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AOL Journals: Magic Smoke

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6/29 Journals Status Update 2
Try the Moblogging (Mobile Blogging) Beta
6/29 Journals Status (R7 Beta Rolled Back)
Don't Miss These Entries
Journals R7 Release in Beta
Open Issue: Journals Database Errors
Are You 'Missing' Entries in Your Journal?
For the Fourth: Fireworks Photos and Your July 4th Blogs
That Strange Thing in the Sky That Hurts My Eyes
Drama, Manufactured and Historical
About That Moblogging Beta...
eBay Sniping and You
CLEARED: Journals Issues Due to Rostering Problems
6/27: Journals Issues Due to Rostering Problem
6/27 Journals Status: A Bad News, Good News Sort of Thing
Moist Monday
New Guest Editor's Picks for 6/23
Stormy Weather Ahead (Plus, Sidebar Material)
About That Moblogging Entry I Promised...
Jakob Nielsen on Blogs vs. Newsletters
Adding Photos to Your Journal With AOL Pictures Permalinks
This Is Not an Update
Blogging for Fun and Profit (or, "Man [Behind] for the Dixie Chicks")
Blogging for Business & Pleasure
New Guest Editor's Picks for 6/16 (Plus, a Sneak Peek at Next Week)
'Pearls' on Bloggers and Comments
Joe Explains Social Link Sharing Sites (Except Not Boring This Time)
About the Latest Weekend Assignment
Social Link Sharing and The New Netscape Beta
I'm Sorry, Britney...
Flag Day & Some Photo Tips
Fixed: Editing Journals Entries
Workaround for Editing/Deleting Existing Entries
Problems Editing Journals Entries (Plus, a Fix)
Status of R6 Fixes (AOL Pictures and Double Quotes)
Problem With Duplicate Description Text Showing Up in Header
Journals R6 Release Successfully Installed
Journals R6 Release Is "Go" for Launch, 6/13, 4am ET
New Guest Editor's Picks for 6/9
Blog Six-Pack Picks, 2.10
Watch What You Say (Redux)
Blog Six-Pack Picks, 2.9
Journals Release R6 Is Coming
Power to the People (and Serenity Now!)
Blog Six-Pack Picks, 2.8
You Know What Today Is, Right?
Blog Six-Pack Picks, 2.7
Journals Editor Joe's Blog Picks for 6/2
Live Video Stream of Space Station Spacewalk
Leveling Up in HTML Knowledge
Hello, June (and a Little Printable Propaganda)
« June 2006 Archive
Wednesday, June 7, 2006
6:30:00 PM EDT
Hearing The Wiseguys, Start the Commotion

Journals Release R6 Is Coming

Okay, folks, here's the news: As Journals Project Manager Yoel writes in his blog, The Daily Grind, Journals Release R6 is approaching. It's currently scheduled for early next week; we'll give you the exact date when it's nailed down.

Like I've said before, the Journals team is using agile development methods, which means smaller releases every 4-8 weeks, instead of just one big release a year. The original schedule was to launch R6 at the end of May, but due to, well, life, the date was moved.

Also, we won't be getting some features we were trying to get this time around (like the free-form mood entry field), but we'll get to those in a later release.

Here are some of the key things that will happen with R6:
  • Journals Search Improvements: We're adding a Search box to the Journals header that will allow you to search just your Journal, or all Journals. Here's a mockup:
    Journals Header Search mockup

    (It's not going to be black-and-white, and that jagged gap is just a cutout so I could fit it in a reasonable width.)

  • HTML Whitelist: We'll be updating the HTML whitelist, which means that you'll be able to include more content from other Web sites using IFRAMEs (IFRAMEs are kind of a window "cut" into your blog, that shows content from another Web page).

    Also, you'll be able to use some Javascript from whitelisted Web sites. We'll need to provide more details on how to do this.

  • Table Tags: You'll be able to use HTML table tags in your Journal entries, so you can do fancy layouts and/or real damage to your blog. (I'm being glib, but you do need to be careful when working with HTML table tags, because mistakes can cause unintended things to happen to your page's layout.)

  • Ad Banners in International Journals: I know how popular this one is going to be, but at the request of the International Journals business teams, ad banners will be added to all International Journals -- that means Canada, UK, France, Germany and Mexico.

    Project Manager Yoel has posted more information about International ad banners in his blog.

  • Moblogging Beta: Moblogging is the ability to post to your blog remotely, away from your computer. This includes posting photos to your blog from your cell phone. This is done by using a special e-mail address that you send your posts to.

    Moblogging has been in kind of a stealth beta, but with R6, the interface will be cleaned up enough so that people can play with it on the Journals Beta.

    You get to the Journals Beta by putting "beta." at the front of your Journal's address -- for example, my blog's address is: http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/
    The beta version is http://beta.journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/

    The moblogging beta is also kind of a back door into group blogging, too, but we'll get to that later.

  • Tagging Beta: I wrote about the tagging beta back in April -- it's a way to tag your entries (again, in beta), which is a way for you to self-categorize your entries. The current beta doesn't support Microsoft's Internet Explorer Browser, which is the browser that comes in the AOL software, so it wasn't particularly useful to most Journalers. With R6, you'll be able to play with tagging on the Journals beta.
In addition to all this, there will be bug fixes, as well as work done on the back end to make it even easier for search engines to find your blog content, and other infrastructure work that you probably won't notice.

We'll have more details on the timing of the launch soon. In the meantime, I and others will be working on ways to explain, demonstrate, and tutorialize the new stuff you'll be able to do with R6.

Thanks -- Joe

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