Last week I received an email from Yammer letting me know about the new “Company Groups” feature they’ve rolled out, but there is actually much more than that going on in the Yammer camp these days. Here’s a rundown on the new things I’ve picked up on lately:
In a post on CNET today their tech enthusiast blogger, Harrison Hoffman (@harrisonhoffman), claims that by way of a topic on Get Satisfaction Twitter accidentally revealed their plan to integrate Twitter Search into the main Twitter interface.
This may be the first time we’ve seen a doctored up screenshot with Twitter Search in the sidebar, but Biz Stone (@biz) told us they would be integrating Twitter Search into the interface way back in July when Twitter purchased Summize.
Though its impossible to know by browsing their website, Yammer has released a new update for their Adobe AIR desktop client. If you already use the desktop client, you should have been prompted with an update window that asked you to update the app. Being on the Adobe AIR platform, updating apps is a snap and can be done in less than 30 seconds and a few clicks.
Updates and changes to the client include:
- Optional new designs (found in preferences–the wrench icon in upper right)
Though the new dark and light themes are nice to have from a user’s perspective, I still find the default theme to be the most appealing.
What I would really love to see would be user and/or admin customization of the interface colors. This would allow company admins to design interfaces that fit in with their corporate color scheme.
- Made it easier to resize window (drag bottom or right edges)
- Corrected tab order (all, following, received, sent) to match website
- Performance and memory improvements
- Ability to close application without logging in
I noticed on the original version that with the “start Yammer upon loading” option selected, it would never actually log me in. With the new update, it works flawlessly, allowing me to get started with Yammer first thing in the morning.
- Added “from Desktop”, “from Blackberry”, etc. to messages display
This feature falls in line with how services like Twitter state which source the message is originating from. It’s not critical information, but it is neat to see how different employees or peers are using the service.
To determine which version you are running (current version of this writing is v100101), click on the wrench icon in the upper right and it is displayed near the bottom.
When you update the app a link is given to the release notes, something fairly common in software and application development, but you’ll need to save that link if you want to go back later and check on other updates, as the release notes are not linked to from anywhere on the Yammer website.
On October 6th the team at Tumblr released an interface update to the Customization page. The page itself is beautiful and very clean, though several have pointed out on the Tumblr blog that it is inconsistent with the rest of the dashboard which also recently went through an interface update.
In the blog post the Tumblr team makes note that this update will allow for some big features they are about ready to launch. Only time will tell what these features are and why this interface update makes sense.
If you’ve not yet logged into Twitter this morning you’re in for a surprise. Last night the Twitter team rolled out a new interface design for its platform that appears to have taken a turn for the better. In the new interface the menus have been streamlined, logos have been tweaked (and decreased in size) and the profile design customizer has been improved.
The big things users will probably notice are the moving of the tabs and the use of AJAX in the menus:
We did this [moved tabs] for a couple reasons. For one thing, it makes them larger targets and easier to access. But more importantly, it was an investment in the future. We plan to have more tabs, and we’d run out of room putting them along the top.
When you click on the Home or @Replies tab when you’re already on that page, the updates are now refreshed via AJAX, instead of loading the whole page, which should be faster.
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Rob is one of the founders of Microblink. His interests include how people are using microblogs and the community growing around them.
Mike writes and edits for Microblink day-in and day-out. He is known as the marketing guy and handles most of the microblogging accounts.
Mark writes development-oriented posts as well as news items. He's not afraid to dive headfirst into technical topics for the sake of the team.| Blog: |
| Microblink |
Topics: |
| microblogging, Twitter |
