New Features Coming Tonight: The AOL Journals R11b Release

OK folks, here it is: Tonight (Tuesday, 5/15) at midnight EDT, the Journals team will be installing the AOL Journals R11b release to production.

You may experience periodic outages during the install (there will probably also be some related work over the next few days, but the big stuff happens tonight).

R11b has been available on the Journals beta for about a week; I will do some full-fledged tutorials after we're live and everyone can play around in production, but here's a little more detail about what we're going to get (R11b is still a relatively small release, but there are a few choice new features):

* People With Webcams Are Going to Love This: If you've got a webcam attached to your computer, the new release makes it drop-dead simple to add video directly to your entries (and even create a video All About Me -- you can see an example in my beta Journal's sidebar).

Here's what the interface looks like -- in the Add or Edit Entry window, you can click the "Add Video" button (or video camera icon in the formatting toolbar), and click the "Record" tab:

Record video blog entries directly from your webcam

If you've got a webcam attached to your computer, it will detect your camera; you can then record a video and save it to your Journal (as well as add text, photos and everything else you would do to a regular blog entry). It's that simple.

(I acquired an orphaned webcam in the last office move, so you're going to see more videoblog entries from me. You already know I have a face for radio; now you'll hear why I have a voice for print.)

Oh, and the "Embed" tab also makes it easier to copy-and-paste the code that you get from video sites like UnCut Video, YouTube and Google Video and put it in your Journal.

* Improved Picture Pickers: It'll be a lot easier to add photos to your Journal, from a variety of different sources. Just click the "Add Image" button (or the camera icon in the formatting toolbar), and click the tab where your picture lives: "My Computer" if it's on your computer, "AOL Pictures" or "Flickr" if they're on those services, or "URL" if it's on the Web somewhere else (like PhotoBucket, Imageshack, or your AOL Hometown space):

Also, when you add photos from your computer, you won't get that silly AOL Pictures white bordered frame any more -- it'll get uploaded into your AOL Pictures "shoebox album", and it'll go into your blog at actual size (so for a 3-column blog, I suggest a width of about 500 or so pixels).

The improved Pictures Picker needs a little more polish and a few more features, but it's a lot better (in my opinion) than what was there before.

Oh, and for those folks who still want to embed entire AOL Pictures albums (with the forward and back arrows), you can still do that by clicking the "Add Albums" button, which will choose from your AOL Pictures albums.

* Commenting and Private Journals for People Without AIM/AOL Screen Names: If a visitor doesn't have an AIM or AOL screen name, but they do have an e-mail address (like foo@example.com), they can claim their e-mail address and use it like a Screen Name.

Once they claim their e-mail address as a Screen Name, they can leave comments (which can be deleted and blocked like any other comments); it also means that if you add "foo@example.com" as a reader to your private Journal, the person with that e-mail address can use it to sign in read your private Journal. (They can also create Journals of their own.)

It's not a perfect solution and still requires registration of a sort, and the process for this isn't as clear or smooth as it should be; I will get into more detail after I can test it out in production.

The Journals tech team in Mountain View, California have set up a blog to talk about the R11b features; I'm encouraging them to keep it up (though to be fair, they have to actually, you know, work, so I and others will keep helping them out with the blogging). Check it out at: http://journals.aol.com/blogsteamhere/share/

Hopefully, we'll have a lot more to show you after a successful install tonight.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, r11b, journals beta

Written by journalseditor Blog about this entry

This entry has 12 comments: (Add your own)

#12 Comment from journalseditorEntry Author
5/18/07 6:43 PM | Permalink

Hi -- what browsers have you tried? I just tested it right now using Firefox 2.0 (running Mac OSX 10.4.9) and it worked okay for me. Haven't tried it with Safari, and development on Microsoft Internet Explorer for the Mac has stopped (so it's basically dead and unsupported), so Firefox might be your best bet.

Thanks -- Joe (posted & mailed)
#11 Comment from wendyburt
5/18/07 6:31 PM | Permalink

I'm on a Mac (if that matters) and now I can't figure out how to add photos to the blog I've been posting for two years. When I click on add photos (or video or anything) nothing happens. At the bottom left it seems like it's something with javascript or ??? I've tried different browsers too but nothing is working. Thoughts?
#10 Comment from jryle79
5/16/07 5:31 PM | Permalink

I want to know why my photos are now "moving." If you're into photography, this doesn't help the composition of a photograph. If I wanted my pictures to be animated, I would have posted them that way.
#9 Comment from journalseditorEntry Author
5/16/07 2:33 PM | Permalink

Hi folks:

* I talk about non-US Journals in my most recent entry:
http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/entries/2007/05/16/journals-rllb-release-successfully-launched/2216

* I also talk more about the name display bug -- the team is working on a patch for that. You can still see their screen name if you roll over or click their name -- it will take you to their public list page, which shows their screen name (it's in the URL, too)

* I will blog about the pictures inserting process as soon as I can -- today or tomorrow.

Thanks -- Joe
#8 Comment from ceilisundancer
5/16/07 1:13 PM | Permalink

Oh, so all along, I was to click a camera ICON, not Add Pictures?! Dag, I've asked other bloggers, but no one's told me. So I"m slow sometimes. lol. Okay, I'll check this out more. Yes, getting some "hangups" which are annoying but aren't prohibitive, and it'll pass. I, too, would prefer not having my first name unless I type it, but my SN showing, just like I want to see the SN of those who actually comment on mine.

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New Features Coming Tonight: The AOL Journals R11b Release