goowy media blog

Goowy acquired by AOL!

We have been working closely in partnership with AOL since early 2007. During this time, we've had an opportunity to see AOL grow and evolve as a company. For this reason, among others, we're thrilled to announce that AOL has acquired Goowy. We are all incredibly excited about the opportunity to be part of the AOL team.

AOL's vision and focus on consumer engagement, content and advertising align directly with our suite of products.  As a part of AOL we will have access to an amazing array of resources, which will enable us to continue the advancement of our syndication and analytics platform, while creating more dynamic widget experiences for our clients and end users.

We have had so many great conversations with AOL about enhancing the user experience, delivering relevant content, increasing engagement and breaking glass, which we can't wait to share with you over the coming months. We could not be more excited about the opportunity in front of us to be part of the continued success of a leading global company.

When we first started Goowy in 2004, we wanted to do something that would have scale; that would touch lots of people; that would deliver new and exciting experiences. With the acquisition we are confident that our dream will be achieved. Stay tuned to see what's next.

A few parting promises…

•  We will not become suits (or wear them unless it's a wedding)
•  We will continue to innovate and build great products
•  We will remain focused on our users
•  We will make a difference

 Thanks for all of your support!

 

Lunch 2.0 is coming to San Diego!

Host: goowy.com

When: Wednesday, November, 12:05 - 2:00 PM

RSVP: RSVP here

This will be the first Lunch 2.0 in San Diego, so please help us get established by:

Organizing - If you want to be a part of bringing Lunch 2.0 to LA, email me: mail(at)awarner.com

Coming - If you’re in San Diego, join us for lunch at goowy.

Inviting others - If you’re not in SD, but know people who are, please send them this post.

goowy offers 2 products, yourminis.com, a widget platform that simplifies widget creation, distribution, and discovery and the goowy webtop, a set of robust productivity tools including email, contacts, calendar, IM, file storage, and more. (And it’s a great company that keeps supporting the tech community. Thanks guys!)

Upcoming Lunch 2.0s::

• Tuesday, October 9- H2.0 ZendCon, Burlingame, San Francisco
• Friday, October 12- Widemille, Seattle
• Friday, October 12- YellowBot, Burbank, Los Angeles
• Friday, October 12- Tagged / Netvibes, San Francisco
• Tuesday, October 16- The Ladders, New York City
• Wednesday, October 17- Lunch 2.0 D.C., Washington, D.C.
• Friday, October 19- TBA, Redwood City, Silicon Valley
• Monday, October 22- Oracle, Redwood City, Silicon Valley
• Friday, November 2 - TBA, Los Angeles
• Wednesday, November 7 - goowy, San Diego
• Friday, November 9 TBA, Kirkland, Seattle
• Friday, November 16 - TBA, Los Angeles
• December TBA, Waterfront, Seattle
• Friday, December 7 - TBA, Los Angeles
• Wednesday, December 12 TBA, Palo Alto, Silicon Valley
• Friday, January 18 TBA, Seattle

Vote for yourminis to be in CNET's Webware 100

yourminis.com has been nominated as a Webware 100 Finalist in the Browsing category.

The “Webware 100” Awards recognizes the best Web 2.0 sites, services, and applications that are leading the next wave of innovation.

There are 10 different categories with 25 finalists in each category. There are only 10 spots available in each category, and we're up against some pretty huge names, so we need your help. Voting is now open and we need you to go out and vote for us!  Make sure to get all your friends to vote for us too!

The link to vote for us is: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/browsing.html

 

 

Thanks!

AIM, ICQ and AOL Integration

Due to a series of factors we have we have decided to disable our support for AIM, ICQ and AOL in our integrated instant messaging client.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause those of you who use these clients as part of the goowy webtop.  Thank you for your understanding and support.

goowy wins SEOmoz Web 2.0 2007 "online desktop" category

The SEOmoz team reviewed hundreds of Web 2.0 sites, in 41 different categories.  They announced their award winners on May 9th, and we're very proud to say that we took home top honors in the online desktop category.

We're also very proud to say that yourminis.com also won, in the widgets category.

Off to SxSW!

The other goowy founders and I are off to SxSW tomorrow morning.  We'll be there through Tuesday, so if any of you are going to be there and want to meet up, just drop us a line or leave a message in the comments.

We're looking forward to seeing what's else is going on in the interactive space, listening to some good music and hopefully taking home an award while we're out there... ;)

Wish us luck!

Maintenance and Updates Scheduled

We'll be performing a short maintenance tonight (February 22nd) at 8PM, during which the site will be unavailable.

One the maintenance has been completed, you'll have access to a few bug fixes, the largest of which is a fix for deleting large amounts of email.  We will also be adding new functionality, the most significant of which is the ability to set from name and reply to addresses on each message that you send out.

As always, please let us know what you think of our progress, the functionality, etc. either here or on our forums.

Recent Updates to Functionality

Earlier this week we updated goowy with some new functionality as well as some bug fixes, but didn't get a chance to update everyone with those changes.  So without further ado, here are some of the changes that you now get the benefit of:

• In order to maintain connectivity to our IM functionality, even with poor connections that have occasion blips, we had previously implemented code which automatically logged the user back in on a disconnect.  One side effect of this change was that users got into a connect/disconnect loop if they attempted to login to their goowy IM on two different machines.  We've now implemented a "stop" after attempting to reconnect more than 2 times within a predefined time window.  This should allow you to login from work, even if you're already logged in from home: http://forums.goowy.com/forums/thread/1815.aspx
• We now display your MSN contacts using their display names: http://forums.goowy.com/forums/thread/1888.aspx
• We implemented a fix to display ICQ nicknames as well.  Actually, the fix was almost identical to the fix for the MSN contacts.  Unfortunately, for whatever reason, our fix works in development but not in production.  We will continue working on this, but in the near future, you should be able to see your ICQ contacts with nicknames rather than with numbers: http://forums.goowy.com/forums/thread/251.aspx
• We've implemented Yahoo Maps into the calendar.  If you are sent and invite with a "Where" specified, you will have a link to launch a Yahoo maps mini with that location input for you.  This functionality is also available if you enter the data, and then go back to review it: http://forums.goowy.com/forums/thread/1650.aspx
• Resolved a small issue where games still played, even if that component was closed: http://forums.goowy.com/forums/thread/1650.aspx
• Resolved an issue where searching for email content that did not exist forced the user to be logged out of the system.
• Resolved an issue where the virtual file storage never reduced the amount of space used (visually), even after files were deleted.

Our next release, which we expect to be available some time next week will incorporate fixes for deleting large amounts of email, will add the ability to set from/reply to addresses on each message and for those of you that unfortunately wish to leave us, will have a "delete account" functionality.

As always, please let us know what you think of our progress, the functionality, etc. either here or on our forums.

People's Choice Awards for SXSW

The 10th Annual SXSW Web Awards finalists were just announced and yourminis was selected as a finalist in the "Technical Achievement" category. The SXSW Web Awards uncover the best new websites and celebrate those who are building and implementing tomorrow's online trends.

Hundreds and hundreds of innovative web designers and developers from across the globe submitted websites in this year's competition, all sites that have been launched or completely redesigned in 2006.

Winners in all categories (ranging from "Amusement" to "Blog" to "Music" to "Technical Achievement") will be announced at the 10th Annual SXSW Web Awards Ceremony // Presented by Adobe on Sunday evening, March 11.

You can see all of the finalists by visiting - http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/web_awards/finalists/

There is also a people's choice award.  You can vote @ http://sxsw.com/peoples_choice/. You can vote once a day for your favorite company. If you have a chance please support us by voting for yourminis. Thanks!

Hundreds and hundreds of innovative web designers and developers from across the globe submitted websites in this year's competition, all sites that have been launched or completely redesigned in 2006.

Winners in all categories (ranging from "Amusement" to "Blog" to "Music" to "Technical Achievement") will be announced at the 10th Annual SXSW Web Awards Ceremony // Presented by Adobe on Sunday evening, March 11.

You can see all of the finalists by visiting - http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/web_awards/finalists/

There is also a people's choice award.  You can vote @ http://sxsw.com/peoples_choice/. You can vote once a day for your favorite company. If you have a chance please support us by voting for yourminis. Thanks!

Email Rules Almost Here - Maintenance Scheduled for 1/23!

Update: The upgrade has been completed - although we're still tweaking a couple of things.  There have been two issues identified which have been commented on below and in the forums - please read the postings and let us know if you have further problems.

--------------------------------------------

We know it's been a while since our last goowy product update, but we've definitely been hard at work in the interim.  And after almost two months of work (if you exclude the holidays), we're very happy to finally bring out our latest improvements.

Some of the enhancements that you can expect with this release:

1. New and improved email reading functionality - many of you have requested that we remove our mail groupings (Today, Yesterday, etc.) and allow you to view your mail directly in a list.  We've finally been able to oblige those requests by removing the groupings and displaying a single flat list with "lazy loading" - getting your mail content to you when you scroll down to it.  In Classic view, you can now easily sort your mail by simply clicking the header - and you can reverse the sort by clicking the same header a second time.
2. Mail rules - we have implemented mail rules, allowing you to very easily process email messages as they come into the system.  There is a graphical front end (available from the Options screen) allowing you to create and administer your rules.  The rules also allow you to "forward" messages to other systems (Blackberry's, Treo's, other PDA's, etc.) so that you have instant notification of new emails.
3. Improved performance - the changes to the mail system have allowed us to make a series of performance enhancements that should make the overall experience faster and more efficient!

The maintenance is scheduled for 8PM Pacific on Tuesday, January 23rd.  We expect the maintenance to last for approximately 2 hours, during which the system will be unavailable. 

We're looking forward to your thoughts and comments in our forums, once you've had a chance to try this out for yourselves!