did was grab a nickname, which lets you publish a calendar (and eventually display your add_me page?)
Here’s a primer on how the whole thing works:
Nicknames are used to create a “<nickname>.myplaxo.com” address. These addresses bring you to your public calendar and “Add Me” pages.
In order to get a nickname, log into PO3 and hit “settings” in the upper right. Go to the “Plaxo Nickname” section on the left. This page lets you choose a nickname to identify yourself and shows you the URL of your public page (it’s not working right now since the add me functionality is a little weird).
To share or publish your calendar click “Share and Manage” in the bottom right of the calendar module. This brings up the manage calendars lightbox. The difference between sharing and publishing is often unclear to people:
· “Sharing” is meant to be a private person-to-person action. When you share a calendar, it will provide you with a complicated (non-guessable) URL. You can give this to friends or family that you want to be able to see the calendar. Each of your calendar folders could have a separate shared page. Right now, you can’t have more than one calendar folder on a given sharing page (each folder gets a different URL)
· “Publishing” puts one or more of your calendar folders on your public calendar page (nickname.myplaxo.com/calendar). This could be seen by anyone who knows your nickname (you probably don’t want to publish your meetings about secret business deals =)
To share a calendar:
· Click the “share” link next to the name of the folder in the listing you see when manage calendars opens up. This opens the page to edit that calendar.
· You can change the name, color and sharing level from this page.
· Choose a level of detail that you want and *save your changes*.
· To see the private URL, click on “edit sharing details” next to that calendar again. The URL should be displayed in a text box.
(Take note, this URL is *NOT* the URL you would used to subscribe to the calendar, you get the iCal URL by visiting the shared calendar itself).
To publish a calendar:
· Click on the “Publish Calendar” tab in the manage calendars lightbox.
· If you don’t have a nickname, it will ask you to create one before you can publish.
· By default, none of your calendar folders will be published.
· Add the folders you want to publish from the dropdown. Then, choose a detail level you like.
· Save your changes and go back to the publish tab to see the URL (it should be nickname.myplaxo.com/calendar).
You can’t publish different folders at different levels of detail (at least not yet).
Your public calendar can be viewed at “<nickname>.myplaxo.com/calendar” It only contains events from folders that you specify within PO3.
If you go to a shared or published calendar, you can see the events in a list. Only one month is displayed at a time. To switch months or jump to dates, use the date picker in the upper right.
To subscribe to a shared or published calendar (in PO3):
· There is also a link in the bottom right that says “gimme an iCal”.
· Click on this and it will probably try to subscribe to an iCal feed in your default viewer (Outlook 2007 or Apple iCal probably). The iCal feed contains all the events from the shared or published calendar.
· If you want to subscribe to the iCal in another program (you could subscribe to your friend’s calendars in your own PO3!) you will need to copy and paste the URL
o You can right click on the “gimme an iCal” link and choose “Copy Link Location” (Firefox) or “Copy Shortcut” (IE)
· Go to the “Subscribe to iCal” tab in manage calendars
· Paste the copied URL into the text box and hit “Get iCalendar”
· The next page will show you how many events we found on the calendar and let you choose a name and color for the calendar.
· Choose a name and color and hit “Subscribe”
You can also find lots of public iCals at www.icalshare.com, www.upcoming.org, or www.zvents.com.
Hopefully this makes one of our more complicated features a little clearer =)
Chris
-------------------------------------
May 9: Hip Tip: Getting the Most out of Photo Calendars
I’m sure you’ve noticed the photos appearing in the background and down the side of your calendar in Preview. By default, these photos are pulled from our own plaxocalendar flickr account, but it is easy to configure the calendar use your own flickr account, or even all the public photos on flickr (over 400 million)!
You can get to the photo calendar settings by going to the ‘Calendar’ section after clicking on ‘Settings’ or by hovering over a photo on the side of your calendar and clicking the ‘Settings’ link that will appear. Here are a few possible configurations:
Your photos
Username: Your flickr username (Can be found by looking at the page title when viewing your flickr photos: “Photos by <username>”)
Tags: One or more (separated by commas) tags you use on your photos. Entering no tags will cause all your photos to be used.
When using your account for the photo strip, your 15 most recently uploaded photos (that match the tags you entered) will be displayed in order of the date they were taken.
When using your account for the background, your 12 most recently uploaded photos (that match the tags you entered) will be displayed in a random order. Your photos will be stretched to fill the entire background of the calendar.
Your photos with Plaxo backgrounds
To keep the holiday-themed photos as your background set just leave the background settings alone and change the photo strip settings to point to your account (see above).
Public flickr photos
By leaving the username field blank and entering a tag (ie; “snow” or “wrx”), you’ll get public flickr photos matching that tag. This can be done for both the strip and background.
Plaxo defaults
Strip username: plaxocalendar
Strip tags: plaxo_cal_strip
Background username: plaxocalendar
Background username: plaxo_cal_background
These are the default options for new 3.0 users. Photos selected by Michael & Emily to match the months they appear in (pumpkin in October, etc). We plan on adding a ‘Defaults’ option for users in a future release.
Note; the background photos are currently not paired up with the correct months. This will be fixed when the next build is pushed to preview.
- Garret
---------------------------------------
Plaxo Preview Testers,
First, thanks again for helping us beta test the new version of Plaxo! And please keep your feedback coming via e-mail to preview_support@plaxo.com.
Second, we just made a major update to Preview, with lots of bug fixes. And we added several planned features that were either missing or were recently pulled. These include:
• Google Calendar Sync – You asked, we’re delivering! We got a bunch of feedback for Google sync and we’ve been busy fixing bugs and making the system more robust. The Google sync endpoint should now be back on for syncing calendar only. Check it out by clicking on “Add Sync Points” in the Sync Dashboard at the bottom of online app. (We’re still working on getting the Gmail address book sync rock solid, stay tuned…)
• Mac Calendar Sync – A long time feature request, making an official appearance for the first time; now you can sync calendars between Outlook, Google, Yahoo!, and Mac iCal. You can get the latest Mac client from the Sync Dashboard, or download it directly from here: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/mac/latest/PlaxoMac.zip?lang=en
• Notes – In addition to your contacts and calendar entries, you can now get access to your notes in Plaxo Online. Check it out by clicking on the “Notes” tab. Coming soon: Tasks!
We also added one really interesting, totally new feature that we’d really like your feedback on. It’s something we’re still experimenting with that aggregates feeds of publicly-available content from the people in your address book. The initial feeds include Flickr photos and Amazon.com Wish Lists, and blogs (for Plaxo members who put their blog in the website field of their cards). To check it out, go to the “My Network” tab. Then click on “Scan contacts.” You might not see any results right away, but content should start coming in within an hour or so. We’re planning to add a rich set of privacy controls, so please view this as just a pre-beta sneak-peek. (And please let me know what you think.)
There’s also a new version of the Outlook client with a bunch of bug fixes. Please take a moment to upgrade; direct links to download follow.
English: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_en.exe
French: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_fr.exe
German: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_de.exe
Japanese: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_ja.exe
Portuguese: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_pt.exe
Simplified Chinese: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_zh_cn.exe
Spanish: http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/latest/PlaxoInstall_es.exe
And lastly, we are continuing the localization effort. International users may notice some English language in this interim release, but the local language content should catch up shortly.
John
If you like what you're seeing in Preview, consider voting for Plaxo for the "Next Web Awards" in the category "Social"!
http://awards.thenextweb.org/
Thanks!
May 9: Hip Tip: Sharing Calendars and iCals
I’m sure most of you know that our latest release of PO3 allows users to share their calendars and subscribe to iCals. I think one of the first things a lot of people did was grab a nickname, which lets you publish a calendar (and eventually display your add_me page?)
Here’s a primer on how the whole thing works:
Nicknames are used to create a “<nickname>.myplaxo.com” address. These addresses bring you to your public calendar and “Add Me” pages.
In order to get a nickname, log into PO3 and hit “settings” in the upper right. Go to the “Plaxo Nickname” section on the left. This page lets you choose a nickname to identify yourself and shows you the URL of your public page (it’s not working right now since the add me functionality is a little weird).
To share or publish your calendar click “Share and Manage” in the bottom right of the calendar module. This brings up the manage calendars lightbox. The difference between sharing and publishing is often unclear to people:
· “Sharing” is meant to be a private person-to-person action. When you share a calendar, it will provide you with a complicated (non-guessable) URL. You can give this to friends or family that you want to be able to see the calendar. Each of your calendar folders could have a separate shared page. Right now, you can’t have more than one calendar folder on a given sharing page (each folder gets a different URL)
· “Publishing” puts one or more of your calendar folders on your public calendar page (nickname.myplaxo.com/calendar). This could be seen by anyone who knows your nickname (you probably don’t want to publish your meetings about secret business deals =)
To share a calendar:
· Click the “share” link next to the name of the folder in the listing you see when manage calendars opens up. This opens the page to edit that calendar.
· You can change the name, color and sharing level from this page.
· Choose a level of detail that you want and *save your changes*.
· To see the private URL, click on “edit sharing details” next to that calendar again. The URL should be displayed in a text box.
(Take note, this URL is *NOT* the URL you would used to subscribe to the calendar, you get the iCal URL by visiting the shared calendar itself).
To publish a calendar:
· Click on the “Publish Calendar” tab in the manage calendars lightbox.
· If you don’t have a nickname, it will ask you to create one before you can publish.
· By default, none of your calendar folders will be published.
· Add the folders you want to publish from the dropdown. Then, choose a detail level you like.
· Save your changes and go back to the publish tab to see the URL (it should be nickname.myplaxo.com/calendar).
You can’t publish different folders at different levels of detail (at least not yet).
Your public calendar can be viewed at “<nickname>.myplaxo.com/calendar” It only contains events from folders that you specify within PO3.
If you go to a shared or published calendar, you can see the events in a list. Only one month is displayed at a time. To switch months or jump to dates, use the date picker in the upper right.
To subscribe to a shared or published calendar (in PO3):
· There is also a link in the bottom right that says “gimme an iCal”.
· Click on this and it will probably try to subscribe to an iCal feed in your default viewer (Outlook 2007 or Apple iCal probably). The iCal feed contains all the events from the shared or published calendar.
· If you want to subscribe to the iCal in another program (you could subscribe to your friend’s calendars in your own PO3!) you will need to copy and paste the URL
o You can right click on the “gimme an iCal” link and choose “Copy Link Location” (Firefox) or “Copy Shortcut” (IE)
· Go to the “Subscribe to iCal” tab in manage calendars
· Paste the copied URL into the text box and hit “Get iCalendar”
· The next page will show you how many events we found on the calendar and let you choose a name and color for the calendar.
· Choose a name and color and hit “Subscribe”
You can also find lots of public iCals at www.icalshare.com, www.upcoming.org, or www.zvents.com.
Hopefully this makes one of our more complicated features a little clearer =)
Chris
-------------------------------------
May 9: Hip Tip: Getting the Most out of Photo Calendars
I’m sure you’ve noticed the photos appearing in the background and down the side of your calendar in Preview. By default, these photos are pulled from our own plaxocalendar flickr account, but it is easy to configure the calendar use your own flickr account, or even all the public photos on flickr (over 400 million)!
You can get to the photo calendar settings by going to the ‘Calendar’ section after clicking on ‘Settings’ or by hovering over a photo on the side of your calendar and clicking the ‘Settings’ link that will appear. Here are a few possible configurations:
Your photos
Username: Your flickr username (Can be found by looking at the page title when viewing your flickr photos: “Photos by <username>”)
Tags: One or more (separated by commas) tags you use on your photos. Entering no tags will cause all your photos to be used.
When using your account for the photo strip, your 15 most recently uploaded photos (that match the tags you entered) will be displayed in order of the date they were taken.
When using your account for the background, your 12 most recently uploaded photos (that match the tags you entered) will be displayed in a random order. Your photos will be stretched to fill the entire background of the calendar.
Your photos with Plaxo backgrounds
To keep the holiday-themed photos as your background set just leave the background settings alone and change the photo strip settings to point to your account (see above).
Public flickr photos
By leaving the username field blank and entering a tag (ie; “snow” or “wrx”), you’ll get public flickr photos matching that tag. This can be done for both the strip and background.
Plaxo defaults
Strip username: plaxocalendar
Strip tags: plaxo_cal_strip
Background username: plaxocalendar
Background username: plaxo_cal_background
These are the default options for new 3.0 users. Photos selected by Michael & Emily to match the months they appear in (pumpkin in October, etc). We plan on adding a ‘Defaults’ option for users in a future release.
Note; the background photos are currently not paired up with the correct months. This will be fixed when the next build is pushed to preview.
- Garret
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