Adding attachments you've used before

If you're a PRO Plus user and frequently use the attachment feature to add documents or web links to your Eyejot messages then you'll likely appreciate a new feature we've just deployed. It's our recently attached item list and it allows you to, very quickly, attach one or more previously used attachments to a new message.

One scenario where this new feature may be appreciated is for people using Eyejot to perform customer support tasks. You'll be able to quickly identify and re-attach documents and web links you've used in previous messages, reducing the time it takes to support your customers.

We frequently send web links and documents to Eyejot customers when we do our own customer support and this new feature will save us a bunch of time too!

Opt-out control for messages and view alerts

We've just deployed two important features that keep Eyejot on the right side of permission-oriented communications: user-managed opt-out control for new message notifications and the ability to suspend view alerts on a per-message or per-user basis.

The first feature has obvious benefits and has been planned for some time. While Eyejot is designed expressly for one-to-one or one-to-few communications some people have found it immensely useful as a marketing communications tool. In order that these new uses are properly supported every outbound email notification message will carry an opt-out link. The link will allow the recipient to prevent future email notifications from being sent to them from a particular sender.

The view alerts suspension feature is for PRO Plus members and allows them to turn off view alerts for a particular message or for alerts generated on behalf of a particular person. Both options can be very useful if you find that one of your Eyejot messages is getting read often.

Collecting great suggestions through UserVoice

We've incorporated the UserVoice suggestion widget into our platform and have created a dedicated space for our users to submit useful suggestions for improving the Eyejot platform. If you're on the Eyejot site you may notice a tiny "feedback" button floating on the left side of your browser. Click it to jump into our suggestion area.

If you've been using Eyejot and have some great suggestions for how we can improve the service please let us know. Just visit our suggestion area on UserVoice and let your voice be heard! We're listening!

"Eyejot This!" adds support for Ping.fm

We told you it was coming. Now it's here! We've released an update to our Eyejot This! bookmarklet that integrates with Ping.fm's social updating service. See our previous post for details about some of the social networks supported by Ping.fm. If you're not already a member, signup with Ping.fm here and then try Eyejot This! We also added the ability for existing Eyejot users to easily reply to your posts made through Eyejot This!

Ping.fm support coming to Eyejot This!

Our Eyejot This! bookmarklet is getting tuned and will be incorporating support for Ping.fm. With the new version, launching within days, you'll be able to configure Eyejot This! to use your Ping.fm application key and send your message to any of the social networks you've configured with that service.

Now, instead of simply supporting email and twitter, like we did in the original version, we'll support any network that Ping.fm supports. That includes:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn 
• FriendFeed
• MySpace
• Tumblr 
• Jaiku  
• Blogger 
• WordPress  
• Delicious  

And many more. We're doing some final testing and hope to announce the new version on the 26th or 27th. We also plan to launch a video kiosk that uses Ping.fm too and will share more information about that in the coming days.

If you don't already have an account with Ping.fm, we suggest you visit the site and create an account and configure all your social networks. Signup here.

New group selection and some bug fixes

It snowed in Seattle and that provided the perfect opportunity to spend some time addressing some Eyejot usability issues and fixing a few bugs.

One question that we receive fairly often is related to composing messages for groups. Some users are confused when they click on an individual group member (or a few) and then press the compose button. They wondered whether they're sending just to the selected member(s) or to the entire group. Well, we've added a new dialog that, we hope, will help make the experience easier.

We also added double-click support for group names to automatically launch the compose window to start creating a video message for that group.

While we were tuning things up we also fixed a  bug that you may have experienced if you were typing someone's name in the address interface. It's a relatively new anomaly that manifested itself only when one item from your address book matched the characters you had been typing. Suffice it to say, we fixed the bug and things should be back to their delightful, properly working state.

Eyejot increases inbox viewing size

Last month we released a version of our general message viewing feature that supported watching them  full-screen. Today we're releasing an update for Eyejot users that are logged in and selecting and watching messages from their inbox. A new icon will appear below the video being watched which will switch the view to a larger size. Give it a try.

We're also pleased to report that we've fixed the bug that prevented previously sent video messages with attachments from being resent. You can now go into your sent folder, select a message that has documents and/or links attached to it and resend it to one or more recipients.

Note: At this time, this fix only applies to messages created after this update was deployed.

Affiliate payouts have begun and money is flowing!

This evening we started paying some of our Eyejot affiliate members who have, though their participation in our free program, generated revenue as a result of their using our product and sharing it with friends, family and business contacts.

While our affiliate program has been active for several months, we've only now just begun rolling out our payment functionality. We would like to thank all of our affiliate members who have used and promoted Eyejot and we're pleased to be able to reward them for their efforts, especially around the holidays.

If you've recently discovered Eyejot and you're not yet part of our affiliate program, it's free and easy to join. And, you don't even have to remember special links or codes. In fact, simply enrolling in the program and sending Eyejot messages creates associations between potential users and your affiliate account. It's really that easy.

For more information, visit our affiliate program after logging in.

Eyejot adds full screen viewing

The next time you get an Eyejot video message and click on the link to view it you may notice two new, tiny details. The first is that the control bar that lets you pause and stop should hide, automatically. Its behavior should be better than with the previous version. If it's not hiding for you, just mouse over the video, then click somewhere else, away from the video.

The next detail involves full-screen viewing of your message. There's a new icon on the control bar that floats above your video. It's toward the right side of the control ear, just next to the volume control slider. That's the flull-screen activation button. Pressing it will display your message full-screen, in all its highly pixelated glory.

Better bounce management

We've just deployed some updated bounce management services designed to improve how Eyejot communicates with remote mail servers and to deliver important information to our users when errors are discovered.

If you attempt to send an Eyejot message to a non-existent account on a remote mail server our new bounce services will detect that event and send you an alert message. A permament record will also be created so that future attempts to send Eyejots to that mailbox are prevented.

Mistakes happen. Sometimes people enter in email address incorrectly. Sometimes people change their email accounts without telling all their friends, colleagues or business contacts. We'll keep an eye out for you when those events occur.