Today's phrase was "put a bow on it", meaning, lets wrap this myUMBC thing up and call it done.  And we did. From this point forward, no more new features, just fleshing out some missing content and putting some extra polish on things.

That said, we managed to sneak something kinda cool in today:

• "Magical" Search Box - It's not as magical as an iPad, yet, but give us a week or two to get it warmed up.  Basically, we've given the search box in the top right of myUMBC the ability to recommend links, groups, and other content to you.  It's smart in that it won't recommend faculty links to students and vice-versa, but its also dumb in that it will only recommend things that we tell it to recommend.  We're going to be watching what people search for and use that data to help flesh out the recommendations.  Keep in mind, this isn't a full-fledged search.  That's a job best left to Google.  However, if we can make it so that when you type "pay bill", we give you the direct link to pay your bill, then why not?

Get Ready for the Big Day: August 14th

I was lazy last night (read: sleep deprived) and didn't write a post, so you get all of yesterday's goodness mixed in with today's:

• Start - The new Start page has been enabled.  We hope you like it.  We have some neat ideas for this page in the future.
• Topic Pages - While we're nowhere near complete, Topic pages are starting to be flushed out.  We will be right upfront about saying that we're going to make some mistakes with which links show where.  We've completely changed the system we use to manage links in myUMBC (meaning, we actually implemented a system rather than doing everything by hand, ugh) and there will be some bumps moving links into the new myUMBC.  Just let us know if you don't find something that you think you should and we'll fix it as fast as we can.
• Sidebar Content - We now show related content in the sidebar.  This should make it easier to find other new and interesting things to check out.
• Feed Discovery for Browsers - Most modern web browsers should now show you a little button in your address bar allowing you quick and easy access to the RSS feeds that come from most tools in myUMBC.  This makes it really easy to get myUMBC content into tools like Google Reader.
• Event Attendee Emails - If you're allowing attendees on your event, you will now get an email when someone signs up.
• Spotlight Archive - You can now browse past spotlights by role, date and even keyword.
• Cleanup of typos and random bug fixes.

We are only 3 days away from our big upgrade.  The changes will be slowing down as we start prepping for launch, but I'll keep posting them.

If you haven't already, please vote or leave a reply to our poll, or leave us feedback.  Your input is extremely important to us.

Thanks,
- Collier

This one is a doozy... As we approach the final week before launch, we're putting the finishing touches on lots of little things around the site.  Most of the changes are subtle ones that you probably wouldn't notice unless we pointed them out... so here we go:

• Spotlight minis - On the Start page there are three little rectangles that will hold what we call "spotlight minis".  Spotlights have become insanely popular.  So much so, that when the really really big stuff happens on campus, its hard to get the word out.  Spotlight minis provide a way for institutional news and events to get a little bit more visibility.  Who gets to have a spotlight mini?  Well, that decision is made by a blue-ribbon panel of university representatives.
• Feedback - Your thoughts and opinions are very important to us, so we've added a new Feedback button at the bottom of the page to let you quickly and easily send us what you love and hate about the new myUMBC.  We can never get enough feedback.
• Group Categories - Now each group can define a set of categories that it can use to organize the content created inside of the group.
• YOUR Favorites - Yesterday we enabled the new Favorites menu, well today imported everyone's favorites from the old myUMBC into the new one.  Be sure to check your links though, as something may not work any more as we've done some web shuffling.
• Comment Notifications - You should now receive an email when someone comments on your content.  A great way to stay on top of what people are saying.  We're working on a mechanism to allow you to get notifications about comments anyone else's content, but that's probably a few weeks out.
• RSS, XML, and iCal feeds OUT of myUMBC - We've talked in recent days of being able to get content into myUMBC.  But we've also spent a lot of time making it easy to also get content out.  In the bottom-right corner of many pages, there will be links to get a feed of myUMBC content in several popular formats.
• Weather on Start - The weather is now available in the upper-right corner of the start page.
• About the Team and Acknowledgements - myUMBC is the result of a lot of work by many dedicated people throughout the university.  So we posted a page featuring them all.  Also, we've posted a page showing some of the technologies that have made the new myUMBC possible.  A little geeky, but some might find it interesting.
• Bug Fixes
• Fixed a bug that was causing some content to show in places it shouldn't.
• Made it so everyone can now choose to hide their role switcher.  Before we fixed it, once one person turned it off, no one else good.  We had a good laugh at this one.
• Various typos and tweaks.

I'll keep this one short since its late...

• Favorites - you can now easily bookmark various pages from the new Favorites menu.  You can also now reorder, rename, and easily delete favorites.  Take a look at the Billing & Personal Finances topic and see how easy it is to add items to your favorites menu by clicking the gray stars.  Fancy, eh?
• MEGA FOOTER - ok, so its not really a feature, but we're trying it out to see how we feel about it.  It is kinda big, but so is myUMBC.
• Bug fixes, typos, and the like.

The Final Stretch

• Media - We've been working on this one long and hard and are very proud to offer this to the community. Media provides a way to share your video and images from YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr, as well as images hosted elsewhere on the web, but that's not all....
• Media Subscriptions - Yesterday we added the ability for your group to subscribe to an external RSS feed, now you can subscribe your group to a YouTube, Vimeo, or Flickr account and have that content automatically pulled into myUMBC.
• Discussion Vote CSV - You can now download the results of a poll as a CSV for whatever nefarious, statistical purposes you may desire.
• ...that's all of the big stuff today
• Tweaks
  • Thanks to suggestions from SEB:
  • We've made it so that the default title for new content clears when you click the box
  • Events now allows you to enter times like "5 PM" instead of 5:00 PM
• Bug Fixes
  • We fixed a bug causing Spotlights to show in the incorrect order or not at all on their Featured Date... we're terribly sorry about that.
  • The mail dashboard was acting up for some people, we sat it down and had a stern talk with it.
  • And as always... miscellaneous typos and fixes.

Finally, as always, please contact me with any comments, questions, problems or suggestions: collier@umbc.edu

• Group Feed Subscriptions - Groups can now subscribe to external content through the use of feeds.  Simply enter in the web address to an RSS or Atom feed from your groups Tumblr or Blogger blog, and ever 15 minutes or so, myUMBC will check to see if you have any new content, and pull the items in as News.  This is a great way for groups to continue to use the tools that best meet their needs, but still have their content shared with the greater UMBC community.  In the near future, we'll allow you to subscribe to feeds from YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr.

• Profile Settings Page - We've migrated over the Profile page from the old myUMBC to the new one, with a slight revamp of the layout, but nothing major.  Access it by clicking your name, just like before!
• New Frame - We've implemented a new frame for accessing content across the many, varied systems that encompass "myUMBC".  This new frame keeps your dashboard and menus visible at all times, making it easy to navigate around.  You can see an example by clicking on Student Contact Info from the Profile Settings page. (if you're a student of course)
• Bug Fixes
• Tons of fixes to the main Events, News, and Discussions pages so that they behave more consistently.
• You can now enter web addresses longer than 60 characters.
• Fixes a sneaky group invite bug that likes to reappear from time to time.
• And as always... miscellaneous typos and fixes.