Netvouz blog

2011-09-16T21:51:00.003+02:00

Netvouz is the best!

We just received some very spontaneous and positive feedback from one of our long time users:

I love NetVouz !!! You guys are fantastic! One of the best web sites on the internet!

I've been using NetVouz for 4 years and it's been just great.

Solid and reliable!

Keep up the good work!

Thanks Thilo - we'll make sure to keep up the good work! :-)

//Henrik

2011-03-05T21:32:00.005+01:00

Technical Problem

We're currently having some network hickups here at Netvouz. The netvouz.com web site is currently not accessible. We are working on resolving the problem and will bring the site back online as soon as possible.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

//Henrik

2010-12-21T09:52:00.004+01:00

Delicious shuts down, Netvouz opens up

Past Friday we started getting lots of requests for new accounts at Netvouz. We do have a continous stream of requests but Friday it was significantly more than usual. After a while we realized why - Yahoo is shutting down Delicious (which, for those of you who don't know, is the biggest and busiest social bookmarking service around). So we decided to open up our self registration service and welcome all Delicious refugees into the warm cosy Netvouz cottage. We have automatic import of Delicious bookmarks and such so the check-out from Delicious and check-in to Netvouz is painless.

Today we disabled self-registration again... So many spammers that just opens new accounts and starts auto-posting junk links. As you know we strive to keep Netvouz always available, free from spam, and to give you fast page load times. Millions of junk links just make life so much harder for us.

So for everyone who really wants an account at Netvouz, and who do not plan to use it for spamming, please drop us an email (info is at our Contact page), and we'll be glad to set it all up for you.

//Henrik

2010-03-07T07:40:00.005+01:00

Google Chrome extension for Netvouz

John Pedersen, the developer of the Firefox extension for Netvouz, has switched to the Google Chrome browser. A great browser but something was lacking - no integration with his favorite online bookmark manager. So he decided to develop an extension for Google Chrome as well. We have now been testing this for a while and it's working really well.

Anyone using Google Chrome should go to Chrome extension for Netvouz and install it. When installed a single Netvouz icon appears in the upper right corner. Clicking it reveals two buttons; one for quickly accessing your Netvouz bookmarks page and another for adding new bookmarks.

Many many thanks to John for his work on this!

//Henrik

2010-01-12T09:34:00.004+01:00

Netvouz adds Google Chrome support

Today we added support for Google Chrome as a browser to Netvouz. Some early adopters of Chrome have noticed that the Netvouz menu system has not worked well (or not worked at all, to be honest...) with Chrome. That's fixed now.

There are yet no Chrome plugin for saving bookmarks to Netvouz as there is for Firefox, but using the standard Bookmarklets works well. To install them select Tools -> Browser buttons when you have signed in to Netvouz and follow the instructions.

Happy bookmarking!

//Henrik

2008-10-25T07:14:00.000+02:00

Netvouz Buttons updated

The Firefox extension for Netvouz has been updated by its developer. It now supports Firefox 3.1 beta versions. You can also display your most recent bookmarks (Netvouz new view) or all your bookmarks (Netvouz all view).

If you want to use any of these two new options open Tools -> Add-ons in Firefox. Then click The Extensions tab on the top, highlight the Netvouz buttons row and click Options. Select your preferences in the dialog that pops up.

Thanks again to John Pedersen for all his work on the extension!

//Henrik

2008-08-19T12:26:00.001+02:00

Spam cleanup!

The Netvouz bookmark database grows steadily - and we like it! Lots of good stuff is coming in all the time.

However to maintain Netvouz' excellent performance and to keep our service free from junk we have decided to do a major spam cleanup. We believe we will junk more than 100000 accounts in this process so it's gonna take us a while.

While we do this we have also disabled the self-registration feature, so during the time we will manually create new accounts for those who really want them.

Happy bookmarking!

//Henrik

2008-06-21T11:31:00.006+02:00

Enabling Netvouz Buttons in Firefox 3.0

John Pedersen, developer of the Netvouz buttons extension for Firefox, has updated the version number of the extension so it's now compatible with Firefox 3.0 and the add-ons installation mechanism. So now it installs smoothly without any tricks needed.

Thanks again John!

//Henrik

2008-06-15T19:26:00.000+02:00

Netvouz 2.0 - project finally started

Hello,

As some of you have noticed there hasn't been many new visible features to Netvouz lately. Instead of adding new features we have focused on two things; 1) keeping Netvouz free from spammers, and 2) scanning the market for the best Web 2.0 development tools and platform.

Today I'm glad to say that the project of transforming Netvouz into a dynamic web 2.0 platform has finally started. We have selected the technologies and products that will enable us to do this transition. This means you should finally see all the goodies of Ajax as well as several new features being rolled out once the Netvouz 2.0 platform is in place.

Netvouz today consists of some 80.000+ lines of code and one of our goals is also to cut down on that number, making the codebase easier to maintain. Another goal is to open up an API for others to easier integrate Netvouz in other services and platforms.

It's currently too early to give an estimate on when we can launch Netvouz 2.0, but as the project moves along I'll post updates here.

If you have a feature request, please don't hesitate to drop us an email at "info at netvouz.com".

//Henrik

2008-01-04T22:28:00.000+01:00

Netvouz buttons Firefox extension updated

John Pedersen who developed the original Netvouz buttons extension for Firefox has released an updated version (now available for download from Mozilla extensions web site).

Version 1.51 has slick new icons made by Swedish Arvid Axelsson, creator of the excellent Firefox theme Qute (highly recommended). It also has configurable options for how the MyNetvouz and Add2Netvouz buttons should open windows.

To configure the new Netvouz buttons extension to your preferences select Tools -> Add-ons in Firefox. Then click the Extensions tab on the top and then the Preferences (or Options, depends on Firefox version) button next to the Netvouz buttons extension. This brings up a dialog box where you can select the window opening behaviour you prefer:

Thanks much John for your hard work on this update!

//Henrik

2007-10-23T14:18:00.000+02:00

Netvouz featured on Profy

Yesterday the technology news blog Profy posted a positive review of Netvouz.

The reviewer appreciates the Netvouz way of organizing bookmarks using both tags and folders, as well as our unique features, such as the broken links manager. He also liked our performance and the fact that we work hard on protecting our users from spammy content.

I was very pleased reading this review as it really manifests that Netvouz is a powerful social bookmarking service which stands out among hundreds of similar services. (I already knew this before, of course, but it's always nice to see it in print ;-)

Read the full Netvouz review on Profy.

//Henrik

2007-07-23T16:17:00.000+02:00

Netvouz adds Safe Browsing service - Surf safer with Netvouz

As part of our ongoing activity to improve link quality we have now added a safe browsing service which warns you if you are about to visit a potentially harmful web site by following a link on Netvouz. From now on all bookmarks on Netvouz are regularly checked to discover web sites that are either known for distributing viruses or other harmful code (malware), or are known phishing sites which may attempt to trick you into sharing personal information.

If you click a link on Netvouz which leads to a suspected site, instead of sending you directly to the site (which could be harmful for your computer) Netvouz takes you to an information page explaining the consequences of visiting the site. When you have understood the consequences you can continue to the suspected site if you want. So Netvouz does not block any web sites or prevent you from visiting them, but we do warn you when you are about to visit a potentially dangerous site by following a link on Netvouz.

Below is an example of what the warning page may look like (click it to enlarge).

The Netvouz safe browsing system currently relies on the Google Safe Browsing service to find suspected web sites, but we plan to also take advantage of other safe browsing services to further improve the precision.

The safe browsing system is active for all links displayed on the Netvouz web site (both public and private links) as well as all links delivered thru any kinds of feeds (RSS, JavaScript, or HTML feeds).

With our automatic link checker (which regularly scans your bookmarks and verifies that they are valid) and recent spam filter for our search engine we have already proven that we care about your links, and this new service further manifests our intentions to become the best place to store your bookmarks online. At least if you care about them.

Give it a try! Sign up and upload your bookmarks to Netvouz, and enjoy a smarter and safer way to surf the web.

//Henrik

P.S. Did you notice the new cool icons for the Netvouz buttons Firefox extension? They will be incorporated into the next update of the extension, soon to be released on Mozilla Add-ons web site.

2007-07-11T19:02:00.000+02:00

Netvouz is 13th Largest Social Bookmarking Site

According to eBizMBA July 2007 summary of the largest and busiest social bookmarking web sites Netvouz ranks as number 13.

This may not sound like such a great achievement, but considering the huge number of social bookmarking sites that have popped up the last 2-3 years and the fact that Netvouz is not owned by a company but developed mainly by one person, I think it's pretty good. And as you may know Netvouz has been in development since 2001 and came online (silently....) in 2003, so we're definitely not a rookie.

A while ago we were also ranked as one of the top 5 best social bookmarking sites by Pandia.

In my opinion several of the services on the list are not really true social bookmarking sites. I consider digg.com, Technorati, Slashdot, Shoutwire etc. not to be true bookmarking sites but rather news voting sites (and excellent such!). Or do you know anyone who is actually using these services for managing their bookmarks?

Nevertheless, I certainly enjoyed reading the list. And thanks to everyone for supporting us and making Netvouz successful. Your feedback is always appreciated.

//Henrik

2007-07-09T10:15:00.000+02:00

More sorts. Less duplicates.

The observant Netvouz user may already have seen the new features we have added the past week, but for the rest of you here's a quick summary.

First there are some useful new sort options which let you view your bookmarks sorted by last visit date and by number of clicks. These let you see which bookmarks you have clicked recently as well as which you have clicked most. You find these sort options in the Netvouz Show menu as "Sort by visit date" and "Sort by visits". A click is registered only when you are logged on and only when you click your own bookmarks.

We have also added a check which notifies you when you bookmark a web site you already have. We then load and display your existing bookmark (if you have several copies we load the last modified) so you can update it instead of saving a new. If you really want to save another copy you can use the Netvouz File -> Add Bookmark menu option or just click the Copy link next to the bookmark.

In addition to this we have also added a P3P Privacy Policy which should make Netvouz work better in recent versions of Internet Explorer which, apparently, have a tighter control of cookies. A P3P policy states what information a web site collects about its users and how it uses this information. Rest assured, Netvouz only collects standard server logs and uses cookies only to determine if you are logged on or not and what your display preferences are, and we do not use this to contact you with any spam email or so, only to improve our web site. We hate spam just as much as you do!

Work continues - this week we will work further on improving link quality and also implement Safe Browsing!

//Henrik

2007-06-28T12:23:00.000+02:00

Netvouz Firefox extension now live on Firefox Add-ons site

The Netvouz buttons Firefox extension, developed by Netvouz user John Pedersen, went live today on the Firefox Add-ons site after a few days in the Sandbox.

You can install it in the same way as any other Firefox extension (select Tools -> Add-ons menu and click Get Extensions in Firefox, then select Browse by category -> Bookmarks on the Add-ons web site). You can also get it directly from http://addons.mozilla.org/addon/5194.

If you are using Firefox we highly recommend this extension instead of the two bookmarklets previously available.

For more information see this previous post (or just scroll down ;-)

Thanks again John!

//Henrik

2007-06-25T22:14:00.000+02:00

Netvouz buttons integrates with Firefox

John, a Netvouz user, has developed a Firefox extension for Netvouz. Netvouz buttons 1.0 provides the same functionality as the "bookmarklets" you use to save bookmarks to your Netvouz account and to visit your Netvouz bookmarks. But because it adds two buttons to the Firefox navigation toolbar (back, forward, stop, home etc.) you do not need to enable the Firefox bookmarks toolbar just to make the Netvouz bookmarklets visible.

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like in my browser:

When you install Netvouz buttons it tries to configure itself automatically and in most cases you do not need to do anything, it should work right out of the box. But if it fails you will see the Netvouz logon screen and it will then configure itself after you have logged on.

Netvouz buttons 1.0 is currently on the Mozilla Sandbox web site and has not yet been promoted to the public Firefox extensions web site.

If you want to give Netvouz buttons 1.0 a try (and we highly recommend it!) you can install it from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5194. You will need to sign up with Mozilla and then edit your account (click "My Account" on the top right) and enable the Sandbox. If you want you may also post a short review.

Thanks John!!!

//Henrik

2007-06-21T21:59:00.000+02:00

New search engine delivers better links, faster!

I am very glad to announce that we have now deployed a completely new search engine on Netvouz. This new technology has been developed during the past 2-3 months and a week ago we began migrating the existing database onto the new improved design (a design which will also allow us to roll out a number of new features which will improve the social aspects of Netvouz). So after several days, weeks, months of hard work it was finally time to make the switch.

This new search engine technology is capable of delivering the best and most relevant results from the links on Netvouz for each subject. Regardless if you search on tag (i.e. browsing by tags) or perform a free-text search using the search field it will return relevant content, free from spam and nonsense links. This is a huge improvement over the old search engine which always came back with lots of spam and irrelevant links, pretty much regardless of what you searched for.

But improved link quality is not all. The new engine is also a lot faster. And because it is also highly tunable we will constantly tune it to deliver better and better results, faster and faster.

For an example of what the new engine delivers, let's shoot a few queries. Let's say we're interested in web design and especially CSS. Netvouz then suggests we take a look at A list apart, css Zen Garden, and HTML Goodies, web sites which all deal with web design, HTML coding and CSS in particular. Good choices, and we could learn a lot from visiting these sites. OK, so now we want to go shopping and what could be a better place to start than by finding the best prices at Price Watch, Priceline, or PriceGrabber. Now let's try to see what Netvouz suggest on another popular topic, cooking diet food. I haven't visited these sites myself but their names sound promising; The World's Healthiest Foods and Over 100 Quick and Easy Healthy Foods.

I hope you all appreciate the much improved search results!

//Henrik

P.S. I recently googled for a radio controlled helicopter, the Lama v4, and much to my surprise Google turns up my own Netvouz bookmarks as hit #4! It must be a sign, so I have now bought one of these as well!

2007-06-05T13:17:00.000+02:00

Who pulled the Internet plug?

Today I got an alert from the monitoring service that constantly checks that Netvouz is healthy. It said Netvouz was down. Strange, because at that same moment I was using it and it worked without a glitch. So it must be something else. And so I started digging....

First I went to my long-time friend GrabPERF, which also keeps track of how we're doing (also see this post). It also reported Netvouz being down. But not completely. So I took a closer look at the GrabPERF details to see what was going on. It told me that some of it's monitoring agents, such as Zurich and Technorati #2 (but not #1!), failed to reach Netvouz but others didn't. So about half of them could not reach Netvouz, while the others could. This is shown in the GrabPERF graph below.

In the middle of the graph you see several measurements which have failed (the purple dots at the bottom), while others have succeed (the green ones above them). That's odd. But at least it's not a problem with the Netvouz servers or the network connection we're hooked up to.

Hmm... let's go check the Netvouz real-time web traffic statistics.

This statistics shows that at noon local time (Central European Time) there was a sudden drop in the number of visitors. OK, so it's a fact. The Netvouz service is healthy as ever, but apparently we can not be reached from some locations on the Internet. Interesting, but why?

So this means that somewhere on the Internet a major core router that handles a lot of traffic went down at about noon today. That could happen. But it also means that the remaining routers did not manage to route via alternative routers, and that should not happen. Luckily, as both graphs show, traffic was reestablished again after about 20 minutes.

So what happened out there today? Was it just a hardware failure at an important router? Or a successful hacker attack that managed to bring it down? Or was it just a "oopss" when someone accidentally pulled the wrong plug?

I don't know, do you?

The mystery remains........

//Henrik

2007-05-28T21:55:00.000+02:00

This post has really nothing to do with Netvouz but I just feel like mentioning it here anyway... I have bought a new toy!

I've been looking for some small radio-controlled helicopter to fly a little now and then. And just recently I discovered the amazingly cool PicooZ from Silverlit. So I picked one up at a local store today. And I don't regret it. Can't see how you can have much more fun for just $40. At least not if you like radio-controlled stuff like I do! It's also the perfect companion for any programmer - charge it for half an hour and fly for 5 minutes. Gives you a perfect break from the keyboard!

Once you've trimmed the control so it flies straight it's very easy to fly, and it looks amazingly cool when it passes your head just an inch away. Highly recommended! See it in motion

Anyone can think of a more sophisticated way to blow out your birthday cake candles!?

//Henrik

2007-05-13T23:11:00.000+02:00

Better links! Much much much better links!

Today we deployed a beta version of our upcoming search engine on Netvouz. The new engine will turn up much better links for all your queries, and equally important, reduce the amount of spam (porn, self-promoters, tag-and-ping bloggers etc.) that you see.

Note, however, the engine is still in beta and currently returns many duplicates, so if you search for e.g. dvd you will notice that doom9.org shows up several times. However, with the previous engine doom9.org didn't show up at all because everything that was shown was just spam bookmarks. So we decided to roll out this early beta version even though it is not yet quite ready for prime time.

So stay tuned and you will soon see much much much better links delivered by Netvouz.

//Henrik

2007-05-11T21:40:00.000+02:00

Servers on the move

Today, Friday May 11th, we moved the Netvouz servers to a brand new server room at our hosting partner Infracom. During the move we had only a 60 seconds downtime, and the move went smooth and all systems came up fine.

In the next week or so we will roll out our long-awaited improvement to our spam filter. This third generation filter should make most kinds of spam less intrusive. And in addition to that we will also make significant improvements to our search engine which will return better targeted and more relevant search results.

//Henrik

2007-04-19T23:26:00.000+02:00

Netvouz becomes a GrabPERF monitoring agent

I've been a long time user of GrabPERF (hey - I've even sponsored the site because it was so useful to me!) and when GrabPERF needed more monitoring agents, I decided to help out. So now I am hosting a GrabPERF monitoring agent on a dedicated Linux box in my apartment in Gothenburg, Sweden. This has nothing to do with Netvouz really (the GrabPERF agent and Netvouz servers are not in the same location), but I have always used GrabPERF to keep an eye on the Netvouz performance.

In addition to that I have also done some DNS changes to Netvouz and these have also improved the responsiveness of Netvouz. Here's what the GrabPERF top 20 list looked today - Netvouz has climbed to 3rd place for the homepage (a new measurement) and about 10th place for the tag search. These figures vary as site response times vary, but it's nice to see that the DNS change clearly made a difference.

I also have some other performance improvements on my to do list which I will implement and roll out as soon as possible. And the neat thing is that these will also have side effects which will improve the quality of the bookmarks and the value Netvouz brings to our users.

//Henrik

2007-04-11T20:46:00.000+02:00

Silence is good! Silence means hard work...

First I must apologize to everyone for not posting more often to this Netvouz blog. I know there is a stream of Netvouz users that visit the blog regularly, and if I were you I would be turned off by not having any news to read.

But silence on the blog is actually good! Because when I don't write blog posts I work hard on developing Netvouz and our service. So less posts means more development time. And more development time means a better service. And a better service means more users!

So today I post because I want to share some figures with you. As you can see from the graphs below Netvouz is seeing a substantial increase in traffic (read members and visitors), and the traffic increase the first quarter this year is quite impressive.

Statsaholic traffic graph

This graph shows the Netvouz traffic according to Statsaholic (who gets their data from Alexa). As you can see Netvouz has been gaining traffic at a healthy rate for quite a while. And after a slight drop late 2006 (perhaps because of our DNS problems), we are seeing a substantial increase in traffic the first quarter this year.

Compete traffic graph
The second graph comes from Compete and just as Alexa they also measure a significant increase in traffic in 2007. Quite impressive, don't you think?

Quantcast traffic graph
The third and final traffic graph is from Quantcast, another company trying to measure site traffic. Their analysis follows the same pattern as the other two and also shows a massive increase in traffic in 2007.

But more traffic means a slower service, right? No!

Netvouz has also been tracked by GrabPERF for a couple of years, and the graph below shows our response times from their measurement locations in the US over the past year.

As you can see, since we upgraded our servers in mid November our response times (from the US) have been cut by 50%, going down from 1-1.5s to 0.5-0.7s. The spike in mid November was when we ran on our slower backup servers for a week. Now, overlay this graph with the traffic graphs above (you have to do it in your head yourself) and you realize that as our traffic has increased our response times have actually gone down! How come? Well.... That's how I spend my time when I don't post to the blog....

Another fun thing is that Netvouz has also made it into the GrabPERF top 20 list (albeit in the 20th place...).

This may not sound like a big achievement, but if you look at the details of a GrabPERF request, shown below, you will see that it actually is.

On this particular request detailed above, GrabPERF could quickly find the IP address for www.netvouz.com (because most of our DNS servers are hosted in the US). But then it took 0.17s for the GrabPERF request to travel from the US to Europe, where the Netvouz servers are located. GrabPERF then received the reply after 0.24s, and after an additional 0.18s the whole page (only 6kB) were transmitted. If you sum this up you end up with a total response time of 0.59s, which is what is shown in the GrabPERF response graph above.

But how much time did Netvouz actually spend processing this request? Well, approximately 0.24-0.17 = 0.07s, or 70ms. The bulk part of the remaining time (0.5s+) is "penalty" because the Netvouz servers are located in Europe. So if we would have our servers in the US and we would have the same transfer times as most other sites being tracked (such as Technorati, Google, Skype etc.) we would probably be among the top sites.

But performance isn't everything, and every Netvouz visitor is not in the US, and Netvouz is among the top 5 bookmarking services in other aspects, so I'm very happy anyway!!

And rest assured, while we continue adding new useful features, we will always always keep an eye on performance.

Next feature to launch is our third generation spam protection. It's in the works...

//Henrik

2007-03-10T15:39:00.000+01:00

Access your Hotpicks even faster!

Today as part of a maintenance release, I have added support for so called access keys (or accelerator keys) on Hotpicks. This means that you can now access the first nine Hotpicks displayed on any page using the keys 1-9 on your keyboard.

Depending on your browser you need to combine the numeric key with other key(s). The list below shows the combinations for some popular browsers:
Firefox: Press Shift-Alt-[Key#]
Internet Explorer: Press Alt-[Key#] and then Enter
Opera: Press Shift-Esc and then [Key#]
Safari (Mac): Press Ctrl-[Key#]

Where [Key#] is the key 1-9.

If more than 9 Hotpicks are displayed only the first 9 are accessible using access keys. To access the remaining you have to click the link with your mouse, as usual.

Access keys was added to better support our mobile visitors. Using a cell phone or PDA and Netvouz as the start page mobile users can now access their favorite web sites with just a single click or keypress (depending on the mobile device).

//Henrik

P.S. I am now working on some major improvements that I will roll out over the next coming weeks. I am really excited about these changes so I have a big smile on my face, 24h a day :-)

2007-03-07T10:19:00.000+01:00

RawSugar import broken

Due to a problem with RawSugar, Netvouz is currently not able to import bookmarks from RawSugar. We have contacted RawSugar about this and they are working on fixing the problem on their side.

Update: RawSugar has now fixed their problems so importing from RawSugar now works again. Hurray, and thanks Frank!

//Henrik

2007-03-02T22:55:00.000+01:00

New server, and new location

It wasn't long since I set up new servers and this coming weekend it's happening again. This time I am also setting it up in another hosting location to provide even higher availability in case there are any problems with any Internet Service Provider (ISP).

So keep bookmarking and I will keep installing new servers, develop new features, reply to emails, and have lots of fun watching the traffic and member stats go absolutely the right way! :-)

//Henrik

P.S. Next on the to do list are features which will both improve performance of searches and give you better quality of the search results. So stay tuned...

2007-02-17T08:28:00.000+01:00

Netvouz wants some del.icio.us RawSugar

I read on TechCrunch that RawSugar is having difficulties and may shut down or sell. So after a conversation with the RawSugar team I decided to offer RawSugar members an alternative.

So now Netvouz imports bookmarks directly from a RawSugar account. Just enter your RawSugar username and password and we will retrieve your RawSugar bookmarks and import them to your Netvouz account. The import is done in real-time and your bookmarks will retain the same visibility settings as they have on RawSugar.

But we will not just import your bookmarks into a flat hierarchy as on del.icio.us and most other services. No, we will actually convert your RawSugar tag hierarchy into Netvouz folders and put the bookmarks in the most relevant folder! So this will mimic your whole RawSugar account in the Netvouz way. If you do want a flat structure you can of course choose not to create Netvouz folders. But I understand many RawSugar users are concerned about moving to other services and losing the power of folders.

Take a look at http://www.netvouz.com/RawSugarDemo for an example. This import was done from a RawSugar account and as you can see Netvouz has recreated the whole tag hierarchy as a folder structure. Isn't that beautiful!

So from Netvouz to all RawSugar users - Welcome to Netvouz!

Oh, I almost forgot. We can now also import straight from del.icio.us as well. Works the same way except your bookmarks are imported into a flat structure.

//Henrik

2007-02-16T00:16:00.000+01:00

Netvouz blog has a fresh new design - and a new address

After having updated the Netvouz color scheme I felt it was time to also put some effort into the Netvouz blog. So I did. And here it is. The Netvouz blog 2.0 :-)

And while doing the update I also moved the blog to it's new address, http://blog.netvouz.com.

It's my vision to post more frequently and to keep you all updated on the development activities going on. (Hmm.... haven't I said that before....) And when new features are rolled out I will also add a small banner on the top of the Netvouz page so you all know that there are new stuff.

//Henrik

2007-02-08T23:56:00.000+01:00

Netvouz on Sociable's short list

A few days ago the popular Wordpress plugin Sociable was released in an improved 2.0 version.

Sociable is a tool that offers Wordpress bloggers a simple way to add buttons to their blogs which blog visitors can click on and instantly save the blog post on their favorite social bookmarking service.

In Sociable 2.0 Netvouz is now one of few pre-selected sociable bookmarking services, along with digg, del.icio.us, and some others. You'll see the icons under Share and enjoy.

//Henrik

2007-02-03T15:24:00.000+01:00

Netvouz in spring colors

Today, February 3, Netvouz greets you with a brand new blue/green color scheme. This is something I have wanted to do for a long time, and finally it has happened. Because most users feel comfortable and like the way Netvouz navigation works all of the navigation still remains the same, so this is purely a spiced up color scheme.

In addition to this new color scheme there's a bunch of under the hood improvements, and as usual you won't see them - but they're equally important. This new release is actually the sum of no less than 20 sub versions of Netvouz that I have been working on for the past month.

So enjoy the new Netvouz color scheme!

If you have any comments or feedback, I appreciate it as usual either as a post here or to the Netvouz contact email.

//Henrik

2007-01-28T09:34:00.000+01:00

Netvouz automatic link checker improved

Today I have installed a new version of perhaps one of the most sophisticated components of Netvouz - the automatic link checker. With the new improvements made there should be a lot less false alerts thanks to an even smarter decision engine.

The link checker is without competition the single component I have spent most time on in Netvouz. For anyone who hasn't yet written a link checker (are there really people out there who still hasn't? ;-) you should now that just getting the status codes from a web site and blindly assuming that they are right won't get you far.

No for me, Netvouz and you to be happy it requires quite a bit of logic to decide among all the various responses (or lack of responses) whether a link is working or not. As you know we flag the links as working, confirmed broken, unreachable and doubtful, and the Broken Links Manager (Tools -> Manage broken links) allows you to easily delete your broken links.

As before your links are scanned weekly and if a link has been broken for more than a week it is flagged and shows up in the Broken Links Manager.

So keep on bookmarking and rest assured that the Netvouz link checker takes good care of your links!

//Henrik

2007-01-21T20:27:00.000+01:00

Ahooooooo..... off you gooooooo......

No Ahoo from Yahoo. Uploading 8700 bookmarks all pointing to your own web site is not the way to use Netvouz. Sorry if I haven't made that clear during the registration process.

And to be honest, the articles on your web site really suck so if you plan on making some money on Google ads I suggest you start writing some decent stuff.

I have a button specially made for users like you. It's shaped like a rubber. And it's sooo easy to use.

//Henrik

2007-01-10T08:43:00.000+01:00

Successful maintenance Saturday 6th

As some of you noticed Netvouz went up and down on Saturday, just as planned. I have upgraded several parts of the system, found memory leaks which caused instability, performed tuning activities which cut down on CPU resources and made several other improvements. So there should be a lot less smoke coming from the server rack ;-)

Hope you all had an equally good weekend!

//Henrik

2006-12-26T10:18:00.000+01:00

Up and down, and ... down

Just when all the DNS problems have been resolved we hear that our Internet Service Provider (ISP) is having some network problems. Arghh! Anyway, they are replacing hardware to resolve the problems and it should be fixed during the day (December 26).

Sorry for the inconvenience!

//Henrik

2006-12-19T21:59:00.000+01:00

DNS problems

We are experiencing a DNS problem (three DNS servers are down!) which makes it difficult to reach the Netvouz web servers. We are working on resolving this, but please be patient as DNS updates can be slow. This problem affects both the Netvouz web site and our mail server.

Update Wednesday:
We have now resolved the problems and the DNS caches should have refreshed all over the world, so everyone should be able to access their favorite bookmarks on Netvouz as usual. Yehaaa!

We are, however, still experiencing a slight delay when logging on to your bookmarks page and we are working on resolving this final issue as well.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

//Henrik

2006-12-11T00:04:00.000+01:00

Netvouz rated as a top 5 social bookmarking service

Once again Netvouz scores high in a social bookmarking service review! Reviews like that are always inspiring to read, and also provides good feedback on what users want.

//Henrik

2006-12-03T16:51:00.000+01:00

Migration finished - and some minor fixes

After the migration of the runtime platform (i.e. server hardware and software) I did a few weeks ago I have today also made the final switch to my new development platform. What a relief. So now I have loads of new features and possibilities to leverage. It's gonna be an exciting couple of weeks/months ahead for me. And if you're lucky you may even see some visible changes to Netvouz as well!

According to Rackspace the Social Issues Research Centre has recently asked a number of people what they want from a web site. The most important factors was speed, uptime, and ease of navigation.

So what do you think about Netvouz? You think it's fast enough? Easy to navigate? Perhaps even intuitive? It would be interesting to see what your rating of Netvouz is. If you have 60 seconds to spare, please go to Rate your site at Rackspace and fill out the form and then post your results here. I got a 94% close to perfection, but I guess I'm pretty biased so my vote doesn't count!

Oh, almost forgot. I have fixed the Firefox import and export features and they should now handle tags perfectly. Thanks Egon!

//Henrik

2006-11-25T23:52:00.000+01:00

New URL syntax at Netvouz

We have a new syntax for the URLs here at Netvouz. Most people will not notice the change, but search engines like Google, Yahoo etc. will appreciate that it is easier for them to crawl Netvouz and gather the information they want. And some users may even appreciate our new, pretty URLs!

What we have done is we have reduced the number of parameters and instead included them directly in the path of the address. Here are some examples to explain the changes:

Browse by folder:
Now: http://www.netvouz.com/demo/folder/5873138918755759749/Newspapers
Was: http://www.netvouz.com/demo?category=5873138918755759749

As you can see we no longer use the "category" parameter but the category number is included in the path of the address, and the name of the folder is also included.

Browse by tag:
Now: http://www.netvouz.com/demo/tag/computers
Was: http://www.netvouz.com/demo?tags=computers

Just like the category parameter, the "tags" parameter is replaced by the "tag" token in the path. To use multiple tags, just add them like tag1+tag2+tag3.

Show a user's new (most recent) bookmarks:
Now: http://www.netvouz.com/demo/new
Was: http://www.netvouz.com/demo?page=new

Users using our Linkrolls for blogs or other kinds of feeds will appreciate that we are backward compatible with the old address syntax, so you do not need to change your blog templates, feed readers etc. immediately. However, we will drop the old syntax at some point in the future.

RSS, JavaScript and HTML feeds are still generated using the "feed" parameter, such as http://www.netvouz.com/demo/new?feed=rss, so there is no change.

Apart from this major change there's a number of small internal updates as well. As usual :-)

//Henrik

2006-11-19T17:23:00.000+01:00

The Big Bang Upgrade - Finally!

One may think Netvouz development has come to a complete standstill because there hasn't been any announcements about new features for some time. But nothing could be more wrong.

The last couple of months I have spent all my time migrating to a brand new server platform. And finally, today, I have done the final switch. Phew!!! (To be honest the switch actually took place a week ago but because of some "interesting" network problems Netvouz has been running on the backup servers for a week, so today we did the final switch to the production servers.)

The new platform is a complete rip-and-replace upgrade of both hardware and software. Everything except the Netvouz code and the database content (your bookmarks!) has been upgraded to brand new versions. The new platform provides us with a solid foundation with advanced capabilities we can leverage when we continue develop new features again. The future looks bright!

//Henrik, the happy developer and sys admin

2006-10-26T20:08:00.000+02:00

Follow the link. Not any more.

In accordance with the Google initiative to prevent comment spam we have now added the nofollow directive to all links on Netvouz. This change is in effect from today, 2006-10-26.

Another minor change is that we have also changed the titles and descriptions of our feeds (RSS, JavaScript, HTML) to make them shorter and more readable.

//Henrik

2006-09-28T22:47:00.000+02:00

Calling for volunteers

As some of you know, Netvouz has been a one man show since it's inception in 2001. It has certainly been a lot of hard work but at the same time it's been great fun. Trust me, because Netvouz doesn't bring in any money, if it hadn't been fun, interesting, challenging, and educating I would have quit it long ago. But I haven't. And I won't.

However, with our current plans we (you do realize I often suffer from schizophrenia and talk about "we" and "us" when I talk about Netvouz, don't you ;-) feel it is time to see if there are any volunteers out there who would be interested in rolling up their sleeves and give a helping hand.

If you (or anyone you know) would like do help out you can do as much or as little work as you want (but I do appreciate a certain level of committment) and in several different areas, such as JavaScript, plugin development, marketing (I'm not doing much to market Netvouz, but despite that we have an increasing number of new users signing up every day), translations, search algorithms, graphics, Linux etc. etc.

So if you have a few hours to spare a little now and then, please contact me and we'll see how we can work together. I'd appreciate it.

//Henrik

2006-09-24T10:13:00.000+02:00

A little bit of this and that

The last month has been busy working out the details for the new hardware & software platform upgrade. It's slowly getting there so within a few weeks we should be ready to switch.

But in the mean time we've also fixed some minor bugs and made some small improvements:
* The XML import feature has been broken for a few weeks but it's working again.
* If you're logged on you can now get RSS/JavaScript/HTML feeds also for private bookmarks. Several users have requested this because they access their bookmarks as RSS feeds for example in Firefox.
* More spam protection. It's a pain and it takes time but unfortunately we need it.

And, again, thanks for all the positive feedback that you keep emailing us. It's inspiring!

//Henrik

2006-08-28T14:02:00.000+02:00

It works!

As I wrote in the previous blog post I have changed the algorithm that selects which bookmarks make it onto the attractive Netvouz front page and new page. And after a few days of real life testing I'm please to say that it seems to work.

Every day spammers sign up and add new bookmarks but none of these have made it onto the front page. I'm not saying the current solution is bullet proof, but at least it's a lot better than previous versions, where the front page sometimes could be filled with spam bookmarks.

So hopefully we will not have to zap some 50 users a day, which has been the case during the summer.

//Henrik

2006-08-23T21:31:00.000+02:00

Netvouz gets more spam protection

Today I made further internal changes to the way the Netvouz front page, new and popular pages work. They still look the same as before but, without revealing too many details, my hope is that there should now be less spam bookmarks and more proper content thanks to the new algorithm that decides which bookmarks make it onto the front page.

I have also done some other improvements to make Netvouz less attractive for spammers. One of them is that it is no longer possible to mark a bookmark as Intranet when you add or edit it. Amazing, but the Intranet feature was actually used by spammers to make their links stand out a bit from the rest. Intranet links are marked with a red text "Intranet link" which spammers obviously liked. I admit I was naive, but when I started working on Netvouz some 5+ years ago bookmark spam was not really a problem... ;-)

I still have some more aces up my sleeves but I want to see the effects of these relatively simple changes first.

So with these updates I hope I can return from my detour in my development plans and continue working on enhancing the site. I get continous feedback from users so there's plenty of improvements to come.

//Henrik

2006-08-19T23:11:00.000+02:00

Spammers go away!

After spending a month working in the US, I'm back in Sweden again. Home sweet home...

And today I have installed a new version of Netvouz with all the enhancements that has been developed during the last couple of weeks. So far so good.

However, because of some spamming attempts during the last two months I decided to take a slight detour in my development plans. So instead of delivering several new visible features that I had planned this release contains a great deal of internal improvements, improvements that you do not see but that is nevertheless important. These improvements will help protect Netvouz against those trying to use it as a "spamvertising" vehicle. It is not 100% yet, but it's a start.

But despite the focus on internal improvements, this release still brings some new features that you can take advantage of:
Open link behaviour - allows you to choose if your links should open in a new browser window (or tab if your browser supports tabs) or in the same window. You can choose different settings for normal links and for hotpicks.
Default privacy setting for new bookmarks - allows you to choose if new links should be made public or private by default. This setting is just the default, when adding new links you can always select public or private.

The settings are found in the Tools -> Settings menu.

Both these features are in response to user feedback, so keep the feedback coming! I appreciate it!

//Henrik

2006-07-08T23:22:00.000+02:00

Get together in Raleigh?

Hi,

I'm spending a month in Raleigh, NC, USA, beginning this weekend. Anyone living in the area who care to get together for a beer? In that case drop me a note at info (at) netvouz (dot) com.

When I return to Sweden I'm gonna release a bunch of new features to Netvouz that I will work on during the coming month.

//Henrik

2006-06-18T20:52:00.000+02:00

Netvouz Duplicate Bookmarks Tool

Today Netvouz got another great tool to help your organize and maintain your bookmarks - the Duplicate Bookmarks Manager.

Log in and select Edit -> Duplicate bookmarks and you will see a list of all your duplicate bookmarks grouped by URL. Using the well-known editing features on Netvouz you can then edit the bookmarks, for example delete all but one in each duplicates group so you only have one copy of each left.

If you have very many duplicates that you want to get rid of the easiest way is to select Show -> 100 per page and then scroll to the bottom of the duplicates page and check the checkboxes for the bookmarks to delete, working your way up to the top of the page. Then when you reach the top hit the Delete button in the blue admin bar.

Soon I will also improve the submit/post bookmark dialog to deal with duplicates as well and then you will get notified if you already have the bookmark you are adding. But nevertheless the duplicates tool is important to clean up imported bookmarks, which very very often contain duplicates.

In addition to this new feature (which was prioritized because of user request) I have also added a bunch of other small fixes and improvements, most of which you actually never see. But nevertheless they're important.

Happy bookmarking!

//Henrik

2006-06-12T20:55:00.000+02:00

Improper use of Netvouz

Sorry "harrybob" but 22499 bookmarks all pointing to identical web sites with thousands of Google Ads is simply not the way to use Netvouz. You have been kicked. And you're in good company with some other people who obviously don't understand how to use Netvouz. So please read the Terms Of Use again and then go elsewhere.

//Henrik

P.S. I'm grateful, though, that you helped me stress test the Netvouz import feature. It rocked! :-)

2006-06-10T09:18:00.000+02:00

Network outage

8am CET: Due to a major failure at our Internet Service Provider (ISP) Netvouz is currently unavailable. They are working at resolving the problem and we will come online again as soon as they do.
10am CET: Problem resolved, we're online again :-)

CET = UTC+1 = EST+6

//Henrik

2006-05-27T10:41:00.000+02:00

System maintenance Saturday June 3

We are planning a few hours maintenance of Netvouz on Saturday June 3. We are going to rewire the internal network supporting Netvouz and because of that we will need to disconnect the servers a little now and then.

We will try to keep the system available as much as possible, but if you know you really really depend on your bookmarks you could export them to a local file (in Internet Explorer or Firefox HTML format) and access them from that file.

//Henrik

2006-05-23T22:36:00.000+02:00

It's B day! B like in Broken links

Today is the first day the new link validator scans some of Netvouz users' bookmarks a second time. This means that today is the first day that some of you have received a message about broken links. To fix 'em, just click the link in the message you see. If you haven't seen the message yet just be patient for another week.... I bet you will see it - most users have broken links.

My own bookmarks will get their second scan tomorrow or Thursday (it actually depends on how many new users sign up and what usernames they pick). Looking forward to it anyway ;-)

//Henrik

2006-05-15T22:04:00.000+02:00

Bookmark spam attack

Today a user signed up and imported 9000 bookmarks. Normally I don't go crazy about that, but when I saw that all 9000 bookmarks all pointed to various locations on the same web site I took a closer look. And, yes, this was a bookmark spam attempt. Needless to say the user was kicked out, in less than 5 hours after signing up.

If you should happen to discover anything similar, please don't hesitate to contact me so I can kick 'em!

//Henrik

2006-05-14T11:57:00.000+02:00

Link validator and improved bookmark importing

Today is the release of some long awaited features! Look here:

Link Validator
The link validator scans your bookmarks for broken links once a week. If it finds links which do not work it marks them as possibly broken and if a link does not work during two validations (two weeks) it is marked as broken. If you have broken links you get a message about that when you visit your bookmarks page and you can then use the Broken Links Manager to fix them. Almost everyone has broken links of some kind, so just be patient and you'll get to see this new feature in action.

Broken Links Manager
The broken links manager divides your broken links into three categories depending on the link's status; confirmed broken (these are definitely broken - the web server even told us so), unreachable (we could not locate the site, it may be gone or may be on an intranet network) and doubtful (we could contact the site but the response we got was bad). Depending on what status the link has you can either delete all broken links with a single click or to display them and process them one by one. Full instructions are available in the broken links manager help.

Import/export to del.icio.us
I have also added support to import and export bookmarks from/to del.icio.us. Netvouz preserves all tags and descriptions (extended notes) on your del.icio.us bookmarks.

Import with merge folders option
If you import two bookmark files and they have folders with identical names you earlier ended up with two folders with that name. Now there's an option to merge these folders (and all bookmarks and sub-folders) when importing.

Blog post button configuration tool
Bloggers may appreciate the new configuration tool for the Netvouz blog post button (used to place a link/button on your blog so your visitors may bookmark your posts easily). The configurator automatically gives you the correct string to paste into your blog template, and it has several options for customizing the link.

I haven't really decided yet, but there may not be any major visible updates until beginning of August. The reason is I'm gonna beef up the infrastructure with some new hardware to cope with the increasing load and to provide even better uptime. Designing, implementing, testing and putting that stuff into production will take me some time. And there's also very nice weather at this time of year so... we'll see what happens!

If anyone has some features they really really would like me to prioritize - drop me an email and I'll see what I can do.

//Henrik

2006-04-29T13:12:00.000+02:00

Tagging survey from Baruch College

I have receieved an email from two faculty members at the Statistics and Computer Information Systems department of the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College in New York city. These professors are working on a project about tagging communities trying to understand the motivation for users to join and contribute to tagging web sites.

They have asked me to get as many Netvouz users as possible to take a survey to help them with their work. If you have some time to spare then take the survey here.

If you are not a Netvouz user, then please do not take the survey at this link.

//Henrik

2006-04-29T13:05:00.000+02:00

Interview with the Netvouz developer

Interested in knowing more what's behind Netvouz? Then read the chat interview ;-)

//Henrik

2006-04-09T21:21:00.000+02:00

Netvouz rated as the best!

We may not be the biggest, but according to this social bookmarking services review Netvouz ends up being the number one, the most ideal social bookmarking service.

Thanks!

//Henrik

2006-04-10 update

After an email to the reviewer above to point out existing features Netvouz scored two additional "points" on this reviewers requirements list. The blog post is also updated with some new Netvouz screenshots. Take a look here.

//Henrik

2006-04-02T21:14:00.000+02:00

Clear, clean, close!

Today I added three more features to Netvouz (this was a quick release, huh?):

Clear cookies - if you're on a public computer (such as in a library) you may want to clear the Netvouz browser cookies before you leave to be 100% certain no one else can log on to your bookmarks. At least I want.
Clean account - let's you delete all bookmarks, folders and tags in one sweep. Use it when you have messed up your account and want to start over.
Close account - delete everything and close your Netvouz account. Why would anyone want to do that?

These three options are all in the Tools menu.

I also changed the color of the folder fold-out menu from boring gray to a fancier yellow :-) It gives much better contrast against the white background.

Next up are some major improvements to the Link Validator (which has been offline for way too long now) and the Broken Links Manager (which most of you have never seen). It's gonna be state of the art among all social bookmark managers! Looking forward? Well I do!

//Henrik

2006-04-01T11:44:00.000+02:00

Simplified bookmark management

Today I've installed a new version of Netvouz. It has taken some time, but now it's finally here. This new version makes it even easier to manage and organize your bookmarks and to move them between your folders. I don't know for sure, but I think Netvouz now may have the strongest features for managing bookmarks among all online bookmark managers. What do you think?

Here are the major new features:

When in edit mode there's now a new bookmark admin bar on the top (just below the Netvouz > username > ... navigator). This bar allows you to select bookmarks and then to batch edit them, delete them or move them to a new folder. If you select move there's a new fold-out menu with all your folders. Just select the target folder and the bookmarks you selected are moved to it. Public folders are shown in blue and private in green, just as usual. It really makes moving bookmarks around a breeze.
In edit move, above each bookmark are now icons to edit or delete the bookmark. I'm working on an enhanced version with a move to folder icon with a fold-out menu as well, but due to performance reasons I did not release it in this version.
Categories have been renamed folders!
When logging on the checkbox now says "Remember me" and is checked by default instead of "Do NOT remember me" (which was kind of awkward...)
Minor changes to the way folders are shown in the navigator bar.
Plus the usual 50 or so internal improvements that you never actually see....

Next release will include improvements to the fold-out menus, options to clean up an account and some other goodies.

//Henrik

2006-02-28T21:35:00.000+01:00

Status update 2006-02-28

Hi, just wanted to let you all know what's happening behind the curtains these days.

I'm currently working on significantly simplifying the administration of bookmarks. When in Edit mode there will be a set of icons next to each bookmark that lets you edit, delete or move the bookmark. On the top of the page will be icons to select all bookmarks and then the same set of icons which acts on all selected bookmarks. When hovering the move icon it will fold out a menu with all your categories/folders and you can just select a category/folder to move the bookmark to. Work is progressing well and if I wanted I could launch this new features in a few days. But I see a potential performance problem (read: it could be somewhat slow to load the page) so I'm holding it back for a while until I have a bullet proof design. I'm also looking into some Ajax technologies to make the user interface even snappier. Will see if that will be implemented or not.

I have also renamed the term "category" to "folder", which better describes what they are. In all browsers I have used it's called "folder", so I think it makes sense to use that term also on Netvouz. (Wonder where I got "category" from in the first place....)

So that's a glimpse of what's going on...

If you have any features you would like me to add, please do contact me and I will be willing to hear about them.

//Henrik

2006-02-11T18:06:00.000+01:00

New release 2006-02-11 - Netvouz menu system!

Today I've launched the first in a series of interface improvements to Netvouz which will be rolled out during the coming weeks. The first change is a menu system which makes navigating Netvouz much like using a regular PC/Mac application.

When you log on (the menu is only available to logged on users) to Netvouz you now have familiar menus such as File, Edit, View etc. All functions and options available on Netvouz is now accessible through these menus. This centralizes navigation and makes Netvouz even easier to navigate.

The menu is tested and works in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.

Unfortunately, however, the Arrange Hotpicks and Arrange categories functions to not work perfectly in Opera. You need to re-select the item each time you want to move it up/down. This will be fixed in a future version.

If you have any feedback on this new feature, please let me know (either with a post here or a mail to Netvouz).

//Henrik

2006-02-05T22:39:00.000+01:00

Minor bug fix 2006-02-05

Just wanted to let everyone who has been trying to post a private bookmark using the Add2Netvouz button during the weekend know that.... now it works again. There was a small bug introduced a few days ago which prevented you from posting private bookmarks (public was ok), but that has been fixed now.

And in case you're wondering what's going on... I'm working on a new, much simplified and cooler, menuing system so you should easily find all the administrative functions Netvouz has.

//Henrik

2006-01-26T21:30:00.000+01:00

New release 2006-01-26 - Improved import function

This release is a very small release. This time the import bookmark has got some extra options; skip default bookmarks and skip empty categories. The first option skips bookmarks that come pre-installed with common browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox (links like Windows Media, Windows Marketplace, Firefox homepage etc.). The other option skips all categories that are either empty in the bookmark file you upload, or which becomes empty after factory bookmarks and duplicates with existing bookmarks in your Netvouz account have been removed.

That's all for now. Next up are some GUI changes; a menu system to easier find all the administrative tasks and then some improvements to blue bookmark admin form. Perhaps I'll add the capability to alert you if you already have a copy of the bookmark you are submitting as well.

//Henrik

2006-01-23T15:24:00.000+01:00

Netvouz review on 3spots

Have you seen the positive review of Netvouz on 3spots ??

If not, do spend a few minutes there and read about what this user thinks about Netvouz. And this user is not just any average user. If you read her blog you see that she has been all over the social bookmarking globe, trying out pretty much all (social) bookmarking services. Finally (well, you should never say never...) she has switched to Netvouz. I'm flattered!

//Henrik

2006-01-22T20:59:00.000+01:00

New release 2006-01-22 - Link Validator (and some other enhancements)

This release brings the Netvouz Link Validator back in business again (it has been offline for quite a while now). This means that from now on all your links will be verified once a week to see if they are working.

If the Link Validator discovers that a link is not working, it is marked as "possibly broken". If it is still not working on the next run (one week later) it is marked as "broken". If you have broken links (seriously broken, not just possibly broken) you get a message about that when you log on to your bookmarks page (or when you have submitted a link thru the Add2Netvouz button) and you can then go to the broken links administrator (only visible if you have broken links).

The broken links administrator gives you basically three options for each broken link; delete it (if you know it's broken), mark it as valid (if the link validator incorrectly has reported the link broken), or mark it as intranet (links on an intranet are not accessible by the link validator and are therefore reported broken, by marking them as intranet you excluded them from future link validations). If you are not sure if a link is really broken or not (the Link Validator may, in some situations, actually report working links as broken) you can click the New window to open the link and see if it works.

Just so you know, I expect a massive number of support mails in two weeks time when lots of users are thrown into the broken links administrator for the first time... Puh ;-)
This release also merges the two cookies Netvouz has used to keep you logged on into a single cookie. The new cookie does not store your password in the cookie itself (the older did, albeit in encrypted form), but rather a so called challenge string calculated using an algorithm based on some information in your account. This also increases your security, as not even a single bit of your password is stored on your computer. The only drawback is that because the old cookie is not used anymore you will have to log on once again.
When you have submitted bookmarks using the Add2Netvouz button, the last "success" page has been removed so there's one less click you need to make. If you have broken links, however, the page is still displayed and gives you an option to process your broken links.
When submitting a bookmark using the Add2Netvouz button and you have not entered any description or tags, a popup window asks if you really want to save the bookmark without that information. Some people may find this a bit annoying but it's really there to make the bookmarks on Netvouz more informative and easier to find, both for yourself and for others. So please, take a few seconds and enter a description and some good tags. The description can even be copied automatically from the page you are submitting and tags are retrieved from the description, so there's really no excuse not to do it...
Added some feeds that will be used for some cool stuff by the upcoming Netvouz plugin for Firefox.

Next up is some improvements to the Import bookmarks feature.

Update 2006-02-02 - Link Validator suspended
Because of some stability problems the link validator is temporarily suspended. The problems have already been fixed, but in order to be 100% sure the link validator will be offline for a few more days.

//Henrik

2006-01-08T00:24:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year - new release 2006-01-08

If you wonder why I'm not posting so often in this blog it's because I spend all my time developing Netvouz, and here's the features added in this last release:

Allow bookmarks to be saved without tags. If you don't enter any tag the bookmark is automatically given a system:unfiled tag.
Search engine now also searches the tags (yes, it has only searched names/titles and descriptions until now, I apologize...).
Re-added the "copy bookmark" link, which unfortunately was lost in the previous release.
Added possibility to include bookmark tags in JavaScript and HTML feeds (perfect for bloggers).
Added a target parameter to the JavaScript and HTML feeds so you can open the links in a new window (use target=_blank) or any window name of your choice.
Rearranged the small windows (I call 'em "portlets") a bit to remove information that was not actually contributing to the page.
When searching for bookmarks a list of the most common tags for the bookmarks found (displayed) is now shown on the right.
Improved the visual appearance of the tag cloud.
Added a tag table that lists all your tags in alphabetic order (there will be an option to sort by frequency as well soon).
Added a one line of descriptive text on top of each page, which describes what you are actually seeing on pages like "new", "popular" etc.
Moved the blue admin form that is shown when in Edit mode to the top of the page instead of at the bottom. If you have many bookmarks you had to scroll all the way down to find it.

I think that was about it. In the next release will be some improvements to the import feature, RSS/JavaScript/HTML feeds for your tags (so you can display a tag cloud on your blog) and a bunch of "under-the-hood" improvements. So... if you don't hear from me in a week or two or three, you know why.

And to everyone who gives me feedback - I really appreciate it!

//Henrik

2005-12-27T17:59:00.000+01:00

Another christmas release (2005-12-27)

Added notes support. Now you can write a short note for each of your bookmarks. If the bookmark is public the note can either be public or private (if the bookmark is private the note is always private).

You can use the notes field in many different ways. For example, if the bookmark is for your web mail account you could create a private note and save the userid/password you need to log on to your mail account there and when you browse your bookmarks you (and only you) see that information. Nice, huh?

It may also be good to know that notes are not (yet) searchable.

Re-added support for popular links. The http://www.netvouz.com/popular page again shows the most clicked bookmarks on Netvouz (it has been disabled for a few days). Clicks generated by search engines such as Google, Yahoo etc. are not counted. A great place to see which links are really active.

Puh, christmas sure is a busy period....

//Henrik

2005-12-23T22:06:00.000+01:00

Merry Christmas!

Today I launched a new version of Netvouz. It doesn't look much different from the previous one so you may not be too excited about this. But for Netvouz it's an important release.

This version is a major improvement of the core platform that Netvouz stands upon. With the enhancements in this release Netvouz now has a more robust, faster and flexible platform that we can continue to add new exciting features to. And the features list is long, so you will see new releases coming out at a steady rate over the weeks and months to come.

There will be improvements to the search engine, support for adding short notes to bookmarks, tags as RSS and JavaScript feeds so you can publish your tag cloud on your blog, visual improvements to the tags list, improved documentation, bookmark subscriptions, an API etc. etc. etc.

Also a big thanks to everyone who is sending cheerful and inspiring mails!

//Henrik

2005-12-12T21:24:00.000+01:00

Work is progressing well

I promised you a new Netvouz release which would fix the administrative tasks once and for all as well as restore the enhanced social capabilities we had a month ago. Just wanted to let you all know that work is progressing well.

I have rewritten and improved much of the core framework Netvouz stands upon to improve its performance and stability.

The new release should hopefully see public light in a week or so.

//Henrik

2005-11-26T21:45:00.000+01:00

Administrative tasks fixed

Because of the problems with the administrative tasks that began with the last update to Netvouz, I've decided to back out to the earlier version (2005-11-11). However, I have retrofitted some of the fixes and enhancements that was made in the latest version.

So what does this mean? Well, it means that the feature to display who else has a bookmark is currently disabled, but on the other hand the administrative tasks work well.

I will fix this once and for all and will update to a version with fully working administrative tasks as well as the social capabilities.

Stay tuned ;-)

Sorry for the inconvenience...

//Henrik

2005-11-24T13:46:00.000+01:00

Administrative tasks are slow (and may fail)

After the last upgrade we are having some problems with the performance of the administrative tasks (e.g. moving bookmarks, deleting categories etc.). If it takes long, wait another minute. If it fails (and you get a yellow error message box), try again but with a smaller set of bookmarks or categories.

We are working on fixing this problem.

//Henrik

2005-11-21T22:47:00.000+01:00

Netvouz goes more social! (New release 2005-11-21)

In this release I've added just one single feature, but it's a major feature - the ability to see who else has also bookmarked a link. This makes Netvouz much more social (and fun to use!) than it has been in the past. And we won't stop there... The social features will soon be enhanced further.

Adding this social feature revealed one thing to me that I hadn't really been thinking of before - how many duplicate bookmarks people really have. So I wrote "Develop a duplicate bookmarks wizard" on my to do list :-)

Oh, yes, I've also fixed some (but not all....) problems in the import bookmarks routine. Importing bookmarks is certainly not a trivial task... And I understand why not all the other bookmarking sites have it ;-)

//Henrik

2005-11-12T08:20:00.000+01:00

New release 2005-11-11

Added a Copy bookmark feature. When logged in you see a copy link next to all bookmarks that are not your own. If you click it you can quickly copy another member's bookmark.

//Henrik

2005-11-08T18:47:00.000+01:00

New release 2005-11-08

Again a small update with the following enhancements:

JavaScript and HTML feeds ("linkrolls") used to include your bookmarks on your blog (or homepage) are now documented. Click the "Tools" link on your bookmarks page to get instructions on how to use them.
If you have a blog you may also appreciate the new Add2Netvouz button you can put on your blog to allow your visitors to easily bookmark your posts. This is an early version of the link, it will be enhanced soon. It's on the Tools page as well.
When importing bookmarks (using the Import feature on your bookmarks page) you can now skip all bookmarks that you already have. This is useful if you want to import bookmarks from several computers and don't fancy having duplicates.
New tabbed dialogs when submitting bookmarks. This layout is both space-saving and looks pretty good, if I may say (but who do you think designed it...). It has been tested in Internet Explorer v6, Firefox 1.07 and Opera 8 and if it works well it will be used on all Netvouz dialogs (it's also used on the Tools page now).
...plus the usual bunch of bug fixes and hidden improvements you never really get to see...

If you have any feedback or comments, post'em here or email us.

//Henrik

2005-10-25T13:42:00.000+02:00

New release 2005-10-25

This release brings some more usability improvements.

There's now an option to display all your bookmarks in a flat structure (without the categories), just like any other social bookmarking service. Personally, I think it's really difficult to find my bookmarks using this layout. But since the other social bookmarking services have it, and it was really easy to add, if anyone likes it here it is! :-) Note: This option is only available if you're logged in, and as usual you can select to show all your public only, all your private only or all regardless if they're public or private.
Moved the links to show 10/20/50/100 bookmarks per page and the sort order to the bottom of the page, to make room for the Public/Private/Both and Show All Bookmarks links at the top.
If you are searching, browsing by tags or displaying all your bookmarks there's now a link "Default view" which quickly takes you back to the default layout.
Added an option to export bookmarks using the Firefox bookmarks file format, which honors "charset=UTF-8". There were also some problems exporting bookmarks using BIG5 encoding (such as Chinese). These are now fixed in the Firefox export option (still remains in the Internet Explorer option though).
Added JavaScript feeds in addition to the RSS feeds. So now all you bloggers and homepage owners can very easily display your favorite bookmarks on your own pages. This is still a preview. It's currently being tested by a number of users and will be documented and released to the public in a week or so.
Added an option to show new bookmarks only, which works like the all bookmarks view but always sorts the bookmarks in descending order of creation. This option is primarily intented to be used with the JavaScript feeds so you easily can publish your most recently added links on your blog.

//Henrik

2005-10-17T22:59:00.000+02:00

New release 2005-10-17

This minor update improves usability even further.

The ratings are now shown with icons instead of figures. A bookmark rated as poor is shown with a thumbs down icon, an average bookmark is shown without icon and bookmarks rated good, very good and excellent are shown with one, two and three yellow stars, respectively. This should make it more obvious, I hope, what the ratings are and how to use them. When adding/editing bookmarks the dialogs also show these icons and they are clickable.
The admin tasks (Add bookmark, export/import, etc.) have been moved from the admin menu on the right hand side to the blue area at the top of the page. The most common tasks (Add bookmark, Tools and Settings) are shown by default and if you click the More Tasks>> link some less frequently used tasks are shown. The normal/edit mode switch is the first link among the default tasks. I hope this new design helps everyone to find the admin tasks (some users missed the old menu).
Some users (especially those with huge bookmark files or slow internet connections) have had problems importing their bookmarks. This should work better now.

There will be even more usability improvements in the next release, soon to appear. Stay tuned... ;-)

//Henrik

2005-10-11T15:28:00.000+02:00

New release 2005-10-11

I have now improved the performance of the tag type-ahead feature further. This time it's a significant performance improvement, so now it should handle also very large amounts of tags well.

//Henrik

2005-10-10T23:14:00.000+02:00

New release 2005-10-10

Another minor update with a few fixes:

The type-ahead feature for the tags field was slow if you had an extreme amount of tags. It has been somewhat improved but I will improve it further over the next couple of days.
Also, if using Internet Explorer and its feature for remembering form data, Internet Explorers dropdown suggestion list would sometimes interfere with the tags type-ahead drop-down list.
Some people had problems importing large bookmark files (usually over slow connections like modem dialup). This is now fixed, I believe.
...plus the usual couple of hidden fixes and improvemements.

//Henrik

2005-10-04T23:54:00.000+02:00

New release 2005-10-04

This is a minor update with the following enhancements:

There's now a non-popup version of the Add2Netvouz button (bookmarklet) available. This was a request from a user and because I had most of the code ready I just enabled it.

To install it log in on your bookmarks page, switch to edit mode and then select the Tools menu option.
Some versions of Internet Explorer had a problem with the new tag type-ahead feature. The tags drop-down list was hidden under the "Rating" drop-down list. This is a bug (or is it "broken by design"...) in Internet Explorer. To work around it I changed the Rating drop-down to a horizontal list instead.
Netvouz now only registers a click to a bookmark if you are logged on. This way I can get rid of all the clicks made by search engines etc. crawling the site. So now the Popular links page should be more correct because it's really what the Netvouz users are using.

Note: The Popular page nor the click statistics does not reveal who has clicked a bookmark, it could be any logged on user. And only public bookmarks are counted.

//Henrik

2005-10-02T16:26:00.000+02:00

New release 2005-10-02

Usability! Usability! Usability!

In this release I've focused on two usability issues:

First is the ability to display both your public and private bookmarks/categories/tags at the same time. This may seem like an innocent change but because Netvouz was originally designed to clearly separate public content from private content it has been quite a fundamental change. This is also the reason why this new release has taken some time. But now it's here, and it's great improvement for all you users who have both public and private bookmarks.

So now you can easily switch between displaying your public bookmarks, private bookmarks or both at the same time (which is the default). The setting is stored in a cookie so it's remembered until the next time your visit Netvouz.

And if you e.g. display all your private bookmarks tagged "sports" and you then click the Public link, the search criteria remains so Netvouz then displays all your public bookmarks tagged "sports".

If you then decide you want to modify the bookmarks displayed you just click the Edit mode link at the top of the page and your bookmarks page is decorated with the edit options making it very easy to update your bookmarks.

To distinguish between your public and private bookmarks/categories, your public ones are displayed in blue while your private ones are displayed in green.
The next usability improvement is type-ahead support for the tags field. When you submit, add or edit a bookmark and you start typing in the tags field you will see a drop-down list of matching tags that you can select from.

This makes it much much faster to enter your tags and also minimizes the risk of entering tags similar to the ones you already have (e.g. flight, flights).

Let me know if you spot any problems - or have any suggestions!

IMPORTANT!
Because the stylesheet (css) is updated you should refresh your browser's cache (hit F5) when visiting Netvouz. Some users browsers cache the old stylesheet and therefore do not get the correct layout.

//Henrik

2005-08-28T10:58:00.000+02:00

New release 2005-08-28

Because we've got a lot of new users who have imported lots of bookmarks (how 'bout 13725 bookmarks just for one single user... new world record??? ;-) combined with the fact that Google, MSN and some other crawlers really like Netvouz, our performance has dropped a bit. Performance is still OK, but I prefer to be proactive. Therefore I have changed my priorities and will work on improving performance (I was planning to do this later this fall, but I'll do parts of it now instead).

In this release, I took a shortcut and reduced the functionality for the search engines (Google etc.) as well as tuned some of the database indexes a bit. I'm currently working on an improved database scheme which will be rolled out soon.

For the normal user, like you, not much have happened except that your most common tags are ordered alphabetically instead of by popularity on your bookmarks page. Hope this makes it easier to find your tags.

/Henrik

2005-08-21T21:47:00.000+02:00

New release 2005-08-21

The theme for this release has been improved logon process and simplified user interface:

The two separated logons (private and admin) that Netvouz used has now been merged into one, simple logon. This is reached by clicking LOGIN in the upper right corner of the screen.
When logged on you can now toggle between so called edit mode and normal mode using the links in the upper right corner of the page.
In edit mode your page is enhanced with editing features (it's the same as the old Admin mode). In normal mode the screen is free from these additional icons and menus etc.
When you log on we now, by default, set a cookie to remember you the next time. This cookie is optional.
Login link is also available from the www.netvouz.com index page. In a future release there will also be a link that takes you to your bookmarks page immediately, if you have the Netvouz logon cookie set.
The private menu is completely removed and the links to toggle between public & private bookmarks are moved to the blue-gray navigation bar. In a future release you will be able to show (and search) both public and private bookmarks at the same time...
The Link Validator is now ready to go into production again. I have been testing and tuning it using a 50.000+ subset of the Netvouz links for a few weeks. The new Link Validator is very much enhanced compared to the previous one. It's multi-threaded and can validate multiple links at the same time. It's also much more tolerant to network timeouts and has much better precision (so less working links will be reported as broken).
Added a change password field to the Settings page
Added a home page url field to the Settings page. If you enter the address to your home page (or blog etc.) it will display at the top of your bookmarks page. It doesn't look so good now but I will fix that in a later release.
Changed the default operator for search from OR to AND
Added caching to some frequently accessed pages that were heavy to generate
Moved the Rating selection from the advanced options to normal options on the Submit bookmark page.
Added "Problems? Contact us. Feedback? Contact us." messages on all entry screens. If you have a problem or a suggestion, help is just a click away.
Plus a number of bug fixes and invisible improvements....

/Henrik

2005-07-21T20:39:00.000+02:00

New release 2005-07-21

The theme for this release has been improved navigation and user interface:

When browsing bookmarks by tags there is now a list of selected tags and related tags. Clicking the minus sign in the selected tag list removes that tag from the current selection. Clicking the plus sign in the related tags list adds that tag to the current selection. Clicking a tag by itself shows all bookmarks with that tag only. Give it a try! The plus/minus signs are intentionally made wide so they are easy to click.

Added a new small page navigator on the top of the bookmarks page. Click Next/Previous to browse thru the results pages.
When selecting to show more/less number of bookmarks on a page (10/20/50/100) or changing the sort order, Netvouz now sets a cookie which remembers this setting to your next visit. This setting is used both when browsing for bookmarks and when searching for them.

Tip: If you want Netvouz to display and sort your bookmarks as most other social bookmarking services do, click the Date sort order so it sorts by descending date. Then you can also choose how many bookmarks you want to see.
Visual indication of the current sort order (small orange arrow) and how many bookmarks per page is displayed.
Added bookmark details (create date, edit date, visits etc) to Edit Bookmark page
Added bookmark importer for Kaylon Powermarks (request from user)
Improved the bookmark import facility to better handle international characters
Renamed the All Tags page to More Tags (this displays your 250 most common tags). Added a new All Tags page (which displays all your tags).
And, of course, a number of bug fixes and under-the-hood improvements.

Next I will rewrite the Link Validator so we get that popular feature back in business again!

/Henrik

2005-07-10T21:50:00.000+02:00

New release 2005-07-10

Much improved tag support when submitting (posting) bookmarks using the Netvouz Add2Netvouz bookmarklet. If you select a piece of text on the web page before clicking the Add2Netvouz button, the selected text is used as description for the bookmark and Netvouz will now automatically try to extract tags from the description. The tags are displayed on the submit bookmark page and you can just click them to select/deselect them. In addition to this your most common tags are also displayed, clickable as well.
When submitting bookmarks Netvouz now sets a cookie so you don't have to enter your admin password every time you want to submit a new bookmark.
When importing bookmarks the tag creator is now more restrictive so there should be less "weird" tags (such as ~~...~~) created and instead better "english" tags.
Fixed a bug that some people hit when importing bookmarks from Internet Explorer.

Work continues - Happy bookmarking!

/Henrik

2005-06-25T13:19:00.000+02:00

Link validator problems

The link validator is having some problems when processing members with very many links (4000+ or so) so I have had to disable it for now. I will re-write it in the next couple of weeks and launch an improved version.

But, for now, the link validator doesn't run....

/Henrik

2005-06-22T09:35:00.000+02:00

Welcome to the Netvouz blog!

Netvouz is a project that has been brewing since early 2001. My original idea was that you should always have access to your bookmarks regardless of where you are, at home, at work, in school etc. And when storing your bookmarks online you can of course share them with others and benefit from other peoples bookmarks as well. Thus, by common vocabulary, it's a social bookmarks manager...

As said, I have been working on the Netvouz project for quite a while, and the site was first put online on 2003-05-24. However, it was not until 2005-06-07 that I really went public, and actually began announcing it to others than my close friends.

On this blog I will post news about Netvouz, so this is the place to check out if you want to know what new features have been added and what's planned. And, of course, there will be a lot of other useful information about the project and site as well.

I appreciate all feedback and comments on the Netvouz service!

/Henrik Sjöstrand, Netvouz developer
Netvouz