I just updated MemeStreams. There are so many changes, its challenging to come up with a list. There are several major ones, and hundreds of little ones. This is the largest update to the site we have made in a very long time. The bulk of the update has to do with internal workings of the site, but there are a number of things that effect users. * New Session Handling All the sections of the site's code that handle cookies and user logins have been changed. This means that everyone will have to login again. There are numerous reasons for this change. We are not doing much right now to track how you use the site that we have not already been doing, but the current changes are going to allow us to start doing much more. As we continue to improve the site, we will start collecting log information for user pages and make it available for viewing. Examples of this would be how many people read your weblog, view your profile, etc. We take privacy concerns very seriously, and privacy rights factors heavily into what type of information we log and how we log it. We are not trying to be big brother. We take your right to privacy as seriously as we take our own. The purpose of our cookie tracking is to identify unique users of the site. That information is statistically valuable, and in our implementation it is kept as anonymous as tracking it at all allows. Whatever information we collect is somehow used to empower the users of MemeStreams, not take advantage of you. User sessions with MemeStreams are now more secure. We have not had a problem with user accounts being hijacked, but its significantly harder to do now. In the future, secure logins will be available, ensuring that you can safely use your account from public and/or "untrusted" networks. (Donations to pay for a SSL certificate are welcome.) * HTML/CSS Improvements The use of HTML and CSS in MemeStreams has been on the verge of criminally insane. I can't think of much else to say about it then that. It was really, really bad. If you evaluated our current HTML/CSS usage, there are still problems even after this update. However, the improvement is massive. Whatever browser you are using, you will see an improvement. IE in particular.. Neither Decius or I use Internet Explorer. We don't catch the subtle problems ourselves. We QA for IE, but not as much as we'd like to. Most of the site's frequent users don't use Internet Explorer either. Well... At least no one who ever complains about problems with the site uses IE. You IE people are damn silent. I personally theorize that users who use Windows are used to getting screwed on a constant basis and just accept a broken website, since they already have a broken computer. We never hear anything out of you. Its possible this has been because the site has barely worked in IE, although I prefer my theory. That aside, if you have problems with the site in Internet Explorer, reply to this and let us know what they are. We will fix them. There continue to be numerous problems with the bookmarklet when using Internet Explorer. These problems are being worked on. Fixes are on the way. In the meantime, use this as an excuse to start using Firefox. It works better, and its "hip". Everyone is doing it, and you should too. * Page tweaks All over the site, minor changes have been made to make things more clear. The new user process has been updated to be more straight forward. It is extremely easy to create a new account. If you do not have one, you should get one. Now. Obey. * Unicode support - OR - "All you people who speak in funny characters" You are supported. You can now post and edit in your native character set. In the past non-latin characters have been converted to marked up hex values. This is no longer the case. Again, let us know if you encounter any problems with characters not showing up correctly. Aside from the ability to order food and direct a taxi in several different languages, we solely speak english. We will not spot subtle problems. "Looks the same to me" is the bar we aim for. Let us know if the site has a problem with posting foreign text. Posts already made that contain foreign characters may not appear in their native character set when edited, however they should display properly. There should be no problems with new posts. * New /people/ page The user search page has been updated. Its not much different from the one that was there previously, but that too will change as the site evolves. ---- We have been getting a fair amount done recently in regard to developing MemeStreams. The pace of adding new features and fixing old problems has been good. There is much more on the way. Some of these things include: * Bookmarklet fixes Internet Explorer has problems with the current bookmark and its popup blocking. Decius is currently working on a fix for this. The documentation regarding bookmarklets will also improve. * Topic system replaced with Folksonomy We are not sure about when this is going to happen, but we are working toward it. It is one of our top priorities. * New Social Network graphs The changes in this update are the start of several internal changes to MemeStreams that will enable new capabilities and features. Past Year in Graphs releases have demonstrated far more advanced methods of displaying the information we have about the Social Network present on MemeStreams. These were based off capabilities present only in our development branch. These capabilities are now being added to the site, and similarly more advanced methods of browsing the MemeStreams Social Network are on the way. * New User Profiles & Pictures ... on the way. More later... MemeStreams Site Update: Summer Solstice | 
