the daily grind

My Last Day

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:25:13 GMT

That's right, today is my last day at AOL. The grind is coming to a halt.

I'll make this brief.

Thank you J-land for reading and listening. It's been an amazing experience. I am not sure I will ever be able to be a product "owner" that blogs with such a captive and engaging audience. I will still be lurking around J-land "halls" and reading your wonderful journals.

Thank you all at AOL for giving me the opportunities.

This journal was always intended to be AOL and AOL Journals focused so this will be my last posting here.

Happy Birthday AOL Journals

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:12:10 GMT

Journals development team (old & new). UI & Project Management. Some of the folks in this picture were on the original team!! The QA team was in another meeting. I'll try to get them in a photo as well.

*******UPDATE**************
Left to Right (standing): Joseph, Holly, Vish, Malika, Bruce, Eric, Carles, John
Kneeling: Kai, Yoel

Tags: AOL Journals, AOL Journals Anniversary

Our birthday card to you

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:13:36 GMT

Taken with my phone (sorry about the quality)

AOL Journals: Three Years!

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 22:34:08 GMT

Happy Birthday AOL Journals and the J-Land Community

Here are few links to entries and a journal dedicated to this day.
Celebrate the AOL Journals Three Year Anniversary With a Tasty Snack
Three Years!
3rd Anniversary AOL Journals

Tags: AOL Journals, AOL Journals Anniversary

AOL Pictures Gallery Beta

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 23:48:24 GMT

Our friends at AOL Pictures just launched, to beta, a public picture gallery. I don't see this as us taking on Flickr or the next Flickr killer. There can be a coexistence of like products. AOL has millions (if not more, I don't know the exact number) of photos on AOL Pictures, opening the doors for the public to view (the ones we choose to make public) them is in line with our strategy.

Check out my public picutres: http://pictures-beta.aol.com/galleries/yoelcrane

Leave comments for the pictures team on their journal: http://journals.aol.com/aolpictures/AOLPictures/entries/2006/08/10/try-it-out/1319

Tags: AOL Pictures, Flickr, Social, Tagging, Beta

My first mobile post

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 14:25:04 GMT

Mountain view fish tank

Adding your Journal to aimpages

Thu, 18 May 2006 22:10:44 GMT

Wondering how to add your Journal to your Aimpages profile so that the headlines of your Journal entries show up in your profile?

http://www.aimpages.com/yoelcrane/profile.html

Here's how to do it.

1. Go to your Journal and click on the little orange feed icon.
2. Click on the little arrow/twisty to "get the feed manually"
3. Click on the Atom url and hit the CTRL & C keys at the same time.

4. Login to your aimpage and go to "Edit" mode

5. Choose "Add Modules"
6. Select the the "Under Construction" Gallery
****Update**** It's now in the OTHER gallery
7. Choose the "Feeds" module - (my other project :-) ) and drag it to your aimspace profile page.
8. Edit the module and add your "feed url" to the "Add your own feed url"
9. Click Publish to save your changes, and you should see your latest blog entries show up in your AIM Pages profile.

And there you go.

Technorati Tags: aimpages, aol journals, blogs

Sippy Cup

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 09:11:45 GMT

About Ads

Thu, 25 May 2006 21:02:24 GMT

As part of the r6 rollout Banner ads will be added to all INTL versions of AOL Journals. These are the Journals hosted on:

journals.aol.ca - Canada
journals.aol.co.uk - UK
blogs.aol.fr - France
tagebuch.aol.de - Germany
diarios.aol.com - Mexico

The ads will be the same style (728x90 banner ads) currently seen in the US version. The disclaimer below the ads will be localized for each country, i.e.
"L'emplacement publicitaire n'est pas contrôlé par l'auteur du blog."
"Werbung in Blogs stammt nicht von Blog-Autoren"

The other major addition to the International version of AOL Journals is that AIM account holders will now be able to create a journal in their respective country domain (as listed above). We'll also add a new locale for the AOL Latino brand, Ads will be there too.

So...Why? Why would we do this again and not learn from the folks that left in Nov. '05. Well the answer is simple, the businesses are different. The folks up north and in Europe run their own business and make these calls. We've shared all of our lessons learned and have given them plenty of advice to help them make their decisions.

Your feedback is needed!

Please put your feedback in the comments section and a link to your journal.

*************UPDATE June 12th 2006******************
No ADS on UK, FR, and DE. Canada, Mexico, and Latino will have ads until further notice.

Tags: AOL Journals, Banner Ads

Release 6

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 04:29:06 GMT

We're getting ready to wrap up release 6. It's a little later than expected and not everything we planned on delivering.

Here's what we have on tap:
Improved Search - search your journal or all journals
Lots of support for 3rd party sites - details to come
AIM support in all INTL locales (AIM users can now create Journals)
Ads for all INTL locales
Improvements for Search Engines (we're helping Google find your Journal)
Additions to the allowed HTML list

Coming to Beta only:
Mobile blogging
Tagging for IE browsers

Signup for an alert to find out when we make all this is available.

Tags: AOLJournals, AOL Journals, Mobile Blogging, Tagging, Banner Ads