December 2006

Ma.gnolia Monthly 11: Happy Holidays!

The holidays that surround the solstice make it one of the busiest times of the year. Sometimes in the buildup you can wonder why we go through it all, but when the big days come and we come together with family and friends, we know it's all worthwhile. We're feeling it right along with you. December has been a doubly busy month for our group here in Ma.gnolia central. We fought a pitched battle with performance problems and think we've won it in the end with a snappier, faster Ma.gnolia. We've also rolled out a few holiday treats that we highlight here, and are getting ready to close the office for a week or so and get some rest. Like many gifts, our little extras might not be for everyone. Makes you wonder if there might be one more thing hiding behind the tree.

We're really excited about what we've got coming in the new year, and will be starting to talk a lot about that on the Ma.gnolia blog and to anyone who will listen for five minutes. Watch for it, but in the meantime may your holidays be safe and filled with all things good.

- The Ma.gnolia Team (support@ma.gnolia.com)

Holiday Avatars—Just Until New Year

It's true, we just released some nice new avatars a couple months ago, but the spirit of the holidays seized upon us this year and moved us to make 5 more.

Very pretty, and available only through the holidays! After January 1 these will vanish from the avatars page, but any that are in use will not be removed. So if you were thinking of starting that year-round, all things Kwanzaa group, now's the time to get busy!

Performance Enhancement—For Real

We're the first to say it—Ma.gnolia has had its slower moments. While we're always on the lookout for ways to make the site perform better, and when you're busy and growing things that were working one day can suddenly stop working the next. This month we bit a couple of bullets and got down to some serious performance tuning. The result is what we think is a big jump in speed and reliability, with much quicker page loading and far fewer errors. But the real test isn't what we think—it's the experience you have, so why not write in to tell us how it's working for you? You can drop us a line at support@ma.gnolia.com.

Tags of Interest for December

Tags can turn up the interesting and unexpected about a given subject, as we show every month in Tags of Interest. Remember, once you've clicked them, you can't un-click them!

• simplicity

  Who doesn't yearn for that moment of sweet relief when something becomes more simple. Or is this simplicity thing an illusion propagated by the lazy?

• nptech

  It's short for Non-Profit Technology, but it's a tag long on resources for Non-Profit and Non-Governmental Organizations who want to work smarter, not harder.

• worldchanging

  Probably one of the most inspirational tags we've ever seen, and it speaks for itself.

Featured Groups for December

Wii Almost as soon as the Wii launched, so followed the Wii group, bringing together early adopters of a the new platform.

Lighter Footstep A pre-launch companion to the coming website of the same name, this group gathers resources around the idea that we can live more sustainable lives in the most natural way—a step at a time.

Identity 2.0 This month Ma.gnolia also opened up support for OpenID, a way of signing up and signing into websites with a single password, and that keeps you in charge of your identity. The Identity 2.0 group focusses on this and other emerging approaches to managing our online identities safely and comfortably!

This Month's Ma.gnolia Tip: Printable Bookmarks

Another of the surprises that we released this month is the ability to print bookmarks in a way that looks good. Printing isn't just for paper, these days. Printing often results in electronic files, that are then brought in as pieces of larger documents. With this in mind, we've started out with two print-friendly views of bookmarks. One happens if you just click your browser's Print button while looking at a list of bookmarks. The second can be found at the bottom of the page of any list of bookmarks. We think that making it easy to get your bookmarks out of Ma.gnolia and into your work and projects is just as important as making it easy to add and share them, so if you have a need for publishing links that isn't being met, let us know.

Creative Commons

Our last item is an important one because it touches on the subject of intellectual property. Ma.gnolia takes the stand that our members are the owners of their bookmarks and related content. Following that idea, it stands that not everyone wants their bookmarks used in certain ways or for certain purposes. Figuring out a licensing scheme that makes sense and communicating that to people would have taken us months, but thanks to the Creative Commons movement, we were able to do it in a few days. Each bookmark or list of bookmarks from a single collection now carries a license that tells people how they may use your content. It's something that puts you in charge of your own stuff, but what's more it proves the worth of Creative Commons, which turned 4 just this month. Ready to pick your license? Head over to the Links Blog tab of your Ma.gnolia Profile, and in just two clicks you'll be done. Easy and legal—what better proof is there that the Creative Commons is a brilliant idea in action.