3 July 08 Yesterday we had a scheduled downtime so we could add some important new features to the Amazee platform. We are happy to announce that these features are now in place and ready to use.
There are quite a lot of useful changes, including new widgets for the project magazine, different navigational options, and a lifestream. See below for a description of each new feature.

Lifestream
Ever wondered what's going on in your Amazee universe? Or even what's going on on the platform as a whole? Well, we’ve implemented a fully configurable lifestream. The lifestream will show you, in a condensed way, what's going on in your projects and alliances or, if you choose, it can show you every click happening on Amazee. Go to the 'My Projects' tab and click on 'Lifestream', set your options to what you want to 'hear' and you are ready to roll. There is even a RSS feed for this configuration so you can get everything on the feed reader of choice.

Messaging Preferences
Currently you are notified about various events happening on Amazee either by Private Message (with email alert) or by email. However, as of today we give you the choice to choose which message to receive when and in which interval. So everybody can set their own notification preferences.

Multiple Choice Polls
Polls for voting got a very important enhancement: you can now set up polls with multiple choice answers. You are free to define how many answers are allowed.

Message all Project Members
If you have hot news in your project and want to reactivate all your members there is now the possibility to send a message to them all or to selected roles only (admins or editors).

Reply in Talk Section and Hierarchy
The talks are getting more structured. You can now directly reply to a message in the talk section, this reply will be indented and the topic will get the prefix 're:'. Just like in old school message boards: perfect for intense discussions.

Projects and Alliances separated in Matrix
Projects and alliances that you are a member of are now separated in the matrix, and so now you get a full overview of your footprint on Amazee. Projects stay on top, alliances are listed below.

Pending Invitations
To keep an overview of all invitations you send out for your projects, each project's member section now has a list of pending invitations. So you can see if any of your buddies are lazy and can send them an extra message if necessary.

Filtering in Member Search
When inviting Amazee members to your project you now have the opportunity to filter instead of search for names. You can display all your current buddies and select from this list, chose a gender (e.g. if you want to do a project with girls only) or do a location search based on the information users gave when registering.

Add new Topics/Areas in Talk & Wiki
Before today, new talk and discussions as well as wiki areas could only be introduced when going back to the project setup. Now you can create new ones directly in the talk and wiki sections. For your convenience, this is very easy to handle.

Make every Member Admin or Editor
When creating a new project you can now select the default role for new members. So, for example, if you want a very creative project where every member is able to add content to the project magazine, you select 'editor' as the default role. This saves you a lot of hassle because you do not have to upgrade all members as soon as they join.

Enhanced Navigator filtering and new default Setting
There are several new filtering options in the Amazee project navigator. From today you are able to use these filters to filter by: latest update, by rating, by views per day, by number of members, by number of sponsors, and alphabetically. In addition, to reward active projects we changed the default sorting option, from now on the project with the latest activity is on top of the this list.

Locale reflected in Navigator Filtering
The language set in your user profile is now reflected in the navigator as well. From today you not only have the language set for the user interface but also in the filter. So if you set English in your profile, the user interface and the projects you see are English as well. You can always override this by selecting 'all languages' in the navigator filter.

Hall of Fame Graph Widget
Ever wondered how your project is doing compared to others? You can now provide your visitors with the history of your project and how it is doing in the hall of fame. The visitors then can compare your project to others, either by views, member count, or rating - just like in the hall of fame, but visually enhanced.

Timeline Widget
Do you want to show your visitors what is going on within your project? Is your project extremely active and you want to show this off? Add the timeline widget and your visitors can go back in time and see what has been happening.

Related Projects Widget
To show links to related projects on Amazee we provide you with a related projects widget. This widget will display other projects on Amazee with the same tags. If there are no similar tags then it will display a randomly selected list of projects from the same project category.

Matrix with Status Icons and visible Changes
The matrix also got an enhancement and now displays your status and additional information next to the updates. When you click on an updated area we will display what has changed in that area. E.g. new members or changed member status, and new talk posts.

More Information next to Project Goal
We realized some of you need a long project goal description. So we did not want to short this down to X characters, but no longer display the whole goal in the short view. Instead, if you mouse-over the goal you will see the full text plus additional information for the project, like the tags, the category, and the location of the headquarter.

Project Rating always changeable
Projects change from time to time - and your opinion on a project might as well. Now you can change your mind daily if you want, and rate a project as often as you like. But remember: only your last vote counts... ;-)

Captions for Image Gallery Widget
You can now add captions to your pictures in the image gallery. So you can describe what happens in your pictures so your visitors get more information on what’s going on in your project.

Enhanced Profiles
This is a very important enhancement for you as a user as well as for the Amazee platform. You can now enhance your profile with additional information about yourself. For example how you can be contacted or with other web profiles you are using, your professional profile and why you are on Amazee. These enhanced profiles will be part of Amazee's future advanced search.