AOL Journals: Magic Smoke

Tuesday, November 22, 2005
5:02:00 PM EST Hi folks -- the tech fix I posted to resolve the "can't save entries" problem seems to be working for most people (please let me know if it doesn't work for you -- I know there are some folks out there who are still having some problems, including some odd ones -- problems, not folks).

Also, I don't have any updates right now on our other open technical issues or the ad banner controversy, so I thought I'd talk a little bit about the Journals development process, and what it means for upcoming releases.

(I'd originally planned to post this last week, but had to table it for obvious reasons.)

Now, earlier in the year, the development team had incorporated aspects of agile software development, which basically means that instead of saving all the big changes and new features for one big release per development cycle (for example, a year or 18 months), we're going over to more frequent, but smaller releases -- say, every 4-8 weeks.

(Here is more than you ever wanted to know about the nuts and bolts of agile development from Wikipedia.)

Since it's pretty much a matter of more, smaller sips vs. one big gulp, the end result is about the same: The same overall amount of work is done, and of course, smaller fixes and maintenance work occurs along the way in both cases. So why do it?

Here's a recent Dilbert that asks the question a different way:

The advantage of agile development lies in its...agility. That is, priorities can be adjusted based on what's going on in the world, user requests, new technologies, industry trends, etc.

For Journals, it pretty much means we'll be rolling stuff out in releases (hopefully) every 4-8 weeks (and we will be announcing launches before we do them, which was the plan this time around, only we botched it).

We're aiming for monthly (well, near-monthly) releases that extend out through the first quarter of 2006 right now, though of course all dates are tentative and subject to the real world.

One Big Caveat: It's always tricky launching stuff at the end of the calendar year, because we're subject to staff outages, and more importantly, moratoriums -- if a launch date slips a day or two into a moratorium, then you have to wait until the moratorium is over, which could be days or longer (like the week between Christmas and New Years).

Tying specific features to specific releases is always a risky business, since features get reprioritized, dropped and generally moved around all the time, so I won't go into the specifics of each release until we get closer to confirmed launch dates.

Things that are being worked on include (this is a mix of features from different releases out to February, in no particular order):

* Rostering Improvements: Manage who can read your private Journal, simply by picking people or groups from your Buddy List.
* Tagging: The ability to label posts for easier categorization
* Moblogging: Mobile blogging, the ability to add photos, text & even audio/video from a mobile phone
* Skins: Something to let you change the look & feel of your Journal via customizable skins -- we'll probably have a predefined library at first, followed later by full user customization
* Draft Posts: Saving drafts of entries
* Shared Journals: Multiple authors can post to a Journal, or group blogging.
* Other Things: Making it easier to blog about someone else's blog entry ("Blog This"); improving the help resources; making sure we ping blog search engines (so your blog entries get picked up in searches and feeds); and making it simpler to show your online presence in your blog.

Also, I am trying to get an increase to the "All About Me" character limit squeezed in somewhere.

I'm cherry-picking the stuff that I think will be of most interest to you (I'm guessing you don't care as much about the infrastructure stuff, as long as we don't break anything). I don't see anything on the map that's likely to generate any controversy (unlike the ad banners).

Anyway, like I said, I will be talking more about specific features in specific releases as we get closer to the dates, so hopefully I will be able to tell you more about what we're going to get with R3 in December.

Let me know if you have any questions or technical problems with the current release.

Thanks -- Joe

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This entry has 18 comments: (Add your own)

• #18 Comment from bhbner2him 
  11/26/05 7:49 PM | Permalink

  Sounds like once they have all this done, they will have just about caught up with blogger!  lol  But seriously, it's very nice to know they want to make things better.  -  Barbara
  http://journals.aol.com/bhbner2him/LifeFaithinCaneyhead/
• #17 Comment from dragonrose3911 
  11/22/05 11:57 PM | Permalink

  Is there any way to give us more HTML areas like there is on blogspot? I like the ability to edit everything instead of just being able to chose colors.
  Felicia
• #16 Comment from aurielalata 
  11/22/05 11:37 PM | Permalink

  Oooh...shared blogging! This will be an answer to prayers for me. I am working on a service learning project for my reading students starting next quarter. They will (hopefully) partner with middle school students to create an online journal. Having this readily available will put my students at ease, especially since I already know a lot of the quirks of AIMJournals.
  
  Jess
  http://journals.aol.com/aurielalata/CIWTheOtherInvisible
• #15 Comment from randlprysock 
  11/22/05 11:07 PM | Permalink

  Hey Joe,
  See if they can work on a way to add more choices to the mood or "feelings" section... ya know, like the word "tired" isn't there and that's often the one we're looking for.  I love the idea of them adding more space to the All About Me section.  
  Lisa
  
  http://journals.aol.com/randlprysock/AdventuresFromFlorida/  
• #14 Comment from dornbrau 
  11/22/05 9:06 PM | Permalink

  Two weeks ago I would have been excited by your post.  I would have said 'Wow!  AOL really does care about improving its services for its members!'  Now I can't help but think that they are only offering those options to make a prettier package for their advertisers to display their banner ads on.  You know, sprucing up the neighborhood.
  Yeah, I still have my journals, I made most of them public today.  But there's no pride in having a journal here any more.  These journals were our way to express our individuality.  Have you seen them?  I mean really seen some of them?  They're awesome!  They're so professional looking.  Or at least they were, until the introduction of those tacky banners.  
  I saw a home page yesterday.  It had the solar system as a background.  It was gorgeous.  The topper that displayed the banner ad, with its little pixel clouds just killed the whole presentation.
  I'm trying to be enthusiastic, really I am.  But its not too hard to see through the scheme of things any more.  Very disappointing indeed.
  And when are those people from the upper echelon going to make an appearance and give us an offical response?  Their lack of concern speaks volumes.  Are they really so callous as to leave the issue hanging over the long weekend?  Such poor management of customer/ memership relations.  Surely you see that even if they don't.  

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