New features in mInformatio.net

Hi again!

(NOTE: This is going to be a direct translation to english from my last post published in Spanish language. Sorry for the probable mistakes)

One of the good things from my last business trips is that I had lot of time to think. And I thought in certain improvements I would like to apply to my web site http://minformatio.net. From the site point of view, I just was able to think, since I didn't bring my development laptop.. :-(

It also helped me the fact of having in my suitcase a nice book for reading while waiting in airports, hotels etc: 'And what would Google do', from Jeff Jarvis. I fully recommend it.

I basically concluded that my web page had to be more dynamic, making easier the exchange of the information between the users (registered or not). As Jeff explained on his book, the high level target should be the creation of a fully environment or tool with multiple possibilities, for each user to be able to use it in the way he/she would like. But always keeping the objective of the site, that is, the comparison and critic of any kind of information through the Internet.

Below you can read the most important changes I just finished developing:

• Improvements of mInformatio.net as social network and environment for managing informational contents. Now every user can send and get messages to/from other users within the application, without knowing at any time the real e-mail address of the other person. We do not pretend to be a Facebook alternative (of course), but we decided to have an small messaging system, visible from menu 'User -> Messages'. Every time there is a possibility to send a message to any registered user, you will see this icon:
  

• There is a possibility to send any new or information directly to an e-mail address. You do not need to be registered: 

• Feed RSS. There is a new option in the main menu called Press RSS. Selecting it you will see a list with the last 15 news published by 5 spanish online newspapers: El Periódico, el País, Libertad Digital.com, La Vanguardia y ABC. After it, there is an option to easily create these news in mInformatio.net, you just need to select one of the possible topics under the information will be created. 
• The news Comparator. From now on, every new is going to have associated the next icon. Picking it up for between 2 and 4 news, you will be able to display all them together in one single page. Specially useful if you want to compare technical goods (computers, cameras, etc), shopping online sites, or news (different points of view based on the different media).

• Possibility of getting an automatic translation for each one of the news. Only for Spanish and English written news, where you will see an English or Spanish flash indicating you have a chance to read the same new in the other language.
• You can send directly informations to Twitter and Facebook from each new. In every new you will also see the number of times the information has been sent to or recommended in any of these services.
• Now it is possible to create sources of information at the same time you are creating the new. Therefore the source doesn't need to be already created and available in the list of values at news creation time. For creating a new source, you just need to inform the name and the URL associated.
• Improved Groups Administration. The creator of the group will get automatically the Administrator Role. Then this user will be able to assign the same role if needed to the user group users.
• Better menu management. We organized and grouped menu options.
• Better picture gallery management.
• Possibility of adding the html code for one video to any new (for example, using the code provided by Youtube.com).
• Friendly URL's for topics and groups.
• Direct search by Topics, from right column.
• Direct access to the home page of all sources informed in mInformatio.net.
• Owner can update all his/her news to be dated as today.
• We have put some advertisements in the gaps of the topics with an odd number of news.

Well, those are the main improvements. There are some more small changes and updates. The target, as I said in the beginning was to make our system more friendly, open and flexible.



I hope you like those changes. If there is any suggestion from your side, please let me know.

Thanks and Regards from

http://minformatio.blogspot.com/
http://minformatio.net