So, there's been some exciting changes in the past few weeks... and along the way we know that some of you have gotten a bit surprised when a feature or a behavior has changed on the platform.

So, first of all -- if we caught you by surprise we apologize. We're going to try and do a better job of announcing changes as they take place, or even in advance, so you will always get what you expect from the platform.

That said -- there have been some pretty nice improvements (many of them suggested features from you) so I thought it would be a good time to share them with you.

New Magnify.net Uploader. This is one of those things that we've always felt could be better. Most video sites just have you click the upload button and then cross your fingers, so you wait, hold your breath, and hope your file transfer is a success. Feels icky. So we've added a swell new Flash-based uploader with a progress bar... so you know if you have time to get a cup of coffee or whether your upload is just a few seconds away from completion..



We've updated our widget code with two important fixes, the ability to make your widget "MySpace Friendly" because My Space requires some extra code to enable off-site links. And also, we've added "Embed This" on the bottom left of all our widgets, so now your visitors can more easily grab and promote your channel. At the same time we simplified the copy and paste process for widget code. So -- thanks to newest team member Kimberly Peterson who's our resident flash expert. Nice work Kimberly, and welcome!

We've also added a neat feature that allows you to create a pretty detailed questionnaire for new site members during sign up. This has a bunch of different kinds of questions, checkboxes, urls, and such -- and you can now gather a good deal of data from new users sign ups -- if you wish.



You've probably already heard about the cool bookmarklet that we've added to your page builder widgets. This allows you to invite your visitors to be able to send videos directly to your site... with the click of a mouse.



The smallest change is maybe the one that's confusing the most people. We've compressed the "review a video" and "comment on a video" features into a single interface. Why? Because we got a ton of feedback that said that no one could tell the difference. So now, there's a single 'Comment' button in the Magnify.net player, and all of the user feedback is listed in the same place. We're investigating a number of new voting options, so expect that you'll have some new choices in the review panel in the next few weeks or so.

And, of course, a bunch of really nifty new stuff we can't talk about -- just yet. But, soon.

Cheers.

Steve