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matt
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Name: Matt
Gender: Male
Interests: hanging out, rollerblading, doing fun stuff with my friends (like whirlyball!), making web apps, video games, programming, euchre
Occupation: Software dev intern at Xanga (
Industry: Software Development
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
5/12/2006
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| Time for a quick update on Boost - Jeff and I have been secretly (or not so secretly) working on some new features as we prepare Boost for a full-fledged launch. Here's the lowdown:
- Boost "Newspaper": We've drastically improved the "best-of" page. Now it looks kind of like the New York Times - except that the content was chosen by you. We take the very best stuff from Boost, stick it in our magic blender, and out pops a newspaper. Go check out the newspaper.
- Video Boost Content: Now you can nominate Xanga Videos for Boost! Right now we have just one demo category for videos while we test, but soon we'll allow videos to be Boosted in any category.
We've also made some miscellaneous tweaks to the interface. Let us know what you think!
Thank You
As a side note, these are the last few days of my internship at Xanga...I just wanted to say thank you to everyone! This summer I've really felt the great sense of community on Xanga, and I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to create some of the tools that you will use to make that community even stronger. Its the committed users like you all that made the hard work worthwhile. Perhaps in the future I will be back to work on some more great stuff. Until then, I'll be finishing up school and, of course, staying in touch every once in a while here on Xanga.
That's all folks!
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| Hey everyone, sorry for the long hiatus from posting. Its been pretty busy at work helping to push out some small features (like the shiny new animated film strip in your photo albums), as well as the much bigger job of getting Xanga Boost ready for its second coming.
Boost 2.0 (kind of like Web 2.0, but more fun)
Jeff and I have been hard at work using your feedback on the Boost beta to make some major improvements. One of the biggest changes you'll notice is the more spacious interface...no more cramming everything into a small column. We've also completely redone the algorithm (thanks Jeff!) so that you are no longer compared to how "average" your vote is...but it will of course detect if you're trying to play games with the system. So feel free now to vote what you really believe! Other improvements include:
- Categories: everything from Movies to Travel. We even let you select multiple categories at the same time! Now you can view all your favorite kind of stuff at once.
- Nominations are built in to Xanga: first we put it in Photos, and it will be launched in Weblogs soon. When you see a "Boost this!" link with a rocket ship (thanks to Jeff for the sweet icon), you can click that link. If you're the first one, you have the opportunity to Nominate it for Boost!
- Better stats: we're still working hard on this one, but already you'll see the major improvments we've made here. You can track how many Boosts you've done, as well as how well your nominations have fared with other Xangans.
- Community Ratings: in keeping with the spirit of putting the power in your hands, you can now directly give Ratings to the content you see on Boost. Also, if anything really offensive somehow makes it to Boost, we've put a link for Flagging that content as well.
- Amazing new graphics, better than your Xbox360: Yea, thats right. From the rounded corners, to the polished new Boost Meter, who needs 3D?
* And, for anyone who is not interested in having their stuff nominated for Boost, we have given you an opt-out in your account privacy settings!
Oh and by the way, Auntie Anne's Pretzels are amazing. So tasty and delicious.
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The time has come for Boost to go public! You do not have to be invited to use Boost anymore, it is open to all users. Jeff worked this past weekend and prepped a few new features to get usready for public testing (the Showcase and the Leaderboard).
After working through a few bugs, the system should be a bit more stable right now. IE 6 users will be happy to know that the image loading bug has been fixed, and you should also notice less server errors when you are actually Boosting.
The only problems we see now are the lack of nominations. You've all been boosting so much that there isn't enough stuff left to boost! We'll be making the nomination process smoother in a few days, but in the meantime make sure you hit the Nomination page and show people that you know where to find the best content on Xanga 
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| Just wanted to thank everyone who's tested Boost so far, your feedback has helped out a lot. Jeff and I have been hard at work improving Boost, and you'll notice the additions of new features and tweaks, most visibly:
- Photo Boost: now you can nominate and boost Xanga Photos
- RSS Feeds: for the more technical users out there, you can subscribe to RSS feeds on the Today's Best page
We're trying to incorporate as much of your feedback as possible, so keep letting us know what you do and don't like about Boost. And don't forget to nominate stuff too! I know the interface is really clunky right now (with all the copy and paste nonsense), but hopefully soon we will be adding buttons to every blog and photo that will allow you to nominate directly.
Note: If you absolutely must have easier nominating right now, you can check out sean's post on using a Firefox plugin.
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| Well, for the last month or so, Jeff and I have been working on a new content featuring system that we call Boost. Just like we went out to our users to help us rate Xanga's content, we're also reaching out to our users to help us feature the best content on Xanga. For those of you who read John's post, the logic behind this is that the collective opinion of our users is much more powerful than some computer making that decision.
We've spent a lot of time making Boost as fun and exciting as possible. Every Boost user will have a list of entries that he/she can read through. Then, depending on how cool the post is, you can boost it a little (if you don't like it) or a lot (if you do like it). Then we'll send you your results so you can see how much you agree with the rest of the Xangans using Boost. Besides just boosting content, if you find any good posts out there, you can nominate its to be featured. Those nominations will then show up for other people to boost.
At some point, we also plan on setting up an awards system, so that we can reward the best Boosters and the best Nominators. We'll also be taking comments and suggestions from our beta testers.
Aaaaanyways...
EDIT: you can find Boost at boost.xanga.com . If I put you on the beta list, you should be able to log in. Also, we're aware that there might have been an issue with one of the boost servers telling you to log in over and over again...don't worry about that, we'll get that fixed today.
PS: Don't forget to leave Jeff some love too!
UPDATE: I think that we have plenty of beta testers now, thanks everybody for volunteering. You can check back on Jeff's blog or my blog to see when we release new Boost features and open it up to more testers.
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