A week ago, Identi.ca was updated to version 0.6.2 (rel Nov 18, 2008) of the Laconi.ca platform. The current version on the live site is 0.6.3 (rel Nov 24, 2008), which is the second list of items below. That’s two releases in one week!

Version 0.6.2

Here’s a list of some of the more notable features introduced in 0.6.2 (full list):

• Posted URLs are automatically shortened. You have your choice of ur1.ca, 2tu.us, ptiturl.com, bit.ly, tinyurl.com, is.gd (default), snipr.com, and metamark.net.
• Tag streams now have an RSS feed
• Replies made through the Web site will refer to the clicked-on message (threaded conversations?)
• Experimental theme for iPhone use - switching my user agent to Safari Mobile didn’t make it show up. Can an iPhone user confirm or deny this exists?
• ‘Invite-only’ mode for closed sites (Think enterprise microblogging)

Version 0.6.3

I happened across the list of features included in 0.6.3 via the Read Me (full list). It’s called a bug-fix release, but here’s some of the public-facing stuff. It’s worth upgrading to 0.6.3 if you run your own instance.

• ‘nudge’ functionality to tell a user that they’re missed
• User profiles have the option of RSS, Atom, or FOAF feeds directly on their profile (see image below)
• Favor/disfavor icons changed to images
• Twitter friend sync. Users who set up their Twitter accounts will be automatically connected to other local users who have Twitter accounts and who they’re subscribed to on Twitter
• List view of subscriptions/subscribers (instead of showing everyone’s avatar, now you get more info on them)
• Subscribe/unsubscribe button on subscriptions/subscribers list
• Add Featured users tab to public area
• Add Most favorited notices tab to public area
• Some pretty fancy tagging functions. You can actually tag yourself, then send to a list of people who have tagged themselves using @#tag. So if you send a message ‘@#helloworld hello world’, everyone with that tag will get the message.

Keep an eye out for more as the Laconi.ca team tends to crank out code at a pretty good clip. Maybe the next release will include a link to your own profile somewhere in the links at the top (not to your personal stream), which is my biggest annoyance.

Though the mystery behind the account (@identicaupdates) still seems to be unsolved, someone set up a Twitter account that auto-posts a handful of dents from Identica over to Twitter every hour.

I was alerted to this account through my RSS feed for microblink from Twitter Search. As it turns out, we’ve had two of our dents ported over to Twitter by this account.

There has been plenty of legitimate talk on Identica about bridging your dents over to Twitter as a personal option (a topic for another day), but that would work through some sort of tie-in with your individual account, not setting up an additional account on Twitter and feeding your RSS feed across.

In fact, I particularly can’t stand individuals who use activity stream RSS feeds as their sole source of data for Twitter, especially when the medium is supposed to be about communicating and making conversation, not blasting and broadcasting everything you are doing on the web.

It seems that a lot of people aren’t keen on someone else streaming their personal feeds out onto other platforms. I’d even go out on a limb and call this account spam, based on the fact that it is just streaming content from another source without providing any real value to the community.

The easiest way to make accounts like this go away is to hit the block button or report it as spam to the Twitter team. If enough people turn the account in, they (Twitter) will likely take action.

The latest release of the Laconica platform (version 0.6.0) that Identi.ca is built on just saw a few major features introduced. The two most formidable changes are the ability to send direct messages between users and the ability to favorite an update. These features aren’t revolutionary by any means, but are certainly welcome changes to the federated platform.

In a quick test this morning, Mike and I determined that direct messaging can only be done on a mutual subscription basis - i.e. if I follow him and he follows me. We both pointed out the fact that we like how the Inbox and Outbox tabs are elevated above with the personal, replies, and profile tab. To send someone a message, head to their profile and click the “Send a Message” link below their avatar. From what I can tell, there isn’t a quick way to put it right into the notice box using the “d” modifier like you can in Twitter.

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