We've added RSS support. This means you can view MemeStreams using RSS aggregators and headline scrollers. The topic pages and user weblogs are supported. You'll see an XLM icon in the lower right corner of windows that have RSS output. This icon links to the XML output. However, you can reach it by adding "?type=rss" to the end of a MemeStreams URL.

You've probably noticed that the look of the site is dramatically different. My goal with this is to make the site a little easier on the eyes.

The biggest change in this release is the Social Network Maping. If you click on the Social Network links around the site you'll be able to see who is linking who. The maps are interactive; you can move through the network from link to link by clicking on people's names.

This data is all based on Recommendations (not clickthroughs). It provides an excellent way to get feedback about the links you are providing. As the community is small, most people are connected to a small group of frequent posters. However, as the site grows, this feature should provide an interesting way to surf through the social network on the site in search of interesting people. Rattle deserves all of the credit for this feature.

The MemeBox has been updated. The frames version was a little cramped. This should be more comfortable to use.

New users will not show up in the recent posters list until their recommend an article. I also fixed a bug with selecting multiple paragraphs of text with the bookmarklet.

Lots of changes to circle management for scalability.

1. When you are forwarding a recommendation, you can type in a username, nickname, email address, or real name into the "add user or email address" field. It will match this information with the username of the person you are looking for and add that username to the destination list for your Meme.
2. The best way to add someone to a circle is to click on that person's name somewhere in the site. This will take you to their "about me" page, at which you can add them to circles. You can search for people using the search engine on the /people page.
3. The Manage Circles page now allows you to move people between two different circles.

As always, please tell me if you have any troubles.

The biggest change in this code release is the user list. It has been replaced with some shorter lists as well as a user search engine. There are also a few minor bug fixes in this release that impact other parts of the site.

The new MemeBox has been significantly improved. It is now organized like an email inbox, which should make it a lot easier to manage lots of memes. The "P" stands for private. It means that the message in question was sent to you in private (ie, not posted to a thread or memestream).

I am using frames for this, and this is a "correct" use of frames. However, I'm not sure how well this is going to play with various browsers, so please let me know if you have any trouble.

The new Reputation Agent has been significantly improved.

1. The agent will always show you highly rated new content. Previously the agent only showed you content from the people with the highest reputations. It will now find the highest rated content for the time period, even if your highest rated contributors haven't posted anything new.
2. The timeframe for the agent now defaults to Since Last Visit. If you don't touch the agent for 3 hours your visit is considered to be over, and the next time you use the agent content will be collected from the time your last visit ended.
3. The mode selector is gone. The agent now uses a hybrid mode. This should make the agent a lot easier for new users to understand.

This update involves three changes:

1. When you hit a blogid that does not exist you get an error message.
2. When you click on a link it no longer opens a new window. I know that there are many of you who really liked the way this worked. I'm basically bowing to Nielsen's greater wisdom on this. I will make this configurable later.
3. The thread display trys to eliminate redundant posts.

The search engine should now provide more accurate results. When you do an "OR" search it will rank the results that you would have gotten for an "AND" search above those for an "OR" search.

I've posted a very significant update to the site, but unfortunately, its one of those things where, if I've done my job properly, you won't be able to tell. I've made some significant changes to the Database to aid scalability.

Three changes you will see:

1. The main site now updates daily.
2. Thread links display the number of posts.
3. When you reply it tells you who its forwarding the reply to.

You can now install a full sized Recommend Bookmarklet. Just follow this link.

There were a lot of bugs related to memees in the last release. New users were given memees that weren't working at all. Replies to posts in existing memees weren't working right. This release has fixed all of those problems.

As usual, if you run into problems with memestreams, please tell me so that I can address them.

Installed a major update with lots of new features.

• You can now compose an article that is not linked to a url on the net. This is similar to making a journal entry.
• You can now reply to other people's articles in the system. A reply is a link to the article you are replying to.
• There is now a thread view for every URL in the system, which shows all of the posts about a url and all of the replies to those posts in a threaded discussion format. The capability to filter these discussions will be coming soon.
• There is now a new discussion bookmarklet. When you are out reading the internet and you happen upon a URL that you think people on memestreams may have discussed you can click on this bookmarklet and a new window will open with the threaded view for that url.

A fairly annoying bug in Manage Circles prevented you from seeing your circles if you only had one. Its been there for quite some time, but no one brought it to my attention until tonight. Its fixed. Sorry if there has been any confusion.

The reputation system in the agent now has two new modes: Recs/Noise and Clicks/Noise

I think these ratios are a more accurate reflection of real reputation. They'll help you keep track of users who make rare but useful recommendations. I'm still defaulting to total recommendations. One reason is that people with a very high signal to noise ratio probably don't post often... Tell me how well they work out for you.

Note: You CANNOT artificially inflate your signal to noise ratio by deleting old recommendations.

I'd like to thank JLM for the work he did in helping me put together a search engine for MemeStreams. You should notice it all around the site now.

The only strange thing about the MemeStreams search engine is the form of boolean queries.

Usually the Search engine does an "OR" search. So if you enter the search terms "purple people" it would return all of the results that contain the word "purple" or the word "people".

You can add the word "AND" (in all caps) as a switch. The search engine performs an "OR" search for all of the words before the word AND, and then an AND search for all of the words after. For example:

A search for "purple AND people" would return all of the results that contain the word "purple" AND the word "people".

A search for "AND purple people" would return the same results as a search for "purple AND people" or a search for "people AND purple".

A search for "purple people AND eating hippo" would return all the results which contain the words "purple" AND "eating" AND "hippo" as well as all of the results with contain the words "people" AND "eating" AND "hippo".

The results are ranked by relevancy and popularity. Searches on a circle can provide interesting results that may be more relevant then those available from any previously existing tool, as the most popular search results according to a group of people you rate highly are likely to be more relevant to you then the most linked sites on the internet at large.

Have fun...

The Bookmarklet is the link that lives on your web browser's link toolbar that allows you to enter URLs into MemeStreams. I've made two changes to it. The first change makes text selection work on ANY web page. You will no longer have to cut and paste between the story you are reading and the Memestreams window. The other change is a minor detail related to the way the website architecture works. In future, I may change the site in such a way that the old bookmarklet will not function anymore. So, please, upgrade. Hopefully I will never have to change this code again.

To upgrade your bookmarklet, first you must delete your current one. Right click on it, and select Delete. Then drag and drop the link below onto your links toolbar.

MemeStreams

Thats it! Thank you for your cooperation.

I have posted a major update to the MemeStreams code which will hopefully expand its functionality while addressing a number of complaints that have been raised in the past. I hope that this update will prove to be a major turning point for the site.

New Topics: A much more comprehensive topic system has been posted. Furthermore, there is now a basic and advanced topic system. If you don't want to deal with the complexity of about 150 topics you can scale back to a system which only includes a handfull.

Circle Management: Many people complained that they couldn't find the circle management features, so I put an easy to use interface in the configuration box.

Web Spiders: Search Engines will have an easier time indexing the site. Hopefully this will result in more people becoming aware of it.

Top URL blogs: You'll notice that the main page now has a collection of links. These are the most popular links on MemeStreams for the past 7 days. The descriptions given are the most popular descriptions for those links. A similar blog appears for each topic. This is the most important change in this update. Up till now MemeStreams has primarily been useful to those of us who use it actively, have well populated agents, and so on. However, in order for the power of the reputation system to really unfold we need a LOT more people on this site. These blogs will provide something useful to casual users who don't have the time or inclination to dig deeper. Hopefully a broader base of casual users will result in a broader base of involved users.

Smile everyone, you are all now editors for one of the most open and democratic news systems in the world.

Bugfix: Memeboxes were not working correctly. Memes were not going through to people whose nicknames and usernames differed. This is fixed now.

I apologize for any DNS instability you may experience. Long Story. Should be gone soon.

I had a system crash, combined with a file system problem, combined with the guy who owns the network this computer is on being out of the country. I'm very sorry about the downtime, but I must say that the frustrated emails mean at least some of you are having trouble living without your memes. I think that means I'm doing something right. A plan is underway to move this system to a more local facility. Hopefully that will happen within a month.

The Top URLs lists now display the title instead of the URL. This should make them a lot more usable. You also give reputation capital when you click through top items from the last day, week, or month.

The user list is ordered by the date of the last recommendation rather than the user name.

Your own weblog now displays in time mode rather then rank mode by default. I'm basically tired of explaining this to people. I may cut it back over later when I have a search engine installed.

A number of bug fixes related to adding email addresses to circles.

Email sending should be faster from the user's perspective. Please complain if this is not the case.

Unread Memes notice is more prominent.

As you can see, the UI has been changed dramatically. I'm no Jakob Nielsen, but hopefully this will be more pleasant to use.

You can now easily forward recommendations directly to friends as you log them. You can send recommendations to someone's email addresses, or to their MemeStreams inbox (called a MemeBox) if they have an account here.

I've added a feature called "circles." Circles are collections of people. You can put MemeStreams users and email addresses into a circle. This makes them easy to access when you are forwarding recommendations. You can also view the agent using the list of people in a circle instead of using your list of highest ranked contributors. That way you can keep track of what some of your friends are recommending even if they don't end up at the top of your overall reputations.

Extensive changes have been made to the account creation system. All of you will need to verify the validity of your email addresses. You will find that most of the site will redirect you to email verification until you do this. I've also updated the documentation a little and made the biographical information config page consistant with the rest of the site.

You can now cause cookies to persist in your browser so you don't have to login everytime you use memestreams.

A quick recommend link has been added that makes it easy to re-recommend other people's recommendations. You'll notice that you can also re-recommend your own recommendations. This will make more sense soon, as I will be adding a feature that allows you to send recommendations to friends over email.

The user list now displays the date when each weblog was last updated. Everyone starts off fresh on Jan 6th. This should make it easier to find new content as the user list grows.

There have been some questions about the ordering of log entries when you view your own weblog. The entries are ordered with the links you click through most often at the top. If you want to see the list in chronological order, click on "List by Time" in the Navigation box. I think this ordering will make more sense once the search engine is installed. You will be able to go to your own weblog and quickly get access to links you use frequently. Think of it as a public bookmark list. There has been some debate about what the default setting should be. It will certainly be configurable soon.

Memestreams is now open to the public. However, we are still under development here. Please join us and play with our tools, but do understand that this is a work in progress.

MemeStreams is now open for beta testing. Followw this link to create an account. The first thing to do is get familiar with the system and begin maintaining a weblog. We will have the agent up and running within a week. We are in dire need of your thoughts, experiences, suggestions, and bug reports. Please email us at tom@memestreams.net. Thank you.