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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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The Dashboard - Your News Feed and More...
Saturday, October 16, 2010 at 7:15 PM
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I am happy to announce a new page on ArtistServer, the 'Dashboard,'
How To Get There: Once you are signed in, click on 'Dashboard' in the main site menu.
This page is meant to provide you quick access to content by artists and members you follow, as well as stats and feedback all on a single page.
1. News Feed - contains new music, blog posts, and photos by artists and members you following/friend. When you locate an artist or member you want to follow, click on the Follow/Friend button  , then when they release new content on the site, it will show up in your News Feed. At the top of the News Feed, is a flash mp3 player with the songs from your News Feed, as well as buttons to play the listing in your own mp3 player, in m3u and XSPF formats.
2. Favorites - you'll need to be a member or artist, signed in and start adding things to your favorites. You can add songs, playlists, artists and members, and genres. Just click on the small button with the star and a plus  . Once you build up your favorites, you'll see them listed on your dashboard, serving as a custom menu to all the things you like on ArtistServer. In addition, we display your listening history, listing the last 15 songs you listened to.
3. Forum Direct Messages - notifying you of your most recent direct messages (previously, this was only accessible in the forums)
4. Music Stats - Also on the dashboard, you'll see two of the charts you normally see when viewing your song stats. The charts are set to display song activity for the last 30 days, including song streams, download, and ringtone downloads. Move your mouse over the chart to locate data points with specific data totals.
Next up, we're displaying your music's 'favorite' history, which shows who on the site has added songs of yours to their favorites list. It's nice to know who is into your music. We display this on each song page, but from here, you'll see the 10 most recent favorites across all of your songs.
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NOTE: we are moving from a 'friend' system to a 'follow' system - with following, you aren't requesting the connection, and there will no longer be a posting of a message with the follow/friending action. I'll soon have this updated on the artist and member pages, as well as the My Account/Settings area.
Let me know if you have any feedback
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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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RE: The Dashboard - Your News Feed and More...
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 9:12 AM
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crickets....
hmm - well, you never know. I thought this was one of the best site upgrades in years 
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Second Thought
Joined: 05/05/02
Location: Oh God knows.
Posts: 188
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RE: The Dashboard - Your News Feed and More...
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 11:16 AM
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Everything's following the Facebook/Twitter format these days then? I do prefer 'friends' to 'follow' myself. But that's just me. I hate the way the internet is heading in general!
Drug use for children has for many an education and with obvious alarm to both parents on the increase almost yearly.
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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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RE: The Dashboard - Your News Feed and More...
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 12:33 PM
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Aggregating content into a news feed has been around since early 1995 - which was the early days of the modern Web. Facebook simply adopted what had already become a standard practice. Have you ever used an RSS reader to keep up to date with news, sites, and content? It's a great way to stay on top of things without having to invest all the time it takes to go to all the locations you like just to check for new content and news.
In regards to friend/follow - they apply to different situations, and for our case, the follow model made more sense. The logic behind this, is that we are all trying to get our music out there and heard, and currently the songs are all available on the site music page, the genre pages, your own artist page, and possibly the charts - there's no barrier between the music and the music fan. Since we have no barrier, we are a perfect fit for the 'follow' model, as it isn't based on validating that someone has some form of relationship with you. If our content was more private and not based on public sharing - we would have stayed with the 'friend' model.
>>I hate the way the internet is heading in general!
I'm up and down about it all. I get quite tired of it - then I'm completely jazzed by it. I'm just glad I have memories of life before the Web, before mobile phones, and ATMs.
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For me - I like this new feature because it keeps me informed about the artists I enjoy the most, and gives me a quick view at how my music is doing on the site. I also like seeing who is adding my music to their favorites list. Before the dashboard, the only way to see this information, was to visit all your song pages.
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Second Thought
Joined: 05/05/02
Location: Oh God knows.
Posts: 188
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RE: The Dashboard - Your News Feed and More...
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 2:21 PM
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Sonic Wallpaper wrote:Have you ever used an RSS reader to keep up to date with news, sites, and content? It's a great way to stay on top of things without having to invest all the time it takes to go to all the locations you like just to check for new content and news.
Ah, no, I like looking at websites. I've never reached a point where I feel like I'm 'investing all the time' into it, really, it's just nice to browse sites at my own leisure!
Drug use for children has for many an education and with obvious alarm to both parents on the increase almost yearly.
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Brainbelly
Joined: 05/03/02
Location: Mellow Mendocino California
Posts: 124
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RE: The Dashboard - Your News Feed and More...
Wednesday, October 20, 2010 at 5:04 PM
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I love rss readers. My most favorite is Feedly.com. It's scripted so you don't have to leave the Feedly site to read a linked article. Less adverts (in fact none I think). Large text for my aging eyes. Online only though.
As to AS Dashboard, I'm not jazzed about it. I think the over-all site-bar navigation you implemented a while ago makes a better impression. Accessibility and control... hard to satisfy everyone on that one I think.. and then to wrap it all in compelling graphics... hard to do.
Maybe include an option to go directly to Dashboard upon member log-in.
I would like to be able to have larger text on the mp3 player.
One control on the (News Feed)Following list I'd like to see is "play(show) only 1 most recent song per artist" so I would know a followed artist had put up a new song or songs but not have them all bunched together such that other artist's new songs are pushed off the list.
Do subscribed artists want to see the advertising banner at the top? Might be a place for site news
On the "My Favorites" expansion lists, if the only editing is to delete an entry why can't it just be done in the Dashboard page instead of changing to another page?
I like the direct messages from forum app. Is there a highlight or some small icon to mark/announce a new (unread) message?
I've always liked the chart graphics.
I'm interested in knowing how thing are going with the iPhone app.
"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination, but crossing the road with your eyes closed is easy" -John Lennon - “What relates to reality, is not certain; and what is certain, is not real.” --Albert Einstein
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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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RE: The Dashboard - Your News Feed and More...
Wednesday, October 20, 2010 at 5:49 PM
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Hi Brainbelly - que paso?
I've posted replies to your comments below - thank you for taking some time to provide feedback and listing the features you'd like to see.
>>>Maybe include an option to go directly to Dashboard upon member log-in.
it almost became the homepage - but I thought it doesn't work well for new people to the site, as the page is completely empty when you first join. The Dashboard is now in the main menu - so it should be quite easy for people to navigate to from any location on the site.
Adding a feature to send you there upon signin- could be done, I just don't have so much development time these days, and I'm concerned about having too many settings.
>>>I would like to be able to have larger text on the mp3 player.
I completely understand this request  Unfortunately, I don't have control over that - it would have to be a different mp3 player altogether - if you have a suggestion that works with XSPF let me know, I'll take a look at it. I'm currently looking into a solution called jPlayer - which would allow me to control all aspects of what a player looks like.
>>>One control on the (News Feed)Following list I'd like to see is "play(show) only 1 most recent song per artist" so I would know a followed artist had put up a new song or songs but not have them all bunched together such that other artist's new songs are pushed off the list.
I don't think I'll be adding this. I don't want to clutter up the screen with multiple play buttons and titles as to what they cover, and don't see a clean way to present it. I can explain how you can achieve this using RSS if you like. All artist pages have an RSS feed of their music - using Yahoo Pipes, you could merge multiple RSS feeds and probably set up rules for filtering.
>>>Do subscribed artists want to see the advertising banner at the top? Might be a place for site news
by subscribed, do you mean artists with upgraded accounts? I think if I output listings of news, it would be the right side - below the current content.
>>>On the "My Favorites" expansion lists, if the only editing is to delete an entry why can't it just be done in the Dashboard page instead of changing to another page?
I reused the current code we use on the site - you can see the same thing in the Favorites popup. If I have time to work on adding more features, I can add that. Right now, I'm trying to add features to ArtistServer that gives the site more value and helps people keep up to date with the site and content. My next dev project is a site wide newsletter - to send out to all members (w/ a means to opt out). We missed out on a good cross promotional opportunity earlier this year because we didn't have a site wide newsletter.
>>>I like the direct messages from forum app. Is there a highlight or some small icon to mark/announce a new (unread) message?
I don't believe the forums supports a read/unread status - it would require building a new feature into the forums.
>>>I've always liked the chart graphics.
Me too speaking of charts, did you see my announcement concerning the support of Google Analytics? You can now track your site stats via Analytics. When in the Settings area - click on Site Stats for a tutorial on how to set it up.
>>>I'm interested in knowing how thing are going with the iPhone app.
Most likely won't be done for a few months. The initial framework is done, but I've assigned it a lower priority. I've also had to take on another contract job to make ends meet - and am looking for more work to help cover the site's hosting bills. With ads bringing in less, and not too many account upgrades happening - I'm having a difficult time getting by. Do you have an iPhone or Android phone?
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A Bit Crusher
Joined: 01/26/02
Location: Tilburg
Posts: 1794
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RE: The Dashboard - Your News Feed and More...
Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 12:14 PM
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Will have a look at the new features later on....I'm a bit too busy doing other things....
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