Jun

18

2008

(0) Comments

Useful Tips #2

01:00PM by Hoc

People have been asking this for an invite friend feature awhile back and we’ve added it a couple of weeks ago. It’s pretty much what you would find in other sites that have a social networking component to it. To access it log in and go to:

My Home -> Friends -> Invite Friends.

Add as many email addresses as you want and whenever they accept the invite you and your invitee will automagically be friends. Even if someone else invited the same person or if they accept the invitation under a different email address they’ll be added to your friends list and you’ll get credited for the invite. What does being credited for the invite get you? Nothing much now, but something very important soon!

Another new feature is the ability to see your friend’s request in the login area. With our universal login system, you’ll see the friend’s request no matter which Mixr community you visit.

There’s been a dozen of quiet bug fixes as well and everything is a work in progress folks, so thanks for your patients. Our efforts right now are on our microsites that we’re developing with our content partners and our video streaming solution. I’ll go into more details about those in a later post.

Also, you’ll find many of the Mixr staff at the AAFilmLab 72 Hour Shootout launch party that our Ningin community is sponsoring. It’ll in lower Manhattan this Friday 6/20 at 6pm.

May

14

2008

(1) Comments

Feature Slideshow

05:31PM by Hoc

We’ve added a new slideshow feature that highlights the more extraordinary content on our Ningin community. Since the new design, one of the things that seem missing with images. We’ve always been a very graphic heavy site mixed with minimalist design elements. The new design made our homepage seem text heavy. Well it’s been improved! Articles and post selected to the slideshow are generally things that are really popular on the community. So it’s the users that determine what appears there. On occasion, we’ll add things of lesser popularity if the editorial or moderating team feel it’s underexposed and worth more attention.

The community page is still not entirely finished. There are more apps and features we’ve yet to code or finish testing, but we’re getting there!

On a different note, we decided to stop using Google ads on our Ningin site. For some reason, we draw a lot of Asian dating and marriage ads. We’re not against those services, but that’s not what Ningin is about. 

May

7

2008

(0) Comments

Forum Visitor Stats & Blogging Notes

09:40PM by Hoc

Forum Visitor Stats was something on our to-do list for awhile since the forum was launched about three weeks ago. The delay was due to issues trying to separate visitors from our different communities. We didn’t think it would make sense to show Jetdrop or Ziggytek visitors on the Ningin site. In any case, that’s done so now you can see who’s online with our Ningin forums! Every site has more guest than users, but it would be really nice if you guests sign up and join the community!

We’ve also been busy adding bloggers to our Ningin community. It’s about one a week now, a pace I don’t expect us to continue, but great for now. The goal is to have a little of everything content wise without too much overlap. So far we have Alvin Lin for general Asian media and Asian American politics, Andrew Lim for Hong Kong gossip and Asian foods, and guest blogger Daron Jenkins for Asian film reviews. We’ve created an expanded blogger profile page to highlight all our different bloggers. One for Ningin, and one for Jetdrop. We’re still looking for a few more, so if you or your friends are interested, then this page is for you.

Apr

9

2008

(0) Comments

Milestone Moment: Forums Up!

01:53PM by Hoc

Today, we’re proud to add a new application to our Ningin community, discussion forums! It’s fully integrated with everything else on our website and each new posts or topic you write will show up in your recent activity feed.

We’re looking for a couple of moderators to add to the ones we already have. Send me a private message if you’re interested.

Thanks so much to all the beta testers for their time and thoroughness these past couple weeks!

Apr

4

2008

(0) Comments

Useful Tips #1

04:55PM by Hoc

#1 I’ve been noticing that some new users are having trouble receiving their activation email. I’m going to use an educated guess and say it’s because of extremely indiscriminate spam filters. I can’t really blame those filters, one of my gMail account catches nearly 6,000 spam emails a day for me. (It was just last month when I was getting 4,000 spam emails/day. Who did I piss off?) Our activation emails go out pretty much the second you hit register. Depending on the quality of your email provider, it should take anywhere from 2 seconds to 2 minutes. Any longer than that, and it’s a safe bet that our email was caught in your spam or bulk folder. Instead of signing up for a new account with a new email address, we have a handy ”Resend Activation Email” link that’s prominently displayed on the upper right side of the registration page.

#2 This isn’t a new feature, it was around when we launched our blogs, but you can quickly email your friends and acquaintances of an interesting blog post via our email post link on the lower left hand corner of each post. We also have a handy print version of all our blog postings for those of you who like to print out stuff. All our applications have these links, not just blogs.

#3 Last but not least, there’s a lot of new users without avatars. I think the world would be much happier if everyone had an avatar. We have a pretty spiffy upload-your-own-avatar-and-crop system. As the name implies, you can upload any non-copyrighted, non-nudity photo via the “Photo” tab in your member profile area. Then crop it by clicking on the “Set Avatar” link. (Other reasonable photo restrictions may apply.)