the blog

We have a lot going on at Xerpi today, preparing for our U.S. launch tomorrow. It's the hectic days like today that make me truly appreciate Xerpi's organizational features.

I used to think of Xerpi as kind of an 'link filing cabinet.' I thought -- what a great place to drop all of the links I want to keep around 'just in case.' Kind of like that paperwork you keep around 'just in case' until you leave the company and then it goes into the big dumpster sized recycling bin.

But then I realized that there are some internet places that I need to visit, or monitor on a daily basis. For work this can be blogs that are relevant to Xerpi's space, or video contest pages that we need to monitor for submission, even internal links such as our bug tracking site, which I need to check in on daily.

For personal use, I check some of my friend's blogs daily, to see what they are up to, and if I am watching an item for purchase on eBay -- or selling one -- I like to keep an eye on that page regularly too.

It's this concept of 'frequently accessed links' that I didn't get before. Now that I get it, I've created a Xerpi block on my 'Work' view called "Daily monitoring" -- there I put all of the blogs, news sites, contest pages, and other work related things I need to track daily. On my "Main" view, I created a 'Check out daily' block, and put all of my ebay watchlist items, friend blogs, casting sites, and any other dynamic sites I need to check regularly. If things get crazy like today, I just make sure that I take at least a few minutes to drill down each of these 'daily' blocks and make sure I haven't missed anything too important. If you are pressed for time, having what you need in one place can really make all the difference.

Did you know you could drag and drop an entire link block into a new view? A crosshair appears whenever your mouse is over the title of a block of favorites. Then just left-click on the block — and drag!

When you hold the block over the new view's tab at the top of your page, that tab's border changes from green to red. Then when you release the mouse, the block magically disappears from the current view — and re-appears on the new one!

This is a great way to tidy up your Xerpi home page. You don't always need all your link blocks at the same time. And sometimes having them all cluttered onto one page can even make it harder to spot the ones you need!

I've been trying to look at my favorites differently — thinking of special "sets" of link blocks — and then giving each set its own dedicated view. While I've got many useful blocks of links, sometimes I'll just want one group of those blocks, and other times it's a different group. (Plus, now that Xerpi lets me create public views, I've going to start creating new views with sets of public links.)

Of course you don't have to drag the blocks to a new view — you can also just move them to a different location on the page. (Maybe the first column could be "Morning" link blocks, and the third column could be "Evening" link blocks?) If you're new to Xerpi, you might want to check out this post — Top Ten Ways to Customize Xerpi.

As I was saying back in June — Xerpi can be whatever you want it to be. It's your favorites, and your view of your favorites.

Knock yourself out!

Xerpi's new public views proved one thing to me — that whenever you release a new technology, you can never predict all the cool things people will do with it!

There's already a public view that's all about... flamenco dancing. (See? You can create a public view about anything!) And some iPhone lovers at Xerpi have created a view that's all about the iPhone!

Are you curious what other public views are available? So am I! Xerpi's developers are working behind the scenes to surprise us with a way to look at all Xerpi's new public views. And there are some more "pioneer" communities that are already being tested.

Anime
Student study groups
Fantasy football league
Project managers

And of course, there one more group that might start creating an entirely unique set of public favorites soon.

Your own friends!

Q: Does it takes a village to build a Xerpi home page?

A: No — but it sure is fun!

Xerpi just unveiled a new feature — Xerpi Community! You've always loved your favorites, but now you can share those bookmark views with your friends. (And of course, now your friends can also share pages of their favorites with you!)

But why stop there? While you're sharing your view, now you can also let your friends add their favorites too!

Here's how it works. Just click on the "pencil" icon at the top of a view's page (in the tab with its name). Not only can you re-name a view — now you can also designate its special sharing status. You can share it with the public — everyone on the web — or just make it available to "family and friends." (And there's still a third choice for the classic "for your eyes only" view — private!)

Selecting "Friends" will pull up a clickable list of all of your Xerpi friends. Then just select which ones you want to share your view. (There's also a second list where you can select which friends can add and edit the links!) Below that the window displays the web address for your new view — so you can cut-and-paste it into an email and start telling your friends...

I'm excited about this. Just think of all the communities that can now collaborate on a Xerpi view.

• Members of your family?
  
• Those people who surf the web at work!
• Your old friends from that class reunion
• All the people in your neighborhood...

I got a sneak preview at the new Xerpi help file, and they came up with some more good examples.

• A study group at school sharing research and project links
• Rock climbing buddies, sharing links about gear, climbing spots, and places to camp
• A law firm, keeping current on legislation and sharing articles.

It's so flexible, it's hard to see where the possibilities end. I imagine that someday, someone will make a special view for their sick friend, with all their friends contributing funny links to help cheer them up. Maybe a mother will make a Xerpi view for her young daughter's birthday, with everyone in the family pitching in. But there's an even more important question. Who will you build a favorites page with?

That's one of the great things about Xerpi. When the internet was young, writer Howard Rheingold used to attach this sentence to the bottom of every email he sent.

"What it is — is up to us."

Ultimately you can share your view with whoever you want to collaborate with. (Or whoever wants to collaborate with you!) Together you'll combine your best-est links into a grand collection of glorious web-based synchronicity.

Or something like that.

And besides — it's a lot of fun!

If you haven't logged in to Xerpi recently, you're missing something special....

We've added a slideshow on the sign-in page to demonstrate the happy feelings users have for Xerpi. (My favorite picture shows a smiling user feeling the love for her favorite bookmarks.) But if you're really alert, you also noticed a yellow button at top of the page that says in tiny black letters: "win $5k."

It's true. And it's going to be a lot of fun. It's the "Use Xerpi" video contest.

It's all about capturing one simple idea about Xerpi. "Once people try it, they love it." Your mission: make a video that shows the fun and the excitement of using Xerpi -- or anything else that will intrigue viewers to try out the site!

Because here's the twist. Once someone has saved a link to your video on their Xerpi page, "the more they use Xerpi the better your chances of winning. It's that simple," reads the official contest page. "Just like Xerpi." There's also points for creativity, and the quality of the video -- but 70% of the scoring is really based on how much people were inspired to use Xerpi after linking to your video.

The rules page has some more good news. Besides the $5000 first prize, there's five other cash prizes -- two for $100 (for second place) and three for $50. Just keep the videos under two minutes or less; and submit them to the contest's user group on YouTube in August. (U.S. users only!)

And if you're stumped for ideas and you need inspiration -- you can always watch the front page's new slideshow about the woman who loves her favorites!

Everyone loves Google's maps. But here's something you may not know. In February Google added a new feature: traffic reports! For 30 major U.S. cities, they'll highlight the spots on a map where traffic problems have been reported. (After you've pulled up driving directions, just click on the "traffic" button!)

It's one way that a "Google's Maps" block is more powerful than you think. Xerpi makes it easy to add a search window for Google Maps to your home page. (Just click the "Add Content" hyperlink at the top of the page -- then click "Add Google Maps"!) Here's some handy tips for the getting the most out of your Google Maps block.

• Just for fun, type something in parentheses after your address. Google will display that on the map in place of the word "Address"!

• Did you know you can stretch Google's maps across the entire width of your screen? Just click the tiny blue arrow located halfway down the map's left edge!

• To get driving directions between two locations, type them both into the window with the word "to" in between!

• Your map can even display businesses in your neighborhood. Just type what you're looking for, and then the word "near", and an address, city name, or zip code.

Some geeks will even pull up a location's map by typing in the numerical coordinates for its longitude and latitude. And don't forget that you can always switch your map to Google's "satellite photo" view.

A Google Maps block may not take up much space -- but it's very powerful!

For those of you interested in the technology behind Xerpi, here is a quick summary:
Xerpi is a Ruby on Rails application! The database is MySQL, of course, and our hosting provider is RailsMachine. We are about to completely re-write the existing application in order to build a better foundation that will allow us to add new functionality fast. Moreover, the existing code (beta release) relies heavily on custom JavaScript and we want to take better advantage of AJAX-oriented JavaScript libraries and the appropriate Rails Helper abstractions to those libraries.

Just a little background... I've done a lot of Enterprise-level distributed development (C/C++ on DCE/Encina, C++ on CORBA, and Java on J2EE, Spring + Hibernate). I was also lucky enough to get early exposure to Python in school. And, I definitely have some opinions with respect to Python vs. Ruby that I won't go into here, yet. Regardless, RoR is simply a dream platform for problem domains like Xerpi. I had become so disillusioned with the "bloat" of Java-oriented development/configuration, especially when compared to the "form is liberating" approach of Python, that RoR and its "convention over configuration" is a very welcome change for me.

To sum up, I am truly excited about the technology and very passionate about the functionality we have lined up to bring to the web. This summer shall be very exciting!