Hi all,

We shipped the latest version of navBurner over the weekend.  Highlights include:
Enhanced Discovery Tools
1. Map Mashup Visualization
Help your users see where items are grouping on a map.  Allow users to narrow and refine by location.  This feature allows the visualization of the location filter in a Google map.  It displays icons at locations on a map showing the number of items matching a given query.  When the user clicks on an icon on the map, navBurner performs a faceted navigation drill down on that location.

2. Search Look Ahead
Give your users suggestions as they type in their keyword search terms.  Administrators can add, remove and stylize search look ahead functionality into their site.   navBurner can show words that start with the same spelling as the keyword is being typed into the search box.  These suggestions are based on the available faceted navigation filters.

3. Ability to add Images to a Topic
Administrator can upload and associate an image with a topic.  These images are then shown when a user navigates to the topic page.

Enhanced SEO Functionality
4. Auto-Suggest Meta Tags for Articles and Topics
navBurner auto-populates the metatags for keywords and description for articles and topics (any administrator content overrides the suggested content).  The description meta tag is created from the body of the article / topic in the system.

Enhanced Community Functionality
5. Comments Widget on Topic Landing Pages
Default navBurner themes now include the comment widget on the topic pages.  If not wanted, the administrator can easily remove the comments widget.

Additional Features
6. Ability to delete prior entries when the editor deletes a feed
When deleting a feed, the editor has the option of either not including any NEW entries from the feed from that point forward OR deleting all entries that have been collected from that feed.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Cheers!
Bing

Our very own Brad Allen will be speaking @ Amazon’s AWS Start-up Tour tomorrow afternoon (3:30pm) at UCLA’s Fowler Museum.  If you are interested in cloud computing and/or tech startups, please come by.  Registration is free and there’s a networking/cocktail reception afterwards.

See you there!

Bing

It’s moving day. We’re packing up all of our stuff for the movers and we’ll be moving over to our new digs at 909 N. Sepulveda Blvd, El Segundo CA. It’s about 3 blocks away from our existing location. We’re closed tomorrow (Friday) as part of the move, but we’ll be raring to go on Monday, August 25th. My guess is that I’ll be checking email at least once tomorrow

Bing

Our latest release includes the following:

SEO Optimization Enhancements:

- Enable the Editor to add/manage keyword and description metatags for Article and Topic Pages

- Enhancements to the URL structure

- Support for Dublin Core element: dc:publisher in incoming RSS feeds

Enable the Editor to add/manage Feed Labels

And some assorted bug fixes..

Thanks!

Bing

navBurner will be exhibiting at two Gartner shows next month. Web Innovation Summit is:

“Focused on the next generation of web technologies, including Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing…and will cover future trends and innovations, best practices, actionable advice, vendor and product selections, tutorials, and tactical decision frameworks.”

Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit is:

“The productivity-minded event focused on finding better ways to deliver resources, streamline content delivery and storage, and bring people together for greater efficiency.”

Both shows will be here in Los Angeles at the Hyatt Century Plaza. Web Innovation is September 15-17 and PCC is September 17-19. They should both be really great shows. If you are attending either show, please stop by and say Hi!

-Bing

Over the weekend, we shipped the latest release of navBurner. It was primarily back-end enhancements.

a) Site and query performance optimization and

b) Enhancements to our duplicate detection module.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Thanks!

Bing

http://flickr.com/photos/graemethickins/1919002621/

Ok, the paperwork is finally done…. we’re really excited to be a sponsor of the Defrag 2008 conference. It’s starting on election day this fall (November 3rd and 4th). If it’s anything close to last year, it will be a great event. Hope to see you in Denver…

-Bing

p.s. The above photo is Brad driving home a point during Defrag 2007’s closing panel on “Relevance and Information Overload” .

This morning, starting at roughly 9am Pacific time, Amazon S3 services suffered an outage. Current status of Amazon’s efforts to restore service can be seen here. The impact on navBurner services is that information hubs are currently unavailable; the management applications, blog and wiki are unaffected. Service will be restored automatically when S3 returns to full functionality.

Last night we shipped a minor release of navBurner. Below is a quick description of the new features. Looking forward to hearing your feedback…

Thanks!

Bing

1) Entry De-duplication
For all incoming syndicated feed content, if entry (article) title and article text are exact matches, then do not show the older article. Only the “newer” article is displayed in the information hub.

2) Filters coming from syndicated feeds will be marked hidden
If the syndicated feed content contains categories or tags, those tags will be automatically added to the Topic category and marked as ‘Hidden’. This means that these tags are not attached to the entries in the information hub unless the editor marks them as visible.

3) Detail Page URLs will be SEO friendlier
The link for the details page for an Entry and Filter will contain the title instead of a unique identifier.

Was: http://www.navburner.com/service/custid/entries/187759/

Now: http://www.navburner.com/service/custid/entries/schwarzenegger-urges-new-fees-to-fight-fire/

4) Ability to add an author and publisher to a new entry
When an administrator clicks on ‘Add a new Entry’ in the management interface, the administrator may optionally enter an author and/or publisher for that entry.

5) The administrator has the ability to edit the URL of an entry
Administrator can edit the URL for the entry in the ‘Edit Entry’ form.

6) Edits to the Entry metadata will be reflected in the Information Hub within 1 hour
Any administrator modification (title, description, etc) that is made on an entry will be visible on the information hub within 1 hour

7) Edits to the Filter metadata will be reflected on the Information Hub within 1 hour
Any administrator modification (title, description, etc) that is made on a filter will be visible on the information hub within 1 hour

A quick update after last week’s outage.  We’ve worked to implement a couple of solutions to prevent this situation in the future.

First, we moved the storage of customer themes and templates from navBurner’s web tier to our database (Amazon S3). This gives us two things:
a. It allows us to have more than one set of web tier machines for navBurner which provides redundancy and the ability to handle more user traffic.
b. Improved reliability for customer themes.

Second, we implemented a series of automated backup scripts to allow more robust recovery abilities.  Tonight, we have a minor release planned and a major release scheduled for the end of the month.  More information to follow….

-Bing