LAUNCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Thursday! We've just launched the new version of Geojoey. Our slogan has changed to "Blog on a Map" and that's exactly what we do. You can view my blog at http://geojoey.com/mark/

If you're an existing user of Geojoey your blog address is http://geojoey.com/your_username/

We have some awesome new features. Here are the highlights:

• Floating or pinned blog widgets
  • You can create a "widget" on your blog using a WYSIWYG editor. Once you save it you can edit the border, opacity, background color and image, and lots more.
  • You can either float it (the map moves under your widget) or pin it to the map.
  • If your widget is pinned to the map, it will auto-resize as you zoom in and out
• The thing I dig the most is that you can edit your widget HTML source. That means you can embed flash objects into widgets and do things like make them 50% translucent using the widget style controls.
• Isn't this f'ing amazing? I think so.
• You can save the zoom and position of your map, so if you're traveling in Australia or blogging about fishing spots in Washington you can save your map so visitors only see that area.
• We support multiple maps, so if you have 10 trips during a year you can have a map for each. You can create a new map when you add a blog entry. Each map has it's own distinct widgets.
• A blog entry can appear on your home page and a custom map or only on a custom map if that's what you'd prefer.
• For now all blog entries also appear on Geojoey's home page. Come on, share the wisdom!!
• We support remote posting via email. I'm about to leave for a trip to Thailand for 20 days (yeah, launch and then bail, I know, I'm insane) and I'm going to be using remote posting both from my blackberry and on a HAM radio while we're sailing in Thailand (assuming everything works ok). For details on remote posting go to your blog settings page once you've signed up.

A few caveats: This software is Alpha. That means that we're testing it and should probably not even have launched it. We're not announcing this to the press at all and we'd appreciate it if you'd keep things quiet around here and not break anything until March 10 when we're back in Seattle and have time to fix stuff. :-)

I'm going to be blogging on my Geojoey blog at least for the next 20 days and quite possibly for the rest of time, so bye bye Typepad. Have a nice life.

You can visit my new Geojoey blog at

http://geojoey.com/mark/

Comments

[Kristian Hansen]

Hey Mark,

Glad to hear that you are heading over to Thailand. Be sure to check out some Muay Thai (Thai Kickboxing) if you get the chance. I have enjoyed using your site over the last three months.

Thank you for changing things around a bit. It was really hard for me to travel around istanbul and only be able to tag one place that I visited, but now with the new launch lets hope there are some changes in that arena (say you visit 5 places in Thailand in one day you won't have to write 5 seperate posts).

I'll be in SF during march so I 'll have some new posts coming.

All the best,
Kristian

[Mark]

Thanks Kristian!! We've enjoyed your travel posts so far and look forward to more! I'll definitely do my best to catch some kickboxing.

Mark.

[Laurel Fan]

Looks cool! I want to try out the new posting interface. The only problem is that the homepage throws an error for me, so I can't log in...

[Mark]

Thanks Laurel! prototype.js was causing a permission denied error when I called Position.prepare() on load. I removed that code and it should work. I assume you saw that error in firefox which is where I repro'd it.

Mark.

[Kate L]

Very nice! Do you have any plans to add an RSS feed to the new blog features?

Enjoy Thailand! If it happens to be Bun Bang Fai while you're there (it's in the spring sometime), don't miss it, even though it's out of the way. Here's my account: http://www.mynameiskate.com/life/travel/th/th04.html