If you thought you had seen everything there was on PodShow, it may be time to take another look! Everyday we are making updates to the site to make it faster and better for everyone. This may be a long post, so only read it if you have a few minutes to dedicate to learning about some of the recent updates to the PodShow.com website! Lets get to it…
There have been updates made to the interface side as well as to the administration side of the site. So you will see changes both when you are logged in to your account and editing as well as when you are browsing the rest of the site. Some of the updates include: my channels module, full width modules, image cropping, video search, family friendly settings, managing your top 12 friends and more! Let me break down some of these changes for you.
My Channels Module
The “My Channels Module” is a cool new feature that has just surfaced for users on the PodShow website. Up until now, you could browse the site and collect all the different podcasts/shows you wanted but they were pretty much constrained to your collection only. With the introduction of this module (which includes an easy to use administration panel) you as a user of the PodShow website can organize your shows into channels (with an image and textual description), you can pick the order of the shows, and you can show these recommendations to people who visit your profile on PodShow! This is something I find really cool because I love sharing the shows I love with my friends and family. Since PodShow allows you to create an unlimited number of channels, you can create a unique channel for every person or any mood and share it with the world. Check out the screenshot, it shows an example of what the module looks like for the “Kick Ass Music” channel I created on my Profile (also found at http://ferf.podshow.com).
You may be asking yourself, “How do I get that on my PodShow profile?”. I’m glad you asked! All you have to do is login to PodShow, click on “Master Control” and then choose “My Collection” from the menu. From here you will be able to create and organize your channels. In order for people to see your new channels, you will need to add the My Channels module to your user profile. To do this, login to the PodShow website and click on “Master Control”. From here, click on “My Profile”. Scroll down the page and click on the icon for either “add a new full page width module” or “add a new half page width module” and choose My Channels from the drop down menu. That’s it! People who browse to your profile will now be able to see your channels and all of the shows that you recommend.
Full Width Modules
I figured it was only appropriate to explain the new full width modules addition since I talked about it in the My Channels section. If you have used the PodShow website in the past, you may have noticed that we allowed you to add modules to your profile in a column that was 50% of the width of the page. This is cool, but it is kind of limiting to how much content you could show… so we decided to make a module that spanned 100% (2 columns) of the width of your profile! This allows you to show more of your content and to display it in a new way.
While this was introduced at the same time as the My Channels module, My Channels is not the only full width module. You can also highlight your profiles entourage, gallery, people you dig and people who dig you. The full width module is also available on your show profile where you can highlight your show gallery, fans and entourage in full width mode. So if you have your PodShow account setup already, jump into the admin now and test out this cool new feature.
New Profile Display Layout
Along with some of the administrative features, we have also made a few updates to the user interface as well, making it easier for people to find out more about you and to interact with you better. These updates make it easier for you to find out more about any user on the PodShow site including: their videos, images, collections, channels, blogs, comments and more. Additionally, we have made it easier for you to dig people and to send them messages via the PodShow user to user email system.
My Videos on PodShow
We have been working long and hard trying to create an easy way for our users to upload, share and enjoy videos on PodShow and have now released a great working version of what we like to call “My Videos”. My videos is a place for any user of the PodShow website to upload, share and watch the videos they have created. You can upload any of the content you own. You can share the videos with users of the PodShow site, copy and embed them in other websites like MySpace, you can embed them into comments on user profiles on PodShow, or you can add them to your personal blog outside of PodShow. You can even click on the “embed video” button from the editor when you are creating blog posts on PodShow and you can pick a video and automagically add it to the blog post! To see an example of My Videos in action, click on the My Videos link on my profile at http://ferf.podshow.com or if you like, here is a direct link to them 🙂
Image Cropping
Uploading, editing and sharing your photos should not be hard, so PodShow is going to lend you a hand. You have always been able to upload and share images within the PodShow website, but we have just introduced an image cropping tool. This means you can now upload any image you like and use the cropping tools to trim up the image so it includes only the people or area that you choose. While this is not revolutionary by any means, it makes it a simple process to upload and edit a photo without having to load the photo in a program like PhotoShop to edit and export before uploading it to PodShow.
Manage My Top 12 Friends
This one has been around for awhile now, but I wanted to make sure everyone knew about it. While you can browse the PodShow site and find new friends all day long, sometimes you may want to highlight certain friends. Because of this, we have created a dead easy way for you to do this. From your Master Control, click on My People and then Manage My Top 12. From here, all you have to do is drag and drop friends from your master list onto one of the top 12 spots. You can easily change the order just by clicking on your friends image and moving it to a new location. No need to save, the orders are updated automatically!
Family Friendly Settings
A few months ago we introduced a new feature called the Family Friendly Setting. This allows you to moderate all of the comments added to a specific user or show profile before they go live to your site. This helps ensure that there are no comments posted that include inappropriate text, images or videos that may offend your friends or show listeners. To activate this family friendly setting, you need to go to your Master Control. From here, click on “Account Info” and then on “Family Friendly Settings”. All you need to do is click the check box next to any profile (user or show profile) that you wish to have the family friendly settings applied to. You will now have to manually approve, deny or block any comment added to that profile before it shows up on your profile.
Invite Friends via Email or Through an External Address Book
There is nothing more exciting to me than the ability to share what I love with people I know. I created my profile on PodShow, uploaded images, collected podcasts and uploaded a bunch of my videos…but the problem was, nobody really knew about it. Thankfully PodShow developed a new viral tool to invite your friends and family to the PodShow site to see your content and to create their own account. You can get to it simply by clicking on the Invite button from the top navigation when you are logged into the site.
From here, you have two options. You can either type in the email addresses of the people you would like to invite, or better yet, you can choose to use you address book from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, AOL Mail or from MSN. All you have to do is type in your username and password for the address book you would like to use and the site will show you all of the addresses in that address book. You can then pick the addresses you would like to send to and you are ready to go!
Video Search
This is the last update I’m going to talk about for now, but there will be more to come. Video search on PodShow is a small update, but a great way to find content on PodShow. From any page of the site you can search for great videos on the PodShow site and from other sites such as Google Video, YouTube, Grouper and more coming soon. Simple type the word in the search box you are looking for and select “video” from the drop down box and hit the go button! This will show results of videos to watch and enjoy through the PodShow Mashboard.
I hope I have not bored you too much and that you find this update useful. Sometimes we get so busy we forget to tell people what we are working on. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment or by sending me an email to [email protected]!